Food & Farming · Wednesday, 9 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Canada started taxing American goods on Tuesday. On a Montana farm the tax lands on the machinery, not the wheat.

Food & Farming 22 sources

Canada's counter-tariffs took effect on about $20bn of American goods, farm equipment included. A wheat and barley grower near Great Falls says he may not be able to afford the seed drill and grain bins he wanted. The price of his crop has not moved at all.

$20bn

of American goods Canada began taxing on Tuesday

about 6% of the $333.6bn the United States sold north last year [2]

15% or more

the new Canadian tariff on American farm equipment [1]

the wider list runs at 15%, 25% and 50% [2]

15%

of the herd sent north to be fattened, Montana's agriculture director says

Canada is the state's biggest trading partner, worth about $1bn a year [1]

$99

a barrel of Brent crude oil on Tuesday, its highest in weeks

Goldman Sachs says it could reach $120 if shipping tensions in the region continue [4]

The lead story — what happened

Canada began charging tariffs of 15%, 25% and 50% on about $20bn of American goods on Tuesday. [2]
The list covers steel, aluminium, cheese, appliances, clothing, cosmetics and farm equipment. [2]
That is roughly 6% of the $333.6bn the United States sold to Canada last year. [2]
American farm equipment going north now carries a Canadian tariff of 15% or more, and Canadian goods coming south face American tariffs of up to 50%. [1]
Steve Sheffels grows wheat and barley outside Great Falls, Montana, and cuts it with Canadian-built headers, the wide cutting bar bolted to the front of a combine harvester. [1]
He says he would like to buy a new seed drill and grain bins made in Canada, and is afraid he will not be able to afford them. [1]
None of this changes the price he gets for his wheat. American grain growers are already dealing with flat crop prices, record diesel prices and rising fertiliser costs. [1]
Canada is Montana's largest trading partner, worth about $1bn in cross-border sales for a state of barely a million people. [1]
Montana's agriculture director, Jillien Streit, says about 15% of the herd is sent north to be fattened, and farmers have been shipping barley to Canadian feedlots too. [1]
Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney, said his government would move faster to rely less on the United States, and that four decades of integration had left the country too dependent. [2]
Formal trade talks collapsed on 21 August and have not restarted, though officials on both sides are still in contact. [2]
President Donald Trump threatened on Monday to ban American sales of business jets made by Bombardier, a Canadian manufacturer, unless it builds them in the United States. [3]

Who is involved

Steve Sheffels

a wheat and barley farmer near Great Falls, Montana; he buys Canadian harvesting equipment and says he may not be able to afford a new drill or grain bins [1]
Mark Carney

Canada's prime minister; he ordered the counter-tariffs and says Canada will steer its economy towards other partners [2]
Jillien Streit

director of Montana's agriculture department, who also farms wheat, chickpeas and lentils near the border; she said it is sad that food has to be a bargaining chip [1]
Bombardier

a Canadian maker of private jets, threatened with a US sales ban; it says about 2,800 American companies in 47 states are in its supply chain [3]

How it unfolded

21 August trade talks between the two governments collapse [2]
Monday Trump threatens to ban American sales of Bombardier jets [3]
Tuesday Canada's tariffs take effect on about $20bn of American goods, farm equipment included [1][2]
Next the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, has suggested blocking some Canadian products from the American market altogether [2]

Where this points

The next move is the American response: the US trade representative has floated blocking some Canadian goods outright, which would shift the fight from what things cost to whether they can be sold at all.

