An important role in upholding national economic interests is played by the activity of business associations, their well-founded, well-balanced civic position, aimed, on the one hand, to dialogue with the government, and, on the other, to their readiness to firmly defend their legal rights. In the field of food supply, one of the determining factors in these relations is the economic efficiency of grain production .
In the context of the economy of innovation, current trends of globalization and internationalization of the economy, the efficiency of grain production, as well as the problem of nutrition in general, remains unresolved. Moreover, in the conditions of the modern Internet community, the availability of numerous information on international processes of production and consumption, including food, the task of information support for the production management of such an important type of product as food and fodder grain remains unresolved.
Our study is aimed at showing the world of science and practice how obviously feasible and relevant today is production efficiency in the agricultural segment of the economy and the information task of assessing the most important trends in the world grain market. Only after solving problems of this class can you honestly do other management tasks in social systems.
As early as the beginning of autumn 2010, FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) experts reported that no food crisis was foreseen, although international food markets would be unstable as food production efficiency declined. However, the global trend of a sharp jump in food prices at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 made the experts of this organization talk about a new food crisis. The latest FAO report in this sense is disappointing. World food prices reached a record high in January 2011, when the FAO index rose 3.4% over the month to 231 points.
The expectations of such a crisis are reinforced by the current trends in the global grain market and the corresponding production efficiency at agricultural processing enterprises.
The basis of this point of view is the obvious influence of the world grain market on the capabilities of most other segments of the world food market, in which grain is used as raw material (flour, cereals, etc.) or as feed for growing livestock and poultry.
If we talk about the most important trends that are forming today in the global grain market, they, according to the authors, are as follows.
The main producers of grain - China and India - are increasingly becoming importers of wheat and corn. This is due to the following reasons:
- outlined in recent years, the growth in food demand in these countries, caused by the growth of incomes of the population;
- the lag of grain production in these countries from the growth of domestic consumption;
- deterioration in these countries in recent years of natural conditions in the regions of commodity production of grain.
True, both countries are increasing attention to national grain production:
- China has already invited to the country the largest company in Asia engaged in the organization of industrial corn cultivation, it draws on international experience in creating modern enterprises for the production of fodder harvesting equipment and increasing their production efficiency.
- India has not yet been able to solve the problem of more efficient use of its sown areas, which make up about 10% of the global wedge. This is, first of all, the impossibility of mechanization of agricultural production, when an average of 1.5 hectares of arable land per farm.
According to experts of the International Grain Council, the main grain exporting countries will not be able to increase the production of the main grain crops of the world market - wheat, corn and rice in the coming years.
The trend, which has already manifested itself in grain exporting countries from the Southern Hemisphere (Australia, Argentina), indicates that grain crops in exporting countries in the 2012/2013 sowing year may be low due to weather reasons.
In a number of countries exporting grain from the Northern Hemisphere, due to last year’s unsatisfactory weather and organizational conditions, it was not possible to stockpile high-quality seed.
At the end of 2011, individual exporting countries significantly raised grain prices from stocks of previous years and have not yet been able to sell it profitably.
A number of exporting countries (Russia, Ukraine) have banned or restricted the export of their grain, which also leads to higher prices on the grain market.
Summing up the identified major trends in the grain market, we can formulate some conclusions:
- the supply of grain on the world market in 2012 will fall, and demand, naturally, will increase more and more;
- the majority of grain importers will not be able to weaken the need for grain imports due to domestic production growth under natural and economic conditions, but they will not have enough currency reserves to increase purchases;
- there will be such a situation when exporting countries cannot offer the requested amount of cheap grain, and importing countries cannot buy all the proposed amount of grain due to the high cost;
- in fact, the problem is the inability to grow and offer grain to developing countries-importers at such a cost that for a significant part of the world grain crop to achieve agreed prices on the international market;
- the weather conditions of 2012, as in previous years, will mainly negatively affect the results of grain production.