Food & Farming · Thursday, 17 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

African swine fever has cost Asia's pig farms up to $192bn. Now it is killing wild pigs that live on one island each.

Food & Farming 15 sources

A virus that arrived with farm pigs in 2018 has spread into Asia's forests, and scientists say some island species could be gone within a single human generation.

$130-192bn

lost by Asia's pig farms since 2018, from pigs that died and pigs that were culled

the researchers say saving the wild species would cost a tiny fraction of that [1]

87%

fall in wild boar at one Malaysian forest reserve, within four months of the virus arriving

counted by camera traps at Pasoh; two years later a second forest was down 99% [1]

16 of 16

Visayan warty pigs that died in one outbreak at a Philippine breeding centre

it was the whole population at Kabankalan, and the species is Critically Endangered [1]

$74bn

the ten-year cost to US farms if the virus ever arrives there

the US estimate behind this month's warning to Caribbean cruise passengers [2]

The lead story — what happened

African swine fever was found in northern China in 2018 and reached 20 countries across the Asia-Pacific region by 2020. [1]
The death and culling of hundreds of millions of farm pigs in Asia cost an estimated $130bn to $192bn in the first years alone. [1]
The virus has now been confirmed in wild populations of four species that live nowhere else: the Sunda bearded pig, the Philippine warty pig, the Sulawesi warty pig and the Sulawesi babirusa. [1]
Camera traps at Pasoh Forest Reserve in Malaysia counted 87% fewer wild boar within four months of the virus arriving. [1]
In the Endau-Rompin forest in Malaysia, wild boar numbers fell 99% and Sunda bearded pigs 81% between 2021 and 2023. [1]
The IUCN, the global body that ranks how close a species is to extinction, moved all three babirusa species to its Critically Endangered class in 2025. [1]
Farm pigs are the main source of infection for wild pigs, and the virus also travels in pork, on vehicles, boots and equipment. [1]
One outbreak at the Kabankalan breeding centre in the Philippines in June 2023 killed all 16 Visayan warty pigs held there. [1]
No vaccine is cleared for use in wild pigs. Vietnam developed one for farm pigs in 2023 and Indonesia approved a farm vaccine in 2025. [1]
The authors ask governments for eight actions, and call three of them impossible to delay: surveillance, captive breeding and an emergency fund to pay for both. [1]
The US agriculture department told cruise passengers island-hopping in the Caribbean this month to leave pork dishes at home, because the virus survives in cooked and raw pork. [2]
US officials estimate that an outbreak on American farms would cost pig farmers and agriculture more than $74bn over ten years. [2]

Who is involved

The IUCN

the global body that ranks how close a species is to extinction; its 2025 review moved all three babirusa species to Critically Endangered, and its members passed a resolution calling the Asian wild pig crisis urgent
The US Department of Agriculture

the US government's farming and food department; it warned travellers this month that pork dishes can carry the virus between Caribbean islands
Asia's commercial pig industry

the farms and firms that lost $130bn to $192bn to the virus; the researchers want them to become a main funder of the emergency fund they propose
The Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme

an Indian breeding project run with the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Assam Forest Department; it has released 179 captive-bred pygmy hogs since 1996 and its biosecurity now guards against this virus too

How it unfolded

2018 the virus is found in farm pigs in northern China [1]
2018-2020 it reaches 20 countries across the Asia-Pacific region [1]
Dec 2020 the first Sunda bearded pig is confirmed infected, in Malaysian Borneo [1]
Jan 2021 the Philippine warty pig is confirmed infected; it is now reported from all 14 regions of the country [1]
Aug-Oct 2023 the Sulawesi warty pig and the Sulawesi babirusa are confirmed infected [1]
2025 the IUCN moves all three babirusa species to Critically Endangered [1]

Where this points

Watch whether Indonesia and the Philippines, where the rarest island pigs live, put money behind carcass searches and breeding centres; the authors say neither can be scaled up without the emergency fund they are asking for. [1]

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.

