Malt Barley Crops in UK

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A friend from England wrote:

"Barley markets have been showing some bounce here in the UK and in the far distance we can just make out a few bulls gathering.

We have had very little rain for the last two months and in some areas the crops are looking a bit stressed. With the total sowing in the UK being back by around 20% on last year, the S&D position is forecast to be in balance IF there is no weather condition that will affect the yields.

With the dry weather we have had so far, the yields are already going to be affected so a short market could develop. This is what is putting some backbone back into the market."

Pars

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Reminder date for CWB 2009/10 Pool

Sign up for Series C Delivery Contract by Mon May 31

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EU wheat forecasts trimmed in global wheat production estimates
By Jane Byrne, 25-May-2010

Related topics: The Big Picture

Wheat production on a global scale for the 2010-11 global crop has been revised upwards by two million tonnes to 660 million tonnes, according to the May report from the International Grains Council (IGC), which was less upbeat abou the EU harvest.

World wheat production is still forecast to fall 2.4 per cent for 2010-11 compared with estimates for the 2009-10 crop year, stated the IGC.

"Conditions in the northern hemisphere remained mostly beneficial, but the crop forecast for the EU is trimmed," the IGC said.

EU wheat output

Earlier this month, Peter Duggan, business analyst with the Irish food board (An Bord Bia), stated that a recovery in French, German and British wheat output is expected to lead to overall EU production increasing by three per cent to 134m tonnes.

The analyst, citing forecasts from Strategie Grains, claims that within the top three EU wheat producers, namely France, Germany and Spain, output is expected to grow by four per cent to 79 million tonnes due to a combination of higher planted areas and some anticipated yield improvement on 2009, according to the report.

Total EU wheat availability is expected to rise almost in line with production forecasts, he added, and with little change in EU domestic use and trade, closing stocks are expected to rise.

EU wheat availability should rise by two per cent by the end of the 2010/11 season to 155 million tonnes on the back of imports increasing by 41 per cent to almost five million tonnes and production being there per cent higher.

Flour exporters

The IGC report also shows Kazakhstan still remaining as the world’s leading flour exporting country, with shipments forecast at three million tonnes of wheat equivalent.

Second in global flour exporting rankings was Turkey, with its outgo placed at 2.5 million tonnes of wheat equivalent, and the EU and Argentina are tied for third place with the outgo for each forecast at 1.3 million tonnes of wheat equivalent.

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Globe and Mail Update
Published on Tuesday, May. 25, 2010 6:38PM EDT

On the flat prairie just east of Regina, the head office of Alliance Grain Traders Inc. rises like a bright-red island in a sea of mud and stubble.

Inside the corrugated-metal walls, Alliance’s young chief executive officer, Murad Al-Katib, is crafting a vision that’s every bit as eye-catching as the building he has put up. He aims to construct a global food powerhouse in the Canadian West based on lentils, chickpeas, peas and beans.

These once-lowly “pulse grains” are staple foods in fast-growing emerging markets such as India, China, and northern Africa, but, as crops, they flourish best in the dry, fertile soil of Saskatchewan.

“We can grow them here better than anywhere else in the world,” says Mr. Al-Katib, 37, and already a 15-year veteran of global agribusiness.

This Saskatchewan advantage has powered Mr. Al-Katib’s overnight rise as a player in world markets for the legume vegetables, which contain protein-rich kernels encased in their pods. Pulse crops have teamed up with the even more prevalent canola to end the rule of King Wheat, which had once dominated the Prairies.

Alliance, now the world’s biggest lentil processor and exporter, is expected to gross $700-million in revenue this year from buying, selling and processing pulses. As head of an acquisition-minded company with a market capitalization of more than $500-million, the towering Mr. Al-Katib is bidding to become an agribusiness giant in more ways than one.

“Some in the industry may be jealous of him, but he took the risk, so good on him,” says Murray Purcell, a lentil and grain farmer near Saskatoon who is a supplier to Alliance and chairman of the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers. “He’s going to bring good things to growers.”

Mr. Al-Katib has capitalized on the fact that as crop gluts and competition forced Saskatchewan farmers to diversify beyond cereals, they turned increasingly to alternative crops – canola and, to a lesser extent, the highly profitable pulses, used in foods from pasta to hummus and soups. (The name is a variation on the Latin puls, for thick soup.) Pulses have emerged as a $2-billion export business in a province where, 20 years ago, few were grown. They also offer a measure of marketing choice to those growers who feel shackled by the monopoly status of the Canadian Wheat Board, which trades the West’s major cereal grains.

“These pulses are cash crops that are not centrally controlled by the board – they are freely marketed,” Mr. Al-Katib says.

What’s more, they are a handy weapon in farmers’ crop rotation arsenal. By alternating these cash crops with wheat and canola, farmers minimize the need to leave land fallow in summer. Pulses replenish nitrogen in the soil naturally, rather than using it up, and they grow well in dry conditions.

