Commodity Origins

Weekly commodity stats

Ten new statistics about where commodities come from, who trades them and how their prices behave, published every Monday. Each is computed from the data behind this site, with its source and year, from a pool of 554 stats that covers concentration, trade, prices, price swings, land and yield, data quality and more. A statistic is not repeated until the pool has been used up.

This week: week of 28 September 2026

  1. China bought 86% of world imports of bauxite (HS 2606) by value in 2024. Source: CEPII BACI, 2024. Bauxite · China
  2. South Africa produced 45% of the world's mined chromium in 2025. The top five producers together made 86%. Source: USGS MCS, 2025. Chromium · South Africa
  3. China is the world's largest producer of grapes (22% of output in 2024), but Peru is the largest exporter of grapes (HS 0806) (14% of world export value in 2024). China is 3rd among exporters. Source: CEPII BACI, 2024. Grapes · China · Peru
  4. World production of soybeans in 2024 was 15 times what it was in 1961: 397.7 million tonnes against 26.9 million tonnes. Source: FAOSTAT, 2024. Soybeans
  5. Adjusted for US inflation, peanuts costs about 13% of what it did at its November 1980 peak (the World Bank series starts in 1980). Source: World Bank Pink Sheet, 2026. Peanuts · Peanuts prices
  6. Oats output in Brazil grew from 432,136 tonnes in 2014 to 1.1 million tonnes in 2024, 9.7% a year for ten years. Source: FAOSTAT, 2024. Oats · Brazil
  7. At 2025 mining rates, the world's known phosphate rock reserves would last about 292 years. That is a snapshot, not a forecast: reserves are re-estimated as prices change and new deposits are found. Source: USGS MCS, 2025. Phosphate rock
  8. The real price of potash fell 79% between April 2022 and October 2024, and has not climbed back to the old peak. Source: World Bank Pink Sheet, deflated by the US consumer price index to 2024 dollars. Potash · Drawdowns
  9. The Netherlands is a net exporter of 18 of the 96 commodities tracked and a net importer of 55, with a combined net balance of −$58.4 billion (deficit). Source: CEPII BACI trade values, approximate where customs codes overlap. Netherlands · Net trade
  10. China bought 28% of world imports of linseed (HS 1204) by value in 2024. Source: CEPII BACI, 2024. Linseed · China

Permanent link to this week

Earlier weeks

How these are made

A script builds the pool from the daily facts plus one statistic for each row of the pattern reports: drawdowns, volatility, the oil link, land versus yield, data reliability, net trade and stocks versus prices. The pool is interleaved by topic, and each Monday the next ten unused statistics are taken and frozen, so a past week never changes when the data is refreshed. Figures are as of the week they were published; the current value is always on the linked commodity page. Subscribe with the weekly stats feed or download JSON. Prices are monthly benchmark averages and are not investment advice.