Heat map

Via: http://www.economist.com The world is warming ON NOVEMBER 29th representatives of countries from around the world gathered in Cancún, Mexico, for the first high-level climate talks since those in Copenhagen last December. Incremental progress is possible, but continued deadlock is likelier. What is out of reach, as it was at Copenhagen, is agreement on a plausible programme for keeping climate change in check. The world warmed by about 0.7°C in the 20th century and by the end of the 21st century temperatures will be 3°C warmer than at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Increases in average temperature will be less noticeable than those in extremes. According to a 2009 comparison of over 20 climate models by David Battisti and Rosamond Naylor, by 2050 there is a 10-50% likelihood that the average summer in much of the world will be hotter than any summer recorded...
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Global AgInvesting Europe – Geneva, Nov 9 – 10 2010

Global AgInvesting Europe 2010 was held on November 9-10, 2010 at the Intercontinental Geneva Hotel in Geneva, Switzerland. Following the success of the second annual Global AgInvesting conference (May 6-7, 2010 in New York, NY), this program presented actionable intelligence on the outlook for global agriculture and the range of investment opportunities available to investors with varying return objectives and and risk tolerances. "The global investment community has recognized that our Global AgInvesting conference series offers unique insight into the complexities of investing in agriculture,” says conference Co-Chair Hunt Stookey, Managing Director at HighQuest Partners. “Our goal is to provide investors with an understanding of the wide variety of private agricultural investments available to them, from farmland to private equity and specialist public equities managers." The whole event had a great success and here I had the opportunity to have a speech on Romania. More details on: http://events.soyatech.com/conferences/GAIEurope_proceedings.htm...
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Follow the water!

By Christophe Pelletier Without water, there is no agriculture, there is no food, and there is no life. It is obvious, and yet the water question is too often neglected. The quantity and the quality of water available are absolutely crucial for the future production of food. It will influence where and what type of food we can produce. It will define food security and world politics. Since 70% of fresh water use is for agricultural purposes, it is clear that water will soon be power. The need to preserve water and use it efficiently is going to be one of the main challenges to overcome for the decades to come. This will stimulate innovation and the development of new technologies and new techniques. Field sensors that measure the level of humidity in the air and in the soil connected with “crop per drop” irrigation systems can allow the distribution of the...
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The business opportunity in water by McKinsey

Monday November 15th 2010 Paul Alsteem, Phd have sent us this interesting study by McKinsey on how water scarcity can become an opportunity for many companies and a threat for many others. McKinsey expects that by 2030, (almost 20 years from today!) water supplies will satisfy only 60 percent of global demand on average. For many companies, water efficiency is a long-term requirement for staying in business, a big commercial opportunity, or both. In 2004, for instance, Pepsi Bottling and Coca-Cola closed down plants in India that local farmers and urban interests believed were competing with them for water. In 2007, a drought forced the US Tennessee Valley Authority to reduce its hydropower generation by nearly a third. Some $300 million in power generation was lost. Businesses everywhere could face similar challenges during the next few years. A larger global population and growing economies are placing bigger demands on already-depleted water...
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The Global Food Crisis

The end of the plenty By Joel K. Bourne Jr Photograph by John Stanmeyer It is the simplest, most natural of acts, akin to breathing and walking upright. We sit down at the dinner table, pick up a fork, and take a juicy bite, obliv­ious to the double helping of global ramifications on our plate. Our beef comes from Iowa, fed by Nebraska corn. Our grapes come from Chile, our bananas from Honduras, our olive oil from Sicily, our apple juice—not from Washington State but all the way from China. Modern society has relieved us of the burden of growing, harvesting, even preparing our daily bread, in exchange for the burden of simply paying for it. Only when prices rise do we take notice. And the consequences of our inattention are profound. Last year the skyrocketing cost of food was a wake-up call for the planet. Between 2005 and the summer of 2008, the...
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Pension funds and farmland investments

(Reuters) – Pension funds are deepening their commitment to farmland, upping investments by billions of dollars and moving to active strategies, as a hedge against potential inflation and to diversify from riskier investments. Leading the charge are U.S. and European pension funds, although it is estimated that the amount of institutional money invested is less than 1 percent of global farmland value, with concentration in food exporting regions. A growing world population, limited water resources and finite amounts of land available have made farmland attractive to investors beyond traditional owners — private families.U.S. pension fund TIAA-CREF has around $2 billion (1.3 billion pounds) invested in farmland of the $426 billion it has under management and is looking to expand its farmland holdings. “If we found the right opportunities we’d be willing to double our existing exposure over the new few years,” said Jose Minaya, managing director of global private markets at the fund.“This is just another asset class that has the potential of...
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The world agriculture industry

A study in falling supply and raising demand By Hardman & Co Published on May 26th 2010 Agricultural Land Available: 1.5 trillion hectares Value of world’s Agricultural Land: US$5 trillion World Population 2010: 6.8bn World Population 2050: 9.1bn Africa’s Population 2010: 1.8bn Africa’s Population 2050: 3.6bn 10 Year Performance, US Farmland: +100% 10 Year Performance, UK Farmland: +95% Word per Capita Food Consumption. 1965: 2,358 kcal per person World per Capita Food Consumption 1998: 2,803 kcal per person World per Capita Food Consumption 2030 est: 3,050 kcal per person Pooled Funds Available for Agricultural Investment, Worldwide, listed in this study: 18 Quoted Agricultural Stocks Available For Investment, Worldwide, listed in this study: 42 After decades on the periphery as an investment category, farmland worldwide is increasingly becoming an acceptable holding for traditional investment funds. We believe that farmland, and agriculture generally, will shortly move beyond the ‘acceptable’ in the eyes of the world’s investment management community and become a core product. In the future, we believe, it will be as normal for a pension fund to...
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USDA AGRICULTURAL PROJECTIONS TO 2019

Key Assumptions and Implications Major assumptions underlying the projections and selected implications include: Economic Growth • U.S. and world economic growth reflect a recovery from the global financial crisis and economic recession, with a transition back to steady economic gains. • Global economic growth is assumed to rebound to a 3.3-percent average growth rate for 2010-19. A resumption of high growth rates in emerging market countries, such as China and India, and a return to strong growth in other developing countries and countries of the former Soviet Union underpin this macroeconomic result. • The U.S. economy resumes growth at 2.5 percent in 2010 and 3.2 percent in 2011, followed by an average rate of 2.7 percent over the remainder of the projection period. With slower growth in the United States than in the world economy, the U.S. share of global gross domestic product (GDP) falls from about 27 percent currently to 25 percent at the end of the projection period. • The return to broad-based, steady global economic growth supports longer term gains in world...
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