But the challenge is adding value to the output of the 18,000 pulse growers in the province. That is where Mr. Al-Katib and other processors come in. In his Regina plant, which processes the widely used red lentils, “we peel the skin off each kernel, split it in half, and polish it with canola oil and water, and package it and send it to the world,” he says.

About 35 to 40 per cent of the world’s lentil trade passes though Mr. Al-Katib’s hands in one way or another. In total, Canadian pulse production exceeds five million tonnes a year – up from 250,000 tonnes in 1985 –and most of it comes from Saskatchewan.

Mr. Al-Katib, with his global business savoir faire, exudes an exotic air, but he is just as Saskatchewanian as curling and Tommy Douglas. A son of a Turkish-Canadian family, he was born and raised in Davidson, Sask., where his father was the town doctor and his mother was the mayor for a time.

Pulses didn’t always make his heart beat faster. With a commerce degree from University of Saskatchewan and an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix, he thought he would end up on Wall Street. But he wrote a fateful letter in the mid-1990s to Roy Romanow urging the then-NDP premier to build a trade promotion presence in emerging markets.

Mr. Romanow invited him to join that effort and, as a 25-year-old, he was selling Saskatchewan crops to places like India, China and Bangladesh. After seven years in government, he conjured up the idea of becoming a value-added trader and processor of pulses. A Turkish family, the Arslans, invested $1.5-million in his newly formed Saskcan Pulse Trading Inc.

Nine years later, Saskcan has evolved into a global business, now called Alliance, that operates 21 factories in Canada, Turkey, Australia and the United States, but earns 60 per cent of its revenues in Canada through its Saskcan operations. The Arslans own almost 30 per cent and Mr. Al-Katib, 2 per cent The timing is right for his big idea, Mr. Al-Katib says. Pulse production is declining in the very countries that consume the most and where population is growing the fastest. As producers, many countries in Africa and Asia have trouble coping with seed diseases, and there is little plant research.

Contrast this to his home province, where University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre has developed shorter-maturing strains suited to the Western Canadian growing season.

He says his future lies in pushing up the value chain, which means more packaging, canning, processing and branding of pulses. He talks of turning green lentils into his own pasta, and buying chickpeas from farmers for his own hummus production.

Regina, hummus capital of the world? Don’t underestimate the vision of Mr. Al-Katib, whose finger is on the pulse of world food trade.

“I’m not an ag guy, I’m a risk manager,” he explains. “This business is all about emerging markets, market development and risk management. We’re dealing in countries that once were not familiar to Saskatchewan exporters.”

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Nice vacation:


"The Canadian Wheat Board is seeing growth in sales to Bangladesh. Don Bonner just returned from visiting several key milling customers and says there are several reasons he CWB is finding significant interest in Canadian wheat.

"Australia's drought a few years ago made them more interested in Canadian wheat. Also, the overall economy is doing fairly well in Bangladesh which is increasing personal wealth."

The CWB used to sell between 200,000 and 300,000 tonnes into the country annually. Exports jumped to 600,000 tonnes last year and they're now aiming for one million tonnes.

"They have a population about five times the size of Canada and they consume slightly less wheat than we do," said who Bonner who believes there's lots of growth potential.

As the economy grows, Bonner says more Bangladeshis are switching from rice to wheat. The wheat they demand is also increasing in quality as they switch from traditional flat breads to more loaf-style breads which require wheat with higher protein"

quote from http://www.discovermoosejaw.com

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"The Canadian Wheat Board is reminding growers about the CWB's 45-tonne minimum delivery policy.

Producers with small contracts may be able to deliver more than the called portion of their grain using the 45 tonne policy explains Jordan Adamchuk, CWB account representative.

"On the first call of any series farmers can deliver, without exceeding what they contracted, the greater of either the quantity of the grain and grade being called, or 45 tonnes," says Adamchuk. For growers with small contracts, the 45 tonnes may be larger than the percentage called for by the CWB.

Whether using the minimum delivery policy or not, Adamchuk says farmers should always consult with their grain company representative regarding the details of the contract before delivering."

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Parsley are you baiting LWeber you know he does not like nice things said about Murad?

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I've been on a bypass for a couple of days, away from AV, gusty.

It is a Globe and Mail article, not from Weber.

I posted marketing related items on this thread I thought may be interesting for AV'ers.
Pars

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http://www.calgarybeacon.com/2010/05/column-did-you-know-4/

The legislation eliminates a step in the process to pay producers for their grain.The current system requires analysis from the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Finance, as well as Treasury Board approval before payments are delivered. Under the new legislation, Treasury Board approval will no longer be required. This could speed up the payment process by as much as three weeks. The introduction of this new legislation demonstrates that the Government of Canada is committed to increasing the CWB’s accountability to farmers and to improving the way the Government works for producers