Agri-Finance:The Major Players in Agri-Finance - by Shawn Williamson

A few years ago an accountant I know told me about some of her clients. They were a couple of guys on a mission to assemble hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. farmland for a Canadian pension fund. That’s when I started to realize there’s a lot more going on in the world of agri-finance than you hear about. Here are some of the big players in the agri-finance universe.

The types of players include banks that specialize in agricultural loans, non-bank finance companies that do land and equipment loans, farmer-owned lending co-ops, REITs that own and manage farm real estate, private equity funds that buy cropland, sovereign wealth funds, and, of course, pension funds.

One of the big agri-finance players, the Dutch Rabo AgriFinance in Chesterfield, Missouri, is headquartered only half an hour from my office. I recently sat down with their executive vice president, Curt Hudnutt, to talk about their market share in ag lending and the overall condition of agricultural loans. Rabo makes land, operating, and equipment loans. The company also sells crop insurance and offers commodity price hedging.

One of my goals was to show you the five largest agricultural lenders in the United States. Sounds easy, right? It isn’t. You have to pull together data from the Federal Reserve and beyond, and you have to specify the criteria. Are you talking about banks that do more than half of their lending to farms, dollars in farm real estate loans, number of farm loans, or some other metric? I think the fairest way to rank them is by how many dollars in ag loans a retail lending entity held as of the end of the most recent quarter. I thought this list would just be five large banks, but I was wrong. Here are the top five ag lenders as of September 30, 2018:

1. Farm Credit Services of America (ACA)
2. Farm Credit Mid America (ACA)
3. MetLife Insurance
4. Rabo Agrifinance / Rabo Bank NA
5. Compeer Financial (ACA)

Read more at The Major Players in Agri-Finance | Successful Farming

EU Renewable Energy: The Netherlands still trailing behind on EU renewable energy targets

The Netherlands is trailing the rest of Europe when it comes to reaching sustainable energy targets, according to new figures from the European statistics agency Eurostat.

In 2017, just 6.6% of the energy used in the Netherlands came from sustainable sources, but the target is 14% by 2020, Eurostat says. Luxembourg, where 6.4% of energy consumption derived from biofuels, hydro or wind power, solar or geothermal energy in 2017, has a 2020 target of 11%.

The Eurostat statistics show 11 EU countries had already reached their targets two years ago. In Sweden, for example, more than half the energy is sustainable.

The EU as a whole aims to make sure 20% of gross final energy consumption comes from renewable sources by 2020

Read more at: The Netherlands still trailing behind on EU renewable energy targets - DutchNews.nl

Turkey: Erdoğan’s aggression against Turkey’s Kurds—it’s personal - by Cemal Ozkahraman

Turkey’s Kurds have long faced oppression by the state. But they have come to be seen by the Erdoğan regime as the main obstacle to its untrammelled power.

Against the background of Turkey’s affiliation to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the European Union’s official recognition of its candidature for full membership at the Helsinki Summit in 1999 gave hope to Kurds concentrated in east and south-east Turkey that they would soon obtain political rights enabling them to represent their own regions and stimulate their culture and identity. Indeed, despite the continuation of the Turkish state’s customary denial of Kurdish realities, during the early years of the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan there was some alleviation of its treatment of the Kurds. Particularly since the June 2015 general election, however, Erdoğan’s government has returned to the old ways, clamping down on the Kurds, imprisoning their elected politicians and members of their People’s Democratic Party (HDP), notably its former leader, Selahattin Demirtaş, who has been jailed in the face of ECHR demands that he should be released.

Why did such militant antagonism towards the Kurds resurface just at the time when Turkey was on the verge of achieving a lasting peace with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)? Part of the reason is that Erdoğan is manoeuvring to regain popularity among Turkish voters before the local elections in March. Being very conscious of Turkish sensitivity with regard to Türklük (‘Turkishness’) and devlet bekasi (state security), Erdoğan constantly implies that the HDP and Demirtaş are terrorists and traitors, accusing them of supporting the PKK. By creating enemies and then spreading fears that these enemies are attempting to destroy Turkish unity, he had previously achieved substantial voters’ support for the continuation of his ‘sultanate’, enabling him to reinforce his aim of a Sunni-based, nationalist, one-party-state system of autocratic militarist enforcement in Turkish politics. He has been consistent in trying to achieve this by touching on the Turkish electorate’s most sensitive nerves, Türklük and devlet bekasi.  

