Food, in brief

Robusta coffee's reputation as the bean that can survive climate change rests on studies that treated farms with irrigation as good natural growing land. [1]

Aaron Davis of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in Britain, who led the new paper, calls the belief an "internet myth" that took hold about a decade ago. [1]

Robusta does handle heat better than arabica, the other main coffee. It does not handle drought. [1]

Most of the world's robusta comes from Vietnam and Brazil. The paper says those two, and India, lack the climate to grow it without irrigation. [1]

The paper was published last Thursday in the journal Sustainable Development, and says earlier assessments of robusta should be treated as provisional at best. [1]

Growers in some robusta regions already struggle to get the water the irrigation needs, the paper says. [1]

Britain shows the same swap. With two thirds of the harvest in, berry growers have picked 6% more than last year through five record heatwaves. Their trade body says the plastic tunnels and drip lines held the heat off the fruit. [2]

Where nobody was buying water, the same weather did the opposite. Hungary's agriculture ministry says 1,588 hectares of fish pond dried out, killing about 280 tonnes of fish at 20 farms. [3]

Hungarian operators drained one pond into another to keep some stock alive. About 99% of the country's land is under severe or extreme drought. [3]

Crop losses from Europe's heatwaves are projected to cost close to 2 billion euros, with almost no major crop untouched. [4]

Arizona's Colorado River water is cut 27% a year from 1 January. Its cities say taps will keep running, on wells, another river system and expensive treatment plants, and that the cost goes onto water bills. [5] The river serves 40 million people, and one town outside Phoenix has already capped growth and revived old wells. [6]

Prices moved underneath all of it. A Bloomberg index of ten farm products rose more than 13% in August, its steepest month since July 2012. [7][8]

Why it matters. Watch whether robusta planting keeps expanding in Brazil and Vietnam now that the resilience case is contested, and whether the irrigation water holds in the regions where growers already report shortages. [1]

A Bloomberg index tracking ten major farm products rose more than 13% in August, the steepest monthly gain since July 2012. Wheat drove much of it after attacks on Black Sea ports cut shipments, while sugar and cocoa each rose about 20%. [7]

Why it matters. It is the price side of the same weather and war the lead describes, arriving at the till a season later.

The US government's Famine Early Warning Systems Network stopped publishing updates on Somalia after July, and dropped Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen from a food-needs brief issued on 14 August. The US State Department told NPR on Monday that reporting resumes in September. [9]

Why it matters. The UN counts 6.5 million Somalis, 5 million Yemenis and 14 million Afghans facing acute hunger, and aid groups time shipments off those forecasts.

Australia's agriculture department now expects a 2026/27 wheat crop of 29.9 million tonnes, about 12% above its June forecast and the eighth-biggest on record, after strong winter rains. [10]

Why it matters. It arrives just as attacks on Black Sea ports create extra demand for Australian grain.

South Africa's Crop Estimates Committee put this year's wheat harvest at 1.76 million tonnes in its first forecast, down 7.5% from 1.91 million last year. [11]

Why it matters. It is the committee's first forecast of the season, and it lands in the month wheat reached a three-year high. [7]

The US agriculture department's Nairobi office cut its forecast for Kenya's 2026/27 corn crop by 51%, to 2.2 million tonnes, after a severe dry period in the middle of the year. [12]

Why it matters. Corn is Kenya's staple food, so the gap has to be filled by imports at this year's prices.

The US agriculture department's crop report for the week to 30 August left corn condition flat at a season low. A week earlier 57% was good or excellent, against 69% at the same point last year. [13]

Why it matters. It is the last condition reading before harvest sets the size of the crop.

A market adviser writing for the US trade title Successful Farming argued that this year's damage could push corn to $6 in September. It cited drought across the western Corn Belt, storm after storm in the east, and heat indexes above 100F in July. [14]

Why it matters. It is a forecast, not a fact, but it shows what the trade thinks the crop report will say.

India now expects 30.6 million tonnes of sugar this season, 11% below the Indian government's earlier estimate of 34.3 million. It had already approved 2 million tonnes of exports, of which nearly 800,000 shipped before exports were halted in May. [15]

Why it matters. A kilo that cost 40 to 45 rupees in May and June was selling above 58 rupees in August, going into the festival and wedding season.

