Global agri-food trade has more than doubled since 1995, amounting to $1.5 trillion in 2018, with emerging and developing countries’ exports on the rise and accounting for over one-third of the world’s total, according to a new report issued today by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

As the deadline for the post-Brexit trade talks between the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) looms, concerns have arisen as to whether the two parties will be able to conclude a deal.

Zimbabwe imported agricultural products worth more than US$1bn — half of it maize — last year, despite investing more than US$3bn in “command agriculture”, a controversial programme to ensure food self-sufficiency introduced in 2016.

La Nina conditions have started up their projected multi-month residency in the Pacific Ocean, just as new crop cycles are kicking off in the Americas, including corn and soybean planting in South America and wheat planting in the United States.

JUST AN HOUR from Madison, Wisconsin’s capital city, cows roam sloping hillsides and cornstalks line serpentine backroads. Loganville, a town of just 300 people, is farm country.

Global gross domestic product (GDP) has quadrupled since 1970, enabling immense progress, and lifting billions of people out of poverty.