Water is a precious resource so improving its use is essential. Adopting proven sustainable agricultural practices reduces water use per bushel. Research, innovation, and access to improved technologies, seeds, and improved irrigation techniques are essential to increasing the efficiency of water use. Agriculture needs to be part of watershed management.

Reinet Meyer is the senior inspector at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in the provincial city of Bloemfontein, located in the central grasslands of South Africa. In April, she received a tip: Two adult lions had been held for two days without food or water in tiny transport crates on a farm called Wag ‘n Bietjie (“Wait a While” in Afrikaans) about 20 miles outside the city.

Fears last year over the prospects of the U.S. table grape market during and after the transition to Southern Hemisphere supplies have resulted in what is described by Chilean exporters as a supply shortage.

Things are not looking good for the U.S. farm economy.

Bayer is set to face a second US jury over allegations that its popular glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup causes cancer, six months after the company’s share price was rocked by a $289m verdict in a California state court.

 Today, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) and PG Economics, Ltd. released new studies highlighting the continued social, environmental and economic benefits of the global adoption of biotechnology in agriculture.

Both the United States and China have suffered more damage from the trade war than expected, Blu Putnam, CME Group chief economist and managing director, said at the opening session of INTL FCStone’s annual Global Markets Outlook conference.

The US and China have for the past three months been locked in discussions about how to overcome a trade dispute that has slowed Chinese economic growth and seen the US-China trade balance slump to a record low last year.

The Food and Drug Administration lifted an import restriction that allowed AquaBounty, a biotech company with facilities in Canada and Panama, to start raising genetically engineered (GMO) salmon eggs in America, effectively clearing the way for the country’s first GMO seafood—and first commercially raised GMO animal—to come to market

Before the first harvest robot drives through the greenhouses, millions of cucumbers will still be manually picked. However, robots are already working in packing and sorting. Beltech is one of the companies focused on the development of a harvest robot, but the company has already delivered a packing robot as well.

Last year, a few days before Christmas, Gail Fuller drove me out to the middle of a wind-whipped field just north of Emporia, Kansas.

The debate on land reform has not translated well in the US and investors are looking for more transparency from the South African government that it will not hurt the economy, says US deputy secretary of state John Sullivan.

 Japan’s compound and mixed feed production is staying strong, reaching its highest level since 2012-13, as livestock levels hold steady.

TROPICAL FORESTS GLOBALLY are being lost at a rate of 61,000 square miles a year. And despite conservation efforts, the global rate of loss is accelerating. In 2016, it reached a 15-year high, with 114,000 square miles cleared.

Justin Chadwick, CEO of the Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa, spoke about the challenges and triumphs of SA’s citrus industry at the recent Citrus Summit.

 Massive flooding in the Midwestern U.S. is wreaking havoc on stored grain as well as storage structures, and its likely the area of damage will expand.

South Africa Farming and Agriculture-  November 2021

March 2019 World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) provided further evidence that the world will have fairly large maize, soybean, and rice supplies in the 2018/19 season. Meanwhile, wheat production could decline from levels seen in the 2017/18 season.