FT.com / Reports - Carbon trading: Emissions cuts at the lowest price – in theory

carbon trading might be the only optimal way out that connects different governments, regions etc in a manner that makes the financing work. taxing locally might work but it would be a very disjointed approach. emissions trading and getting the world markets to establish a carbon pricing might be the way that works for all, despite the many issues with it, including worries about how big banks and commodity traders will take advantage of it or the plethora of derivative structures that might be marketed based on the underlying carbon instrument.

FT.com / Reports - Carbon trading: Emissions cuts at the lowest price – in theory: "At Copenhagen, no firm decisions are likely to be taken on the details of how to ensure that finance is available, particularly in poor countries, to make the emissions cuts that will have to be laid out in any agreement.

Instead, world leaders are likely to sign up to a headline figure for the future financing required."

Copenhagen climate change summit in deadlock over rival texts - Times Online

it seems confusion is ruling large at the Copenhagen talks. this is all stuff that should have been sorted out months, if not years before these talks began. to have different proposal texts appear with 193 countries present with such a diversity of interests, even if they all agree on climate change, and with few hard numbers to go with makes this real tricky. it's hard to see a lot of success come out of this except some general agreement at best. REDD still stands out as the one with the best shot of getting good momentum.

Copenhagen climate change summit in deadlock over rival texts - Times Online: "The Copenhagen climate change summit is likely to end with two rival texts because the main countries cannot agree on the key question of how to share the burden of cutting emissions to a safe level.

The extent of the disagreement was exposed by the publication yesterday of two draft agreements, neither of which contained clear numbers or language on any of the most contentious issues, despite two years of negotiations before the summit.

The US refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol has forced negotiators to work on two separate texts and there is now little chance of the twin-track process producing a single document. The negotiators from 193 countries are hoping that the early arrival at the summit of several leaders next Wednesday, including Gordon Brown, will help to break the deadlock."

The Localization of Agriculture: A Predetermined Future

There is a push for local agriculture, farms, local food in many of the urban centers. Attempts to lower the carbon foot print of food, reduce the embedded energy, decreasing the distance traveled by food from farm to plate etc are all factors driving this. below is an article from TreeHugger.

The Localization of Agriculture: A Predetermined Future: "
The Apple Orchard. Image credit:University of Minnesota blog, FreeAlonso

In the United States, there has been a surge of interest in eating fresh local foods, corresponding with mounting concerns about the climate effects of consuming food from distant places and about the obesity and other health problems associated with junk food diets. This is reflected in the rise in urban gardening, school gardening, and farmers' markets.

With the fast-growing local foods movement, diets are becoming more locally shaped and more seasonal. In a typical supermarket ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Looking to 2050: Where will food for 9 billion come from?

Article below highlights the stark realities and the seriousness of food issues we all face in the coming years. The new blog mentioned herein is another place where we can turn to get an idea of the ongoing discussions and proposed steps as well as actions being taken to avert a food crisis.

Looking to 2050: Where will food for 9 billion come from?: "

As world leaders, scientists and activists meet in Copenhagen to focus on the challenges of climate change, a related and equally difficult problem is looming for the global population: food security.

With the planet’s population projected to reach 9 billion by 2050 — that’s nearly 33 per cent greater than today — the demand for food will also grow, while climate change, development and other factors make suitable land for agriculture, and adequate water supplies, harder to come by.

To address this growing challenge, the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has launched a new website: Food Security.

The multimedia resource with numerous social media features aims to do more than simply provide an introduction to the food security issue. It will also feature a multi-author blog with posts from authors across the food security field, including researchers, farmers, industry leaders and consumers. The blog is designed to serve as an online destination for provocative debate about different views on food security and different approaches to feeding the growing world population.

“Feeding 9 billion mouths in the coming decades is going to require significant scientific progress, and changes that will affect all of us,” said Douglas Kell, chief executive of the BBSRC. “We can all recognise the importance of securing our food supplies but people disagree over the ways to do this and the approaches to take. The new blog on www.foodsecurity.ac.uk will be a place for those interested in this topic to provoke, engage, debate and discuss. If people have something important to say about food security we want to hear from them.”

