Food, in brief

US wholesale prices were 6.3% higher in September than a year before, the biggest rise since December 2022, the US Labor Department said on Thursday. [2]

Wholesale prices are what businesses charge each other, before goods reach the shops. They rose 1.3% in one month, the most since March 2022. [2][3]

Fresh and dry vegetables jumped 41% from August to September. Grains rose 17%, and oilseeds, crops such as soybeans that are pressed for oil, rose 11%. [1]

Wholesale food as a whole rose 1.2% in the month, its biggest gain since February. [3]

Fresh eggs went the other way, falling more than 30%. [1]

Diesel more than doubled in a year and rose 21% in September alone. On Thursday it averaged $6.32 a gallon, against $3.66 a year earlier. [1][3]

Trucks, freight trains and most farm machines run on diesel, so its price is added at every step from the field to the shop. [3]

World diesel exports fell from 6.8 million barrels a day in 2025 to 5.8 million in September, as the wars cut supply from the Gulf and from Russia. [7]

Shop prices have risen less so far. US consumer prices were 3.7% higher than a year before, up from 3.4% in August. [6]

Weekly pay, once rising prices are taken out, fell in September from a year earlier, the first fall since May. [3] Hourly pay rose only 3% in a year, the Financial Times reports. [5]

Shoppers kept spending. Retail sales rose 0.8% in September, but much of that went on petrol, while restaurant sales rose 1.1%. [4]

The figures came 19 days before the US midterm elections. A Fox News poll found only 22% approve of President Trump's handling of prices. [1]

Why it matters. Watch the October shop-price figures for vegetables, and whether the US central bank raises rates again this month, as Patrick Harker, a former head of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, told CNBC he expects. [1]

Chinese meat and dairy firms are selling their surplus abroad, Reuters reported on Thursday. [9] China became a net exporter of chicken last year, selling $2.6 billion of chicken products, almost double 2020. [9] Its government paid big producers to expand after African swine fever, a pig disease, hit herds in 2018, and output kept rising as city people ate less pork. [9] Wintop Food, a processor in Shandong, says its chicken is $1,000 a tonne cheaper than Brazilian or Thai meat. [9]

Why it matters. China's share of processed chicken has tripled in the UK since 2022, to more than 14%, and doubled in the EU, to 10%, says Gira, a food consultancy. [9] Chicken exporters in Thailand and Brazil lose buyers, and the EU has already put duties of 41% to 67% on Chinese pea protein. [9]

This summer's heat and drought cut Europe's forecast grain harvest by about 16.7 million tonnes, the ECIU, a UK climate research group, estimates. [14] That cost farmers more than 3 billion euros, it says. [14] Legumes de France, a French vegetable growers' group, warned in July that losses in some crops could reach 50%. [14] On one farm in Spain's Basque Country, tomato plants stopped flowering in the heat, and officials had to bring 50,000 litres of water by tanker. [14]

Why it matters. Trouble in the Strait of Hormuz, caused by the war on Iran, has also squeezed supplies of fuel and fertiliser, Euronews reports. [14] Josefine Herz of EARA, a European group for regenerative farming, says each swing in harvests hands more of the money to a few processors and retailers. [14]

England grew 3.7 million tonnes of barley this year, 11% less than in 2025 and the least in more than a decade, provisional figures from Defra, the UK farm ministry, show. [11] A smaller spring-sown crop and an 8% fall in yield, the amount grown on each hectare, caused the drop. [11] Wheat edged up 0.8% to 10.8 million tonnes. [11] Even so, some feed barley is being shipped to Ireland from northern Scotland, where distillers and maltsters are buying less. [11]

Why it matters. Feed barley sold at 182.6 pounds a tonne on 14 October, against 196.2 pounds for feed wheat, and grain trader Andrew Dewing says farmers are slow to sell at those prices. [11] He says the UK is short of wheat and will have to import it. [11]

