Homo sapiens.

After a moment of astonishment, other financial investment institutions and speculators frantically used various relationships to inquire about news.

Soon, the news that North American soybeans might be out of harvest this year was known by many organizations.

All of a sudden, these financial institutions and investors seem to smell bloody sharks and piranhas, and they are frantically buying more soybean and soybean meal futures, and even the futures prices of corn, wheat, and rice have skyrocketed.

It seems that ABCD, as a major international grain merchant, the soaring soybean and grain prices this time seems to be very beneficial to them.

But in fact, ABCD was about to vomit blood at this time.

Because they broke their position.

Because there are too many high-leverage short positions in soybean and soybean meal futures, the bottom line for their price fluctuations is that soybeans can rise by up to 15%. Now soybean futures prices have soared to nearly 300%.

They don't liquidate?Who liquidated?

Within ten minutes, ABCD lost tens of billions of dollars in the international futures market.

Among them, Cargill and Bunge lost the most.

What's even more frightening is that the delivery period of soybean futures will soon expire next month. There are currently 8 million tons of futures orders in the futures market that expire in August and September.

No matter how the futures price fluctuates, ABCD must have soybeans and soybean meal delivered at that time.

But the problem is that North American soybeans are now one of the regions with the largest production in the world, and the harvest suddenly disappeared. South American soybeans and Lucia soybeans have been booked by Chinese buyers.

At that time, if ABCD fails to hand over 3372 million tons of soybeans and soybean meal, it will face default.

For example, Luzon purchased 630 million tons of soybeans from ABCD through the channels of Xiangjiang and Sing Tao, preparing to promote the diversification of edible oil and feed channels.

In this transaction, a maximum liquidated damages of 1.3 times was set. At that time, the contract was $330 per ton, and the total transaction value of the contract was $20.79 billion.

Moreover, this is a long-term contract, with an annual supply of 630 million tons, for a total of 5 years.

If the contract is breached, ABCD will need to pay nearly $6 million in compensation this year.

In addition to this, Homo sapiens also used several listed companies in Europe to place tens of millions of tons of orders to ABCD on the grounds of developing artificial meat, plant protein, feed and biofuels.

In other words, if ABCD cannot find enough soybean spot this time, they will not be able to make any profit in the soybean spot market.

Financial markets are very real.

A group of international investment giants don't care about the bleeding of ABCD. They only care about their own pockets, and they even want ABCD to continue to bleed.

The impact of the liquidation is that the futures prices of soybeans and grains soared.

At the end of the day.

国际期货市场上，各种大宗农业商品的涨幅非常夸张，大豆涨幅327％、豆粕涨幅272％、玉米涨幅127％、小麦涨幅108.3％、大米涨幅105.7％。

In the futures market of ABCD, although the reverse operation has reduced some losses, it still lost more than 135 billion dollars that day.

David's Louis Dreyfus company lost 18 billion dollars, and he and the entire futures trading department employees fell into silence.

Too tragic.

Louis Dreyfus's profit this year is estimated to be only a billion dollars, and today this year's profit has been evaporated all at once.

"The company has already held a board meeting, so everyone should be mentally prepared!" David said dejectedly.

……

If it is said that Louis Dreyfus has suffered heavy losses.

Then ADM, Cargill, and Bunge are hurt.

After all, Louis Dreyfus has no soybean industry in North America, but was slaughtered in the financial market.

However, ADM, Cargill, and Bunge have a large number of soybean farms, oil mills, feed mills, and plant protein extraction plants in North America.

The executives and boards of directors of the three companies held emergency meetings overnight.

Among them, Cargill, which is not listed, is better, at least it does not need to explain the situation to stock market investors, but they also suffered heavy losses.

Cargill’s chairman, William Wallace Cargill Jr., looked at President Wade, his eyes were about to burst into flames: “Tell me how much money I lost?”

