The Sosland Publishing Purchasing Seminar was in Kansas City Sunday evening to Tuesday at noon. We had eight people there, along with 800 other sales and purchasing managers; it’s a true must-attend event.
Of course, there’s a full program of education on ingredients and services relevant to our industries. Carl Schwinke was the featured speaker on cash soft wheat markets, and was widely complimented on his presentation.
Takeaways: The U.S. stands a real chance of losing a substantial amount of its export grain markets to countries like Russia (wheat), Brazil (soybeans), and a whole bunch who want to grow corn. Due to more intense regulation, the truck transportation market is now very difficult. It is likely going to continue with significant cost increases and likelihood of service disruptions. The economic expansion that began back in 2009 has another 4-6 years to run. This will make it the longest in our history. On the other hand, it’s also had the slowest growth of all the expansions. Energy prices have been very stable at low levels for natural gas, more volatile for oil products, but over the longer term should be very moderate compared to recent decades: technology plus the desire of oil-producing countries for revenue will combine to keep prices relatively low.
That’s what we heard; now we start finding out if it’s all true!
June 7, 2018