Country News
Australia: Barley exports are set to hit record levels in 2014/15 as Chinese buyers turn to it in the face of expensive domestic corn, according to Reuters. Exports are expected to be around 3 MMT through the end of July and booked shipping records indicate that it could potentially outstrip the record 6.15 MMT of barley Australia shipped in the 2011/12 season. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics
and Sciences estimated in June that coarse grain exports would total some 5.2 MMT this year and has predicted that barely production will fall by around 20 percent to 7.5 MMT.
Brazil: The government has given approval for ADM to begin shipping corn from their new terminal on the mouth of the Amazon, according to Reuters. The terminal is located just outside of Belem, and will have an initial annual shipping capacity of 1.5 MMT, which is expected to increase to 6 MMT by 2016. The opening of this terminal in northern Brazil is expected to reduce shipping costs by 34 percent compared to cargoes arriving from Brazil’s main port of Santos in the country’s south.
China: Drought and high temperatures have caused damage to over a million hectares of farm land in the provinces of Henan and Inner Mongolia, reports Reuters. Henan is one of China’s larger barley producing provinces, and the province’s drought is the worst seen in four decades. It has negatively impacted 900,000 hectares of crops and forced the provincial government to restrict usage for water intensive industries. Inner Mongolia has been in a state of drought since April. This has negatively impacted 150,000 hectares of farm land, 16.4 million hectares of pasture land and severely impacted the drinking water supply of 300,000 people. The drought in Inner Mongolia is believed to have caused around $37 million of damage so far.
South Africa: South Africa has raised its forecast for corn production to 14.02 MMT, which is an increase from the prior estimate of 13.9 MMT. Sorghum production estimates jumped by 9.6 percent to 255,700 MT.