When I started to work in development cooperation in the late 1980s, one-third of EU agricultural subsidies—about 10 billion euros annually (equivalent to about 17 billion euros today)—were spent on export subsidies. The EU Common Agricultural Policy was a central planning system with administratively fixed intervention prices for major commodities, huge stocks of cereals and milk products, and high import tariffs.
Corn, bean, and wheat prices have all taken the plunge the past couple years, but analysts and traders said they’re optimistic that futures will improve in 2016. Corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade have dropped 19% in the past two years, soybeans are down by a third, and wheat has dropped 24%.
Russia has banned imports of soybeans and corn from the United States starting from February 15, Assistant to Head of Russia's Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor) Alexey Alekseenko told Russian news agency TASS on Wednesday.
In two months, the spring sowing campaign will begin. According to preliminary information, as regards the 2016 harvest, the whole cultivated area under agricultural crops by all categories of farms is expected to reach 26.7 million hectares or 100% of the area sown in 2015”, Oleksiy Pavlenko, the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine.
A continuing decline in crop and livestock prices will pull down U.S. farm income for the third year in a row, but this year’s decline will be a modest 2% or 3%, said a USDA forecast, far milder than the combined 31% plunge of the past two years. Large crop-support payments, estimated at $9.5 billion for ARC, PLC, and LDPs, would buffer a 4% drop in livestock receipts and a 1% fall in crop receipts.
- U.S. inventories of corn, soybeans, and wheat more than doubled on average since 2013 while consumption has stagnated, says the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. “The outlook for the agricultural economy has continued to become more pessimistic,” the Fed bank says. The strong dollar stifles ag exports and the bumper crops of 2015 could mean further expansion of U.S. supplies in 2016.
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. At Kiev’s Boryspil airport, Igor, a 28-year-old Russian returning from what he calls an “excellent” trip to the Ukrainian capital, grumbles about the overnight journey he faces home. “I don’t see why I have to fly back to Moscow via Minsk” he complains.
The U.S. 2015 corn and soybean crop sizes did not increase as much as the trade expected, and the amount of those crops being stored did not build as much either, according to the USDA Tuesday.As a result, the CME Group’s corn, soybean, and wheat markets have spiked higher. At the close, the March corn futures settled 5 cents higher at $3.56 3/4. March soybean futures closed 13 1/4 cents higher at $8.74.
Wheat saw a pick-up in price action last week, with another drop to test major supports that quickly reversed back up - then followed by a strong day that then saw prices erode back to unchanged. Plenty of action but not much direction. World wheat prices continue to erode, with prices slogging down to the summer’s lows.
Developed countries agreed to stop the subsidies immediately and developing nations must follow by the end of 2018. The WTO, which represents 162 countries, called it "the most significant outcome on agriculture" since the body's foundation in 1995. But longstanding talks on other trade barriers were left unresolved at the end of the summit in Kenya.