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Costs, not crop prices Building↑

American grain growers face record diesel and rising fertiliser bills before any tariff [1]; Brent crude sat near $99 a barrel on Tuesday [4]; and energy added about 0.28 percentage points to China's consumer inflation in August [11]

Food inflation turning back up Building↑

British manufacturers expect food inflation near 4% by Christmas and 6.4% by July 2027 [9]; 88% of British shoppers already said in July they were worried about the cost of living [10]

Weather shrinking European harvests High↑

the EU maize crop is put at 50.1 million tonnes, a near two-decade low, and Hungary will import this year [19]; British food firms name El Nino and drought as the reason for the rise they forecast [9]

Voluntary rules not holding Building↑

61% of baby-food pouches carry more sugar than breast milk despite British voluntary guidelines [13]; JBS deleted its net-zero target and PepsiCo, Morrisons and Nestle all pulled back from theirs [15]

The rest of the day

14 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Food giants sue US sugar producers

General Mills, Mars and McKee Foods have joined an antitrust lawsuit in a federal court in Chicago against the two biggest American sugar producers, American Sugar Refining and United Sugar Producers and Refiners. [8] The claim is that the two coordinated prices without ever meeting: each reported pricing and sales figures it calls competitively sensitive to an independent analyst, Commodity Information Inc., which then published them to sugar company subscribers. [8] Sugar goes into most packaged snacks and drinks sold in the United States. [8] No court has ruled.

Why it matters — The buyers here are the companies that make the snacks, not shoppers, so this is one part of the food industry accusing another of overcharging it. Whatever a court decides lands on the sugar price sitting inside almost every sweetened product.
03
British food prices are forecast up again

The Food and Drink Federation, which speaks for British food manufacturers, says food inflation will reach almost 4% by Christmas, more than double the current rate, and peak at 6.4% in July 2027. [9] That would be the fastest annual rise since early 2024, when grocery costs still carried the energy shock from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. [9] It blames drought and El Nino, the Pacific warming pattern that shifts rainfall worldwide. [9] Shoppers were already uneasy: 88% told the British statistics office in July they worried about the cost of living. [10]

Why it matters — A forecast is not a price, and this one is ten months out. It matters because the industry that sets shelf prices is saying out loud where it expects them to go.
04
Food and energy lift China's inflation

China's consumer prices rose 0.8% in August against a year earlier, up from 0.5% in July, and factory-gate prices rose 3.8%, beating forecasts. [11][12] The national statistics bureau said higher crude oil and metal prices pushed costs through related industries, and that energy alone added about 0.28 percentage points to the consumer figure. [11] Typhoons and heavy rain last month disrupted transport and production. [11] Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, was 1%, so the increase came from the volatile half. [11]

Why it matters — This is what a cost-driven price rise looks like from outside: the headline number moves while what people actually want to buy does not. For a household the higher bill is the same either way.
05
Europe's maize belt is shrinking

The European Commission's late-August estimate puts this year's EU maize harvest at 50.1 million tonnes, a near two-decade low and about a fifth below the average of the past three years. [19] Hungary, normally an exporter, says it will have to import maize. Its harvest of about 2.5 million tonnes is under a third of what it grew in 2018 and 2019, and Romania's exportable surplus has shrunk too. [19] Hungary's June and July highs have run 3.1C above the 1961-1990 average over the past decade. [19]

Why it matters — A country that used to add to Europe's grain supply now competes for it, which changes the price for every buyer on the continent. Some Hungarian growers have given up maize altogether or taken second jobs because the family farm no longer supports them. [19]
06
US farm income is forecast to slip

The US Department of Agriculture's research service forecasts net farm income at $153.4 billion in 2026, down 2.6% from $157.5 billion in 2025 once inflation is taken out. [6] Gross cash farm income, the money coming in before any expenses, is put at $611.5 billion, down 0.4%. [6] Production expenses are forecast to fall 0.9%. [6] Larger operations look better: average net cash income for farm businesses is forecast up 18.7% to $135,000 a farm, with crop specialists gaining and livestock farms losing, cattle aside. [7]

Why it matters — These forecasts were published before this week's tariffs took effect, so the cost side of them is already out of date. The sector total falling while the average large farm's cash income rises is the gap between big farms and everyone else.
07
A tariff on palm fatty acids reaches kosher food

The Orthodox Union, which calls itself the world's largest kosher certification agency, wrote to the United States commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, warning that a tariff investigation into vegetable-based fatty acids would threaten the supply chain for kosher food. [5] Fatty acids drawn from palm and other vegetable oils are used in margarine, mayonnaise and a wide range of processed foods. [5] The investigation is part of the wider American tariff programme. [5]