Animal diseases crossing borders High↑

The US agriculture department asked Caribbean cruise passengers to leave pork behind, because African swine fever survives in cooked meat. [2] The US will reopen a New Mexico crossing to Mexican livestock next week, closed over a flesh-eating fly called the New World screwworm. [4] A study of 379 samples of cattle tuberculosis in Wales found two strains that look like separate arrivals from outside the country. [6]

Heat and drought in English fields High→

Nyetimber, an English sparkling wine producer with 11 vineyards, started picking grapes on 14 September, five days earlier than it ever has. [7] A Suffolk grower says about 25% of his apples came in under 65mm, and wholesalers want 75 to 80mm. [8] A cider maker in the same county harvested about three-quarters of a normal crop. [8]

Money running short for food and farms Building↑

The UN food agency has $206m for Sudan this year, against $645m last year. [3] In the European Union the average farmer is now 57 and fewer than 12% of farms are run by someone under 40, which the FAO blames partly on the cost of land and credit. [11] English farms worth more than 2.5m pounds have paid a 20% inheritance tax since April. [9]

Breeding animals to resist disease Building↑

Genus, a British livestock breeding company, won approvals in Argentina, Canada, Uruguay and Peru for a pig it gene-edited to resist PRRS, a different pig virus. [5] Wild pig experts want research into why African warthogs carry African swine fever without falling ill. [1]

The rest of the day

13 more stories on this beat.

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

02
UN food agency has half its Sudan money

The World Food Programme has received $206m for Sudan so far this year, against $645m for the whole of last year, its acting head Carl Skau told Reuters after a trip across the country. [3] Sudan's war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces has displaced up to 14 million people and ruined harvests, and almost 20 million people there face hunger. [3] In Tawila in North Darfur, where about a million people shelter, everyone gets food each month, but only half a ration, which covers two weeks. [3]

Why it matters — The agency has narrowed its work to the 5 million most in need, and says the gap to keep going is just under $300m. [3] The migration agency IOM separately said its shelter and sanitation supplies for Sudan run out at the end of September.
03
US to reopen a livestock crossing

The US agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, said on 16 September that a New Mexico port will reopen to livestock trade with Mexico next week. [4] The crossings were shut because of the New World screwworm, a fly whose maggots burrow into the flesh of living animals; a phased reopening began in Douglas, Arizona, in late August. [4] Two active infestations remain, both in Texas, one in a horse and one in a dog. [4] Rollins said the door shuts again the moment officials see another threat. [4]

Why it matters — Rollins said the 20-odd days since Douglas reopened have shown that the risk is manageable. [4] Each reopening is a judgement that the fly can be watched rather than walled out.
04
Former minister calls farm tax a mistake

Lord Blunkett, a former Labour minister, said the 20% inheritance tax on farm assets worth more than 2.5m pounds was a mistake and asked the prime minister, Andy Burnham, to listen more to the countryside. [9] The tax came into force in April, ending a waiver farms had held since the 1980s, and was watered down in December from an original 1m-pound threshold after protests. [9] He spoke at the launch of a Countryside Alliance campaign. The UK government says most estates are unaffected and that it wants to rebuild trust with farmers. [9]

Why it matters — A farm is usually passed down rather than sold, so a tax on inheritance decides whether the next generation can keep the land together. Farmers have held tractor protests across Britain over the past year.
05
Wales maps where its cattle TB came from

Researchers sequenced 379 samples of Mycobacterium bovis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis in cattle, taken from infected animals in Wales in 2021. [6] They found three main groups of the bacterium, each in its own part of the country, and three smaller ones, two of which were genetically far from everything else and look like separate arrivals from outside Wales. [6] Cattle tuberculosis still infects about 5.7% of Welsh herds a year, and one breakdown costs about 23,636 pounds on average. [6]

Why it matters — Badgers carry the same bacterium in Wales, which is why testing and culling cattle alone has never cleared it. Knowing which strain sits where tells officials whether an outbreak came over the fence or in a lorry.
06
Gene-edited pig cleared in four countries

