CBH South East Asia grower study tour participants represented farmers right throughout the State at last week's Global Grain Asia conference in Singapore.
The two-day affair is the premier event in the Asian grain calendar and with more than 350 registered guests, it was the perfect opportunity for the study tour group to gain some insight into the broader South East Asian grains industry.
For the majority of the trip throughout Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore growers were focused on wheat - WA exports, South East Asian imports, consumption trends, flour milling, bread and noodle making and the vertical integration of companies surviving due to the current abundance of the globally grown grain.
But for the final days of the trip growers were treated to presentations on everything from biofuel policies to rice trends and everything in between.
But it was esteemed American market analyst and ConsoliAgra director Emily French who demanded the group's attention with her less than positive world grain outlook for the 2013/14 season.
She told delegates continued unpredictable weather, uncertain macro-economic direction, heightened political risk and volatile commodity capital flows made the world grain market more complex than ever to analyse.
But it didn't stop her from expressing her opinion about the world's "increasingly volatile wheat markets" of which neutral weather conditions would result in a sustained bearish market overall.
She said key trends including macro volatility, wider volatility and market instability, market numbness, a quivering world export trade, unpredictable weather and the fact it was a "buyers' market" these days added to her cynicism.
Ms French told delegates wheat would have its feed demand taken away due to forecast increased corn production in coming seasons and world grain stocks across all soft commodities were not currently of any concern.
"Competitive offers to take advantage of world flat prices will keep Australian wheat exports flowing into key demand however reduced domestic stocks will make 2013/14 production very important in determining Australia's future export role," Ms French said.
Also of great interest to the WA delegation was an origination panel discussion which analysed the production environment of the world's key producing regions.
CBH's head of marketing Tom Puddy joined Vicorus broker and discussion mediator Jonathan Grange, Soyuz Commodities chief executive officer Peter Biermann, Black Sea, CHS logistics director Luis Neves, Brazil and RJ O'Brien senior vice president Craig Sielaff, USA, to discuss whether or not Brazil was developed enough to emerge as one of the world's export powerhouses, whether the USA would be able to increase its land made available for farming and continue to increase its exports, if the Black Sea could be an important supplier of grain to Asia for the long-term and how the current wave of farm consolidation had impacted grain exports from Australia.
Despite a number of 'co-operative critics' back home in WA, what was made crystal clear at last week's conference was the interest in CBH's role and structure by a large number of Asian conference goers.
More than a few international conference delegates noted that it seemed CBH was in a covetable position given its substantial share of the WA grains industry.
Maya grower and CBH director Brain McAlpine said low fobbing costs in WA as compared to eastern Australia were noted in a panel discussion but it was also noted Australia had an expensive fobbing cost as compared to other markets on average.
CBH was the sole platinum sponsor of this year's conference.
p Bobbie Hinkley travelled to Indonesia and Malaysia courtesy of CBH Group.
