The ins and outs of buying wheat in Egypt are more complicated than they might sound at first. While the story may be a familiar one to those in the industry, the abridged version is that Egypt – the world’s biggest wheat buyer – rattled markets back in December 2015 when it rejected a cargo of French wheat sold by Bunge due to the presence of a hallucination-inducing fungus called ergot. A series of cargoes from Romania, Russia, and the US were then held up for inspection, causing costly delays to the trade and sparking speculation of cash flow issues and interdepartmental rivalry within the government.