Genus, a British livestock breeding company, said on 10 September that its gene-edited pig had won approvals or favourable rulings in Argentina, Canada, Uruguay and Peru, and that sales are starting in some Latin American countries. [5] The edit is meant to stop PRRS, a pig virus that makes sows lose their litters and leaves young pigs struggling to breathe. Genus says PRRS outbreaks hurt North American pig farmers badly this year, and that its own study found 94% of shoppers open to buying pork from edited pigs. [5] It is still seeking approval in Mexico, Japan and China. [5]

Why it matters — This is the other way to fight a farm disease: change the animal instead of guarding the border. The edit protects only the pigs that carry it, and only against this one virus.
07
English vineyards pick their earliest crop

Nyetimber, an English sparkling wine producer, began picking grapes at its West Chiltington and Amberley vineyards in Sussex on 14 September, five days earlier than its previous earliest start in 2018. [7] About 500 pickers move to its 11 vineyards in Kent, Sussex and Hampshire from 21 September, handpicking around 400kg each a day. [7] The summer was so dry that September rain is now swelling and splitting the berries, said senior winemaker Brad Greatrix. [7] The company expects about 2,500 tonnes of grapes and more than 1.5 million bottles. [7]

Why it matters — England's sparkling wine is built on cool summers, and Greatrix says a hot one suits ambitious still reds better than the sparkling wine his company sells. The harvest has moved from mid-October to mid-September in about two decades.
08
Suffolk apples too small to sell

Henry Dobell, who grows 15 varieties of apple at Moat Farm near Debenham in Suffolk, said about 25% of this year's fruit came in below 65mm across, while wholesalers ask for 75 to 80mm. [8] He called it the hardest season of his 21-year career: a good spring, then heat that burned the fruit and stopped it swelling. [8] Tim Chapman, who makes Giggler Cider nearby, picked about three-quarters of a normal apple crop and is selling last year's stock to cover it. [8]

Why it matters — Size is a sales rule, not a taste rule, so heat turns edible fruit into fruit nobody will buy. Dobell says shoppers have also drifted to the same few varieties all year round.
09
Europe's farmers keep getting older

The average farmer in the European Union is now 57, up from 55 in 2010, and fewer than 12% of farms are run by someone under 40, the FAO said at a ministers' conference in Osijek, Croatia on 15 September. [11] The UN food agency's regional director, Viorel Gutu, said land, credit and markets decide whether young people can farm at all, not enthusiasm. [11] Farms run by younger farmers invest about 1.5 times more per hectare, and 20% of under-40 farmers have full agricultural training against 4% of those over 65. [11]

Why it matters — Europe is deciding what its Common Agricultural Policy pays for after 2027, and this is the FAO's argument for aiming that money at land access and rural services rather than at farming alone.
10
US offers Venezuela farm trade programmes

The US agriculture department's foreign service set out a package of export financing, market development, technical fellowships and food assistance for Venezuela on 10 September. [12] It included the GSM-102 programme, which guarantees the credit American exporters extend to foreign buyers. [12] The under secretary for trade, Luke Lindberg, who visited days after Venezuela's recent earthquakes, said the department is weighing an agribusiness trade mission to the region for early 2027. [12]

Why it matters — Food aid and export credit are the same instrument seen from two ends: one feeds people now, the other books American grain into a market for years.
11
Reused factory water may carry allergens

Food factories increasingly clean and reuse their own water. Cleaning the equipment in place can alone take up to 70% of the water a plant uses, and 30% to 80% of its running costs. [14] A review in the journal npj Clean Water says the practice is unstandardised and that proteins which cause food allergies may survive treatment and reach other products. [14] Allergen detection is already one of the most common reasons food is recalled. [14] The authors say the evidence is thin and call for rules that test for allergens, not only for bacteria. [14]

Why it matters — Water reuse is being pushed hard as a way to cut how much water food factories draw. This is the check nobody has written yet.
12
Gut bacteria made to fight salmonella