Why it matters — Nobody buys a vegetable fatty acid, so a tax on one never appears as a price on a shelf. It arrives instead as a certifier telling manufacturers an ingredient may stop being available.
08
Food companies are dropping climate targets

JBS, the world's largest beef and poultry producer, left its net-zero pledge and its supply-chain emission goals out of its latest sustainability report. [15] The company says it is not walking away but strengthening its framework to fit an $86.2bn business; campaign groups accused it of peddling empty promises. [15] It is not alone. PepsiCo pushed its net-zero date from 2040 to 2050 or sooner in May 2025. [15] The British supermarket Morrisons delayed its own target by 15 years, and Nestle left the Dairy Methane Action Alliance. [15]

Why it matters — These were the pledges that won the applause at the start of the decade, and they are being unwound one report at a time rather than announced. A target dropped quietly leaves nothing for anyone to measure the company against.
09
Most baby-food pouches beat breast milk for sugar

A University of Glasgow study analysed commercial baby foods and found that 61% of those sold in spouted pouches contained more sugar than breast milk, and that pouch products tended to hold less protein. [13] Only 14 of the products studied, 8.5% of them, were judged fully suitable for weaning. [13] Half the pouch foods were liquid, and the researchers said many have the texture and composition of sweet drinks. [13] Once fruit is pureed or pasted its cell walls break down, which turns its sugar into free sugar, the kind health guidance counts. [13]

Why it matters — A pack covered in pictures of fruit and the words no added sugar can still be closer to a smoothie than to fruit. The study's lead author says regulators should consider labelling these as drinks rather than as foods.
10
Europe has still not defined ultra-processed food

The European Union has not committed to writing a legal definition of ultra-processed food and is still deciding whether to try. [14] In July it published a scoping paper on the question. [14] It asked two advisory bodies, its Group of Chief Scientific Advisors and its European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies, to review the science and the definitions that already exist. [14] The United States is further along: California has passed a certification for food that is not ultra-processed, defined largely by which additives a product contains. [14]

Why it matters — A rule cannot act on a category with no boundary, so labelling, advertising limits and school-meal standards all wait on this. The wording also decides which companies must change their recipes and which do not.
11
Forty years of GM crops, measured

A study in Nature Climate Change mapped what genetically engineered crops did across the United States over four decades. [16] It found higher yields and smaller swings from year to year for corn and soybean, more modest gains for upland cotton, and that some of the damage a warming climate does to yields was cancelled out. [16] It also found the crops slowed the northward drift of American cropland, the movement of growing regions towards cooler ground as the south heats up. [16]

Why it matters — The argument about engineered crops is usually about safety or about who owns the seed. This measures something else: whether they helped farms cope with a changing climate, and the answer here is partly yes.
12
Irrigation water is a fertiliser nobody counts

Water pumped onto fields carries nitrate that leaked out of fertiliser applied years earlier, and a study in Nature Sustainability has put a number on it using more than 1,300 field measurements. [17] Irrigation delivers about 14 million tonnes of nitrogen a year worldwide, equal to 13% of all the synthetic fertiliser used on cropland. [17] The median field got 19 kilograms a hectare, while a tenth of the measurements were above 100. [17] The authors say this input is almost entirely absent from nitrogen budgets and from fertiliser policy. [17]

Why it matters — Farms sitting over nitrate-heavy groundwater are buying part of a fertiliser they are already pumping in for free. It also means nitrogen that leaked away decades ago is being carried back onto the fields it left.
13
Inland fish farms have 53 fixes and few takers

A review in Nature Food read 84 studies, in English and Chinese, on how a changing climate is squeezing inland aquaculture, meaning fish farmed in ponds and lakes rather than in the sea. [18] It identified 53 possible adaptations, spread across day-to-day management, technology and government policy. [18] Take-up is limited by restrictive policy, a shortage of money and poor access to information farmers can act on. [18] The authors say impacts vary so much between places that uniform solutions are unlikely to work. [18]

Why it matters — Inland fish farming feeds a large share of the world's protein and sits outside most national plans for adapting to a hotter climate. The barrier here is not that nobody knows what to do.
14
The world rebuilt its count of fish stocks

