Food, in brief

Trump said on Monday that the US government is working on a deal to buy potash from Belarus, at a price he said would be well below what it pays Canada. [1]

Potash is a mined mineral that helps a plant resist disease and raises the size of a harvest. [1]

Canada supplies the vast majority of American potash imports. [1]

Josh Linville, a fertiliser analyst at the trading firm StoneX, said American farms have not struggled to find potash and have more than enough. [1]

The fertilisers those farms do need help with are phosphate and nitrogen, Linville said. [1]

The war on Iran has blocked most Gulf shipments of nitrogen fertiliser, natural gas and sulfur, which phosphate mining needs. [1]

Belarus's president, Alexander Lukashenko, said on 11 September that his country had resumed selling potash to the US after American sanctions were lifted. [1]

Lukashenko also said he wants more than $40 million of Belarusian money released from the US banking system. [1]

Those sanctions were eased as Belarus freed political prisoners, 25 of them on 16 September after a visit by Trump's envoy John Coale. [2]

Sanctions and the closing of a Lithuanian port on the Baltic made Belarusian and Russian potash expensive to ship, and Linville says potash is too cheap to be worth carrying across the Atlantic anyway. [1]

Canada's trade minister Dominic LeBlanc and Nutrien, the world's biggest potash producer, did not comment. [1]

Why it matters. Watch whether any Belarusian potash is actually loaded, and whether Lithuania reopens the port of Klaipeda to it - without that route the cargo has to go the long way through Russia's Arctic. [1]

Diesel futures in Europe closed at an all-time high last week, more than double their level at the start of 2026, and average US retail diesel passed $6 a gallon for the first time on record this month. [3] Wars in Iran and Ukraine have damaged refineries in both regions, and Middle East diesel exports halved between March and August to 800,000 barrels a day. [3] Russia is set to extend its own export ban to the end of October after drone strikes cut output at three of its six largest diesel refineries. [4]

Why it matters. American farm fuel costs are up about $11 an acre for corn on last year, and most food reaches a shop on a diesel truck. [22]

Brent crude, the benchmark price for a barrel of oil, fell about 1% on Friday to $103.77 but stayed above $100, after reaching four-month highs earlier in the week. [5] Loadings at Saudi Arabia's Red Sea export hub of Yanbu were suspended and some deliveries to Europe cancelled after its East-West pipeline was damaged in an attack that hit three pumping stations. [5] Traders say a long closure could cut off as much as 4% of world oil supply. [5]

Why it matters. Diesel is made from crude, and the same wars are blocking the natural gas and sulfur that nitrogen and phosphate fertiliser need. [1][5]

Indonesia is fighting its most intense wildfires in eleven years, with El Nino conditions drying out forests and fields on Borneo and Sumatra. [6] The haze has driven up breathing illnesses and crossed into Singapore and Malaysia. [6] President Prabowo Subianto told his cabinet there would be zero tolerance for anyone who starts a fire, and asked ministers to look at making it a crime called ecological terrorism. [6] On Saturday, indigenous and civil-society groups in West Kalimantan filed a class action against him, with a first hearing on 7 October. [7]

Why it matters. The plaintiffs say Indonesia's government has failed to stop fires that return every year, and a judge will now hear that claim. [7]

A free trade agreement between India and New Zealand comes into force on 20 October, after both countries ratified it, New Zealand's trade minister Todd McClay said. [8] From the first day, 57% of New Zealand's exports enter India tariff-free, including sheep meat and wool, rising later to 82%. [8] New Zealand also gets quota access for apples and kiwifruit, and India's tariff on wine falls from 150% to either 25% or 50% over ten years. [8] The two governments want trade to double from about $2.3 billion by 2030. [8]

Why it matters. A 150% tariff on wine shows how closed India's market has been, and New Zealand sells the lamb, apples and kiwifruit it now gets access for. [8]

A new report from the Economic Research Service, the research arm of the US agriculture department, finds that three quarters of US counties have been nominated as veterinary shortage areas since 2010, many of them more than once. [9] Rural students apply to veterinary school in proportion to their share of the population, at 14%. [9] The money points the other way. Average revenue at rural food-animal practices fell 22% between 2021 and 2025, to $1.54 million, and rural food-animal vets' real income fell 19% from 2017 to 2024. [9]

Why it matters. A vet is who spots bird flu or bovine tuberculosis in a herd first, so where there are fewer of them an outbreak is found later. [9]

About 44 million American households, a third of the country, grow some of their own fruit or vegetables, a number rising about 4% a year for five years, the National Gardening Association says. [10] More people turned to gardens and farmers' markets after a record summer of foodborne illness. [10] James Rogers of Consumer Reports says the size of the grower is not what decides safety. Big washing plants can spread one contaminated batch through a whole run, and most small growers are exempt from the federal rules on irrigation water and testing. [10]

Why it matters. One food-safety expert keeps animals, small children and rainwater barrels out of his own vegetable beds, because washing with water alone removes only about 90% of most germs. [10]

A review of 87 clinical trials covering more than 6,500 people, published in the European Heart Journal, found that eating more whole grains lowered body weight, waist size, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and a marker of inflammation. [11] Benefits appeared at 30 to 40 grams a day and were strongest at 60 to 100 grams, about four to six servings. [11] A whole grain keeps all three parts of the kernel; refining strips two of them away. [11] The trials ran about eight weeks on average. [11]

Why it matters. The lead author, Helda Tutunchi of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in Iran, says the gain comes from several small improvements together rather than one large one. [11]