Researchers engineered a harmless strain of E. coli to carry a virus that kills Salmonella Typhimurium, one of the bacteria behind food poisoning, and settled it in the guts of mice before infection. [15] The modified bacteria kept producing the virus, blocked salmonella from establishing itself and improved survival in mice with salmonella-driven gut inflammation. [15] In mice given a salmonella strain that stays in the intestine, the treatment cleared it entirely. [15] The work was published in Nature Microbiology and has not been tested in people or in livestock. [15]

Why it matters — Farm animals carry salmonella without looking ill, which is why it keeps reaching kitchens. A preventive dose is a different idea from treating an outbreak after it starts.
13
Council waters down local food plan

Worcestershire County Council in England passed a motion on 10 September asking school caterers to buy from local farmers where possible, but only after an amendment stripped out the promise of a progress report by December. [10] The Reform councillor who tabled it, Justin Bowen, said the change would leave it to drift. [10] A Conservative councillor called the original idea idealistic given the cost per pupil of a school meal, and a Labour councillor said it was warm words. [10]

Why it matters — Public kitchens are one of the few buyers a government can direct. The fight here was over the deadline, not the aim.
14
A farming network built on belief

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, an agronomist from Guatemala, farms 63 acres at Salvatierra Farms in Northfield, Minnesota without herbicides, pesticides or synthetic fertiliser, raising chickens under hazelnut and elderberry bushes. [13] In 2022 he co-founded Tree Range Farms, a group of poultry producers using the same method. [13] The network he has drawn in includes Lakota tribal members, a former 3,200-acre Kansas corn grower who gave up chemical weedkillers, and Dominican Sisters in Wisconsin who lease their land to two regenerative dairy farmers. [13]

Why it matters — Most arguments for changing how land is farmed are made in money or carbon. This one is made in belief, and it is recruiting farmers that the money argument had not reached.

02 Lesson why it matters

Why a farm disease cannot be fought on the farm alone

A pig virus went from village pigs into Asia's forests, and nothing done inside a farm fence can reach it there.

The twist

The animals that keep a farm disease alive are often ones nobody farms. So the useful work happens away from the farm, and it is done by people who own no pigs and get no payment for it.

How it works

A disease lives in more than one kind of animal, or in meat, soil and carcasses
A farmer can only test, cull, treat or vaccinate the animals inside their own fence
The disease keeps going outside it, in wild animals or in a suitcase
It comes back to the farm, so the farm is never finished with it
The work that ends it happens in forests, at ports and in other people's habits

The same force, elsewhere today

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

Wales mapping where its cattle TB came from

the same step repeats: badgers carry the bacterium outside the herd, so testing and culling cattle has never cleared it, and the genome study is an attempt to see where each strain actually comes from
The US reopening a livestock crossing

the screwworm's two live US cases are in a horse and a dog, animals no cattle rancher controls, and the cattle trade door still turns on them

Where you've seen this

Head lice in a school

one family treats every head in the house and the child comes back infested from a classroom

Malaria

you can treat every patient in a village and the mosquitoes over the ditch keep reinfecting them

Weeds

a grower can keep their own field clean and still get seed blown in from the verge next door

The catch

Sometimes you can end it inside the fence after all. Genus has bred a pig the PRRS virus cannot enter, which protects that pig wherever it stands - but only that one virus, and only the pigs carrying the edit.

