World

Following two years of below average rainfall in Australia, which has led to severe drought conditions, agricultural production on the country’s east coast has been devastated.

An accord between the EU and the Mercosur trading bloc, comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, could be reached in the next week.

US President Donald Trump’s recent announcement of a US$16 billion (about R231 billion) farm aid package has been met with mixed reactions.

Beef farmers in Ireland will be receiving €100 million (about R1,62 billion) in aid to compensate them for falling beef prices due to Brexit-related uncertainties, changes to the value of the pound, and price cuts since the Brexit vote.

Thirty-two cows recently boarded the world’s first floating farm in the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

The deadly Xylella pathogen poses a "very serious threat" to the EU's olive industry, with countries in southern Europe most at risk.

A jury in the San Francisco Superior Court in the US has awarded more than $2 billion (about R28 billion) to a couple who claimed that the Bayer AG glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide gave them cancer.

It is expected that soya bean output in China will increase 7,9% to 17,27 million tons for the 2019/2020 production year, according to the country’s agriculture ministry.

Nearly 50 000 smallholder farmers in rural India have benefitted from a technology-led educational programme to boost their productivity and income since it was launched in 2018.

Severe food shortages are currently being experienced in North Korea, following a year of unexpected dry spells, heatwaves and flooding, which have resulted in the worst grain harvest in more than a decade.

The European Commission’s latest short-term outlook for agricultural markets indicated that maize imports to the EU would increase 38,6% from 14,5 million tons in 2017/2018 to 20,1 million tons for the current season, with the majority of this maize coming from Ukraine.

India’s cotton imports are expected to increase by 80% this year. This followed the devastating drought that had hit many states in that country’s cotton production areas, which resulted in a supply shortage of quality material for textile mills.