The site also highlights numerous facts about the food security issue:

• More people die each year from hunger and malnutrition than from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined;


• The UN’s annual report on global food security confirms that more than one billion people — a sixth of the world’s population — are undernourished.


• Africa –the only populated continent that is not self-sufficient in food production — is expected to see a doubling of its population by 2050, from 1 billion to 2 billion;


• Demand for food is projected to increase by 50 per cent by 2030 and double by 2050;


• Farming accounts for 70 per cent of the world’s use of fresh water that is extracted globally for human use; and


• Agriculture is estimated to account for 10 to 12 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions (and land-use changes, such as deforestation for farming, adds much more).

What will the solution to such challenges look like? Will technology come to the rescue? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Related posts:

1. World population to hit 7 billion in 2011
2. Can a city grow all its own food? Project aims to see
3. Food prices nothing to do with biofuels, says Bush govt

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Small farmer gains with Green Jaguar wholesale markets

Farmers wholesale markets are being set up by Jaguar trading in multiple locations as Green Jaguar farms. These will eventually tie small farmers into a large network which when it builds up scale will benefit the individual farmer in many ways.

Currently the small farmer in most of these locations is the victim of his size and hence at the mercy of a chain of middlemen. In some locations, the middlemen essentially lock down a very low price at the farm level despite making the farmer go through all the stages of the farm to market auction chain. The farmer essentially loses title to his commodity early on in the chain and watches with despair and few other options than see his produce being sold at good margins that are mostly retained by the middlemen.

It is not easy for small farmers to break this vicious cycle. Many of them are paid weeks, if not months later for their produce while the middlemen circulate the money into other speculative activities. Also, the farmer is often left with having to deal with ongoing expenses of water, utilities, electric, fuel, fertilizers etc while he is still waiting to get paid. Many of them end up taking short term loans at high interest rates and often break down under the debts. Suicide rates are relatively high in some nations amongst the poor farmers. Meanwhile, the middlemen that have access to the end buyer or markets control this access to market, price information, demand etc resulting in the small farmers who are unable to get access to or share this information being cut out from the process.

In some locations, local governments are trying to help the small farmer and provide him with more timely market information, price and demand information, access to buyers etc but the lack of effectiveness of this approach, often lack of follow up, change of government, policies, priorities, lack of funding, in some cases corruption, diversion of funds for political and other reasons all result in poor conversion to actual measurable benefits to the small farmer.

Green Jaguar farmers wholesale markets provide farmers direct access to buyers in the locations where it is setting up these markets. In many cases, this is the first time the small farmer is getting such direct access. It is a very disruptive approach wherein many of the middlemen are being eliminated from the farm to consumer chain. The consumer is able to get quality product locally at lower prices while the farmer gains the most by holding on to bigger part of the margin.

green jaguar wholesale markets keep expanding

Jaguar Trading is looking to set up a series of wholesale produce and grain markets in a number of countries. These are being set up to connect them to a network of small farms that can then be optimized across the network to match orders, create value for small farms and end buyers and reduce transaction costs, carbon costs, energy costs, lower shipping, transport costs and provide better earnings to small farmers

This is one of best ways to ensure that local small farmers get higher returns from their farm produce whether grains, fruits, vegetables etc. Also, it ensures that the small farmer can avail of a range of benefits including time sensitive price and demand information, access to national and overseas markets previously not accessible to him.

The small farmer depended almost entirely on brokers often in a long chain and his margins could be reduced, sometimes drastically and margins were retained by middlemen while the farmer would be left struggling. 

In the Jaguar wholesale market, the trading house agents in each locality work to help build out the simple market trading platform including identifying suitable site, developing the site using local, sustainable materials and resources, putting in basic information systems initially that are to be eventually connected into a web centric platform. 

