Canada's first wet year of the decade became a disease year, and the spray bill came due

One wet country, one dry continent

Canada’s durum, spring wheat, canola and pulse crops have spent the summer in an expensive fight with widespread disease [1]. It is the country’s first wet year this decade. An extremely wet spring and early summer loaded the soil with moisture. Then it turned hot and humid, which is close to perfect for fungi [1].

“We sprayed everything with fungicide this year,” said Jake Leguee, who farms about 19,000 acres in southeastern Saskatchewan [1]. He spent $6 to $20 an acre on it [1]. A fungicide is a spray that kills fungal disease on a growing plant. It cannot undo an infection already sitting inside the kernel.

Canada is the world’s leading exporter of canola, durum wheat, dry peas and oats [1]. So the choice was not a local one. Farmers had to decide whether to put more money into crops that were not going to be profitable anyway, or protect whatever was standing [1]. Most spent. “It was a must-do,” said Ray Redfern, an inputs dealer in Brandon, Manitoba [1]. He had expected farmers to pull back, and said many are at the end of their operating credit line [1].

Each disease attacks its own crop. Fusarium head blight hits durum and spring wheat; sclerotinia and blackleg hit canola [1]. Nobody knows yet whether the spraying worked. “We won’t know till we get the combines in the field,” Leguee said [1].

Europe had the opposite problem. Relentless heat and drought could halve France’s maize crop to under 7 million tonnes, the smallest since 1976, according to analysts at Expana and Argus [2]. The French agriculture ministry’s own projection is a 35% fall to about 9 million tonnes [2]. The European Commission has already cut its forecast for the whole EU maize harvest to 51.9 million tonnes, the lowest since 2007 [2]. Some analysts now expect it under 50 million for the first time since the 1990s [2]. Germany’s grain maize crop is forecast down 14% [2]. Poland, which got timely July rain, may end up the EU’s largest maize grower [2].

Vegetables took it harder than grain. French growers report shortfalls of 25% for courgettes, 35% for lettuces, 40% for peas, 60% for broccoli and between 50% and 100% for artichokes [3]. “This year, all our main production areas have been hit,” said Eric Legras of France’s canned and frozen vegetable producers’ association [3].

In Champagne, the official harvest start was pulled forward to 12 August, more than a week earlier than last year [5]. It is the earliest since records began in the early 20th century [5]. Across all French vineyards, harvest dates have moved about 21 days earlier over the past 50 years, said agroclimatologist Serge Zaka [5]. A spring frost had already taken roughly 30% of the champagne grape crop [5].

In England, nearly three-quarters of the country remains in drought [4]. Grass growth is about half of normal, which matters because summer grass is where most livestock farmers get their winter feed [4]. Milk production is down about 1%, according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board [4]. Berries are smaller but sweeter, and it may be a bumper year for cider apples [4]. A comment piece in the Guardian argued this week that Britain should rebuild strategic food reserves it no longer holds [24].

Where the shortfall gets made up, and where it does not

The USDA’s August world supply and demand report cut EU and UK wheat production, blaming prolonged above-average temperatures during grain fill [8]. Grain fill is the few weeks when the plant packs starch into the seed; heat there shrinks the grain itself. Because EU maize is short, more EU wheat is now expected to go into animal feed instead of food [8]. US wheat ending stocks are down 22% on last year at 717 million bushels, and the season-average farm price was raised 20 cents to $6.20 a bushel [8]. Ending stocks are simply what is left in store when the year’s use is done. They are the world’s buffer, and a thin buffer moves prices further on any new shock.

American corn is the counterweight. Production is forecast at 16.0 billion bushels, which would be the second-largest US corn harvest on record [8]. Exports were raised to 3.3 billion bushels, partly because Ukraine’s exports are constrained [8]. But the crop is late. As of 17 August, no corn had reached maturity in 10 of the 18 major corn states [6]. Indiana has its own version of Canada’s problem. “Gray leaf spot and northern corn leaf blight are more prevalent than tar spot this year,” said Syngenta agronomist Chad Threewits [6]. Flooding had dropped 7 to 17 inches of rain on parts of the state [6].

It is worth knowing how that corn number is built. The August forecast comes from asking farmers what they expect [23]. USDA staff do not start physically counting plants and ears in sample fields until late August, so those measurements only enter the September report [23]. Independent forecasters run parallel models off weekly crop-condition ratings as a cross-check [23].

Elsewhere the grain is moving. Argentina exported a record 5.14 million tonnes of corn in July, its biggest month ever, the Rosario grains exchange said [9]. Ukraine’s exports are going the other way. It is the world’s largest exporter of sunflower seeds and oil at half of global supply, fourth for corn and fifth for wheat [10]. Russian forces have struck at least 50 Ukrainian cargo ships since June, and commercial ships stopped calling after a 19 July strike killed ten people [10]. More than 90% of Ukraine’s farm exports leave through Black Sea ports [10].

