I was present at the W & R Barnett, R & H Hall customer conference in the Carlton House hotel in Maynooth last week. R & H Hall are the leading supplier to the Irish feed industry of grain and non-grain feed ingredients and the main supplier of ingredients of which I purchase for Inishowen Co-op.

Dan Basse was the main speaker at the conference, an agricultural commodity economist and the president of AgResource Co, a domestic and international agricultural research firm based in Chicago.

Dan, who is always an entertaining speaker, had some very interesting predictions for the agricultural world of the next 12 months and beyond. Some of which I hope he is correct in and some of which I hope he is not!

Agricultural outlook

Firstly, he believes that the Russian-Ukrainian war will end in the next 12 months. He believes that the Russians cannot afford to fund the war any longer and they are now drafting inexperienced, poorly trained individuals who don’t want to fight in the war in the first place. He said he doesn’t know what the end of the war will look like but he does believe it will end.

Secondly, he believes that 2023 will see a world recession. “Recessions follow fuel or food price spikes. The case for a 2023 US/World recession grows,” he said.

One interesting but probably politically incorrect statement was that we need to keep drilling for oil as the existing renewable energy sources don’t even cover growth within the industry, never mind eat into existing coal and oil energy production.

Grain production

Another interesting, albeit worrying slide that he showed, plotted the increase in metric ton of grain, produced per hectare since 1973. The data incorporated corn (maize), wheat, barley, sorghum, soy and canola combined on a worldwide basis and had increased pretty much year-on-year until 2016, where it has since plateaued.

The thinking is that from now on, even with increases in technology and better farming practices, it will not be possible to increase yields per hectare on a world-wide basis. The only way to produce more will be to have more hectares but where will these hectares come from?

He did have some good news for meat producing farmers, starting with beef farmers. He was adamant that the price for beef, chicken and pork would soar in 2023 and that there would be a negative demand for grain next year leading to lower prices albeit for one year only. So cheaper grain and high beef prices - looks like 2023 will be a good year to finish cattle! Too good to be true?