I attended the Barnett-Hall customer grain conference in the Heritage Hotel in Co Laois last week and once again a host of world class speakers lined the stage.

It was chaired as usual by Andy Doyle (former Irish Farmers Journal tillage editor). Although by the sound of John Bergin’s closing address to the conference, I think Andy might be trying hard to retire from the job.

John who is R&H Hall’s commercial director said: “Andy was trying to retire but we wouldn’t let him.” And why would they? He always does a very fine job. Andy was flanked by four main speakers.

Ukrainian trader

Anna Mezhuieva is a Ukrainian trader with the Louis Dreyfus Company. Anna started her career as an analyst of Black Sea oilseed markets at a consulting firm based in Ukraine.

Since 2018 Anna has worked at Louis Dreyfus Company, starting as a researcher of grains and oilseed markets for Ukraine. She then took a commercial role, including trading of Ukrainian milling wheat and currently trading Europe and Black Sea feed grains.

Anna is still living and working in Ukraine and spoke about the differences between pre-war and post-war with regard to farming and trading.

Ukrainian farmers have lost access to around 8m hectares of land due to the war. Ukrainian grain farmers were making a margin of around $800/ha before the war.

This went into minus figures at the start of the war and is now sitting around $200-300/ha. She also said that a lot of money has been spent on infrastructure to allow grain to be stored, as well as money being spent away from the three main ports to allow grain to be exported.

Diplomat and geopolitical strategist

Braz Baracuhy is a career diplomat and a leading geopolitical strategist. He served as the acting ambassador of Brazil to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva and speaks regularly on geopolitical risks and trends associated with global trade in agriculture and commodities.

He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brazil in 2001 and his work has focused on the intersection of geopolitics and international trade, including economic diplomacy, trade negotiations and foreign-policy strategy.

Braz spoke about how the world is in what he sees a bipolar disorder. China is equal to the US as a world power and there is no shared concept of order between the two nations.

He also said he believes that the Ukrainian war can no longer be won by military means, it must now be won by political means.

Geopolitics needs to be incorporated into business strategy and that he would not be surprised by a third world war. Cheery thought!

ESG manager

Rachel Connor, quality and environment, social and governance (ESG) manager with Barnett-Hall.

Rachel is responsible for the testing programme of all purchased raw materials and for ensuring compliance with regulations to ensure feed quality and safety.

Her role has recently expanded to manage the calculating of the company’s carbon footprint and developing policy.

Rachel spoke about the EU Deforestation Regulation and how it has been postponed until December 2025.

The objective of the regulation is to minimise the EU’s contribution to global deforestation and forest degradation.

The relevant commodities cattle, cocoa, palm oil, rubber, soya and wood must not have been produced on land that was deforested after 31 December 2020.

Agriculture research firm

And as usual the main speaker of the day was heavy hitter Dan Basse, president of AgResource Company, a domestic and international agriculture research firm located in Chicago, which forecasts domestic and world agricultural price trends.

AgResorce Company provides information and research to farmers, elevators, soy and corn processors, wheat millers, food companies, trading companies, importers, exporters and meat packers.

Dan is often quoted in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times and is well respected within the industry.

Dan also spoke on geopolitical issues. He said that world farmers are economically struggling and that climate is a big problem.

He spoke on his concern on the accelerating US government debt, he called it a “debt bomb”, one which will eventually go off.

He said the next president no matter who it is will have to cut back on government spending. He expects that beef, dairy and poultry markets will stay strong for the next year at least, but that grain markets will stay depressed.

He said that the fact that China is now using GMO products will mean that they will eventually become self-sufficient and will need to import less.

He added that farm labour was a problem worldwide, but investment in technology can reduce labour costs.

He also mentioned a US beef price of $8.51/lb (by my calculations that €17.17/kg) and a two-day old black calf is making $700-800 dollars (€640-740) a bit more that we’re getting here!

Take all predictions with a pinch of salt, but some interesting information all the same.