July 2011

[[(\|\|)]]	*Commoditus*
July 2011	*Commodity news and trends*
Bananas Cocoa Coconut Oil Coffee Cotton Hardwood Palm oil Pepper Rice Rubber Shrimp Sugar	Palm oil prices have moderated since the beginning of 2011, but are still four times higher than the trough they reached in the middle of 2008. They are slightly above the high they reached in the latter part of 2007. The support to food prices from the emerging world economic recovery is expected to continue to support the price of palm oil, with spillover effects to palm kernel oil. Moderate, though significant, support to palm oil prices is being provided by its use in biodiesel. World production of edible palm oil, a pillar of the processed food industry in the developed world, is overwhelmingly concentrated in Indonesia and Malaysia, but is also important elsewhere in all other tropical regions of the world: Africa (such as Ghana), South America (Columbia) and other parts of the Pacific Rim (Papua New Guinea). Palm oil production, from the pulp of the palm fruit, remains vastly more important than those other tropical fruit mainstays, bananas and plaintains The structure of palm oil production, large versus small producers, continues to evolve, but presently the split is roughly 50:50, with the large plantation share edging upward very slowly, because production, on large or small plots, remains labor-intensive. One factor is that 100 kg of palm fruit bunches yields 22 kg of palm oil and 1.6 kg of palm kernel oil, a high yield of a money crop after processing. The price of palm oil, the most important food oil in the world, is 10% lower than 2nd place soybean oil, even though soybeans can be grown in a much wider area of the world, including temperate climates such as the United States, Europe and Russia. The yield per hectare of palm oil is vastly higher than not only soybean oil, but also the entire range of edible vegetable oils, such as corn oil and rapeseed oil.	Africa Americas Asia

Focus in this issue: Ecuador bananas		Archives

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