Australia’s largest Wheat Grower Ron Greentree is looking to store 100,000 tonnes of this years harvest on farm while he waits for better prices.
Ron Greentree, who expects to harvest a 150,000-tonne wheat crop this season, said in an interview the extra capacity was needed as weak prices meant he was in no hurry to sell his crop.
He said buyers were struggling to arrange credit because of the global financial crisis while the world was awash with wheat following bumper northern hemisphere crops.
“As far as Australia’s harvest is concerned, this financial crisis couldn’t have come at a worse time because it is really difficult for the buyers to get credit on the right terms,” Mr Greentree said.
“We’re adding storage because of deregulation,” he said
Greentree’s operation is large enough that he can choose not to deal with Grain traders. Now not only does he grow the wheat but now he becomes an internation grain marketer.
Mr Greentree has already made several trips to Japan this year, marketing his wheat to flour-millers needing high protein wheat for the manufacture of ramen noodles. He also expects sales to Vietnam and Thailand.
While sales deals have been struck, pricing and a delivery timetable have not been set, requiring Mr Greentree to boost on-farm storage to about 100,000 tonnes.
Takes grain growers into a whole new area of expertise, foreign trade. If you’re a grain grower and have kids at school it would be a good idea if they studied marketing and economics as well as Ag Science.
But then again if they are smart enough to do a triple degree maybe they should just become an investment banker or a commodities trader, getting paid millions of dollars a year in salary and bonuses.
Have Your say!
Tags: Ron Greentree, Wheat
In a ‘just’ world we wheat farmers would take out and win a class action suit against the government, Cargill and other corporations for carrying out the Iraq fiasco hoax to sabotage and destroy the AWB single desk.
But it is not a ‘just’ world and we farmers are not united and don’t have power like the French , Canadian and American farmers.
We will do our best to survive this present wrought of the public purse as it will eventually get better for farmers - especially since it is raining more often.
Claire,
The AWB hedging program came at very little or no risk to the grower-the program would have been 20% in Feb,20% at sowing and 20% in July.
Ask yourself whether you or any other grower could afford the risk of margin calls and a crop failure at 20% of his estimated production per time.
eg-estimated 1000 tonnes production-200 tonnes per time-600 tonnes on by July-could an individual risk the margin calls-remember millions of dollars were lost last year.
Don’t kid yourself about evolution-the wheat industry is on a hiding to nothing.
If you think that you have something to gain by competing against Australia’s other 30,000 growers for a market well so be it.
Eventually we will be shot to pieces.The other thing to remember is that people will not be in a position to exit the industry because Land values will collapse.
Jock’s comment re $100 better off…….it’s called price risk management and any farmer could have achieved this………….not just through the single desk………
Ron, to his credit, is at least trying to adapt to the new environment…..I think it’s called “evolution” - adapt or perish…..
I thought you were on the little guy’s side!!!!! . I thought you were against the oxymoron words ‘free trade’ ?????????????
G’day Margaret,
I don’t think I need to prove anybody that Agmates is on the side of rural and regional people, read anyone of the 600 odd articles published in the last 12 months.
We support all people, be they hobby farmers, organic farmers right up to the biggest in the industry, including all folk who live in rural & regional areas be they black, white, yellow or purple with pink spots.
What I do respect is the right of everybody to have a differing opinion if they chose to.
What I do respect is fair & accurate information & readers comments backed up with references to CREDIBLE sources.
It’s deregulation that in our rural industries that I oppose. That does not extend to personal attacks on those that don’t agree with me.
I’ll state it again - On Agmates Forums we play the ball, not the man.
You in particular Margaret have express strong views about censorship - you and others want to personally attack another farmer just because he holds a different opinion to yourself - thats a dangerous precedent.
You complain about the global warming alarm-ists who attack every skeptic that dares voice a contrary opinion, yet you do the same to anyone who has a differing opinion to yourself.
Don’t you find that a bit hypocritical?
Come on you guys & girls,
Theses comments are getting a little ridiculous.
Why the personal attacks on Ron Greentree? He has the right to be a deregulated wheat market supporter as much as you folk have the right to be against it.
