Some time ago, daily grains and oils reported in the "International Food Price Highlights" about the income of American farmers this year.
According to reports from the US Department of Agriculture, benefiting from the rise in international food prices, the income of American farmers will reach a new high in nearly a decade this year, and it can be said that this year's grain prices have risen, and farmers in grain exporting countries represented by the United States are the beneficiaries of the first wave.
However, recently, some professional institutions issued a document saying that in fact, in the rise in global food prices, the biggest beneficiary is another person.
The article points out that at present, the global grain trade is mainly controlled by several major multinational grain merchants, especially the four major multinational grain merchants led by the United States ADM, Bangji, Cargill, and The French Louis Dafour, which have formed monopoly control over international grain trade in many fields such as storage, logistics, shipping, finance, and trade, and control nearly 80% of the world's grain trade, and earn huge commercial profits by buying low and selling high.
Benefiting from higher international food prices, Cargill's net profit in fiscal 2021 reached nearly $5 billion, the company's highest record in 156 years, according to official reports.
Behind every such multinational company, there is a figure of international speculative capital.
Earlier, Professor Cheng Guoqiang, a food expert in China, said that the food crisis in 2008 was not a crisis of food shortages, but a crisis of food prices. At that time, the international capital market used the concept of biofuels to speculate on the global food supply and demand shortage, resulting in a sharp rise in global food prices, but after the global grain price reached a high point and countries imported and ordered, grain fell sharply.
These international speculative capitals often take advantage of the bad weather, logistics and transportation problems that may occur in the agricultural product market, use the futures market to speculate on international grain prices, and hoard grain to be raised through the transnational grain merchants they represent, thus causing a stage of tight grain supply in the market.
As early as 2012, a multinational capital was pointed out to use grain to speculate and obtain high profits.
In fact, in addition to these multinational grain merchants and the capital behind them becoming the biggest beneficiaries of the rise in food prices, there is another area that also earns far more than farmers who cultivate land, that is, the price of agricultural materials, which includes both fertilizers, pesticides and seeds, and in Our country, high land rents.
Due to the sharp rise in grain prices this year, the area planted with grain at home and abroad has been expanded, and with inflationary pressures, the prices of various types of agricultural materials have soared sharply. Taking China's urea as an example, the wholesale price has risen by about 50% compared with last year, while the terminal sales price has jumped directly from about 80 yuan last year to about 150 yuan at present, nearly doubling, and pesticides and fertilizers in North America have also hit a new high in nearly a decade.
In the seed field, Syngenta Group's operating income in the second quarter of 2021 reached US$7.4 billion, an increase of 28% year-on-year, the cumulative operating income in the first half of the year reached US$14.4 billion, an increase of 24% year-on-year, and the sales of giants such as BASF, Dow and LG Chem in the second quarter increased by as much as 50% to 70% year-on-year.
Of course, the ultimate beneficiaries of rising international food prices are the big food exporters.
After the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the Fed opened unlimited QE and released liquidity on a large scale, and the Fed's balance sheet quickly rose from $4.3 trillion before the epidemic to the current $8.3 trillion.
On the one hand, more liquidity is injected into the world, passing on the domestic crisis, and on the other hand, through high food price exports, American farmers have achieved reverse income growth in the context of a sharp decline in national agricultural subsidies.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects U.S. agricultural export earnings to reach $173.5 billion in fiscal year 2021, $33.8 billion, or 24 percent, from the final total in fiscal year 2020 and nearly $17 billion more than the previous record set in fiscal year 2014, while fiscal year 2022 will increase further to $177.5 billion.
The data estimates show that every $1 billion of U.S. agricultural exports will stimulate $1.14 billion in domestic economic activity and support more than 7,700 full-time jobs across the U.S. economy. This means supporting more than 1.3 million jobs, not only on farms, but also in related industries such as food processing and transportation.
It is reported that at present, the export markets of US agricultural products are mainly China, Canada and Mexico.