Following the trend of the last decade, financing for grains commodities will continue to be readily available next year. As liquidity remains high and interest rates remain low, financing risk should also remain low.

At Export Exchange 2014, the premiere international trade conference focused on the export of U.S. coarse grains and co-products, Terry Barr, senior director of CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange Division,  will delve further into this topic. 

“In the last decade, we’ve had tremendous amounts of liquidity on a global basis,” Barr said. “The central banks have made significant infusions into the financial markets. The last decade has been a very atypical period with near zero interest rates and very accommodative central banks across the globe.”

The last few years have also been characterized by significant increases in supplies of all grain commodities, as growing countries continue to expand operations.

A larger supply drives commodity prices down, as has been seen in U.S. corn marketing with its 2013/2014 corn crop. The price dropped more than 30 percent in 2013 and another 20 percent this year. This trend, coupled with plenty of available capital, means the cost for importing grains over the next eight to 12 months will be low.

Looking toward the future, expectations are that the competition for capital will increase as markets normalize from an unusually long period of high liquidity and low interest rates.

“Once we get to a transitioning period with these commodity markets, I would expect to see increased costs going forward,” Barr said. “But it’s certainly not going to reach a magnitude that is going to offset all the benefits that would occur to the importer from lower grain and oil food supply prices.”

Be sure to register today to learn more about this dynamic topic.