The FAO, the UN's food and agriculture agency, has changed how it judges the world's marine fish stocks. [21] Its reference list grew from fewer than 500 grouped units in 2011 to 2,570 in the 2025 review, and the 2026 analysis uses 2,665. [21] They are now sorted into three tiers by how good the data behind each one is, after 19 regional workshops with about 650 experts from around 90 countries. [21] Small-scale fishers' groups told the agency's fisheries committee that 65% of people working in aquatic food catch wild fish rather than farm them. [22]

Why it matters — Any headline share of stocks fished sustainably is only as good as the list it is worked out from, and that list has just grown fivefold. The fishers' objection is about who the promised growth in farmed fish is actually for.
15
Ultra-processed diets and mental health

The BBC set out what researchers currently say about food and mood, and the strongest thread running through it is ultra-processed food. [20] Studies from several countries link diets high in ultra-processed food, sugar, added fat and salt to worse mental health as well as to heart disease and diabetes, though scientists still do not know why the link exists. [20] Animal and human studies have also found such diets can damage the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved in learning, memory and emotional regulation. [20]

Why it matters — These are associations rather than proof that the food causes the mood, and the researchers quoted say so plainly. They also sit next to Europe's unfinished argument about what ultra-processed even means.

02 Lesson why it matters

Why a trade war shows up in a farm's spending, not its income

A crop's price is set on world markets that no single country can shift, so the pressure arrives through the machinery, the fuel and the fertiliser instead.

The twist

Nothing this week changed the price of wheat, and that is exactly why the squeeze on farms is so hard to see.

How it works

A farm earns the crop price minus its costs
The crop price is set on world markets
No single country can move that price much
Costs are local, and easy to tax or push up
So the squeeze arrives through costs
And the loss looks like a machine nobody buys

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

A tariff on palm fatty acids reaches kosher food

the same step: the tax lands on an ingredient nobody buys on its own, so the change arrives inside margarine and mayonnaise instead of on a price label
Food and energy lift China's inflation

the rise came from oil and food getting dearer to produce and move, not from people buying more - core inflation, which leaves both out, stayed at 1%
British food prices are forecast up again

the manufacturers blame weather and harvests, which are costs, and what a shopper will see is a shelf price with no explanation attached to it
Irrigation water is a fertiliser nobody counts

the same blind spot on the input side: part of a farm's nitrogen already arrives in its water, and no fertiliser plan writes that down

Where you've seen this

Rented flats

a landlord cannot charge above the going rent, so a cost rise comes out of the repairs instead

Airlines

fares are set by what rivals charge, so a fuel spike shows up as cancelled routes rather than dearer tickets

Hospitals paid a fixed fee per patient

the payment is set outside, so dearer staff turn into a longer waiting list

The catch

Costs are not always the softer target. Canada also taxed American cheese and seafood, so a country that buys a lot of one food can reach the price of that food directly.

And the whole of it

A wheat farmer in Montana, a family buying kosher margarine and a shopper in China all paid a little more this week. Each of those prices was set by a decision made in a room they were not in, and none of the three can see the other two.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Canada matched the American tariffs dollar for dollar, and the goods it picked include the farm machinery American farmers buy from Canada. [1][2] So the cost of this fight reaches Steve Sheffels, a wheat and barley grower near Great Falls in Montana, as a dearer grain bin and a drill he may not buy, and never as a change in the price of his wheat. [1]

Why it works on us — Both governments describe the fight in totals - about $20bn of goods, roughly 6% of what the United States sells north - and a number that large has no shape, so nobody pictures the one farmer who cannot afford a seed drill. [2]

