Food & Farming

Robusta was called the coffee that could take a hotter world. The studies had counted farms that were being watered. →

A new paper says robusta coffee's reputation for surviving climate change rests on research that treated irrigated plantations as good natural growing land. The same summer shows the pattern everywhere: British berries under drip lines came in 6% up, while Hungarian fish ponds dried out and killed 280 tonnes of fish.

Iceland votes no to EU talks by 52.8%, and the argument was about fish and farms →

A country of 400,000 people turned out at 82.5% to decide who should set its catch limits and protect its farms. The no side won by 52.8% to 47.2%, and the shape of the question helped it: no ended the matter that night, while yes bought four years of not knowing.

Half of Maine's lobster is sent to Canada to be shelled. From 8 September it is taxed both ways. →

Canada's counter-tariffs start on 8 September and hit about 250 US fish and shellfish products at 25%, with milk, cream and whey at 50%. The lobster boats never moved. The border did.

One supermarket for 45,000 people, because a contract says nobody else may open →

Rhode Island became the second US state to ban grocery restrictive covenants - deed clauses that forbid food being sold on a site for decades after a chain leaves. Woonsocket has at least three of them.

Wheat hits a three-year high, and the world's biggest seller cannot ship a grain →

Chicago wheat reached its highest price since July 2023 after loadings at Russian and Ukrainian Black Sea ports stopped. Russia is now sitting on more than 100 million tonnes it cannot move, while Egypt loads its wheat in France instead.

France bends the rules that define comte and beaufort, because the grass is gone →

A historic drought left French mountain pastures bare, so the state let protected-cheese makers feed grain brought in from elsewhere. The whole value of the label is that this is not allowed.

A 500% error, then a 90% cut: the food market is losing its shared yardstick →

The USDA overstated beef exports fivefold in July and cut the figure by 90% a week later. This week private crop scouts came in 28 bushels an acre below the government in Illinois, and corn crossed $5 on their numbers, not Washington's.

Britain's worst bluetongue outbreak arrives, and the vaccine is already gone →

A midge-borne virus is tearing through British sheep and cattle in the hottest summer on record. The vaccine that stops it has run out, because barely one animal in ten was vaccinated last year.

Corn tops $5 with this year's crop already made, and a record El Nino aims at the next one →

Field scouts walking the US Corn Belt found yields well below the government's estimate, and December corn crossed $5 a bushel for the first time since February 2025. The crop is nearly finished, so nothing that happens now can make it bigger. And the Met Office says the El Nino forming over the Pacific is the strongest in living memory, timed to peak over the southern-hemisphere planting that would otherwise cover the gap.

Britain imports the fruit it could grow, from countries baking harder than it is →

A charity's audit found 80% of UK fruit and 47% of its vegetables come from abroad, mostly from countries more exposed to heat than Britain. Growers say they would plant more here if the sums worked.

Corn Belt farmland loses real value, and the cheapest soil fix is the one hardest to afford →

Midwest farmland fell 3.7% in real terms, the largest drop since 2016, as farm credit tightened and corn stayed cheap. The same week, a ten-year Canadian trial showed what rotating crops does for soil, and what bought nitrogen does not.

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

Fungal disease swept Canada's export crops while Europe burned dry, two egg outbreaks ran on two continents, and a genome paper quietly explained why farmers buy seed every year.

The lettuce traceback took 12 days. The rule that would have made it one arrives in 2028. →

Michigan chased Taco Bell for supply-chain records for twelve days. A law passed in 2011 requiring them within 24 hours has been delayed again, to 2028.

Europe's maize harvest heads for its worst year in three decades →

France's maize crop may halve, the EU's could fall below 50 million tonnes for the first time since the 1990s, and Britain faces its worst cereal harvest since 1984.

Washington closes a 1958 food-additive loophole, and still cannot define ultra-processed →

A 1958 rule let companies vouch for their own additives. The FDA moved to close it - and again skipped the harder question.

Ukraine has a good harvest, a full silo, and nowhere to send the rest →

Russian strikes have all but shut Ukraine's Black Sea ports at the peak of the wheat harvest. Exports fell 75%, silos are filling, and farm-gate prices have dropped below the cost of growing the crop - even as world wheat hits a two-year high.