The US agriculture department's Commodity Credit Corporation said on 25 August it does not expect to buy and sell any sugar under the Feedstock Flexibility Program for crop year 2026. [16]

Why it matters. The programme exists to stop sugar processors handing their crop to the US government instead of repaying loans, so no action means no glut is expected.

High temperatures and heavy rain have battered China's main corn, soybean and cotton regions since mid-July. Xinjiang, which grows more than 90% of China's cotton, faces lower yields from prolonged heat and little rain. [17]

Why it matters. The US government says China pledged $17bn a year of farm goods through 2028 excluding soybeans; the large non-soybean purchases have not come, and damaged crops at home could force them.

Canada will apply tariffs of 15% to 50% on about $20bn of US goods from 8 September, matching 50% US tariffs imposed after talks collapsed in mid-August. Its list covers dairy and farm equipment. [18]

Why it matters. Canada bought about $28bn of US farm products in 2025, and farm machinery is built from parts that cross the border.

Making a tonne of the common phosphate fertilizer DAP takes about 0.4 tonnes of sulfur, and sulfur prices have risen sharply. Sulfur comes mostly as a by-product of oil and gas production, and China makes nearly 23% of the world's supply. [19]

Why it matters. Farmers' 2027 fertilizer bills are already tracking the conflict in Iran. [19] Friday marked six months since the US and Israeli bombing that started it. [42]

The farm cooperative CHS and the fertilizer producer OCP North America are proposing a $450m phosphate plant at Waggaman, Louisiana, making more than a million tonnes a year. It would be the first of its kind built in the US in more than four decades. [20]

Why it matters. It answers a supply problem that is already here with capacity that takes years to arrive.

The Creighton University farm equipment index fell to 22.2 in August from 27.8 in July, its 36th straight month below the level that marks growth. US tractor sales were 15,985 in July, down 10.9% on a year earlier. [21]

Why it matters. Machinery is the first thing a farm stops buying, so it reads the farm economy before the farm income figures do.

New York Times reporting says the US agriculture department's conservation service has lost more than 2,700 workers, close to a quarter of its staff. Some of the department's local offices now have nobody at all, and a Nebraska corn and soybean farmer described 50% staffing cuts at his. [22]

Why it matters. The loans, grants and technical help those offices hand out are what a farm in a bad year runs on.

US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a Ranchers First Initiative on Monday. It includes a new insurance endorsement that would pay a rancher the difference if a heifer kept back for breeding turns out to be worth more sold for meat. [23]

Why it matters. Rollins says the US cattle herd is at a 75-year low, and the only way to rebuild it is to not sell the animals that would rebuild it.

The US Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing 34 requests from small refineries to be excused from blending ethanol into their fuel, and biofuel and farm groups objected this week. [24]

Why it matters. An exempted refinery blends less ethanol, which is corn demand removed. Corn futures fell overnight partly on the prospect. [25]

Bluetongue, a midge-borne virus that cuts milk in cattle and lames sheep, has been confirmed on 684 farms in England, Wales and Scotland since July, with Devon and Cornwall holding almost two thirds. The Pirbright Institute says the strain likely carried over from one season to the next rather than blowing in again from France. [26]

Why it matters. A disease that had to be re-imported every year is now a resident one, which changes the control problem completely.

A dolphin that died in South Australia tested positive for H5 bird flu, the second native mammal species known to have caught it there. About 100 dead little penguins were found on King Island but were too decayed to test. [27]

Why it matters. The virus reached Australia only this year, and it is already moving out of birds into mammals.

More than 17,000 confirmed cases of the parasite cyclospora were recorded in the US this summer, against 1,180 last summer, linked to lettuce from Taylor Farms. Heidi Overton, nominated to lead the US Food and Drug Administration, has no Senate hearing date set. [28]

Why it matters. The agency that would answer for it is being handed over in the middle of the outbreak.

