Fertilizer Markets and Finance

The European Union looked set for another wave of zero-duty imports despite member states remaining undecided on the plans, after Brussels acted to protect livestock farmers in the face of expectations of a declining grains harvest.

The European Commission is expected by the end of the month to permit a further 1.2m tonnes of feed wheat to enter the EU without the tariff of E12 a tonne that usually applies.

The ruling came despite a failure of a vote of farm representatives from EU countries to decide for or against the commission’s proposals.

While many states were broadly in favour of permitting the imports, which will ensure easier feed supplies for livestock producers, Poland, the bloc’s fourth-ranked grain producer, voted against the move, a source told Agrimoney.com.

Under EU rules, the hanging result of the vote empowered Brussels to follow through with its proposals.

Read more at Agrimoney

Uncertainty over the fate of the euro currency is already dampening U.S. economic growth and any significant worsening of the crisis would deal a blow to a recovery that is gradually gathering steam.

Economists estimate that volatile markets and business uncertainty over the fate of Greece and the policy course in Europe is already shaving anywhere from one tenth to one half a percentage pointfrom U.S. 2012 gross domestic product growth.

In a Reuters poll last week, U.S. GDP was forecast on average at 2.3 percent for 2012 and 2.4 percent for 2013.

The direct hit to growth comes through trade. U.S. exports to the European Union account for 19 percent of total exports, and those to the euro zone represent 13 percent of the total. But when calculated in terms of GDP, the share is tiny - only 1.3 percent of total output.

Read more at Yahoo Finance

BHP Billiton Limited (ASX:BHP) has priced a two-part bond deal in the European credit markets overnight, worth about $2.6 billion which will mature in 2024.

BHP says the proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes.

The global miner priced a $US5.25 billion deal earlier this year in five-part bond deal in the US credit markets in order to pay down existing debt.

BHP posted a net profit of $9.9 billion in the first half of its 2012 financial year.

View video at http://www.finnewsnetwork.com.au/archives/finance_news_network20687.html

Lithuania’s port of Klaipeda may lose 14 percent of its traffic as a result of European Union sanctions against Belarus, according to Eligijus Masiulis, Lithuania’s transportation minister, Lietuvos Rytas reported.

Belarus transported 5 million metric tons of fertilizer through Klaipeda last year, one seventh of the port’s total cargo volume, and EU sanctions may force Belarus to divert exports from Lithuania to Russia or the Black Sea, the newspaper cited the minister as saying.

The EU widened its sanctions against Belarus in March, banning more than 240 people from entering member-countries and freezing the assets of 32 Belarus-based companies.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aliaksandr Kudrytski in Minsk, Belarus atakudrytski@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net

Investors have yet fully to factor in Europe’s grain losses to last month’s cold snap, Offre Demande Agricole said, ditching hopes of a rise in winter grains production this year.

Offre Demande Agricole (ODA) warned that it may have underestimated grain losses to frost in France, the European Union’s top producer, with a 2m-tonne figure revealed earlier this month.

“Since this survey, some of the eastern regions of France have reported losses of up to 30% of wheat acreage, meaning the decline in French production could be much greater,” ODA said.

The comments come the day after analysis group Strategie Grains acknowledged it too had underestimated frost losses, as it cut by 1.6m tonnes its forecast for Europe’s forthcoming wheat harvest, and said that winterkill had affected 5-20% of France’s winter cereals area.

“Losses on this scale are highly unusual in France. They can be attributed to the very exceptional circumstances so far this crop year: abnormally mild weather through the autumn and early winter and then the late plummeting of the mercury,” Strategie Grains said.

Agritel on Monday said that 1.9m tonnes of French wheat may have been “lost at national level”.

Read more at Agrimoney

THERE is no doubting that a significant percentage of the increase in Net Farm Income UK farmers have benefited from is attributed to the weakness of sterling against the Euro.

This has led to higher farm gate prices for farmers, who along with the food and drinks manufacturers have greatly contributed to the national balance of payments through higher levels of exports due to the weak pound.

As I sit in the kitchen preparing the 2012 budget to show my bank manager, the uncertainties surrounding the euro and whether the Greeks can actually survive within the euro are a great concern.

Any failure would have serious implications to my own business and the whole of UK agriculture.

Should the pound strengthen against the euro, to the levels we had ten years ago, our exports would be uncompetitive and farm gate prices would drop along with the single farm payment paid to ourselves from Europe.

It is an unfortunate fact that the majority of farms both in the UK and Europe are still reliant on this payment to remain in profit, six years after reforms were introduced to scrap production subsidies.

A proportion of the money paid to farmers is now used to provide rural development grants and also to fund environmental schemes on our farms and these have been successful in their objectives.

Read more at Horncastle News

Moody’s just downgraded Greece’s sovereign debt rating to C from Ca.  This puts the debt-laden country’s rating deeper into junk status.

“Today’s rating decision was prompted by the recently announced debt exchange proposals for Greece, which imply expected losses to investors in excess of 70%, which is consistent with Moody’s criteria for a C rating,” wrote Moody’s.

This follows S&P’s February 27 downgrade of Greece to “selective default.