Commodities news service ZMP is running an item from Morocco, where a 43% drop in harvest has been preceded by a 33% decline in planted area.
After three years of low stocks and poor crops, Brazil’s orange juice industry is starting to look around for alternative citrus fruits that do not succumb to citrus greening. This condition first appeared in Florida 20 years ago, wrecking the state’s headline crop. Today, Brazilian producers face a devastating combination of bad weather …and citrus greening. There is a big article in the Financial Times that brings readers up to date with an ongoing crisis.
The descriptions and content of these brief items are kept as short as possible: if you want to follow up the details of a story, click the link that will always be provided.
Is Labour doing the right thing when it accuses the Tories of “gaslighting” the state of the British economy, that is to say querying the tory grasp of economic indicators to unsettle conservative assumptions? Top of the list: will Thursday’s meeting at the Bank of England really decide to keep interest at 5.25%?
Livestock farmers are facing the threat of wind-borne midges carrying a new strain of blue tongue virus across the North Sea, potentially infecting British sheep and cattle. The illness is established in northern Europe, where it causes significant livestock losses.
Tea time: Manchester Evening News parent editor Emma Gill compares retailer brand tea bags after a series of substantial price rises.
The outlook for olive oil supples is as grim as ever. Sarah Butler lines up the industry’s international data and tells readers of The Guardian to expect more of the same. Urban Food Chains ran an overview a a few months ago.
Defection of the week: Dover MP Natalie Elphicke crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join the Labour party benches. It will be interesting to see how her position will change on things like the Brexit border tax. To help readers spot the changes, I downloaded a couple of posts on May 9 from https://natalieelphicke.com, laying out her position before she jumped ship. The original posts were here: one makes the case for providing adequate funding to allow Dover Port Health Authority to maintain its biosecurity targets and the other highlights ways in which Blockchain applications can speed up border checks. Just in case the originals disappear, download the May 9 versions here and here.
Strong European cheese is a taste challenge to consumers in south east Asia, where the strong flavours and live textures literally get up the noses of potential export customers in cities like Singapore. The BBC filed this report about the seasoned export cheese sales teams from countries such as France, Italy or Switzerland. They are very careful not to push their challenging products until they have earned the confidence of prospective customers. British cheese sales teams headed for Asia with high hopes of conquering sales prospects with cheeses like Stinking Bishop. The broadcasters learnt that the British team was only allowed to promote their strong-smelling cheese at the show because they paid to exhibit at the show on the spot with their own money.
Good news from pesticide campaigners: PAN Europe has become the first civil society to win a substantive case in Europe’s highest court. Pesticide Action Europe challenged the absence of any new scientific data in support of product approval renewals. The EU Court of Justice found in favour of the campaigners, adding that authorisations and renewals at national level should be fully documented and should no longer rely on the work of other member states when renewing product licences. The decision should stop the endless re-use of data going back decades. Read more on the PAN Europe website.
Since February 2021, liveweight prices for finished chickens have risen by 11% in the UK, while chicken feed costs have risen by up to 30%. Over the same period, UK exports of poultrymeat to the EU have fallen by 25% to 208,000 tonnes, while EU shipments of poultrymeat rose by 2.3% year on year to 275,000 tonnes in calendar year 2022. UK consumers buy white chicken meat and not the dark meat on the carcase, which UK poultry producers used to export to balance demand for their output. Without an export market for the dark poultrymeat and facing competition from increased volumes of imported product, the UK poultry sector is between a rock and a hard place.
