World Grain - February 2024 - 26

CGI employee
Scott Tefre
walks on a
railcar at CGI's
grain shuttle
loading facility
in Plentywood,
Montana, US.
CGI
C
by Arvin Donley
olumbia
Grain International
(CGI) Chief
Executive Officer Jeff Van Pevenage, whose
career in the grain industry spans 34 years, has
never seen a more challenging business environment
than the one he and other grain company executives
around the world have encountered in recent years.
Since 2020, they have dealt with a once-in-a-lifetime
global pandemic that forced companies to alter the way
they conducted business, geopolitical turmoil in the
Black Sea region and other parts of the world that has altered
traditional trade flows and caused significant market
volatility, and a prolonged period of global inflation
and high interest rates not seen since the 1980s.
Adding to the angst in recent weeks has been
a series of events that have made shipping
grain in an efficient manner difficult. Low
water levels due to drought have limited
the amount of grain flowing through the
Panama Canal. Yemen-based Houthi
rebels have been firing missiles at commercial
ships passing through the Suez
Canal in response to the hostilities between
Hamas and Israel. For about a
week in mid-December, rail traffic was
halted at the southern border of the United
Jeff Van Pevenage has been chief executive officer and
president of Columbia Grain International since 2016.
26
Sustainable and regenerative ag practices
A vertically integrated company that purchases grains,
oilseeds, pulses and organics from more than 5,000
February 2024 / World Grain / World-Grain.com
States as government officials closed off routes on the
Mexican border going to and from the United States due
to security concerns linked to the immigration crisis. And
if all that wasn't enough, the US government recently
unveiled a $1 billion plan that would study the potential
breaching of the Columbia and Snake River dam system
in the Pacific Northwest to address salmon declines. Such
an action, taking place in Portland, Oregon, US-based
CGI's backyard, would effectively shut down the world's
third largest export corridor for grains and oilseeds.
" We need to keep the lower Snake River dams, " Van
Pevenage said. " It's the top wheat export gateway in the
nation and the third largest grain export corridor in the
world. If farmers and the export industry in the Pacific
Northwest lose this critical barge shipping route, there
will be further strain on an already broken supply chain. "
During a wide-ranging interview with World Grain in
December, Van Pevenage, who was vice president for
five years and senior vice president for three years at CGI
prior to becoming president and CEO in 2016, talked
about how the company has operated in this challenging
environment and emphasized its positive developments in
regenerative agriculture and the burgeoning demand for
specialty crops.
cultivating solutions amid challenges
Strategy includes greater emphasis on specialty crops, regenerative ag
Photo courtesy of CGI
http://www.World-Grain.com
World Grain - February 2024

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