I wrestled with whether or not to write this. Last Saturday, my wife of 16 years passed away in hospice care. Andrea had been in a coma-like state for the previous 2 weeks. She went into cardiac arrest after an asthma attack while I was out getting pizza with the kids. No warning, no chance to say goodbye. A consoling friend said to me, "life, as it turns out, is incredibly fragile." Very true, and for someone who manages risk, my emotions were completely unprotected. We have

After 3 consecutive seasons in which sugar was highly lucrative and prompted greater production in Brazil, the tables have turned — ethanol is now yielding higher returns than sugar, marking the first time this has happened in over three years. Price parity between the two indicates that ethanol currently holds a premium of around 1 cent over sugar, a gap that widens as sugar prices decline.  At the same time, Brazil has been boosting ethanol demand through measures such as t

Read Part one here : Cotton Origin Focus: China - Part 1 China Cotton Sector At-a-Glance   Production:  ~31 million bales annually (average last 5 years).  Leading Region:  Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (~90–93% of national output); minor production regions include Yellow-Huai (Hebei, Henan, Shandong) and Yangtze (Jiangsu, Hubei, Anhui) river areas.  Cotton Type:  Primarily Upland cotton; Xinjiang produces significant volumes of premium Extra-Long Staple (ELS) cotton.  F

China's economic slowdown has finally reached the cotton sector: this year, China imported only 2.4 million bales of cotton (Jan-Jul),...