Darin Detwiler now advises governments and companies on food safety. His 16-month-old son died in the 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak in the US. He says his research shows the scale and severity of recalls increasing, and blames consolidation in food production. [29]

Why it matters. He also says there are now few reliable measures of US food safety, so the count of recalls is what people are left arguing over.

It has felt like a bad year, but US Centers for Disease Control reporting shows the number of Salmonella outbreaks has stayed similar across the past five years, so far. Salmonella infects about 1.35 million people in the US each year. [30]

Why it matters. Both readings can be true at once: the same number of outbreaks a year, each one reaching further than it used to.

Shanghai Ravioli Corporation of Boston recalled about 24,900 pounds of frozen buffalo chicken made between July 2025 and June 2026. The US food safety service says it carried a false inspection mark, for a plant with no federal grant of inspection, and went to catering kitchens in five states. [31]

Why it matters. No illness has been reported. The recall is because the stamp saying somebody had checked was not real.

A Ritz cracker now carries 80% less saturated fat than a few years ago. BelVita soft bakes cut sodium by 56% to fall outside Britain's less-healthy category, which decides where a food may be advertised. Mondelez has spent 40m pounds on reformulation work since 2020. [32]

Why it matters. Britain's government is now reviewing the scoring model itself, and the Food and Drink Federation estimates 80% of already-reformulated products could fail the new one.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is suing the US agriculture and health departments, alleging that a nine-member panel rewrote the guidance issued in January. It says eight of the nine had ties to industry bodies including the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the National Dairy Council. [33]

Why it matters. The same group sued the same two departments in 2016, over cholesterol limits it says were dropped on egg-industry-funded research.

Researchers in Chile split 47 mice into three groups, given plain water, water with sucralose, or water with stevia. Two further generations were bred that drank only plain water, and raised fasting blood sugar still turned up in some of the grandchildren. [34]

Why it matters. It is a mouse study at doses meant to resemble ordinary human intake, so it is a question raised rather than a finding about people.

A potato grower near Yeovil in England says he faces 200,000 pounds of losses because this summer's heat left his crop bruised or stunted, and retailers will not buy produce that looks wrong. [35]

Why it matters. The appearance rules were written when supply was uniform, and they now destroy supply in the years it is not.

Bhutan opened what it calls the first conscious food summit, with prime minister Tshering Tobgay arguing that changing food systems needs a change in values as well as in technology. [36]

Why it matters. It meets as the World Food Programme warns that 50 million people could be pushed close to starvation as a strong El Nino builds.

Researchers visiting the world's largest mangrove forest, in the delta where the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna meet, found a pond that had held fish for local families now cracked and empty. Salt is pushing into fields that used to give two rice harvests a year. [37]

Why it matters. Four million people live off that forest, and a pond that turns salty does not come back.

Meeting Indonesia's target of a 50% biodiesel blend by 2030 would need 4.85 to 8.55 million hectares of land converted, with up to 2.3 million more for rice self-sufficiency, and the two zones overlap. [38]

Why it matters. Two national food and energy goals are competing for the same ground, and the forest is what is between them.

Hormel Foods, the US packaged-meat company behind Spam and Jennie-O, cut its annual sales forecast on 27 August, blaming weak retail sales and poor demand for own-brand snack nuts. Its shares fell about 1% before the market opened. [39][43]

Why it matters. Farm prices are rising and shopper spending is not, and the squeeze lands on the companies in between.

Researchers publishing in Nature Food combined yield statistics with satellite and other geographic data to estimate major crop yields in every producing country. They tested the method against the pandemic, the Australian wildfires and the war in Ukraine. [40]

Why it matters. The paper says expectations of yields in the big producing countries shape export policy, and this method can sometimes work months before harvest.

Marion Nestle and Lisa Sutherland argue in a new book that health claims on food packets began when Kellogg petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration in the mid-1980s. An FDA analysis found All-Bran's market share rose 47% in the campaign's first six months. [41]

Why it matters. It is the origin of the claim printed on almost every box in the aisle.

The US agriculture department's August estimates put Oklahoma, South Carolina and Colorado at the lowest corn yields in the country this year, with Oklahoma at 95 bushels an acre. [44]

Why it matters. National averages hide where the crop actually failed, and those are the farms that will not average out.