French researchers followed 112,395 volunteers for seven to eight years, recording everything they ate for three days every six months. [12] The people eating the most non-antioxidant preservatives, the kind used to stop bacteria and mould growing, had a 29% higher rate of high blood pressure and a 16% higher rate of heart disease than those eating the least. [12] Eight preservatives were linked to high blood pressure on their own, among them sodium nitrite and citric acid. [12] The study is observational and cannot prove cause. [12]

Why it matters. Almost nobody avoids them: 99.5% of the volunteers ate at least one preservative, and the lead researcher, Mathilde Touvier of the French health institute INSERM, says European and US regulators should look at them again. [12]

Researchers scanned the thighs of 615 American adults at risk of knee osteoarthritis and found that those eating more ultra-processed food had more fat inside the muscle itself, not only around it. [13] The link held after accounting for calories, fat intake, exercise and social background. [13] Ultra-processed foods are industrially made products such as packaged snacks, soft drinks, frozen pizza, hot dogs and mass-produced bread. [13] Fat inside those muscles may weaken the support around the knee, the authors write in the journal Radiology. [13]

Why it matters. Obesity and knee osteoarthritis have risen together for decades, and this study looks inside the muscle rather than at what the scales say. [13]

104 Australians aged 65 to 75 were put on one of four diets for four weeks at the University of Sydney. [14] Every diet gave 14% of energy as protein, but they differed in fat, carbohydrate and how much of the protein came from animals. [14] Three of the four groups ended with a lower biological age, an estimate built from 20 blood markers including cholesterol, insulin and C-reactive protein, which measures inflammation. [14] The clearest result was in the group eating less fat and more carbohydrate. The researchers call it preliminary. [14]

Why it matters. The group whose diet changed least, higher fat with animal protein, showed no change at all, which is the comparison that makes the rest worth watching. [14]

Researchers at Hokkaido University in Japan analysed 56 varieties of japonica rice, the short-grain type eaten across Japan, and identified 196 different fat molecules in five groups. [15] Rice is more than 85% starch and only about 2% fat, so its fats had been studied far less than its starch. [15] Black and green pigmented varieties scored highest on the team's health-promotion index and appear to be digested more slowly than ordinary white rice. [15] The work was published in Food Research International. [15]

Why it matters. Rice feeds more than half the world, so a difference between varieties in how fast it is digested reaches a very large number of plates. [15]

Global life expectancy was 71.4 years in 2021 while healthy life expectancy was 61.9, a gap of nine and a half years, according to the World Health Organization. [16] One analysis found the gap widened in 203 of 204 countries and territories between 1990 and 2023. [16] Writing in The Conversation, researchers set out what is known about eating less. The largest human trial, CALERIE, followed 218 adults for two years who cut their intake by 12% on average, improving blood pressure and insulin sensitivity. [16]

Why it matters. The trial measured blood markers. It did not test whether people kept living independently for longer, which is what functional healthspan means. [16]

A review in Nature Reviews Endocrinology sets out the burden of obesity and type 2 diabetes across the Middle East and North Africa, where rates are among the highest in the world. [17] Wealthy Gulf countries changed what they eat earliest and now have some of the highest rates anywhere. [17] North African countries are seeing some of the steepest increases in high body weight and high blood sugar. [17] The authors blame poor diet quality, inactivity, food environments built around cheap processed food, and economic pressure. [17]

Why it matters. The review calls the economic cost substantial and under-recognised, through health spending and lost work. [17]

Nutrition researchers asked 302 adults to record everything they ate on 20 separate days across about three months, then tested how well shorter records reproduced the same eating patterns. [18] Two non-consecutive days were enough to identify the two main patterns, which the authors label prudent, traditional and western. [18] The third pattern appeared largely by chance, depending on which two days happened to be sampled, and foods were assigned to it wrongly. [18] Three-day and four-day records behaved the same way. [18]

Why it matters. The paper marks where a short food diary can be trusted: two days give the main patterns, and the ones after that are noise. [18]

Petrol in Lagos and Abuja has risen to about 1,400 naira a litre, roughly $1.05, from about 1,200 a month earlier, and diesel is above 2,000 naira. [19] The rise followed a decision by the Dangote refinery, Africa's largest at 700,000 barrels a day, to raise its wholesale price to 1,350 naira. [19] Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer, so the increase shows that a refinery at home does not shield a country from world prices. [19] Food inflation eased slightly in August but stayed at 19.57%. [19]

Why it matters. A truck driver in Abuja told Reuters that fuel costs are eating into earnings, and an election is due on 16 January 2027, with opposition politicians making fuel the test of the Nigerian government's record. [19]

Rain across much of the eastern half of the US in the week to 12 September improved soil moisture in some drought-hit areas. [20] Four inches or more fell in parts of the Ohio Valley, the east-central Plains and the western Corn Belt, according to the weekly bulletin from the US weather and agriculture agencies. [20] The rain also disrupted fieldwork and caused pockets of flash flooding. [20] Large sections of the Plains got only spotty showers, which held back winter wheat planting. [20]

Why it matters. Winter wheat is sown in autumn so it can root before the cold, and the bulletin reports the dry Plains slowing that planting. [20]

The Farm Service Agency, the US government body that lends to farmers who cannot get ordinary bank credit, told its state offices this month that it has streamlined and modernised its farm loan programmes. [21] The same notice opens enrolment for 2026 and 2027 in the main safety-net schemes, which pay out when a crop's price or its revenue drops below a set level. [21] It also reminds farmers that 30 September is the Minnesota closing date for disaster cover on wild rice, asparagus, strawberries, garlic and farmed fish. [21]

Why it matters. The 30 September date closes cover for the crops listed, and it falls in the same weeks as the harvest. [21]