The trading offices in different market centers work with international and national clients to bring in bulk/wholesale orders. The goal is to build a very liquid, high volume trading platform that does a lot of internal matching of large buyers with a bunch of small farmers.

distributed contract farming to meet bulk demand

Jaguar trading is constantly on the lookout for large commodity orders of various grains, nuts, beans/legumes, oil seeds, fruits & vegetables, herbs & spices, various cash crops, coffee, sugar, cocoa, rubber, timber, jute, cotton etc from its trading partners, clients, industrial, food processors and bulk buyers.

Jaguar farm network strives to find bulk commodity buyers and once it has future orders in hand or potential orders in place, it works backwards to break down the order to small, distributed farm level. Based on the availability of acreage in the system, open availability from its farmer members, host of factors including distance to market, local growing conditions, weather, timing etc, it can request as many small farmers as needed to work on the commodity needs of its clients.

The farm network is always trying to balance the diverse factors in play, primarily the open availability of farm acreage from the network farmers. Also in play are important consideration like minimizing production costs, maximizing yields, optimizing logistics all the while trying to reduce the carbon foot print of the commodity shipped and also trying to reduce the energy costs of the entire cycle. Sustainability is key to long term success of the farming network.

Small distributed farms tend to make much better returns from their land holdings, labor etc than relying on selling local produce with little control on their margins in the long run.

wholesale/bulk trading farmers markets

Fortress is the national farm network coordinator for Jaguar trading's farms in several locations.

Jaguar trading is setting up wholesale farmers markets in quite a few locations to connect local farm produce directly to bulk buyers and consumers eager to buy bulk quantities at wholesale prices. This is another component of making local, sustainable, distributed farm produce available at low prices to the consumers while improving the margins and earnings of the local farmers.

The wholesale markets also allow local produce- fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, nuts etc to be connected directly to larger end buyers facilitated by Jaguar Trading's farm network. The overall savings in the chain via aggregation, better storage, transport and overall logistic options, central, larger scale buyers can quickly add up, reducing waste, losses and improving earnings for farmers and end buyers. Additional benefits are in the carbon savings, lower embedded energy as a result of savings in distance, better management from farm to plate and increased local sale options for produce otherwise stranded with small farmers.

Small farmers in many locations have been a victim of their size, distance from markets, lack of buying or selling power etc. When the same farmer is part of the Jaguar farm network and utilizes the wholesale farmers market to sell his/her produce, the price discovery is much better, the chance to be abused by chain of middlemen is much lower. Also, with increased chance to have direct contact with end buyers in the marketplace, the farmer learns more about the consumer tastes, issues with the produce, shifting demands for different produce etc.

Small farmers are also able to procure other goods and services, farming inputs etc while attending wholesale markets, also a good location for such goods and services including seeds, seedlings, fertilizers etc.

Jaguar farm network- small farmer's best friend

Jaguar farms continues to innovate its sustainable. distributed contract farming network. Jaguar farms is implementing its farms via 'green jaguar' label. 

The local network support operators enroll small farmers from their neighborhood into the network. The farmers gain from a range of services and benefits that are a result of the aggregation of commodities, scale of network, supply, distribution and trading provided by Jaguar Trading and affiliates. 

The idea is to build a global network of small farmers which can benefit the farmers in multiple ways including new product ideas, seeds, organic/conventional farming approaches, help with getting relatively higher prices for farm produce by cutting layers of middlemen and trading/marketing product via aggregation, better storage, transportation, preprocessing and post processing, better reach for crop insurance products etc.

The network is building green houses, seed banks, seedling nurseries, tissue culture/micro propagation, bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticide facilities in select locations to allow small farmers access to seeds, seedling, fertilizers etc. Very often, farmers produce what they believe the local markets require as they have very little choice and little voice in managing a better use of their land, labor, time and resources. Being part of the Jaguar farm network allows them to get benefits starting with planting better mix of plants that can give them better profits. The collective, aggregation power of the network that works with Jaguar Trading, supply, logistics to line up large orders and large buyer clients.