About 57% of people in the world's 32 landlocked developing countries cannot afford a healthy diet, and about one in six goes hungry, the FAO, the UN food agency, says. [23] Nearly 600 million people live in them. [23] Their goods must cross a neighbour's land to reach a port, so imports cost 75% more per tonne to move than in coastal developing countries, a 2025 UN study found. [23] The FAO and Uzbekistan's farm ministry discussed it at a forum in Tashkent early this month. [23]

Why it matters. Maximo Torero, the FAO's chief economist, says the poorest countries that import food will be hit hardest as import costs rise. [23] He names the Black Sea, the Strait of Hormuz and the Panama Canal as routes under strain. [23]

Defra announced a 65 million pound package for farmers hit by this summer's drought, Agriland reported on Thursday. [12] Of that, 15 million pounds will help farms build their own reservoirs. [12] South-east and south-west England had their driest April to September in more than a century. [12] In Herefordshire, councillors of every party backed a motion on 9 October to make farm reservoirs easier and cheaper to get through planning. [13]

Why it matters. Will Watkins, a potato farmer who chairs the NFU farmers' union in Herefordshire, says water is becoming a limit on what farms can grow. [13] He says public water supply gets long-term national planning and farming does not. [13]

The Philippine Competition Commission, the country's fair-trading regulator, fined six companies 1.76 billion pesos, about $28m, on Wednesday. [10] It says the importers, cold-store and shipping firms shared out the onion trade among themselves. [10] Together they held nearly half of all approved onion import permits in 2020 and 2021. [10] In 2022 onions reached a record 800 pesos a kilo, more than the daily minimum wage and dearer than meat. [10]

Why it matters. It is the commission's largest fine since it was formed in 2016, and the firms may also face criminal charges. [10] The shortage ended only when big local harvests reached the market in 2023. [10]

An outbreak of E. coli O157, a gut germ that can cause kidney failure, linked to ready-to-eat chicken wraps in the US has grown to 50 sick people, from 35 a week before. [17] Neither the FDA, the US food regulator, nor the USDA, the US farm ministry, has said which brand made the wraps or where they were sold. [17] The FDA says they were taken off sale before the link was confirmed. [17] Two Listeria outbreaks, of 11 and 46 people, still have no food named at all. [17]

Why it matters. The CDC, the US disease agency, estimates that 26 E. coli cases go undetected for every confirmed one, so the real count is likely higher. [17]

Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, has sued Gerber, a baby-food brand, and Nestle USA in a Texas court. [21] He says Gerber baby food held dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium. [21] The suit says that from 2017 to 2019 Gerber used rice flour with arsenic above the federal limit, and that its own tests found lead in sweet potatoes and cadmium in carrots. [21] Texas wants a court order stopping the firms from calling the food safe. [21]

Why it matters. These are claims in a lawsuit and have not been tested in court. [21] Texas filed the case in Collin County District Court. [21]

Consumer Reports, a US shoppers' group, has written to Donald Prater, the FDA's deputy commissioner, about this summer's Cyclospora outbreak. [19] Cyclospora, a stomach parasite carried on Taylor Farms lettuce from Mexico, made almost 13,000 people ill and killed two. [19] The group says FDA inspectors took nearly a month to start sampling in Mexico, and the recall was classed as serious more than a month late. [19] It wants answers by 6 November. [19]

Why it matters. It asks why the FDA has issued no import alert, a step that lets it hold shipments at the border, on iceberg lettuce from central Mexico. [19] It says the mixed public messages cost US produce growers money and wasted food. [19]

Thirteen people in nine US states have fallen ill with E. coli O26 linked to Sierra Nevada Graziers grass-fed raw-milk cheese, made from milk that was not heated to kill germs, the CDC says. [17] Eight went to hospital, three have kidney failure, and more than half are aged five or under. [17] Separately, Family Farmstead Dairy of Worcester, New York, is recalling a raw-milk cheddar after tests in Maryland found E. coli O157. [18] No illness has been reported from it. [18]

