Posted on 02/25/2022 10:28:29 AM PST by blam
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Cargill Ship Hit In Missile Attack In Ukraine Waters
Star Tribune reports a vessel chartered by Cargill Inc., a Minnesota-based agribusiness giant, was hit in a missile attack after leaving a deep-sea port on the outskirts of Odessa on Thursday.
“Right now, our priority is the safety of our people in the region. This is a rapidly evolving situation with a great deal of uncertainty,” said April Nelson, a Cargill spokeswoman, in an e-mail. “We are currently gathering information and assessing potential impacts to Cargill and our customers.”
Cargill said that the crew was safe, and the vessel was rerouted to Romania to undergo a damage report.
Cargill has a majority stake at a port in the Odessa port, exporting grains and oils worldwide. The company didn’t name the vessel.
Since the attack on Thursday, Cargill implemented contingency plans as Russia invades Ukraine for the second day. Its plan is to concentrate on guaranteeing its global customers’ food supplies.
Ukraine and Russia account for 25% of global trade in wheat and 20% of corn sales. With port and railway closures in Ukraine, Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index has risen to record highs.
This will feed into food inflation as global food prices will jump to a record next month or sometime in the first half of this year.
Food inflation plagues global consumers and is about to worsen as spot agricultural commodity prices soar to record highs amid new supply chain disruptions.
Next up: Loaf of bread = $10.00.
Thanks, Slow Joe and Vlad.
I hope they paid for “war risk” insurance in their chartering contract.
Beer prices will take a hit.
A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny sounds like a pretty reasonable price.
Another RMS Lusitania or is it another USS Maine?
The world’s major grain exporters are the U.S., Brazil, Argentina and Ukraine. Corn and wheat are fungible, but Ukraine exports a lot to China. Fun times if Ukraine’s exports are cut off.
I read years ago that Ukraine's topsoil is about 150 feet deep and that it had blown in from Russia over thousands of years.
I don’t know about that, but Ukraine is one of the world’s great breadbaskets. Always has been. The ancient Greeks and Romans were running grain ships into the Black Sea. The only times Ukraine hasn’t been a major exporter were when the Mongols rolled through and killed everybody and when the communists ran it. As the saying goes, if Saudi Arabia went communist, in five years it would have a shortage of sand. That’s like Ukraine and grain.
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