In an effort to support the development of the local feed and livestock industries, USSEC conducted an introductory course on risk management in Romania. Traders, purchasing managers and executives from over 20 companies involved in feed milling, broiler and swine integrations, crushing and trading attended the event in Bucharest on April 29^th.

USSEC Commodities Trading Consultant Lola Herrera introduced the current market drivers and projections for the global soy outlook and risk management tools. Besides listening with interest to the lectures, there was a lot of interaction between the trainer and participants, demonstrating the eagerness of the audience in improving its knowledge.
“We do not deal with risk management tools every day and that’s why the event was an excellent opportunity to refresh our knowledge in commodity risk management and learn how to manage volatility instead of reacting to it,” said Ioan Antoci, the general manager of a top local swine integration and one of the very first local customers to import U.S. Soy and adopt soy extrusion technology.
Since quality and price are closely related, USSEC consultant Dr. Iani Chihaia, approached and bridged those topics during his presentations, discussing different quality aspects and the various interests of importers, traders, crushers, executives and nutritionists. Dr. Chihaia mainly stressed the importance of understanding soybean meal variation and how to deal with this in poultry feed formulation and feeding by recognizing, analyzing and incorporating the variability of soybean meal.

Ms. Herrera concluded, “It has been a pleasure to visit and interact with the Romanian industry people participating in our training and discover their high interest in discussing and enhancing their knowledge in the fundamentals of the commodity markets and the use of price risk management tools. The interest of the industry people comes largely from the fact that Romanian agriculture industry is one of the most promising from EU. I predict that existing growth opportunities will turn within the next few years into expansions of the poultry and swine farms, adding new demand for soy in Romania.”