But this is not the only reason for his severity. It can only be fully comprehended by seeing it in terms of resentment—an autocrat’s revenge—with the HDP the most direct object for punishment.

Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the 2002, 2007 and 2011 elections, holding a majority of seats for 13 years. This enabled him to minimise the impact of traditional opposition forces, including the military and Turkish ruling elites, the ‘Kemalists’ (followers of the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk). To cement his vision of Atatürk’s Turkey, Erdoğan seeks absolute domination, and this can only be achieved by a presidential, rather than parliamentary, system.

Read more:Erdoğan’s aggression against Turkey’s Kurds—it’s personal • Social Europe

Belgium - Antwerp: "Cocaine's new gateway into Europe"

Belgian Authorities report that last year they seized $ 2.5 billion of Cocaine

Read more at:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cocaines-new-gateway-to-europe-busy-belgian-port-1519908386

The Netherlands: Dutch newspaper AD uses misleading headline which could favor populist, nationalistic - anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies - by RM

A recent headline by Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD) which stated "Fuss in Germany about proposal to change English language courses in primary schools to Turkish". is misleading, especially if you just read the headline and not the whole story.

If you take the time to read the whole story - however - you quickly realize the heading is misleading.

This change of language from English to Turkish will in reality never happen in Germany or in any other country in the EU.

These kinds of headlines, however, are obviously  "grist to the mill" for the nationalist, anti-immigration, populist parties in the Netherlands and Europe, which are mainly supported by people, who do not want to look any further "than their noses are long", to see the dangers of populism.

This regardless of the fact that there are plenty of examples of populist inspired and created political chaotical disasters in the world, including the emergence of a Trump in America, Orban in Hungary , Giuseppe Conte in Italy, and the Brexit drama, the supporters of the populist movement still have their head in the sand.

As the European parliamentary elections this coming May are quickly approaching, it is good to remember that famous saying  "A warned person counts for two". 

It is high time, that we the people of the EU stop this so-called "populist movement", before they destruct our future, and that we take our purpose of being a democratic counter-balance to the many evil forces surrounding us, more seriously 

For the original AD newspaper report in Dutch click on this link  Ophef in Duitsland over voorstel om Engels op basisschool te vervangen door Turks | Buitenland | AD.nl

Britain - Brexit: British Food Industry warns Government on Brexit disaster

Food industry warns Government on Brexit 'crisis'

Read more at: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47200688

The Netherlands and Brexit: Netherlands wins Brexit spoils amid corporate relocation talks

Brexit is driving companies out of the UK, and the Netherlands is raking in the corporate refugees.

About 250 companies are in talks with the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency to potentially relocate activities to the country, according to a statement published on Saturday. The candidates would join 42 companies that made the move last year, and the 18 early birds in 2017.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the largest Brexit wave is yet to come,” Jeroen Nijland, who heads NFIA, said in a telephone interview. “It normally takes about six months to two years from the first conversation we have with a company before it makes a decision, and our pipeline is now bigger than in earlier years.”

The Netherlands has emerged as one of the winners in securing businesses that seek to leave the UK because of Brexit, vying with countries like Germany, France and Ireland. The country, which bagged the European Medicines Agency — an EU agency moving from London to Amsterdam — is initially luring corporate entities in the financial and media sectors, both of which require permits to operate in the bloc, Nijland said.

The growth of Amsterdam as a trading hub will boost the Dutch share of European equity trading to around a third from five% currently, the financial markets regulator AFM estimates. The watchdog also expects the country to capture nearly 90% of European bond trading.
 
The media industry is another area where the Netherlands has picked up wins. Discovery Inc said in January it’s applying for broadcast licenses in the Netherlands to ensure its pay-TV channels will continue to show across the European Union in the event of a no-deal Brexit when the UK leaves the bloc on March 29. 

Read more: Netherlands wins Brexit spoils amid corporate relocation talks