Agriculture

Saudi Arabia’s main state wheat buying agency, the General Food Security Authority (GFSA), has purchased around 235,000 metric tons of hard wheat in an international tender, according to the agency. The purchase was considerably below the 595,000 tons sought in the tender. The origins offered were the European Union, Black Sea region, North America, South […]

Scientists tracking the spread of a new subtype of H5N1 avian flu are increasingly concerned that gaps in surveillance may keep them several steps behind a new pandemic, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen leading disease experts. Many of them have been monitoring the new subtype of H5N1 avian flu in migratory […]

Mexico’s incoming government, under President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, will discard a core goal of outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s administration to reduce imports of yellow corn and achieve self-sufficiency in its production, according to the incoming agriculture minister, Julio Berdegue. Berdegue told Reuters that Mexico will instead focus on maintaining self-sufficiency in white corn, which […]

China, the world’s biggest soybean importer, is likely to import record volumes of soybeans in July. This is driven by lower prices and the prospect of former U.S. President Donald Trump returning to power and reigniting trade tensions between Beijing and Washington, which was once China’s top supplier of the oilseed. Traders and analysts have […]

Malaysian palm oil futures ended higher for a third consecutive session on Friday, snapping a three-week decline. The benchmark palm oil contract for September delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange gained 26 ringgit, or 0.67%, to close at 3,916 ringgit ($830.54) per metric ton. For the week, the contract rose 0.4%, marking its first […]

According to the weekly report released by the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange (BdeC), wheat planting for the current harvesting season in Argentina has seen a rapid advance over the past week due to recent rainfall in the country’s main farmland areas. Argentina is a major international exporter of wheat, as well as processed soybeans and […]

China has passed a new law aimed at better protecting farmers’ land rights and supporting the development of rural village collectives. The law, known as the Rural Collective Economic Organisations Law, will take effect on May 1, 2025. While all farmland in China is state-owned, farmers have decades-long land lease rights that are exercised on […]

The BRICS group of countries, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, have expressed support for an initiative to establish a grain exchange, according to the Russian Minister of Agriculture, Oksana Lut. The proposed grain exchange would allow buyers to purchase directly from producers, a concept that has been backed by Russian President […]

A last-ditch attempt by EU governments to break a deadlock over relaxing regulations on gene-edited crops failed after countries including Poland rejected changes to the text that exempted patented seeds from the measure. The text for so-called new genomic techniques (NGT), which would be the foundation of negotiations with the European Parliament before the law […]

In an effort to bring down food inflation, the Indian government has allowed limited imports of certain commodities under the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) system, where importers pay nil or lower duty. The commodities included in the duty concessions are corn, crude sunflower oil, refined rapeseed oil, and milk powder. Specifically, India has allowed the import […]