Why it matters. Raw cheese is one of the high-risk foods under a 2011 US rule that makes firms keep records of where food goes, and the US Congress delayed that rule in 2025, Consumer Reports notes. [19]

Thirteen people in Spain are ill with Salmonella, a food-poisoning germ, and eggs laid in Spain are the suspected cause. [20] OCU, a Spanish consumer group, has asked AESAN, the national food safety agency, to name the brands and batches. [20] None have been published, and AESAN's website carries no alert. [20] The EU's food alert system shows the eggs also went to Portugal and France. [20]

Why it matters. Eggs were linked to 131 of Spain's 250 Salmonella outbreaks in 2024. [20] OCU says the batch may already have been withdrawn, but that naming it is needed to prevent more cases. [20]

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee, which checks UK government spending, questioned Paul Kissack, the top civil servant at Defra, on Thursday. [15] They pressed him on the Sustainable Farming Incentive, which pays English farmers for work that helps nature. [15] Its second round opened on 22 September and closed in under six hours, leaving many thousands of farmers without money. [15] Kissack said demand far outran the budget, even after it grew about 40% to 253 million pounds. [15]

Why it matters. The committee's chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, warned that farmers who missed out would remove wildlife features from their land. [15] Kissack said ministers are looking at other ways to share the money than first come, first served. [15]

Indian makers of packaged food and household goods expect thinner profit margins for July to September, analysts told Reuters on 14 October. [26] Sales are growing by about 13%, but crude oil, palm oil and a weaker rupee are raising costs faster than the firms raise prices. [26] Systematix, an Indian broker, expects Hindustan Unilever and Britannia, a biscuit maker, to take the biggest hits. [26] Nestle India was due to report first, on Thursday. [26]

Why it matters. Companies have raised some prices but are absorbing part of the cost, said Tanvi Kanchan of Anand Rathi, a Mumbai broker. [26] She expects margins to recover only from early next year, and only if raw material prices cool. [26]

South Africa's big dams were about 90% full on 5 October, against about 60% before the 2015-16 drought, says the NAMC, a state farm-market body. [24] Soils are wetter too, after rains that lasted into May and began again in September. [24] Forecasters expect a strong El Nino to bring drier weather to grain regions such as the Free State later in the season. [24] Almost all fruit and vegetable land is watered by irrigation, but only 20% of field crops are. [24]

Why it matters. Field crops that rely on rain carry most of the risk, and livestock could lose grazing. [24] Joseph Glauber, a former chief economist at the US farm ministry, names El Nino and costly fertiliser as world farming's two biggest problems for 2027. [25]

China booked 470,000 tonnes of US soybeans for the 2026-27 season, Agri-Pulse, a US farm-policy news service, reported on Thursday. [21] It is China's first such order since President Trump and China's leader, Xi Jinping, met in Washington last month. [21] China keeps half the world's pigs, and their appetite for soybeans redrew farm trade from the US Midwest to Brazil, Reuters notes. [9] On the same day, US senator Adam Schiff said shops in Alberta, Canada, point shoppers away from American wine. [21]

Why it matters. Schiff says the ill will could outlast the trade war and hurts California's wine makers. [21] He hopes the US Congress can still pass a farm bill, the law that sets US farm support, before newly elected members take their seats. [21]

The US State Department opened seven Feed the Future innovation labs at US universities on Thursday. [22] The labs do farm research meant to help farmers in poorer countries and in the US. [22] The program lost 16 of its 17 labs when USAID, the US aid agency, closed in July 2025; only a Kansas State lab on cereals survived. [22] The eight labs share $72 million this year, and the US budget bill for 2026 sets the same sum. [22]

Why it matters. The new labs lean more toward Latin America and less toward Africa, and more toward work with companies, said Marcus Glassman of APLU, a group of US public universities. [22]

