PROVIDING a basis for the rest of the speakers at the recent International Grains Forum, founder and managing director of niche grain trader Agrocorp International, Vijay Iyengar provided a unique overview of the future of grains trading in the global marketplace.
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Agrocorp is active in grain markets in southern Asia, South East Asia, China and the Middle East and sources grain from the Ukraine, Russia, Australia, Canada and North and South America.
Mr Iyengar said to look at the future of the grains industry for the next 10 years was a challenge because marketers didn't usually look that far ahead.
"We all agree that it's a strange time in the world of grains," Mr Iyengar said.
"We withstood the boom and bust of 2008 and the Global Financial Crisis and its subsequent recovery.
"Global commodity markets have seen it all over the last five years."
He cited changes in international tariff policies, the rise of consumption and demography pressures as having the strongest impact on the future of global grains.
"I would like to say that on a macro basis, growing urbanisation, increasing consumption, climate change and the availability of water resources are the main issues impacting on grain supply and demand," he said.
Mr Iyengar also stressed that global food security was one of the most important issues that the world would have to deal with in the next 20 years.
"I would put the emphasis on the word global," he said.
"I think that the world will have to think as one in the future.
"Often individual countries have tended to put their own individual food security ahead of global responsibilities, often resulting in distorting markets."
In a long-term look to the future, Mr Iyengar predicted Africa and the Middle East would be the driver for imports over the next 10 years and Russia and Ukraine showed great potential for exports due to the amount of land that was slowly being made available for agriculture.
