Canada Markets

Teucrium Trading LLC is a U.S.-based company which has created exchange-traded products (ETP) which focus on providing investors a means of investing in agriculture commodities using single-commodity funds, as well as a fund that encompasses four agriculture commodities and others that focus on energy products.

This morning, the company released a video on their site, Teucrium.com, titled Understanding the Global Demand for Corn, Wheat and Soybeans. This video is just three minutes long, with the goal "to create an increased awareness about how population growth can drive demand for these core grains and the factors that impact the planet's ability to produce the supply necessary to meet this demand," said a Brandon Riker, a company official.

Some interesting points made in this video include:

-- There are 142 people born per minute in the world, which totals approximately 75 million people per year, or the equivalent of two times California's population every year.

-- Global consumption of the major agriculture commodities, given all forms of use, is 5 bushels of corn, 3 bushels of soybeans and 3 bushels of wheat per capita. U.S. usage is said to exceed these numbers.

-- Over the three minutes taken to watch the video, global population has grown, which is suggested to result in an increased demand of 1,198 bushels of corn, 793 bushels of soybeans and 879 bushels of wheat over the next year.

-- An increase in acreage of 13.5 million acres per year is required to keep pace with increased demand from population growth.

-- As we already know, the video reminds us that all acres are not created equal, having varying productive capacities, may only be suited to certain crops and have varying levels of required infrastructure.

Also of interest on the homepage of the website is a live corn clock, calculating the bushels of corn required to meet population growth in 2013. A snap-shot-in-time showed this at 85,452,400 million bushels this afternoon, growing by approximately 12 to 13 bushels per second.

While this is not a plug for the investment products offered by this company or promoting the notion of investing in commodity futures or related equity products, we often hear that the agriculture industry needs to improve on its story to the wider population. The industry is faced with the challenge of producing more to meet future needs. This video is just one more reminder, and an important one at that, of what is at stake.

Cliff Jamieson can be reached at cliff.jamieson@telventdtn.com

(AG)

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