Who gains

Commodity Information Inc. — The market analyst named in the sugar lawsuit collected pricing and sales data from the producers and sold it back to sugar company subscribers. [8]
Sweden's Saab and Canada's Bombardier — Canada is buying six early-warning radar planes built on a Bombardier airframe rather than American ones, and is reviewing its planned purchase of American F-35 fighter jets. [3]
Equipment makers selling only inside their own country — American machinery going north now carries a Canadian tariff and Canadian goods coming south face American ones, so on each side the local maker is the one whose price did not change. [1][2]
Farms sitting over nitrate-rich groundwater — Their irrigation water already delivers nitrogen worth a large part of a fertiliser dose, and a tenth of the fields measured got more than 100 kilograms a hectare that way. [17]
Makers of baby food in pouches — Pureeing fruit turns its sugar into free sugar, yet the pack can still show pictures of fruit and a no-added-sugar claim, and 61% of pouches tested held more sugar than breast milk. [13]
JBS shareholders — Dropping the net-zero pledge and the supply-chain emission goals removes a cost from an $86.2bn business the company itself calls an immense execution challenge. [15]

Who pays

Steve Sheffels, a wheat and barley grower near Great Falls, Montana — He wants a new seed drill and grain bins made in Canada and says he is afraid he will not be able to afford them. [1]
Montana's cattle and barley trade — The state's agriculture director says about 15% of the herd goes north to be fattened, and farmers ship barley to Canadian feedlots; Canada is Montana's largest trading partner at about $1bn a year. [1]
British households — Food manufacturers expect food inflation near 4% by Christmas and 6.4% by July 2027, and 88% of British consumers already said in July they were worried about the cost of living. [9][10]
Buyers of kosher food in the United States — The Orthodox Union told the American commerce secretary that tariffs on vegetable-based fatty acids threaten the supply chain for kosher margarine, mayonnaise and other processed foods. [5]
Maize growers in Hungary and Romania — Hungary's harvest is about 2.5 million tonnes, under a third of its 2018-19 output, and the country will import maize this year. [19]
Chinese households — Consumer prices rose 0.8% in August against 0.5% in July, with energy adding about 0.28 percentage points and typhoons and heavy rain disrupting transport and production. [11]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

How much the new tariffs actually cost American farms.

Canada's list runs across many industries and covers about $20bn of goods, and neither government has published a farm-only figure. [2]
02

Whether the two governments will talk again.

Formal negotiations stopped on 21 August. A spokesman for Canada's trade minister says officials on both sides remain in contact but that no formal talks are taking place. [2]
03

Whether the American sugar producers coordinated or simply read the same report.

The lawsuit says both firms sent pricing and sales data to one analyst, Commodity Information Inc., which published it to subscribers. No court has ruled and the producers' answer is not given. [8]
04

How high British food prices actually go.

The 6.4% peak is a manufacturers' forecast for July 2027, ten months away, and it rests on how much damage El Nino and drought do to harvests between now and then. [9]
05

What the European Union will call an ultra-processed food.

The EU has not committed to writing a definition at all. It published a scoping paper in July and asked its scientific and ethics advisers whether a useful one is possible. [14]
06

How much fertiliser farms could stop buying.

Irrigation supplies nitrogen equal to 13% of synthetic fertiliser use worldwide, but the median field measured got 19 kilograms a hectare while a tenth got more than 100, so the saving depends entirely on where the farm is. [17]
07

What replaces the emissions targets JBS deleted.

The company says it is strengthening its framework rather than walking away, and its latest sustainability report does not say what the new goals are. [15]
08

Whether Europe's maize harvest is a bad year or a new floor.

The European Commission puts this year at 50.1 million tonnes, near a two-decade low, and its own ten-year outlook already puts eastern European maize yield uncertainty at 18.7% by 2035. [19]

04 Hope carry this

Over four decades, American corn and soybean fields planted with genetically engineered varieties gave higher yields and swung less from year to year, and some of the harm a warming climate did to those yields was cancelled out.

Also true today

Irrigation water carries about 14 million tonnes of nitrogen onto the world's cropland every year, equal to 13% of all the synthetic fertiliser used on it. More than 1,300 field measurements were gathered to put a number on it.
A review of 84 studies of inland fish farming found 53 separate ways a farm can adapt to hotter water and less reliable rain.
The list of fish stocks the world actually assesses has grown from fewer than 500 grouped units in 2011 to 2,665, built through 19 regional workshops with about 650 experts from around 90 countries.