And the whole of it

A cruise passenger with pork in their bag. A Borneo family who used to hunt bearded pigs and now eat squirrels. A Welsh farmer whose herd failed a test. None of them chose to be in the same chain, and each sees only their own end of it.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

African swine fever arrived in Asia in 2018 with farm pigs and pork, and it is now killing rare wild pigs on single islands such as Sulawesi. The researchers asking for money to stop that say it would cost a tiny fraction of the $130bn to $192bn Asia's pig farms have already lost, and no fund for it exists yet. [1]

Why it works on us — A disease is filed under the industry it costs money, so a virus that empties a forest keeps being counted as a livestock problem and is paid for out of livestock budgets. [1]

Who gains

Genus shareholders — The company's gene-edited pig cleared four more countries, adjusted operating profit rose 25% including joint ventures, and it is buying back 60m pounds of its own shares. [5]
Nyetimber — A late frost threatened its yield in May and the hot summer brought the crop back; it expects 2,500 tonnes of grapes and more than 1.5 million bottles. [7]
American grain and meat exporters — The US export credit guarantee scheme has been opened for sales into Venezuela, so a US firm's risk of not being paid is carried by the US government. [12]
British farms worth between 1m and 2.5m pounds — The protests after last year's budget pushed the inheritance tax threshold up from 1m pounds, which took those farms out of it entirely. [9]
Cattle ranchers on both sides of the US-Mexico border — Each port that reopens restarts a livestock trade that has been shut for most of two years. [4]

Who pays

Forest families in Indonesian Borneo — The bearded pigs they hunted collapsed in 2021, and diets shifted to squirrels and tree shrews. [1]
Smallholder pig keepers across Asia — Hundreds of millions of pigs died or were culled, and free-ranging village herds are both the least protected and the main route the virus takes into forests. [1]
About a million people sheltering at Tawila in North Darfur — Their monthly food parcel is a half ration that lasts two weeks. [3]
Henry Dobell's apple farm in Suffolk — A quarter of his fruit is under the 65mm line, and wholesalers buy from 75mm. [8]
Welsh dairy and beef herds — Cattle tuberculosis still hits about 5.7% of herds a year, and a single breakdown costs about 23,636 pounds. [6]
Young people who want to farm in Europe — Land, credit and market access are what stop them, according to the FAO, and fewer than 12% of EU farms are now run by someone under 40. [11]

What nobody knows yet

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

01

How many wild pigs have actually died.

Carcasses rot fast in tropical forest and are often buried before anyone can sample them, and hunters avoid reporting deaths in case it brings movement bans. Six of the twelve endemic species have no confirmed case at all, which the authors say reflects nobody looking. [1]
02

Whether a vaccine could ever be used on wild pigs.

The live vaccines approved for farm pigs in Vietnam and Indonesia carry risks of residual virulence and shedding, and nobody has tested delivery or safety in a free-ranging wild species. [1]
03

How people in Tawila survive the two weeks their ration does not cover.

The UN food agency's acting head, Carl Skau, said plainly that it is not clear to him either. [3]
04

Whether the New Mexico crossing stays open.

Two screwworm infestations are still active in Texas, and the US agriculture secretary said the crossing shuts again at the next sign of a threat. [4]
05

When China, Japan and Mexico will decide on the gene-edited pig.

Genus says it is still working towards approval in all three, and they are where much of the world's pork is eaten or sold; it gives no date. [5]
06

How many British farms actually pay the inheritance tax on farmland.

The UK government says most estates are unaffected but published no number with the claim, and the campaigners calling for repeal published none either. [9]
07

Whether reused factory water really moves food allergens.

The review found the practice widespread and unstandardised, and the evidence on whether allergenic proteins survive treatment thin in both directions. [14]
08

How much of this year's English apple crop is lost rather than sold small.

One Suffolk grower gave his own figure of 25% undersized fruit; no national count has been published. [8]

04 Hope carry this

Piglets were seen again in Malaysia's Endau-Rompin forest in 2024, three years after African swine fever emptied it, and bearded pig numbers rose in parts of Borneo through 2024 and 2025.

Also true today

Palawan in the Philippines has kept the virus out while neighbouring islands lost their pigs, by controlling its ports and restricting pork coming in.
India's pygmy hog, a rare wild pig from the grasslands of Assam, was moved off the Critically Endangered list in 2019. A breeding programme started in 1995 has released 179 of them back into protected grassland.
Belgium and Sweden cleared African swine fever out of their wild boar by searching for carcasses, removing them and restricting movement.