Showing posts with label Agriculture exports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agriculture exports. Show all posts

Monday, September 16, 2013

16/9/2013: Don't chill that champagne, yet... Irish Agri-food Exports

Here's one of the core reasons as to why agricultural exports are booming in Ireland:


Or more precisely, implied profit margins on sales:

So in basic terms: global food inflation is driving Ireland's agri-food exports since ca Q1 2010, while profitability improvements are contributing to the same since ca Q4 2011. The former is obviously not due to our competitiveness gains or efficiency improvements or great business strategies or policies. The latter is, err... not that much either, as costs continued to inflate since Q4 2011, albeit slower than output prices. In other words, our improved profit margin in the agri-food sector are also due to someone, somewhere on the Planet having to pay more for food.