The next shock is already forecast. The US Climate Prediction Center puts the chance of a very strong El Nino above 90% for the coming northern autumn and winter [11]. Every strong El Nino in the past 55 years has reduced cocoa output, according to investment firm WisdomTree [11]. In Latin America the effect may cut both ways. Extra rain usually helps Argentine soy, corn and wheat, said meteorologist German Heinzenknecht [12]. But excess moisture also raises fungal disease and washes nutrients out of fertilised fields [12]. In overnight trade reported on 17 August, December corn was $4.84 a bushel and November soybeans $11.96 [13].

Two egg outbreaks, on two continents, counted separately

Britain’s health agency is investigating 207 salmonella cases over the past year, most of them in recent weeks [14]. One person has died. More than a third of those affected needed hospital care, and two developed serious blood poisoning [14]. Cases run from babies to people aged 90, and 199 of the 207 are in England [14]. The strain is a single identical one, which is what makes it an outbreak rather than background illness. Officials say the strongest link so far is food made with imported eggs, and that there is no identified link to UK-produced eggs or poultry [14]. People mostly fell ill after eating out rather than at home [14].

The United States has a separate egg outbreak, with its own count. On 12 August the FDA raised a recall of nearly 1.6 million dozen cage-free eggs from Texas to its highest risk class [15]. As of 24 July, 98 people across 17 states had been sickened and 26 hospitalised, with no deaths reported [15]. The illnesses date from 21 November 2025 to 30 June 2026 [15]. Midwest Poultry Services says it found the problem through its own environmental monitoring [15].

Two more American outbreaks are winding down. The cyclospora outbreak tied to iceberg lettuce, the largest on record in the US, has more than 9,400 confirmed cases across 17 states, about 400 hospitalisations and two deaths [17]. A separate salmonella outbreak tied to jalapenos grown in Sinaloa, Mexico has reached 345 cases in 27 states [16][17]. Both trace back to Taylor Farms and to Mexican farms [16]. In a late-July poll of about 2,200 US adults, 40% said they were eating less fresh produce because of it [17].

Elsewhere in the machine

Tyson Foods will end beef operations in Joslin, Illinois and Eagle Mountain, Utah, and is seeking a buyer for its plant in Pasco, Washington [18]. It will anchor the business on Dakota City, Nebraska, Holcomb, Kansas and Amarillo, Texas [18]. American cattle supply is at a 75-year low, and packers keep losing money because cattle now cost more than even record retail beef prices bring in [18].

The EU’s anti-deforestation rule starts at the end of December, and West Africa is not ready. Industry experts estimate that farmers growing more than half of Nigeria’s cocoa beans could fail to comply [19]. Nigeria has around 300,000 mostly small-scale cocoa farmers [19]. West Africa grows about 70% of the world’s cocoa and ships roughly two-thirds of it to the EU [19].

Two smaller things worth seeing. Ticks are spreading as the climate warms, and farmers are the most exposed people in the landscape [25]. One New York grazier says he pulls as many as 60 a day off each of his two working dogs [25]. And Skagway, Alaska is a town of about 1,000 year-round residents fed by barge [26]. An indoor farm above its microbrewery grows 250 pounds of lettuce a week, enough to cover the restaurant’s entire demand [26].

The under-covered story: the seed you cannot save

A team in Gujarat published the full genomes of two plants this week, SKI-215 and SKP-84 [20]. Neither is a crop anyone grows. They are the two parent lines of GCH-7, a high-yielding castor hybrid whose seed is crushed for castor oil [20]. The paper names the practical use plainly: genetic purity testing of GCH-7 seed [20].

That phrase carries the whole business. A hybrid is the first-generation offspring of two deliberately inbred parents, and it outperforms both. But the performance belongs to that one cross, so a buyer needs a way to check that the bag really contains it.

Most of the world’s maize is hybrid, and the trade talks about it that way without noticing. A Minnesota agronomist this week described early relative-maturity hybrids beginning to dent after moisture stress in mid-July [7]. That is ordinary corn, described by the seed type it was bought as.

The constraint is not always biology. South Africa has around 25,653 small-scale sugarcane growers [21]. A six-year study found many take planting cane from neighbours, informal networks or their own fields, because certified seedcane is expensive, unavailable locally, or ordered too late [21]. They end up with whatever variety is on hand rather than the one suited to their soil and their local pests [21]. Sugarcane is grown from stem cuttings, so it can be saved and replanted true. There, access is the problem, not inheritance.

The FAO looked at 469 smallholder farms across five zones in Rwanda [22]. More than 90% scored low on agroecological integration [22]. Farms further along that transition tended to show lower dependence on purchased seeds and other bought-in inputs, though the authors are explicit these are associations, not proof of cause [22]. A separate study in Communications Sustainability looked at redistributing existing cropland between crop types [27]. It found that could lift average crop diversity from 1.43 to 2.36 on a standard index, without clearing new land [27]. Maize and soybean regions were the highest priority [27]. And dsm-firmenich said it is taking a yeast protein called Protopia to industrial scale, aimed at replacing fishmeal and whey [28].

Seed is not only an input. It is a line in the world’s books: the USDA counts food, seed and industrial use together as one category of global wheat consumption [8]. Part of every harvest is next year’s crop, and who gets to make that part is a decision somebody made long before this summer’s weather.