Jim Budzynski，MacroGain Partners
在2007年底开始的大衰退中，全球经济因发达经济体表现疲弱而陷入困境，而中国、印度和新兴经济体普遍继续扩张和繁荣。今天，情况恰恰相反。发达经济体终于获得了一些牵引力，而新兴经济体却步履蹒跚。其中一个主要因素是中国。中国股市波动、房地产泡沫以及从用于钢铁生产的铁矿石到农产品等各种商品库存的减少，都在世界经济中引发了连锁反应。随着新兴经济体收缩、生产过剩，发达国家无法吸收几乎所有产品的生产过剩。
作为 2016 年 1 月展望期的一部分，我们与经济学家进行了交谈，以了解这些宏观经济因素对未来农业、作物投入和农场收入之间的相互关系有多大。
“人们需要认识到，我们陷入的低迷是全球大宗商品低迷。农产品只是其中一类。如果你看看铁矿石公司，你会发现他们正处于自由落体状态，”MacroGain Partners 的执行合伙人 Jim Budzynski 说道。
AgriBusiness Global 与布津斯基和其他经济学家交谈，了解农业的前瞻性经济指标。以下是 11 月底谈话中的一些坦率而富有洞察力的摘录，当时是陶氏与杜邦交易宣布之前，这让他看起来有点像神谕，尽管先正达-孟山都的精灵已经从瓶子里出来了。
AgriBusiness Global：您认为大宗商品价格什么时候会反弹？
布津斯基: I’m of the view now that we might be looking at four to six years of downside, and now we’re about a year and a half to two years into it.
Interestingly, a lot of the big ag producers are in emerging markets, Brazil in particular. And for many of these countries, it isn’t about managing the market. It’s about generating revenue for GDP, social programs, etc. So even in the face of the downturn and declining demand from China, we have people cranking out volume to try to make up the difference.
同样的事情也发生在石油行业。目前正在上演一出大戏，大型大宗商品企业正试图让人们陷入困境，并利用危机让竞争对手破产。
这将会造成很多附带损害。我认为我们将经历一段大宗商品价格极其疲软的时期。通常，在农业领域，我们有相对稳定的需求，但供应中断通常是由天气引起的，或者我们有一个巨大的产量年份，但我们的市场供应过剩。
现在我们正在进入一个市场，部分原因是所有新兴市场都处于或处于衰退的边缘，这些国家的需求正在下降。当你将长期供应与疲软的需求结合起来时，这不仅仅是周期性衰退；这些都是长期衰退。
因此，由于全球需求下降和疲软、大宗商品产能过剩等原因，这将是又两到四年的非常糟糕的气候。看看有多少吨钾肥上线（特别是在加拿大、俄罗斯和印度）。人们竞相投入产能，而采矿业的问题在于它有一个极长的尾巴。您提前四到五年设定了路线，无论市场发生什么情况，您都会继续完成该项目。
我们将经历这个痛苦的过程，人们将被迫关闭，而这将是最小和最弱的参与者。大公司将继续运转并尽可能提高效率，然后市场将在顶级参与者的边际成本触底，那时我们将实现供应效率。然后价格就会触底，我认为距离触底至少还有 18 个月的时间。
我还认为我们正处于生产的重大调整之中。几年来，人们一直在全力以赴，看看美国的乙醇，人们正在快速行动，将大量土地投入生产，部分原因是各国央行在世界各地印制了所有的钞票，我们有一个饲料世界各地对农业房地产的狂热。
现在正在发生的事情是一次非常痛苦的重置，因为12-18个月前我们的农业房地产价值与大宗商品的价值不一致，而这对农民来说是最大的成本。那将不得不重置。
I read an interesting quote from a senior energy executive a few weeks ago: ‘It’s starting to rain … it’s going to rain for a long time … we’re all going to get wet … and some of us are going to drown.’
