Tag Archives: grain

Fuel and food prices, poor weather, upended agriculture, a combination asking for political upheaval

Rev 6:6 NAS And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.”

Important Takeaways:

  • From Pakistan to Peru, soaring food and fuel prices are tipping countries over the edge
  • Now, more than a decade after the Arab Spring, global food prices are soaring again. They had already reached their highest level on record earlier this year as the pandemic, poor weather and the climate crisis upended agriculture and threatened food security for millions of people. Then came Russia’s war in Ukraine, making the situation much worse — while also triggering a spike in the cost of the other daily essential, fuel.
  • The combination could generate a wave of political instability, as people who were already frustrated with government leaders are pushed over the edge by rising costs.
  • In Sri Lanka, protests have erupted over shortages of gas and other basic goods. Double-digit inflation in Pakistan has eroded support for Prime Minister Imran Khan, forcing him from office. At least six people have died in recent anti-government protests in Peru sparked by rising fuel prices. But political conflict isn’t expected to be limited to these countries.

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Canadian shippers find few easy alternatives for grain, oil cut off by flood

By Rod Nickel

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Canadian exporters of commodities from grain to fertilizer and oil scrambled on Wednesday to divert shipments away from Port of Vancouver, which floods have isolated, but they found few easy alternatives.

The disaster, which has killed at least one person, has caused the latest blockage in the congested global supply chain, driving up inflation fears ahead of the holiday shopping season.

A month’s worth of rain in two days caused floods and mudslides in British Columbia that wrecked highways and two critical east-west rail lines owned by Canadian National Railway Co and Canadian Pacific Railway leading to Canada’s busiest port.

The Trans Mountain oil pipeline and part of an Enbridge Inc gas line have closed as precautions.

“That western corridor is our lifeblood,” said John Brooks, CP’s chief marketing officer, at an investor conference on Tuesday. “Just about all commodities to some extent flow through that.”

Vancouver’s port moves C$550 million ($437 million) worth of cargo a day, ranging from automobiles and consumer goods to commodities.

The alternatives include diverting commodities to British Columbia’s northern port of Prince Rupert, to the U.S. Pacific Northwest or across the continent to eastern Canada.

The clock is ticking. Port of Vancouver said it expects vessels to anchor longer while they await delayed cargo, a situation that usually results in shippers paying demurrage for the extra wait.

Buyers can also charge penalties for shipments that arrive late, raising the urgency to find alternatives.

“Everyone is looking at it,” one Canadian grain trader said.

Even if the railways can carry out repairs within a few days and restore service – they have not provided estimated timelines – delays will stretch for as much as one month given the backlog of shipments to work through, said a second grain industry source.

The Prince Rupert grain terminal, owned by Richardson International, Viterra and Cargill Inc, is already busy with exports, limiting its capacity to handle more volumes, said Wade Sobkowich, executive director of the Western Grain Elevator Association.

Canola futures for January delivery fell 1.5% as traders factored in transportation problems from the floods.

Teck Resources, a copper and coal miner, said in a statement that it was diverting trains from Vancouver to a Prince Rupert terminal.

Canpotex Ltd, the potash export company owned by Nutrien Ltd and Mosaic Co, will ship more of the crop nutrient through its smaller terminals in Portland, Oregon. and Saint John, New Brunswick, spokesperson Natashia Stinka said.

Trans Mountain’s closure means some 300,000 barrels of oil and refined products each day will start filling storage tanks, or find another conduit.

The main alternatives are shipping oil east on Enbridge’s Mainline or south by train to the United States, said John Zahary, CEO of Altex Energy, which owns rail terminals in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

“(It) does seem like supply chains are so tight these days that when something happens, panic and scrambling becomes the plan,” Zahary said.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

In Wisconsin, Trump announces $13 billion in farm aid

By Steve Holland and P.J. Huffstutter

MOSINEE, Wis. (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump announced a new round of pandemic assistance to farmers of about $13 billion at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Thursday night, delivering aid to an important sector in a crucial battleground state.

“Starting next week my administration is committing an additional … $13 billion in relief to help farmers recover from the China virus, including Wisconsin’s incredible dairy, cranberry and ginseng farmers who got hurt badly,” Trump said, referring to the novel coronavirus virus.

Wisconsin is known for its milk and cheese industries, which have been hard hit by both the White House’s trade policies and the COVID-19 pandemic – but the amount of assistance to farmers weeks before the vote was unexpected.

Trump spoke in Mosinee, a rural town in the central part of Wisconsin, as state officials reported 2,034 new coronavirus cases, a record one-day increase.

The new aid program – which the agriculture department is expected to release details about on Friday – is tapping into the $14 billion in additional Commodity Credit Corporation funds that Congress agreed to prepay as part of the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, according to four sources familiar with the matter.

Farmers are expected to be allowed to start applying for the new program on Monday, the sources said.

How much certain crops will receive is not known, but the program is set to make direct payments to producers of meat, dairy, grain, vegetables and other products, the sources said.

The payments will be designed similarly to an earlier aid package: calculated based on yields of crops and the impact the coronavirus pandemic had on the price of the commodities.

Trump in April announced a $19 billion relief program to help U.S. farmers cope with the impact of the virus, including $16 billion in direct payments to producers and mass purchases of meat, dairy, vegetables and other products.

That came on the heels of $28 billion in trade aid given to the farm sector over 2018 and 2019. A government watchdog agency said on Monday the 2019 aid favored farmers from the U.S. Southeast, primarily those growing crops like cotton or sorghum, over those in other parts of the country.