"4...43 billion..." Vader's voice was trembling.

boom!Little William slammed his fist on the oak table, his face looked like a piece of pork liver, and he roared frantically, "43 billion! What is the company's profit this year? Also, the contract expires in August and September. How do you plan to solve it?"

"Chairman, I can't help it. No one thought that such a severe soybean downy mildew would suddenly break out." Wade obviously didn't want to take the blame.

Little William blushed even more: "I want to listen to how you solve the problem and reduce losses, not just your excuses, understand?"

All the executives were like ostriches, looking down at the documents in their hands, and no one had any thoughts to speak out.

Those present are not fools. With such a big loss and production gap, they don't know magic. Even if they replant now, it's too late.

Cargill's soybean inventory in North America is 1537 million tons, and in South America is 1239 million tons. These are to be delivered to customers, or the company's factories themselves need them.

Of course, there is another way now, which is to snap up soybeans from Eastern Europe and Lucia, and use this part of the soybeans to deliver to customers.

It's just that the spot price of soybeans has exceeded 530 US dollars per ton. Purchasing at this price is better than paying liquidated damages directly.

This is also one of the reasons why the executives present did not dare to speak out. The problem was obvious, either purchasing soybeans from other regions to fill the gap, or directly breaching the contract to compensate customers.

Little William felt tired.

Suddenly, President Wade thought of a way: "Chairman, maybe we can make up for it from other places."

"What way?" Little William asked quickly.

Wade explained: "Do you still remember the food war in Luzon? I estimate that Luzon's grain inventory will not exceed 500 million tons. Coupled with the continuous pressure in these two quarters, their domestic rice and corn planting area has decreased. A lot, and now I feel like I can attack early."

"Luzon? Food? Isn't it planned to start next year?" Little William obviously knew the details of the plan.

Wade shook his head: "Next year is too late, and the international rice price is out of control now. Although the effect of starting early will be worse, but we have nothing to do now!"

After thinking for a while, Little William also discovered the problem.

In order to suppress international rice prices, ABCD has maintained a low-price dumping strategy before, but now the thunderstorm of soybeans has caused a chain reaction on the entire grain market.

After all, soybeans are an important raw material for edible oil and feed. Once the price soars, buyers will naturally look for alternative products.

This in turn drives up the prices of rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, palm oil, corn, wheat and rice.

This invisibly undermines ABCD's low-price rice strategy.

If it is not activated now, as long as Luzon gives a little guidance, its rice planting area will increase again, causing the previous layout to be wasted.

1 Chapter Fifty

8 month 2 day.

Metro Manila.

The sky had just turned white, and many people had already gotten up to work.

Mary prepared breakfast for the two children early in the morning, and then rode a bicycle to send the younger son to the No. [-] Primary School in the North District.

This school is a private school under the name of the Fernando family. It mainly provides educational guarantees for the children of Homo sapiens employees, family children, and middle-class families.

Mary's youngest son can come to school here, and it also benefits from the relationship of her eldest daughter Julie.

After sending her youngest son to school, she went to work in Fengrao Supermarket by bicycle.

Just arrived at the supermarket.

The manager shouted: "Mary, you and Bell go to change the price tags on the shelves."

"What else has the price increased?" Marie knows the unspoken rules of the supermarket, that is, if the price of something in the market has increased, the supermarket will rush to change the price; if the price of something in the market has dropped, the supermarket will be slower to respond.

Picking up a bunch of price tags that had just been printed out, Mary found that the things bearing the brunt were rice, flour, soybean oil, and palm oil.

Colleague Bell exclaimed in a low voice: "The price of rice has risen so high."

The two chatted quietly as they walked.

When she came to the grain and oil area, Mary took out the old price tag from the interlayer of the price tag and inserted a new one.

Basmati Medan Rice / 56 pesos / kg

Mindoro sticky rice / 41 pesos / kg

South Island Indica Rice/38 pesos/kg

……

The prices of various types of rice have risen to varying degrees, with an average increase of about 13%.