全球农业企业： 较低的价格将如何影响农作物投入品和投入品公司？
布津斯基: The first things big crop chemical companies do is announce reductions in force to get their cost structures in line. And then secondly and predictably, we enter into the mating frenzy. The rule of three means that we won’t have six big crop protection companies, and in the next six to 18 months, we are going to go from six to three or four big players in that business, and there will be some smaller businesses disappear as well. So there is going to be a lot of activity.
Crop chemical prices drifted upward along with the general economics of the farmer, and they are sticky and don’t come down immediately. But eventually they will come down and we are entering into a situation where the farmer is financially strained and they are just not going to be able to extract the kinds of premiums that they’ve extracted during the past three to four years over the next three to four years.
种子是不同的，因为它往往决定作物的潜力，如果农民认为某个特定品种可以为他们带来产量潜力，他们就会犹豫是否要搞乱这一点。然而，我越来越多地在艰难的环境中与农民交谈，他们正在考虑使用非转基因种子和传统化学品，所以我认为我们将看到在这次经济低迷时期尝试一些新模式。
AgriBusiness Global：您真的认为农民会做出截然不同的决定吗？
布津斯基: For farmers, in the first six to 12 months that things are bumpy, they take notice but they don’t really react. Now that we are 18 to 24 months into this, then they are starting to think strategically and will change their operations.
The equipment guys can teach us a lot here; they are the first guys to get skewered because spending on equipment is the most discretionary for farm operations. One of the big unknowns is what this does for the whole precision Ag space. Precision Ag has tremendous promise to make farming more efficient. That being said, the sales proposition must be pretty crisp because in the current environment, if you have some really cool bells and whistles that a farmer can’t relate to bottom-line profitability, then it will be a tough sell. It is going to force a lot of our precision Ag technology players to mature pretty quickly and think long and hard about the value proposition to the farmer and communicate that aggressively … If not, they are going to go away. We have probably seen the high-water mark. There are a lot of companies with similar business models, and in a storm, it is going to be hard for all of them to survive.
AgriBusiness Global：普通农民对全球化有那么重视吗？他们应该吗？
布津斯基: People that are growing high-value crops, particularly ones that are growing produce for Asia, are keenly tuned into global situations, especially out West, where everyone is talking about the strength of the dollar right now. But some farmers are going to get dragged kicking and screaming into this global game. We’ve built such a massive food machine in the U.S., but it requires global consumers for it to work, and i think we for a long time have built infrastructure and expanded production. I think we are going to have a pause. Yes emerging markets have hungry people, but their currencies are in free fall, economies are in recession, and they are going to be unable for a period of time to purchase food from the U.S. like they once did. So all of us in the U.S. are going to get a lesson in global economics in the next few years.
In my view, this commodity downturn and the Chinese economic downturn are driven by a whole range of things including banking problems, stock bubble, pollution and public policy. In China, no country in the history of the world has grown as fast and added so much capacity and debt in such a short period of time. There is always a hangover. There is always going to be a period of retrenchment. If you think you can go from $2 trillion in debt to $28 trillion in debt without picking up some bad debt in there, then you are nuts. When a bubble gets going, at some point standards drop and some people get loans who shouldn’t, and a lot of barnacles build up on the ship and the reason you have a recession to clean off all the barnacles. We are going to have some barnacles scraped off this boat whether people are ready for them or not. It is painful for the people involved but it is healthy for the economy.
Our biggest frustration (as an investment firm) is that we are in suspended animation. Eventually we will be better served as humans to take our lumps and clean up our balance sheets and get our houses in order, then a new era of growth and prosperity can start. But it’s not going to start with three-times GDP worth of global debt. That isn’t the beginning of a bull market; that is the end of a growth market. The party is about over.
Editor’s note: See the January issue of AgriBusiness Global for 2016 年展望报道，包括更多有关宏观经济、作物保护、生物农药、植物健康、种植意向以及中国和印度供应趋势的信息。