Such a network can not just work on a local level but has to be international in scope as a lot of the farm output can land in distant markets. And since demand for products can originate via Jaguar Trading clients from distant markets, user groups etc, the demand flows backwards and is optimally matched by the Jaguar farm network to appropriate farmers based on a large number of factors including size of demand, local growing conditions, weather, soil, water etc, distance of farm from market, logistics, carbon foot print, embedded energy etc. There are quite a few factors to be considered and the agronomists and other technical and market experts in the network help optimize connecting farmers to the end product buyer via Jaguar Trading.

large scale composting for carbon sequestration

fortress bio has formed partnership with Green Jaguar and other affiliates in West Africa to carry out urban composting in grasslands. The results from a number of similar projects carried out in the US, Australia have proven so far that carbon losses from the soil in which urban compost has been added is minimal and also methane and nitrous oxide emissions are also minimal. Combined with the potential methane emission savings by preventing the urban waste to go into landfills further leverages the benefit of a large scale urban composting program in sequestering carbon is very high. Some experiments have shown more than 1 ton of carbon sequestration per hectare per year.

This compost can also be generated from manure and is much more stable and better than spreading animal manure on the farmland and grassland. To improve soil health, compost provides a lot organic material to the soil and also locks in carbon.

fortress bio is working with Green Jaguar in South America to identify potential Savannah grasslands where large scale composting can be carried out. beyond the scope of experiments, an issue has been identifying a large enough grassland near a major population center

guar seed plantations

fortress bio continues to build upon the momentum to establish one or more guar seed farms overseas leveraging its extensive relations in the farming community and guar gum processing factories in Rajasthan and elsewhere in India. this has taken higher precedence in its contract farming push in the light of strengthening guar gum prices in the commodities markets in India and an improving future forecast for the demand for the product.

the cosmetics and toiletry sectors are increasingly purchasing guar gum as ingredients in their products. the petroleum drilling and mining players continue to expand use of guar gum as a low cost input in drilling, hydraulic fracturing etc. the need from the animal feed sector is also the rise as feed producers are increasingly turning to healthier ingredients to meet the food needs of the consumers who are buying organic, antibiotic free, free range, pasture, non industrial animal farm produce at their local whole food and organic produce markets. also, with lower availability of animal feeds including fish meal etc have been increasing using guar.

guar is also a soil nitrogen building plant like some of the other legumes and so soil health building and introducing nitrogen into organic farming without extensively relying on chemical fertilizers is another reason why fortress is actively pursuing the guar farming plantation strategy in South America and West Africa, regions that also have close proximity to large consumer markets of North America and Europe. In Asia, guar beans are also used for human consumption and that could be another factor assisting push for these beans with good protein content into West Africa and Sub Saharan Africa.

fortress plans to grow the seeds for animal feed and also as green manure. it will eventually also establish guarm gum refinery in South America - the output of which is used in ice cream thickners, stabilizing agent in cheese production, in the making of puddings, substitutes for whipped cream that is increasingly in demand from consumers and also as a binder in meat products and animal protein substitutes.

the usual buyers from the paper and pulp industry, petroleum drilling, ore flotation and other industrial applications continue to buyer lower grades of guar seed produced guar gum.

guar gum trading

fortress bio has established partners and suppliers in Rajasthan and other parts of India from who it sources guar gum for its buyers in North America, Europe and elsewhere. the firm has been able to work with its buyers in the crude oil extraction and production industry to connect them with quality suppliers and manufacturers of guar gum which has extensive utilization in the petroleum extraction sector.


the firm also has quite a few current and potential buyers from the manufactured and processed food industry including baked foods, dairy, canned and frozen food sector, animal feed as well as from the soup and sauces players that frequently source guar gum from its suppliers. 


fortress bio has been actively pursuing the idea of growing guar seeds in other locations outside India in large scale by applying methods, farming techniques and skills of farmers in Rajasthan. it has been in active talks with larger commodity traders based in New York to set up guar seed plantations in South America and some locations in West Africa that have climate patterns and soil conditions similar to Rajasthan and other producing regions in India.


