If the Australian Dollar had not crashed from 98 cents US a couple of months ago to 65 cents US now there would be carnage in Australia’s rural sector.
The monthly Westpac - NFF commodity price index figures are just out for October. The index is 2.6% below this time last year but would have been a whole lot worse if not for the slump in the Aussie dollar.
Beef Prices were one commodity to really benefit from the falling dollar.
Here is the index movements for last month. You’ll see that they are all over the place.
Commodities hit by falls were canola and barley (both minus 9.2%), wool (minus 8%), wheat (minus 5.9%) and cotton (down 1.8%). These falls outweighed major price rises for dairy (7.6%), sugar (4.1%) and beef (3.3%).
Quoted in the Age Newspaper senior agribusiness economist at Westpac Andrew Hanlan said:
The financial crisis had undermined pricing fundamentals. “The weakening Australian dollar prevented what could have been an extreme month for global agricultural commodities,” he said
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Tags: Agricultural Commodities, Andrew Hanlan, Barley, Beef, Canola, Cotton, Dairy, National Farmers Federation, NFF, Sugar, Westpac, Wheat, Wool