In fact, the increase in grain and oil in Fengrao Supermarket is already the smallest in Manila.

Another large grain and oil wholesaler not far from Fengrao Supermarket has pulled the price up to 120% at this time.

Manila, as the region with the strongest foreign capital, the most compradors, and the densest concentration of converts, became the eye of the storm for soaring food prices in Luzon.

In the warehouse of Jiahai Grain and Oil Trading Company.

The boss, Fan Oka Hook, is leading people to check the fireproof and waterproof facilities of the warehouse. He imported a large amount of fragrant rice from Siam, more than 2 tons.

Now is the season when typhoons frequently occur in Luzon, and he is also very worried about whether these rice storage warehouses can make a fortune, it depends on this time.

"Boss, the market price of rice has soared by [-]% now, do you want to sell?" the person in charge of the sales department asked cautiously.

Fan Oka rolled his eyes: "Have you lost your head? Now that the international grain price is rising steadily, Siam, Annan, and Tianzhu have all announced to increase the export price of rice and reduce the export volume. What money can you make now? ?”

"Boss is wise!" Another dog leg quickly flattered.

Fan Oka patted the rice warehouse: "If the price has not doubled, don't sell it, and I will continue to reduce the supply of the store."

"But, where is Fengrao?" The person in charge of the sales department still felt a little uneasy.

"What are you afraid of? I can't break the law if I don't sell rice? This is a free market." Fan Oka waved his hand indifferently.

Like Fan Oka, comprador merchants, convert groups, and foreign-funded enterprises are rapidly reducing rice sales while gradually raising market prices.

Affected by the sharp increase in the price of rice, Manila not only saw price increases for food, but also edible oil, sugar, meat and eggs, and non-staple food.

Similarly, in other cities in Luzon, there are also signs of rising prices of grain, oil and agricultural products.

Luzon seems to have returned to the era of the last food crisis all of a sudden, with insufficient internal food production capacity and soaring external food prices.

But this time, will the result be the same as last time?

Homo sapiens has increased the market supply of food through Fengrao Supermarket, but it has started a purchase restriction model, and the price is not low.

But in the market, Fengrao Supermarket has enough food supply, and the public can only grit their teeth to buy food at a price of one day.

This situation lasted for more than a month.

The time came to September.

The second season of rice in Luzon has entered the harvesting period.

At this time, the average price of rice in the Luzon market is stable at 56 pesos per kilogram for indica rice, 58 pesos per kilogram for glutinous rice, and 80 pesos per kilogram for fragrant rice.

The price has almost doubled.

And the worse news is.

Affected by the typhoon, this year's Luzon second crop rice production will decrease by about 12%.

At the same time, bad news came from Luzon in the rice purchase negotiations with Siam, Annam, and Tianzhu. It seems that the two sides have huge differences in prices.

All kinds of unfavorable news have made the fried rice merchants in Manila more confident. Many speculators believe that there is still room for food prices in Luzon to rise.

Just now.

The rice rush has also begun in various parts of Luzon.

Foreign-funded enterprises, comprador businessmen, and groups of converts began to organize grain collection teams to purchase rice at high prices in rural areas.

Even some of the agricultural cooperatives under Homo sapiens are "secretly" selling rice to these people.

Inside the cooperative in Macaron Village.

Fan Oka said with a smile: "Brother Carter, 45000 pesos per ton is already the highest in Manila. Don't brothers want to live in the free world?"

After he finished speaking, he took out 50 pesos from his purse and stuffed it into Carter's hand.

Carter put the money away calmly, and then replied solemnly: "Yes, 45000 a ton, but only 500 tons."

"Haha, happy cooperation." Fan Oka smiled smugly.

At this moment, his heart has been occupied by greed, and he has invested all his wealth in snapping up local rice.

There are not a few people who think like Van Oka.