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U.S. grains: Wheat and corn up over 20 per cent in 2021, soybeans edge to third year of gains

Reading Time: 2 minutes Chicago/Singapore | Reuters – U.S. corn, wheat and soybean futures were set to post yearly gains, with strong demand and supply constraints in some key production areas of the globe underpinning the markets throughout 2021. Corn futures, which have jumped 23.4 percent this year, have paced the grain markets, supported by increased feed usage by livestock as […] Read more


Farmer Anil Salunkhe feeds strawberries to a cow during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the Satara district in India’s Maharashtra state on April 1, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Rajendra Jadhav)

How COVID-19 is upending global food supply chains

Cows fed strawberries in India, watermelons rot in U.S., okra not reaching Canada

Reading Time: 5 minutes Satara/Singapore/London | Reuters — In the fertile Satara district in western India, farmers are putting their cattle on an unorthodox diet: Some feed iceberg lettuce to buffalo. Others feed strawberries to cows. It’s not a treat. They can either feed their crops to animals or let them spoil. And other farmers are doing just that […] Read more

Reginald Conyers, a traveling busker, plays the trumpet outside a Safeway while people observing social distancing wait in line to enter the store  in Oakland on March 20, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Kate Munsch)

Panic buying, lockdowns may drive world food inflation

World has ample grain and oilseed supplies, FAO and analysts say

Reading Time: 3 minutes Singapore | Reuters — Lockdowns and panic food buying due to the coronavirus pandemic could ignite world food inflation even though there are ample supplies of staple grains and oilseeds in key exporting nations, a senior economist at FAO and agricultural analysts said. The world’s richest nations poured unprecedented aid into the global economy as […] Read more


(Mark Wilson photo courtesy Louis Dreyfus Co.)

U.S.-China trade fears halt soybean imports

Reading Time: 3 minutes Singapore/Beijing | Reuters — China’s purchases of U.S. soybeans have come to a grinding halt, trade and industry sources say, as fears of further action by Beijing to curb imports of U.S. crops following last week’s anti-dumping move on sorghum rattles the agriculture industry. Buyers from China, which takes 60 per cent of soybeans traded […] Read more

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Brazil cuts into U.S. soybean market share in China

Reading Time: 2 minutes Reuters – Brazil is expected to win a larger share of China’s soybean imports in coming months, hitting U.S. exporters during the peak marketing season for their most valuable farm product as the world grapples with a fifth consecutive bumper crop. China is expected to buy about five million tonnes of soybeans from Brazil for […] Read more





(Photo courtesy Canada Beef Inc.)

U.S. grains: Wheat rises for a second day on short-covering

Reading Time: 2 minutes Singapore/Paris | Reuters, 7:01 a.m. CT –– Chicago wheat futures prices rose for a second session on Friday with short-covering ahead of the Labour Day holiday weekend supporting prices, although the trend was set for a second week of declines amid plentiful world supplies. Corn was up for a second day, recovering from a multi-year […] Read more

(Scott Bauer photo courtesy ARS/USDA)

China’s farmers switch to soy amid corn market reform

Reading Time: 3 minutes Reuters — Wang Zhonghai, a 49-year-old farmer in China’s top corn producing province of Heilongjiang, plans to switch 80 per cent of his land to cultivate soybeans this year as the government ends a near-decade-old corn price support scheme. China announced last week it will stop its corn stockpiling program and allow markets to set […] Read more