Last year, the Los Angeles long beach port complex became famous as dozens of enormous cargo ships lined up offshore, waiting to unload cargo. The reason was that COVID caused a shortage of both trucks and drivers to take goods to their final destination.

The scenes of row upon row of cued vessels at the only ports on the US West Coast that can handle the new breed of mega-ships encapsulates both the challenges and the vulnerability that 150 years of trade growth has wrought on global shipping.

In this 8th episode of the Trading Places podcast, we explore these challenges.

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Host: Rachel Williamson  

Producer: Sonny Sanjay Vadgama

Tips, advice, and insights on running your exporting business smarter: www.blog.silverbird.com

Get a global business account designed for international trade at: www.silverbird.com

Q: What’s the historic secret of China’s success?

A: Rice.

The world’s second-most-important cereal crop and the focal point of culinary culture in both Asia and India, the cultivation of rice is a tricky business—it can only be grown in regions with high rainfall.

Unlike wheat and barley, the cultivation of rice requires comparatively little agricultural land—meaning that a large population of non-rural workers can be fed. This led to urbanisation on a massive scale and diversification of the labour market, transforming ancient China’s political system and bureaucracy into a slick, well-oiled machine.

It’s no surprise that rice grew alongside such socially-complex cultures, the likes of which gave Europe inventions as wide-ranging as the printing press, the compass, and gunpowder. These sophisticated governments could afford to heavily invest in all facets of rice’s labour-intensive cultivation—from canal building to the deployment of sprawling armies of agricultural labourers.

In this 7th episode of the Trading Places podcast, we’re talking about the past, present and future of rice—the food that inspired cultures.

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Host: Rachel Williamson

2. Dr Gurdev Singh Khush – an agronomist and geneticist who received the 1996 World Food Prize for his achievements in enlarging and improving the global supply of rice.

3. V Subramanian – Vice President, Asia at The Rice Trader, an analyst is the global rice trade.

Producer: Sonny Sanjay Vadgama

Tips, advice, and insights on running your exporting business smarter: www.blog.silverbird.com

Get a global business account designed for international trade at: www.silverbird.com

Throughout booms, busts, global wars, and times of prosperity, gold has proven itself to be the commodity consistently at the heart of global evolution. As our need and desire for it increase scientists are already proposing ways to harvest it from more hard-to-reach places such as the ocean.

One thing that is for sure is as has been the case for the last 6,000 years, gold undoubtedly has a place in everyone's future.

In this 6th episode of the Trading Places podcast, we explore the past, present, and future of gold.

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Host: Rachel Williamson

Producer: Sonny Sanjay Vadgama

Tips, advice, and insights on running your exporting business smarter: www.blog.silverbird.com

Get a global business account designed for international trade at: www.silverbird.com

The earliest evidence of wine drinking was noted some 8,000 years ago. Today, wine is still as popular as it has ever been.

But as with all agricultural industries, one is not and never has been an easy trade. Climate change is threatening the viability of famous wine regions while wine's eternal popularity makes it vulnerable to state-level persecution, let alone what impact the new eye watering cost of getting wine to the end of drinker will have down the track.

In this 5th episode of the Trading Places podcast, we explore the future of wine, the oldest traded product.

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Tips, advice, and insights on running your exporting business smarter: www.blog.silverbird.com

Get a global business account designed for international trade at: www.silverbird.com

Scientists have calculated that unless something drastic is done within the next 30 years, there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish. It's hard to underestimate just how essential bioplastics will be enough.

In this episode of Trading Places, we'll dive into a new industry: bioplastics – a kind of plastic made from renewable resources, such as sugar or waste, and that comes with promises.

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Tips, advice, and insights on running your exporting business smarter: www.blog.silverbird.com

Get a global business account designed for international trade at: www.silverbird.com

The global market for cannabidiol, better known as CBD, operates in a strange gray area between legal and illegal. In the US, it's completely legal. In Australia, it's legal, but with strict medical conditions. Yet in Russia, even using a hemp-based shampoo could see you in prison for up to 15 days.

In this episode, you'll learn about why most experts have been very wrong about what the future holds for CBD.

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Tips, advice, and insights on running your exporting business smarter: blog.silverbird.com 

Get a global business account designed for international trade at: silverbird.com 

The pandemic has transformed us in many ways. It taught us to value our health, loved ones, and most importantly: not take things for granted.

But can you learn not to take for granted something as ubiquitous as oxygen? And can you build a business selling it?

It turns out you can.

As the world is reopening and recovering from lockdowns, we won't go into (yet another) lengthy conversation about the pandemic. Instead, this second episode of The Trading Places podcast will focus on how the pandemic affected the medical oxygen industry.

From hearing a reporter talk about the oxygen crisis in India, talking to entrepreneurs working in the realm of "oxygen bars," and even selling oxygen online, we'll talk about how this crisis is teaching people to think about oxygen as a commodity that can be bought and sold around the globe and how the way we think about it has changed.

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This podcast is supported by Silverbird – your global business account for international trade. Join us at silverbird.com

Get free tips, advice, and insights on running your global exporting business smarter at blog.silverbird.com

For many in the business world, Nigeria is about oil. And yet, few people know about its vast agricultural legacy. This is something the economists dubbed "the resource curse" – countries with an abundance of a natural resource have lower economic growth and more inequality because that one resource crowds it all.

In this first episode of the Trading Places, our team heads off to Nigeria to explore how a country with an abundance of oil was forced to refocus on agriculture.

We'll meet with two international merchants working in the cashew industry and one financial journalist, analyzing the agricultural sector in this country, to talk about what it means to start your exporting business in Nigeria today, and what the future outlook of this economy looks like. 

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This podcast is supported by Silverbird: your global business account for international trade. Join us at silverbird.com 

Get free tips, advice, and insights on running your global exporting business smarter at blog.silverbird.com