U.S. stocks rallied, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 10,000 for the first time in a year, on better-than-estimated earnings at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Intel Corp. Oil climbed, while the Dollar Index slid to the lowest level since August 2008 and Treasuries fell.
As of October 14, Ukraine harvested nearly 5.5 mln tonnes of sunflower seed throughout 84% of planned areas, declared Yuri Melnik, the Minister of Agrarian Policy.
In 2009, the general production volumes of oilseeds in Ukraine are expected at the level of nearly 9 mln tonnes, including 6.1 mln tonnes of sunflower, 1.89 mln tonnes of rapeseed, 950 thsd tonnes of soybean, declared Stepan Kapshuk, the general director of the association "Ukroliyaprom", during the International conference of oilseeds, vegetable oils and by-products ("Oilseeds & Oils 2009"), taking place in Istanbul (Turkey) on October 12-14.
According to S.Kapshuk, the season-2008/09 of oilseeds processing was characterized with the record volumes of vegetable oils production. For the first time, Ukraine produced over 2.6 mln tonnes of vegetable oils, including over 2.5 mln tonnes of sunflower oil (the export volumes totaled 2.1 mln tonnes).
The growth of sunflower production to the level of 6.5 mln tonnes, the presence of the up-to-date technical base and advanced technologies, the excellent logistics assisted to the appearance of such results, marked the general director of "Ukroliyaprom".
Ukraine, Russia and Argentina take 53%of the world market of sunflower production (18%, 22% and 13% respectively), declared Vadim Litvinenko, the analyst of the market of oilseeds and by-products of APK-Inform Agency, reporting at the international conference “Oilseeds & Oils 2009” (Turkey). These three countries export nearly 32% of the world exports of sunflower seed.
In 2009, grain production volumes in Ukraine will total 42.9 mln tonnes (in clean weight) as opposed to 53.3 mln tonnes last year, declared the Ministry of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine. According to estimations of the Ministry, grain exports from Ukraine in 2009/10 marketing year (MY, July-June) will total 16.69 mln tonnes, as opposed to 25.2 mln tonnes in the previous MY.
As the International Monetary Fund(IMF) and the World Bank annual meetings approach as another arena for policy makers to discuss ways to resume and sustain growth, the world economy is scrabbling on the way out of the deepest recession since the 1930s.
Argentina, once the world’s second- largest corn exporter, lifted a ban on overseas shipments of the grain and wheat, making good on a pledge by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as planting shrinks.
The United States is getting back into the work of helping poor, developing countries increase their agricultural output, a policy it abandoned nearly three decades ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said.
"We moved away from investments in agricultural productivity, toward emergency food aid [in 1981]," Clinton said in a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York September 25. "Revitalizing global agriculture will not be easy. In fact, this is one of the most ambitious and comprehensive diplomacy and development efforts our country has ever undertaken."
Enabling the world's poor to feed themselves through sustainable farming will help alleviate the crises caused by one of the most urgent threats facing the world: chronic hunger and its consequences, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says.
"This is an issue that affects all of us, because food security is about economic, environmental and national security for our individual homelands and the world," Clinton said September 26 at a food security conference co-hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Representatives from 130 countries, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations attended the brief conference to address the underlying causes of global hunger.