the firm is contracting with local farming groups and guar gum processing factories to set up joint ventures to seek overseas growth opportunities. the contract farming and private farm initiatives are based on the expanding need of guargum in a variety of industries including food additives, pharmaceutical, farming, hydroseeding etc that the firm sees in many of the developed countries.


the firm hopes to have a plantation proposal put into action in one or more locations outside India in the near future and is in talks via partners with various local governments that are looking to provide their farmers with alternative crops that can provide good returns on the land and labor.


the prices of guar gum have firmed up a lot in the recent months and the firm sees continued strength in both the seed market as well as the output guargum and the animal feed byproducts. the use in animal feed sector is also on the rise as increasingly need for pasture farming, organic feeds, healthier grass and grain feeds is on the rise originating from the buyers in richer nations but rapidly spreading for health and safety reasons as well as carbon and methane emissions control needs from large animal farm owners and operators.

cement trading and distributed, small scale cement mills

fortress bio has connected several cement importers from African nations on the West and East coasts both with their ongoing cement needs (bagged, bulk shipments) as well as cement clinker for some clinker mills and bulk cement for rebagging to local packaging specs and subject to import restrictions and also for the needs of bagging plants.

cement prices have gone up over the past few years with some cyclical economic pressures recently. In general with the increasing cost of fuel- coal, diesel etc, increasing desire for more biomass inputs into the fuel mix, pressure to decrease the carbon emissions, make the cement greener with lower embedded energy and also research into newer building materials, cement ingredients, additives etc like thermal coal plant wastes of fly ash, the number of closures in old world, high carbon, high polluting, high energy intensive cement plants has increased a lot. some countries like China have shut down a large number of very polluting small cement mills that were exporting most of their cement and clinker production.

these closures combined with the increased manufacturing activity, rising population, demand for more housing, infrastructure etc has caused the need to establish more cement plants.

fortress continues to connect cement buyers with their cement import needs while also assisting some of them to set up their own cement mills. fortress continues to believe that the cost of shipping cement over long distances, besides the carbon foot print of such logistics and the embedded costs therein that the end consumers are not paying at the moment, will eventually result in a rush to set up smaller, distributed cement plants. these will mostly be in areas that have access to local limestone, gypsum and potentially lower cost fuels. lower cost fuels like biomass feed stocks, natural gas that is currently flared in many areas, coal grades that can be greened with cofiring with biomass pellets etc.

fortress traders continue to work with partners in many of these regions where they are working to identify locally available limestone quarries so as to bring in mining partners, established small scale cement mill manufacturers that are cleaner technology oriented and working with alternative, renewable, biomass based fuel burners, kilns etc in order to put the partnerships in place to enable the setup of distributed cement plants.

the market is currently still very regional despite large shipments and trading of cement. the local operators that control local quarries etc tend to use local import restrictions, punitive tariffs and other trade flow alternating mechanisms to push their product on to the local markets often with price bending methods and high profit margins resulting to them.

fortress continues to strongly believe the consumers in all the regions should have access to good quality, ideally local and green cement and this is only possible if more smaller scale cement plants can be established that can cater to the local needs without shipping bull cement over long distances.

towards this end, fortress will continue to identify green and clean cement technology partners that it can bring into the mix with local limestone miners, quarries etc and and assist in setting up partnerships while providing trading support as well as getting the mills access to markets for the cement. it believes that if the carbon markets get established and there is a price on carbon, the cement market can suffer but the least effected market will be the local cement mills especially ones that have been following green practices.

potential limestone mines for cement mills

fortress bio has connected limestone mine sites in several African nations with cement mill project developers and continues with this process. The goal is to establish small scale cement mills closer to the demand centers where possible and at the least to minimize the shipping costs resulting from the bulk feed stocks needed for cement production as well as the high costs involved in shipping cement, clinker etc. 

