Middle East and a monster month of sheepmeat exports
Australia’s sheepmeat exports have been on the rise this year, flowing on from the record high lamb slaughter levels. Both lamb and mutton volumes are well above year ago and five-year-average levels for the year-to-May, as the US and the Middle East soak up our extra supply. China has been Australia’s biggest mutton market and […]
I heard the herd was bigger
There has been a bit of talk around lately regarding the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) official cattle herd numbers, and how they have ramped up considerably with new methodology. While the herd numbers are old news now, being for June 30, 2023, it’s still worth looking at what’s changed. The ABS previously used farmer […]
Agricultural Commodity prices since the mid 1990’s
A suggestion was made recently for an article to look at the change in price levels across a range of agricultural commodity prices during the past two decades. Such a comparison throws up some challenges which this article looks at. In this analysis, the commodity prices have been simply deflated (adjusted for inflation) for both […]
Lessons from the recent volatility
General grain hedging theory has historically held that you shouldn’t be selling into rising wheat futures in May or June. When prices are rising as the northern hemisphere harvest approaches it is usually due to crop problems that aren’t going to go away. This rally, it seems, was different. Figure 1 shows the Chicago Soft […]
