Food, in brief

The United States reopened its biggest livestock inspection port, at Santa Teresa in New Mexico, on Thursday. It had blocked Mexican cattle since last year to keep out New World screwworm. [1]

Screwworm is a fly whose maggots eat the flesh of living animals. It was found in a calf in Texas in June, and the US now counts two active cases, one of them a horse in New Mexico about 160 miles from the port. [1]

Santa Teresa inspected about 43% of Mexican cattle imports over the last five years, according to the US Department of Agriculture. [1]

Between 750 and 1,600 cattle a day are expected to cross there, down from a high of about 3,000 a day, because every animal now goes through treatment rules meant to make sure it carries no maggots. [1]

A smaller port at Douglas, Arizona, reopened a month ago, and about 6,500 cattle have crossed there so far. The department says it will next consider reopening Columbus, New Mexico. [1]

Beef prices will not fall soon. It takes five to eight months to raise an imported Mexican calf to slaughter weight, and US ranchers have kept ever-smaller herds through seven years of dry weather. [1]

The US had 86.2 million cattle in January, the fewest in 75 years, and the import ban helped push ground beef to a record near $7 a pound last month. [1]

New Mexico officials say they feel safe reopening because of the checks at the port, the low US case count, and the department's release of sterile flies wherever a case appears. Cases in Mexico are still climbing. [1]

Texas officials think wild animals spread the pest there. The department has confirmed no wildlife case and its traps have caught no wild flies, which raises questions about how complete its count is. [1]

Why it matters. The next test is Columbus, New Mexico, which the department says it will consider reopening next; a new case near Santa Teresa is what would put the port's own status back in question. [1]

Three cattle groups in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas said on Friday that immigration operations this week kept workers away from meat plants, feedlots and dairies. [2] Plants in Dodge City, Liberal and Garden City, which each process thousands of cattle a day, shut for a time and sent cattle back to the feedlots. [2] The Kansas Livestock Association says thousands of cattle were delayed and millions of dollars lost. [2] The Department of Homeland Security confirmed its officers are in Kansas but says it is not raiding worksites. [2]

Why it matters. Beef is already at a record because the herd is the smallest in 75 years. A plant that cannot staff its lines processes less, and the Kansas group says a long enough disruption would mean higher prices in shops. [2]

France announced a 450 million euro package on Tuesday that extends fuel subsidies for farmers, fishermen and builders to the end of the year. [4] Germany renewed a 17-cent-a-litre cut in fuel tax from 1 October, and Spain extended its cuts, with a step up to 20 cents a litre if fuel inflation passes 15%. [4] Pump prices have passed the equivalent of $12 a gallon in some European countries. [4] The EU buys more and more of its diesel from the US, and its spokesman called a US export ban a bad idea. [4]

Why it matters. A farmer or a fishing skipper cannot add the fuel bill to the price of wheat or cod, so governments are paying part of it for them. The lesson below is about that step.

US crude oil traded $12.02 a barrel below Brent, the world benchmark, on Thursday, its widest gap since May, as traders priced in a ban on diesel exports. [5] President Trump said on Tuesday he backs a ban. His office denied on Wednesday that a 90-day ban is being prepared, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright says a ban would not bring prices down. [5][7] The US exported a record 1.6 million barrels of diesel a day in August. [6] Wood Mackenzie estimates a ban would fill Gulf Coast storage in about a month and force refiners to cut runs by 12%. [5]

Why it matters. Diesel is the fuel of tractors, combines and grain lorries. Analysts say a ban would lower US diesel briefly and raise it everywhere else, including in Europe, which took 41% of its diesel imports from the Middle East last year, a supply that has since halved. [6][8]

Rick Telesz farms 700 acres of corn, soybeans and dairy cows in western Pennsylvania. He expects a good soybean crop and hopes it pays for the fertiliser and fuel he bought in spring. [3] Fertiliser costs 15% more than last year and diesel about 80% more; his combine burns 150 gallons a day. [3] The American Farm Bureau says growers of every major row crop will lose money in 2026, the fourth year in a row. [3] About 200,000 farms have closed since 2020, and farm bankruptcies rose 19% in the year to June. [3]

Why it matters. Telesz says a trucker adds fuel to the freight charge and a farmer cannot, so the cost stays with him. China's purchases of US cotton, wheat, pork and beef were devastated in 2025 and have not come back, an economist told the Peterson Institute this week. [3]

