Commodity Conversations

Learning from the roo’s - 29th April 2022

What can kangaroo’s teach us about livestock farming methods? Tune in to commodity conversations this week to hear Lachlan Campbell, CEO and founder of ProAgni, explain their innovative new product, what problems they aim to address and some of the inspiration behind it’s creation.

Market wrap - 21st April 2022

This week Mecardo's Rob Herrmann and David Myers take a look at what's been happening in cattle, sheep and wool markets recently. Join us to hear the latest market developments and jump on the Mecardo website to read the full articles that are discussed briefly today. 

Biosecurity alarm bells – 14th April 2022

Biosecurity issues have dominated agricultural headlines recently as South Africa grapples with another foot-and-mouth outbreak, meanwhile Lumpy Skin Disease outbreaks among cattle in Indonesia have Australian officials worried. This episode Rob & Olivia discuss these issues as well as pay a special tribute to two friends and colleagues. We hope you have a good Easter break, from the Mecardo team.

China still hungry for aussie proteins - 2nd April 2022

Russia’s war on Ukraine is still having ramifications across the global grains & oilseeds markets and indirectly across a whole raft of agricultural commodities. We’re seeing stronger demand for most agricultural commodities than we’ve ever seen before, as governments around the world try to secure essential food items to keep their populations content. China of course is no small fry when it comes to the global trade market, being one of the biggest if not the biggest importers of redmeat & grains and oilseeds. Geopolitical tensions aside, this episode, Mecardo analyst Adrian Ladaniwskyj has a chat with Rob Herrmann about China’s demand for Aussie red meat in 2021 & 2022, amongst other key highlights of the grains, wool and livestock markets. 

Unprecedented times or history repeating? - 25th March 2022

Prices for most agricultural commodities (and inputs) have increased to record levels due to the trio of tight supply, stretched supply chains & the war in Ukraine. But are we really in unprecedented times? We’ve seen prices shoot up for commodities before, like during the GFC of 2008, but this time round, while some things are the same, there’s certainly a lot more factors at play & uncertainty in the global economic outlook. To help us untangle the current volatility in the market, we’ve got our regular guest Michael Whitehead, head of agri-insights ANZ on to talk with Rob Herrmann.

Russian roulette, volatility on the rise - 18th March 2022

With the Russian war on Ukraine dragging on, we’re taking a look at how this war is reverberating around the globe and in particular it’s flow-on effects on markets that are directly affected, such as the wheat & oilseeds,  to the in-directly affected livestock & wool markets. Rob & Olivia are back in the drivers seat this week for our podcast.

Market wrap with Adrian & Dave - 11th March 2022

This week Adrian & Dave from Mecardo discuss the main movements in the wool, sheep, cattle & grains movements this week. As always, there's plenty happening for us to talk about - head to the website if you want to read the full analysis of each topic we've covered this week. Our thoughts are with all of the flood victims up north, we hope that the clean up efforts continue and the towns and communities recover. 

Wheat sweats on New World order – 4th March 2022

The wheat market has been up and down like a yo-yo in response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The two countries together provide more than a quarter of world wheat supply, so we asked our resident grain expert, Nick Booth from Next Level Grain Marketing, on to help us understand the seismic impact this terrible situation is having on global grain market dynamics.

Online is on trend – 25th February 2022

Online platform AuctionsPlus has gone from strength to strength in the past few years with more and more producers getting on board. AuctionsPlus is now arguably the nations largest livestock ‘selling centre’ which now not only provides cattle & sheep auctions, but auctions for everything from farm machinery, properties, goats, working dogs, cars, charity fundraisers and more.

 On this episode we’re fortunate to have AuctionsPlus’ chief economist Tim McRae on to give his perspective on why the platform has grown so much in the past few years, as well as the innovative ways the data is being used by producers and stock agents.

Tipping the protein scales - 18th February 2022

Livestock prices have rarely been higher but what does the global protein supply and demand balance tell us about the outlook? Robert Herrmann and Simon Quilty presented on this topic at Gippsland Red Meat Conference recently and have joined us for this weeks episode to discuss the key factors.