Market Perspectives – May 22, 2015

Country News

Argentina: ADM announced this week that it is expanding the grain export capacity at the Puerto San Martin terminal, reports Reuters. The 25 percent increase in capacity will be completed by early 2016. This comes after a February announcement that ADM had entered into a partnership with Glencore to quadruple port capacity at a shared facility in northern Brazil.

Syria: Syria’s barley harvest is expected to total 1.2 MMT, which is up from 800,000 MT produced last year, according to Bloomberg News. Further, the government is attempting to entice farmers in rebel-held areas to sell their harvests through official channels in an effort to stave off food shortages and to try and re-establish government control in those areas.

South Africa: South Africa will likely cut its corn production estimate by 0.6 percent as drought continues to afflict the country’s crops, reports Bloomberg News. Farmers could bring in 9.7 MMT of corn in 2015, which is a substantial reduction from the 14.3 MMT harvested in 2014.