More than 400 people a day have crossed from Sudan into eastern Chad over the past week, twenty times the rate of recent months, the UN refugee agency said on Friday. [9] They come from Darfur, Kordofan and Blue Nile, where Sudan's army and the Rapid Support Forces have fought for more than three years, and they describe fleeing bombing and drone attacks. [9] The war has displaced up to 14 million people and ruined harvests. [9] The agency has received 18% of the $1.6 billion it needs this year. [9]

Why it matters. Almost a million Sudanese have crossed into Chad since the war began, 55,000 of them this year. The agency says many who cannot eat there try to move on towards Europe. [9]

Aid groups spent the week of the UN General Assembly in New York looking for money to replace what rich governments cut over the past year. [10] Operation End Starvation was launched this summer with a two-year $100 million commitment from the US State Department. Its head says it needs 17 times that every year to buy enough therapeutic food for starving children, and it won a $5 million Gates Foundation grant on Wednesday. [10] The AP has documented children dying in Myanmar, Nigeria and Somalia after cuts to food rations. [11]

Why it matters. Family offices and Gulf donors are being courted to replace USAID, which a study in The Lancet credits with preventing 91 million deaths in two decades. The new money is smaller, and one charity head calls the effort very ad hoc. [10][11]

Dr John Ferguson, a biologist at the University of Essex, has been given £2.8m over four years by UK Research and Innovation, a government body, to breed high-yielding maize that uses less water. [12] Maize loses about 95% of its water through stomata, tiny pores on the leaf, and earlier research showed plants with fewer pores keep more water and hold their yield in drought. [12] He will breed hybrids with fewer pores without cutting photosynthesis, and hopes they reach subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. [12] The UN says East Africa takes a fifth of all global food aid. [12]

Why it matters. In 2016 scientists said temperatures were rising faster than new crop varieties were being bred. A maize that drinks less is aimed at the farms that lose harvests first. [12]

Co-op Group, the member-owned British retailer with more than 2,500 food shops, reported a £45m underlying operating loss for the six months to 4 July, against £32m a year earlier, after spending more on promotions and stores. [13] Revenue rose 2.4% to £5.6bn. [13] Its interim chief executive says customer confidence has been weak all year, and the group is matching the prices of the discounter Aldi to keep shoppers. [13] It has fixed the price of all its gas, electricity and diesel for this financial year. [13]

Why it matters. A grocer with 2,500 shops fixed the cost of its diesel for a whole year. The farmer supplying it buys at the pump each week, which is one reason a fuel shock lands on the farm first.

Indonesia's parliamentary budget committee approved 4,106 trillion rupiah ($231bn) of spending for 2027 on Thursday, with a deficit of 2.4% of GDP; a full vote is due on 29 September. [14] A draft bill alongside it plans an excise tax on sugary drinks; the new finance minister, Suahasil Nazara, declined to give details. [14] Energy subsidies were cut by 11 trillion rupiah to 261.5 trillion, about 6% of spending. [14] Indonesia's government also plans a commodity exchange to set prices and a state export firm to monitor key shipments. [14]

Why it matters. A sugar tax in a country of Indonesia's size reaches every drinks maker selling there. The export firm and the price exchange would put the state between its farm exports and their buyers. [14]

Maple Leaf Foods is shutting two of its three plant-protein factories, AgFunderNews' weekly roundup reports. [15] In the same week Impossible Foods made its British retail debut at Tesco, without the heme protein that gives its burgers their colour, and Tesco pledged £20m to a venture fund for better food run by Henry Dimbleby. [15] Elian, a Spanish company, raised 40 million euros to make plant protein in the EU. [15]

Why it matters. Factories closing in Canada and a new brand on British shelves are both signs of a market still finding its size. The roundup gives the events, not the sales figures. [15]

Governments will fall well short of a UN goal to protect 30% of the world's land and sea by 2030, research led by the Campaign for Nature found on Wednesday. [16] Since the Kunming-Montreal agreement of 2022, another 1.3 million sq km of land and 6 million sq km of sea have been protected, but coverage is 20% of land and 10% of sea. [16] If every pledge were kept, land would reach 26% and sea 13%. [16] Only 3.5% of the ocean is counted as effectively protected. [16]

Why it matters. Protected areas are drawn over land and sea that someone farms or fishes, which is one reason pledges are slow to become fences. WWF's Pauli Merriman says a line on a map does not mean protection in the water. [16]