Farmland birds in the UK have fallen 12% in the past five years, a Defra report on wild birds says. [16] Since 1970 they have fallen 63%, with turtle doves and tree sparrows among the worst hit. [16] The report blames farming changes from the 1960s, such as more pesticide use and the removal of hedges. [16] On the Allerton Project, a 320-hectare farm in Leicestershire, nature-friendly methods raised farmland bird numbers by 145%. [16]

Why it matters. Joe Stanley of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust says the money for such methods has never matched the size of the problem. [16] He points to the farm scheme round that closed after 352 minutes. [16]

The UK Agri-Tech Centre will cut its staff by 60%, from 130 to 50 people, AgFunderNews reported. [27] The centre was formed in 2024 from three government-backed bodies and runs 43 places for testing crops, livestock, fish farming and farm robots. [27] From 2027 it will stop testing new farm technology itself and will connect companies with other labs instead. [27] Its core money comes from the UK government through Innovate UK, a research funder. [27]

Why it matters. The centre says the change is not about saving money. [27] It has not said which partners will take over its testing work and facilities. [27]

Syngenta, a big seed and farm-chemical company, has asked the US Environmental Protection Agency to raise the yearly limit on bicyclopyrone, a weedkiller in its corn sprays. [32] The change would double how much growers may use in a year. [32] It would also let farmers spray one of its products before the corn comes up and another after, which current labels forbid. [32] Syngenta hopes for approval before the 2027 season. [32]

Why it matters. The company says growers asked for more freedom over when they use weedkillers. [32] The request is still under review, and some states may set their own limits. [32]

A typical US migratory beekeeper with 8,500 hives earns only about $31 a hive above cash costs, University of Illinois economists estimate. [35] Without US government disaster payments, that would be a loss. [35] Counting the cost of replacing equipment, the business loses $62 a hive. [35] The model business loses 44% of its hives in a year and moves them from North Dakota to Texas and on to California. [35]

Why it matters. Much of its income comes from renting hives to California almond growers, whose trees need bees to pollinate them. [35]

Dafydd Trystan Davies, a Welsh government minister, told the Senedd, the Welsh parliament, on Tuesday that he was minded not to create the Glyndwr national park in north-east Wales. [28][29] It would have covered the Clwydian Range and the Dee Valley, and been Wales's first new national park since 1957. [29] Setting it up would cost more than 11 million pounds, and all five councils in the area objected. [28] A final decision follows four weeks of comments. [28]

Why it matters. Both Welsh farming unions welcomed it, saying a park would add planning rules to farms. [28] A Labour member of the Senedd called it a lack of ambition. [29]

Mahindra & Mahindra, an Indian tractor maker, has started building the MaxSeeder, a machine designed by Clean Seed of Canada. [34] It sows wheat, maize, soybeans, cotton or rice straight into the stubble left after a rice harvest, without ploughing. [34] So farmers no longer need to burn the stubble to clear the field. [34] Sales will start in Punjab and Haryana, where field trials took place. [34]

Why it matters. Mahindra says the machine also cuts fertiliser and seed waste, and can be pulled by a small 35-horsepower tractor. [34]

More than 250,000 children get meals in 335 schools across the Central African Republic, the World Food Programme, the UN's food aid agency, says. [39] In one village school, enrolment rose from 475 to 857 after the meals began. [39] The WFP buys more than five times as much from small local farmers as it did five years ago, partly for the meals. [39] Nearly two million people in the country do not have secure access to food. [39]

Why it matters. Carl Skau, the WFP's acting head, ended a four-day visit by asking other countries to do more for the country. [39]

Sales of plant-based meat and fish substitutes grew 8.1% from 2024 to 2025, Euromonitor, a market research firm, says. [36] But fewer companies now build their own factories for them, FoodNavigator, a food-industry news site, reports. [36] Demand is hard to predict, so many brands pay contract manufacturers by the kilo instead. [36] That turns a big fixed cost into one that rises and falls with sales. [36]

Why it matters. A brand with its own plant carries costs that are hard to spread when sales are low, which can push prices up and demand down further, says Priyansha Reddy of the Good Food Institute Europe. [36]