China’s demand for U.S. corn and soybeans has been strong in recent weeks, boosting prices, and it is also importing more meat amid a potential food supply gap.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and P.J. Huffstutter; Writing by Andy Sullivan and Eric Beech; Editing by Tom Brown and Aurora Ellis)

Major grain traders face one-two punch from U.S. floods, trade war

Water stands next to a field of crops near Putnam County, Illinois, U.S. July 5, 2019. Picture taken July 5, 2019. REUTERS/Stephanie Kelly

By Karl Plume

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Severe U.S. weather likely dented earnings for large grain companies including Archer Daniels Midland Co and Bunge Ltd for a second straight quarter, adding to headwinds from a still-unresolved U.S.-China trade war, analysts and economists said.

ADM and Bunge, as well as peers Cargill Inc and Louis Dreyfus Co, known as the ABCD quartet of global grain trading giants, faced processing-plant downtime, rail, and barge shipping delays and other supply uncertainty this spring as historic floods ravaged the central United States.

The weather woes are heaping more pain on the battered U.S. agricultural sector already hard-hit by a years-long crop supply glut and the U.S.-China trade war now entering its second year. The tariffs China imposed on soybean exports from the United States in retaliation for U.S. duties on Chinese goods curbed shipments of the most valuable U.S. export crop.

The excessive rains and flooding could also have a lasting impact on the grain merchants, whose latest round of quarterly earnings will start this week. ADM and Cargill are viewed as particularly vulnerable due to their outsized U.S. footprints. Reduced U.S. corn and soybean plantings will likely cut available crop supplies in the United States, potentially driving up raw material costs and squeezing margins.

“They thrive on volumes and margins and both of those are going to be depressed in the coming year with the bushels being smaller and the margins likely not being there,” said Kevin McNew, chief economist with Farmers Business Network. “Export business is just going to fall off the cliff, especially for corn.”

The U.S. corn crop was more affected by floods than soybeans because soy can be planted later in the season.

FILE PHOTO: A flooded parcel of land along the Platte River is pictured in this aerial photograph at La Platte, south of Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Drone Base/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: A flooded parcel of land along the Platte River is pictured in this aerial photograph at La Platte, south of Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Drone Base/File Photo

WEAKER RESULTS

The first of the companies scheduled to report is privately held Cargill, which announces fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday.

The results will cover the March-to-May period, when flooding disrupted grain movement, including export shipments, and the year’s second “bomb cyclone” blizzard temporarily shuttered at least six Cargill grain handling facilities and a beef processing plant.

Cargill and ADM both own barge companies that haul grain and other products on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Grain barge movement so far this year is down about 37% from a year ago, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers data, due largely to prolonged river closures triggered by floods.

Cargill is expected to report weaker results compared with the very strong earnings of the year-ago quarter, due partly to expected lower profit in its origination and processing unit, said Bill Densmore, senior director of corporate ratings at Fitch Ratings.

Bunge and ADM will follow, with second-quarter results covering April, May and June scheduled for release on July 31 and Aug. 1, respectively. Privately held Louis Dreyfus is expected to issue interim first-half results in the autumn.

Shares of publicly traded ADM and Bunge are hovering just above three-year lows notched this spring as mounting concerns about U.S. plantings and trade fueled investor nervousness.

FILE PHOTO: Flooded farm fields are seen from an aerial photo taken while Nebraska Army National Guard Soldiers used a CH-47 Chinook helicopter to deliver multiple bales of hay to cattle isolated by historic flooding in Richland, Nebraska, U.S., March 20, 2019. Picture taken on March 20, 2019. Courtesy Lisa Crawford/Nebraska National Guard/Handout via REUTERS

FILE PHOTO: Flooded farm fields are seen from an aerial photo taken while Nebraska Army National Guard Soldiers used a CH-47 Chinook helicopter to deliver multiple bales of hay to cattle isolated by historic flooding in Richland, Nebraska, U.S., March 20, 2019. Picture taken on March 20, 2019. Courtesy Lisa Crawford/Nebraska National Guard/Handout via REUTERS

UNEVEN IMPACTS

With its concentration of assets in the United States and its large U.S. ethanol business, ADM was likely hit harder by adverse U.S. weather than Bunge, analysts said.

ADM cited poor U.S. weather for a nearly $60 million drop in operating profit in its first quarter and warned in April that lingering weather impacts would cut second-quarter earnings by $20 million to $30 million. Some analysts expect ADM to post as large a hit to second-quarter earnings as in the first quarter as adverse weather stretched through the spring season.

“ADM’s first-quarter estimate of $50-60 million seems like a good starting point” for the second-quarter impact, said Seth Goldstein, analyst with Morningstar.

ADM’s soy processing, ethanol and sweeteners and starches units may post lower margins, and smaller corn and soybean crops will hurt its grain origination business, said Heather Jones, founder and senior analyst with Heather Jones Research LLC.

The price of corn, the most common feedstock for U.S. ethanol makers, has surged as U.S. farmers struggled to plant the 2019 crop due to a historically soggy spring. Cash corn premiums in parts of the eastern Midwest, where planting delays were most acute, are at a six-year high. Soybean prices hit a one-year top last week.

“Bunge is less exposed, but higher bean costs would squeeze soy crush margins in the U.S.,” Jones said. Bunge is the world’s largest soybean processor.

(Reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Matthew Lewis)