Miller Magazine Issue: 113 May 2019

40 NEWS MAY 2019 “Black Sea Grain” gathers agribusiness leaders in Kyiv On April 10-11, 2019 Kyiv hosted the 16th International Conference “Black Sea Grain” - a leading communication plat- form that gathers agribusiness leaders to discuss key trends, central events and future directions of the Black Sea and the global agri sector development. The conference provided par- ticipants with 2 days of exclusive analytics from international industry experts, effective networking and meetings with play- ers across the value chain, top managers, decision-makers and opinion leaders. Black Sea Grain is annually attended by 700+ delegates from more than 450 companies and 50 countries worldwide, confirming the high status of the forum and global interest in the agrarian sector of the Black Sea region and Ukraine in particular. The conference is organized by analytical agency UkrAgroConsult (Kyiv, Ukraine). Considerable attention to the conference is paid due to the high role of the region in the global grain trade. “Now the Black Sea region supplies the world with a total of more than 100 MMT of grain, which is about 28% of the total global exports, - reports Elizaveta Malyshko, Grain Market Expert, UkrAgroConsult. -The region has a particularly high impact on the global wheat market. In the current season, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan together exported about 58 MMT of wheat, which is 32% of the global trade. Although export volumes in 2018/19 are expected to be lower than last year due to lower yields in all countries compared to a record 2017, nevertheless, this will be the sec- ond record in the entire history”. “Significant success is also noted in oilseed market, - says Yulia Garkavenko, oilseed market expert, UkrAgroConsult. - In particular, there has been a sharp increase in soybean meal and oil production and exports from Ukraine. The forecasts for oil- seed production in 2019 are quite optimistic. In particular, we expect rapeseed crop to grow to 3.5 MMT compared with 2.8 MMT in 2018”. “Agricultural sector of Ukraine and other countries of the Black Sea region demonstrates a steady and firm development, - says Sergey Feofilov, Director General of UkrAgroConsult. Our fore- cast for 2019 grain crop in Ukraine is about 63-65MMT with ex- ports of 43-46 MMT of grain. However, there are significant risks and challenges for further development of the agricultural sector. The main risks are mostly focused on consumption side. First of all, this is a decrease in the global economy growth rate, which can lead to significant correction in commodity prices, including agricultural commodities. Currently, almost all major grain sup- pliers are developing responses to these challenges. Among pos- sible solutions can be increased role of political factors in market strategies, intentions to boost budget support for agricultural production, focus on growing of certain kinds of crops and other measures. Particular attention should also be paid to improving efficiency of processing market data. Uncontrolled flow of facts, rumors and information injections can significantly distort a pic- ture of the real market trend and lead to large financial losses. The only answer to this challenge can be innovative methods and tools for processing a huge number of market data”.