source: FAO STAT

Not a perfect relationship, but there are generalizations that can be pulled from this chart.  This graphic shows the Southern Oscillation Index (bars) and the year-over-year change (%) in sugarcane yields (solid line, with 1.0 being same).  When the SOI is in negative phase, this is an El Nino indicator, which tends to correlate with [...]

Author: Michael Ferrari, PhD
VP, Applied Technology & Research
The Agricultural Outlook Americas conference was held in Boston this week.  This year’s event brought together a mix of growers, investors and technologists, with discussions ranging from  new investments on the farm to currency hedges.  The three day event contained too many interesting discussion [...]

Raw sugar futures continue to exhibit strength on global supply concerns, helped by the weaker USD.  With nearly all analysts reducing their global crop surplus estimates for 2010/11, with most are now in the range of a 3-4 mmt net global surplus (down from between 6-8 mmt).  There are more concerns now circulating the wires [...]

Author: Michael Ferrari, PhD
VP, Applied Technology & Research
 
Sugar demonstrating another week of strong performance as today’s activity (Mar11) closed at 27.81.  View the ino.com chart below for 5 day performance.

Judging by much of the market commentary we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks, the strength shown in the sugar market since August seems to [...]

Author: Michael Ferrari, PhD
VP, Applied Technology & Research
The first two maps below (from USDA) highlight the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI, for sugarcane growing regions in India’s northern states; the third map (Indian Met Dept) is the seasonal monsoon totals (through 22 Sept).  We have noted that the 2010 monsoon has been beneficial for [...]