I can understand the frustration and anger of those of you that opposed deregulation, but that should be directed towards those that voted for it in the parliament, NOT one of your own.
The anonymous slur on Ron Greentree by Concerned is particularly distasteful. They are pretty serious allegations, and it is an ordinary act to make them and not have the courage to put your name to them. - as such I have removed the offensive section, unless you have some concrete evidence to back it up, which you can send to me at news@agmates.com if you wish. There may be a story in it.
Just explain to me what you all hope to achieve out of pillorying another farmer just because he has a different set of business beliefs to you guys.
About 20% of farmers voted against deregulation fro m memory. So if Ron Greentree was / is a supporter of deregulation he is in keeping with 80% of growers in this country who either supported it or did not care enough either way to vote.
I’m sorry, but I just can’t work out why you guys would turn on one of your own, just because he holds an opinion that is different to yours. He did not make the legislation - It is a free country and he has the right, as you all do to his own opinion.
Frankly I amazed at the Ron Greentree ‘witch hunt’ being carried out on this forum.
Cargill and Monsanto looked after him I’m sure.
Who funded Rons trips overseas to market his grain?
Whilst he was Chairman of GGA he did a lot of tripping around and we never did find out what for.
Accountability was never one of his leadership qualities.
Well done Ron! You were up to your arm pits in this pro-deregulation push, so now RON where is all this competition and where are all the excellent prices we were going to receive?
Where do your friends Bill Hefferon, Judith Adams, Wilson Tuckey and yourself stand now?
Farmers will never forget that the ALP & lIBS stabb the grain growers in the back when there was more than 80% support for the national marketing pool system from grain growers
You should hang your heads in SHAME!
There is a struggle right across rural industry boards - wool , wheat, beef , dairy , horticulture etc to get growers backs on boards to represent growers and not pander to corporate shareholders constantly.
Reports on the AWI ( Australian Wool Industry) elections sound very good - they managed to elect pro-mulesing wool producers back on the board much to the digust of the corporate chairman and his backers . There is still going to be more of a fight to go because the present chairman is still in place for the time being.
The animal rights people are not happy.
I hope this is the start of an avalanche of change going back to growers having more of a say on boards. Balance is required and it has been way way too much the corporate way.
Who is big Ron trying to kid.He would have been far better off with the Single Desk and the Naional pool.
I have been told by a very reliable source that we would be up to $100.00 better off if we still had Orderly Marketing-the hedging premiums that AWB would have captured would have been enormous.
It is interesting how Ron has not settled on a price or tonnage yet in talks with the Japanese and Vietnamese.
Watch out Ron-you might meet more than your match on this one.
I also hear that Canadian farmers with their Single Desk are doing much better than us-could Agmates run a check on our behalf?
I guess he was in favour of the de-regulation that many countries and people hate and are now standing up against.
A comment I read this morning -
“They’re calling for resurrecting the failed World Trade Organization talks that collapsed this summer. And we heard, if you recall, this summer, when the Doha talks collapsed, that globalization and the Washington Consensus were dead, because developing countries had rejected it. They are calling for the resurrection of the entire free trade — discredited free trade agenda.
The other thing that they’re calling for is a greater role for the International Monetary Fund.
And it’s important to understand that the reason why the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization and the whole free trade agenda, generally, has been in collapse in recent years is because countries around the world are no longer willing to accept the conditions attached to joining this club, the conditions attached to an International Monetary Fund loan.
In reasserting a greater role for the International Monetary Fund, in calling for the World Trade Organization talks to get back on track, these world leaders are actually calling for more financial market deregulation, more of the same.
What’s really striking is that you hear this language of anti-protectionism, you know, that we can’t turn away from free trade.
The International Monetary Fund, the Doha round, they’re all coming back from the dead at precisely the moment that we should be actually burying, for good, this whole agenda of deregulation.
What we are dealing with is an unsavory relationship between the real economy and the financial sector.
The financial conglomerates do not produce commodities. They essentially make money through the conduct of financial transactions.
They use the proceeds of these transactions to take over bona fide real economy corporations which produce goods and services for household consumption.”