US corn yield comes in short, and the grain market jumps →

The USDA's first survey-based read on the 2026 harvest cut the corn yield below what traders expected, and corn and wheat both surged - the latest sign of a heat-squeezed season worldwide.

Food costs 'cooled' in July, but your grocery bill has barely noticed →

July inflation shows US food costs easing, yet grocery prices stay elevated after years of shocks - even as El Nino, Europe's heat and a Black Sea attack load the next spike.

Record beef prices are finally rebuilding America's cattle herd - and quietly setting up the next crash →

A July USDA count shows the US cattle herd stopped shrinking after a multi-decade fall, as record prices coax ranchers to rebuild. But a cow takes years to raise, so today's high-price rebuild is planting tomorrow's glut - the slow boom-bust cycle nobody can break.

Washington puts $500m into building cattle buyers - because ranchers have only four →

The USDA opened a $500m program to strengthen small beef plants, aimed squarely at loosening the grip of the four giants that buy most of America's cattle.

As beef prices soar, US shoppers switch to chicken - and the meat giants follow →

US beef is up about 12% on the year as the cattle herd shrinks. Shoppers are trading down to chicken, Tyson cut its beef profit forecast while its chicken business grew, and with global food prices at a three-and-a-half-year high there is little cheaper left to switch to.

India flags a whisky giant's 'matured in oak' label as false →

A claim you could never verify by tasting turns out to be the one most worth faking - and the regulator, not your senses, is what stands behind it.

America grew too much chicken - and the price fell twice as fast as the extra sold →

A US poultry glut cut commodity chicken prices 45% in a year, punishing growers who sold more meat for less money - while Tyson, which quit the raw-commodity market, saw profits rise. A grains glut had done the same to ADM and Bunge. The lesson: for a food people eat about the same amount of, abundance can pay the producer less.

Two summer outbreaks show what cheap fresh produce leaves off the price →

A deadly cyclospora outbreak on lettuce and a salmonella one on jalapenos reveal a cost the price tag skips - keeping fresh food safe.

The farm-equipment slump shows how a small dip at the field becomes a big swing at the factory →

Tractor and seed makers had a rough quarter as farmers deferred big purchases - a wobble that grows louder the further up the food chain it travels.

When the drought hits every field at once →

A record-dry July pushed more than half of England into drought, halved some UK vegetable harvests, and sent produce prices sharply higher - as the usual import backstop, Europe, bakes too.

US farmland tops $6,000 an acre for the first time - while the farmers on it aren't cashing in →

Cropland hit a record even as grain prices slid and beef farmers earned less. Farming's relentless efficiency drive keeps paying off - just not for the farmer.

Africa's new export boom is fruit, not gold - and it shows what trade is really for →

African countries are getting rich on blueberries and citrus while Britain buys Spanish broccoli and China builds its own cattle herd - three moves in one argument about who should grow what.

A strong El Nino is coming for the world's staple crops - and the poorest eat the risk first →

The UN's weather agency says a strong El Nino will intensify from August, threatening harvests across Africa and Asia. Where families lean on one cheap staple, a price rise hits hardest.

Grain prices whipsawed all July - and a farmer's hardest call is when to sell →

December corn futures ran from $5.06 to $4.26 and back near $4.92 in ten weeks, while soybeans slid and wheat climbed on Black Sea shipping risks. The swings show why a grower's real gamble is not the harvest but the price it fetches.

A grain giant's big profit, and the case for owning your whole supply chain →

Bunge's earnings beat came from a step it owns outright - crushing oilseeds - while its rivals buy across the market and pocket less.

A lettuce scare shows why fresh food is the riskiest thing a farmer can grow →

A parasite outbreak tied to Mexican lettuce has cut US restaurant salad sales just as growers face a crop that spoils in days. Plus soybeans slide on good weather, wildfires threaten Bordeaux's grapes, and a US city opens grocery stores that undercut the shelf by 30 percent.

The cattle border reopens - and the meatpackers cheer, not the ranchers →

US ports reopen to Mexican cattle after a screwworm ban, Tyson and JBS shares jump, and farm-gate prices slide - a plain lesson in who holds the power when a few buyers face many sellers.

The US cattle herd grows for the first time since 2018 - and prices are already falling →

A USDA report shows the long shrink in America's cattle herd has bottomed out. Yet beef futures are dropping, because traders can already see the extra supply coming years down the line.