Last week I presented at the Grains & Oilseeds Markets 2022 Conference in Singapore, organised by Centre for Management Technology. The participants were the global heavy weight experts of Agro-Trading, Commodity and Procurement sectors.
I covered the opportunities Alternative Protein innovation could provide to cope with the increasing global meat demand and divert animal feed products back to human food. Drawing inspiration from Big Idea Ventures 80+ portfolio companies.
Some of the key takeaways from this conference:
- Simon Bentley from Commoditia warned that as we transition to “renewable everything” — so biofuels, fermentation based protein, plastics etc. a lot more pressure could be put on grains!
- Garima Jain from Louis Dreyfus Company discussed the misconceptions of India are far from the reality where India is ranked as the 2nd in the World for Agricultural Production and Indian agricultural production has increased from 101 USD bn to 481 USD bn in the past 20 years (8% annual growth from 2000 to 2020).
- Evgeniya Dudinova from Agthia Group PJSC cautioned severe delays (>1 month) and budget challenges, badly affected by sky rocketing grains and oilseeds prices. Has created an interest to look at new markets for sourcing in the Arabian Gulf. “It is impossible to afford these prices in the long run, which is why we need to explore new formulations and sourcing locations”.
- Douglas Khng from Toyota Tsusho Corporation echoed that Brazil, Argentina, India and the US will fill the gap left by Ukraine in the grains and oilseeds markets.
- Caleb Wurth from U.S. Grains Council stated that E15 Ethanol from corn biofuel does not affect corn supply demand even with high oil demand.
- Ritesh Kumar from Aastar Trading highlighted that rice is the only grain whose prices have gone down in the last 5 years in major growing/export origins and how wheat export bans by India has helped rice exports. However given the methane emissions of rice this could affect future carbon tax initiatives.
Thank you Rebecca Cheng for bringing us all together and the warm invitation to participate.