Reading Time: < 1 minute Moscow | Reuters — Russia’s agriculture ministry has proposed that the government reduce or cancel its wheat export tax due to rouble volatility and a decline in global wheat benchmarks, the Interfax news agency reported, citing first deputy minister Evgenii Gromyko. The rouble has lost about six per cent against the U.S. dollar since the […] Read more
Russian ministry proposes reducing wheat export tax
Russia, China sign accords on grain quality control
Reading Time: 2 minutes Reuters — Moscow and Beijing have signed agreements on the control of grain quality, which technically open the Chinese market to Russian grain. Russian food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor and the Chinese government body in charge of quality control signed two food safety documents on Russian wheat, corn (maize), rapeseed, soybean and rice supplies at a […] Read more
Russia aiming for steady grain crop in 2016
Reading Time: 2 minutes Moscow | Reuters –– Russia, one of the world’s largest wheat exporters, is aiming for an unchanged grain harvest in 2016 compared with the current year, the agriculture ministry said Tuesday. If the weather remains favourable during the winter and spring, Russia, a major wheat supplier to Turkey, Egypt and Iran, will harvest a large […] Read more
2016 could be a ‘battleground year’ for commodity prices
A ‘battleground year’ is how analyst Errol Anderson sees 2016. Prices will be profitable… sometimes…but success will only come to producers who rein in their emotions
Reading Time: 8 minutes It isn’t only agriculture. China has become the world’s largest market for an incredibly long list of commodities. Consider the manufacturing industry, for example, where the Chinese generate roughly half of global demand — they use 54 per cent of global aluminum production, 50 per cent of nickel, 48 per cent of copper and 46 […] Read more
Russia-Turkey tensions stymie new wheat deals
Reading Time: 2 minutes Reuters — Political tension between Russia and Turkey has put a brake on new wheat deals between the two countries and created uncertainty about existing agreements, traders said Thursday. Relations between Russia, one of the world’s largest wheat exporters, and Turkey, the largest buyer of Russian wheat, have quickly deteriorated after Turkey shot down a […] Read more
Black Sea in it for the long haul
The Former Soviet Union, once Canada's largest wheat customer, is now its largest competitor
Reading Time: 3 minutes Black Sea wheat exports are projected at an all-time high this year, and there is good reason to have confidence in this forecast. During the 2015/16 marketing year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that the states of the former Soviet Union excluding Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia (FSU-12) will export a record 45 million […] Read more
U.S. grains: Wheat falls on profit-taking
Reading Time: 2 minutes Chicago | Reuters — U.S. wheat futures sank on Friday on a round of end-of-week profit taking after prices hit an 8-1/2 week high on Thursday, traders said. Soybeans also fell, pressured by the expanding harvest of what is expected to be a bumper crop in the U.S., while corn was close to unchanged. Wheat […] Read more
Russian government proposes cutting wheat export tax
Reading Time: 2 minutes Semikarakorsk, Russia | Reuters — The Russian government has proposed cutting its floating wheat export tax from Oct. 1 and to exempt durum wheat from the levy, a senior official said on Thursday. Russian wheat exports have been constrained by the tax, which has prevented exporters from fully benefitting from the weaker rouble and a […] Read more
Russia defends crop data reliability
Reading Time: < 1 minute Moscow | Reuters –– Russia’s agriculture ministry defended the reliability of its crop data on Thursday, after a farmers’ lobby said regional officials were pressuring farmers to report bigger grain crops to the ministry than they actually harvested this year. The ministry said its numbers, compiled by its regional departments which send “operational information” to […] Read more
Russian farm lobby says crop reports artificially high
Reading Time: 2 minutes Moscow | Reuters — Russian regional officials are pressuring farmers to report more grain crop than they actually harvest this year, the head of farmers’ lobby the Grain Union said on Tuesday. Arkady Zlochevsky said the difference between the actual harvest and the declared figures was not significant. However, his comments could be troubling for […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