the team has its own limestone testing lab as well as access to a number of affiliate labs wherein the limestone samples are analyzed for potential use as feedstock. It also sends a team of limestone mine assessment engineers that can carry out the mining surveys, identify appropriate limestone sites as well as suitable mining plans to carry out the material extraction.

fortress has partnered with a number of mining equipment manufacturers as well as can carry out some fabrication work near project sites in makeshift and leased facilities. most of the equipment involved in mining including material handling and processing, conveying equipment is supplied by affiliate factories and in some cases, by the project partners with such embedded facilities and skills.

the team also has identified multiple sources of gypsum that form a small percentage of the input feedstock needed in cement manufacture.

the strong growth area for the firm has been identifying biomass feedstock sources and assisting in the setting up of biomass plantations as well as waste wood, agricultural residue based pellets and briquettes to be used as fuel feedstock alongside coal in the cement burners/kilns.

raw cashew nut supply and trading from West Africa

fortress bio is supplying raw cashew nuts from its West African sources to buyers in South India. the trading team has secured via its US trading partner, large quantities of raw cashew nuts that are per specifications of purchases by nut processors in South India.

fortress is currently seeking processing partners or leased processing facilities to process its own shipments as well to supply shipments to buyers. The raw nut count is around 200 on average and the moisture content is less than 10%, less than 5% foreign matter and packed in bulk. the local partners in the locations provide good quality services in sourcing nuts from the farmers and aggregating them, drying and storing them for onward logistics.

fortress's trading partners have been helping build storage facilities that maintain the raw nuts in optimal conditions in their short time prior to shipment. the local shipping and transport agents ensure good shipping services to allow loading the bulk nuts onto vessels in an optimal time period without hold up delays and minimizing factors that could effect the nut quality in transit.

crude oil and oil products trading

fortress bio has a number of term contract arrangements via trading affiliates in West Africa oil producing nations. the trades at the firm have arranged a number of large oil shipments at discounted terms from its producer/oil suppliers to refineries in the Asian region. the traders at the firm arrange the petroleum trades and also have supplied its West African export partners with diesel, petrol, kerosene and other refined petroleum products to meet their local oil product needs.

fortress bio has regularly assisted in importing of refined oil products and heavier end oil products including various grades of gasoline, diesel, naphtha, jet fuel, bunker fuels, fuel oil grades, kerosene etc into buyers in Asia and South America.

the trading team can arrange various grades of sweet to sour, light to heavier grades of crude oil for refineries based on their needs. While most refinery majors have their established term contracts and supply partners, it doesn't prevent fortress to find niche, large buyers who are regularly scouring the petroleum markets for other suppliers and better grades of crude oil as well as better pricing and trade terms. fortress has always been able to utilize the trading, supply and demand inefficiencies in the market place to connect buyers to its petroleum suppliers.

similar arbitrage opportunities are regularly presenting themselves in the petroleum product markets as well, where there are a large number of buyers from large scale government buyers to medium to small scale buyers. they all tend to look for best pricing, timing of delivery, ability for others to hold on to the needed inventories, more capital restriction etc. fortress traders regularly find large number of trading opportunities in the petroleum product markets. it has been able to establish a large network of buyers many of whom have contracts for importing refined products from their governments and are allowed to import petroleum products into their country under their local licenses.

about fortress bio

Fortress Bio Engineering is a privately held trading, marketing and project development group with offices in India and USA. The firm is engaged in trading commodities, export and import of machinery equipment, goods and services and in establishing projects in the areas of food and energy production, manufacturing, fabrication and technology transfer.

food commodities trading

fortress bio is engaged with overseas trading partners in exporting and importing of a large number of food grains, oilseeds, pulses, nuts, edible oils, herbs and spices, fruits and vegetables, processed foods, packaged foods, snacks  etc.

the firm has been involved in trading various grades of rice, wheat, grains, corn, soybean, millet, sorghum, various pulses including lentils, kidney beans, moong, various dals, oilseeds including soybean, rapeseed, sesame, groundnuts etc, edible oils including soyoil, canola/rapeseed, mustard oil, palm oil, coconut oil etc.