Don’t forget to register for the 5th Downes-O’Neill/EDairy Annual Outlook Conference. Held on June 18 & 19 in Chicago, the conference’s platinum sponsor is Schreiber Foods and the gold sponsor is Dairy Farmers of America. An impressive list of speakers are on the program.
The Outlook Conference is a leading gathering for dairy-industry executives, analysts, traders, and producers that also attracts participants with price risk exposure in other commodities, including grains and fuels.
The keynote speaker for this year’s conference is Todd Buchholz, a former director of economic policy at the White House and a managing director of the $15 billion Tiger hedge fund. Buchholz, who has authored numerous books on the economy, including Market Shock: 9 Economic and Social Upheavals that Will Shake our Financial Future and the bestseller Dead Economists, will present his viewpoint of the direction of the global economy in 2008 and beyond.
The conference, also will feature Siva Yam, the president of the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce, who will discuss the Chinese economy and trends in that nation’s food import and export situation. Climatologist Drew Lerner, who also addressed last year’s conference – and predicted this year’s harsh winter in the U.S. – will be back to offer his predictions for global weather patterns in the remainder of 2008 and beyond.
Downes-O’Neill/FCStone’s own Bill Brooks will offer his perspective on the changing fundamentals of the dairy market and what they will mean for prices at the wholesale and retail level. Ken Bailey, Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics at Penn State University and a consultant to Downes-O’Neill/FCStone, also will address the dairy market outlook, and will discuss the use of econometric models to forecast commodity prices.
Other speakers will include David Hightower, editor of the Hightower Report newsletter, on U.S. and world currencies; Julian Viso, Vice President of Latin American Operations for FCStone, LLC, on Latin America’s economy and agriculture sector; Eric Bowles, Senior Vice President of FCStone Trading on OTC swap derivatives; Mike Knobbe, President, carbon credits, of FCStone Carbon, LLC; technical analyst Peter Ullrich; Jim Webster, publisher of the Webster Agricultural Letter, on the legislative outlook; Tripp Dunman, Director of the fuel surcharge program for FCStone, LLC on the energy market outlook and trading strategies; and David Smoldt, FCStone Vice President and risk-management consultant, on the outlook for U.S. grains.