Agriculture & Softs

Corn is a cereal crop grown around the world and grows in warm weather and usually matures in late summer. Corn’s varieties are directly used for food and animal feed or processed to make food and feed ingredients (such as high fructose corn syrup, corn starch and lysine) or industrial products such as ethanol and polylactic acid. Sugar is produced by more than 120 countries in the World and its total global production exceeds 165 million tons per year. The main source of sugar is Cane with over 80% of the global sugar produced from sugar cane, grown in tropical countries. The rest of sugar is produced from sugar beet, grown mostly in the northern hemisphere. The 10 largest sugar producing nations represent about 75% of world sugar production with Brazil alone producing fourth of the world production. Coffee, after crude oil is the most wanted commodity in the world. Coffee is grown in over 50 countries in Asia, Africa, South America, Central America and the Caribbean and usually no more than 1000 miles from the equator. There are the two main commercially grown coffee beans Arabica and Robusta. Arabica is the more common type of bean grown (70 percent of coffee is Arabica) and it is considered to have more flavour whilst Robusta is stronger and mostly used in production of instant coffee. The Cocoa tree (Theobroma Cacao) is grown in the tropics in a band between 10 to 20 degrees north and south of the equator , sometimes called the "Cocoa Belt". There are four major types of cacao being cultivated: Criollo, Forastero, Trinitario and Nacional. The flavor of the cacao beans is not only dependent on the variety, but also on the soil, temperature, sunshine and rainfall.