MARKET MORSEL – GLYPHOSATE KNOCKED DOWN

Article courtesy of EPISODE3 | BY Andrew Whitelaw , EP3

At EP3, we have been covering input markets for our private clients. We regularly cover fertilizer, fuel and diesel.

This week, I wanted to have a look at glyphosate pricing because we haven’t covered this in a long time.

Fertilizer prices have crashed, and this is welcomed by producers, which we covered this week in this article.

Glyphosate has followed a similar path. The first chart below shows the price of glyphosate from 2006 to the present. We can see that during the past two years, the market went through the roof; it ias now fallen back to more normal levels*.

The second and third charts show the relationship between energy and glyphosate. The production requires energy, but some of the precursor raw materials are also energy intensive. So there is a reasonably close relationship between energy pricing and glyphosate price.

The good news is that glyphosate, one of the major inputs in broadacre agriculture, is pricing at a much better level than in recent times.

*Bear in mind that this data is as of end of May, and prices have fallen further.