Such a move would mark an acceleration of efforts to reshape Unilever. More than one Unilever CEO has tried to refocus the company’s portfolio by expanding in personal care and beauty, and selling some food brands.

The food business came under the spotlight again when the Financial Times reported that Unilever might spin it off, and had held merger talks with Kraft Heinz, which ended.

Unilever’s shares, which were higher in early trade on Friday, had fallen to their lowest since July last year as investors and analysts worried that CEO Fernando Fernandez could be distracted from the day-to-day running of Unilever by the potential separation. And they questioned ‌the benefits of such an action so soon after Unilever’s protracted ice cream unit split.

How much is Unilever’s food business worth?

Unilever’s packaged food business accounts for more than a quarter of group sales, but faces pressures from a shift away from ultra‑processed products, competition from private label brands, and softer demand as the rise of weight‑loss drugs changes consumer buying habits.

Home to Knorr bouillon powders and Hellmann’s condiments, the division’s underlying operating margin – which excludes the impact of foreign currency exchange rates – was 22.6 per cent of revenue, outstripping the group’s 20 per cent margin last year.

The food business, which also makes Marmite spreads, reported an operating profit of 2.9 billion euros (C$4.6 billion) last year, giving it an enterprise value of roughly 30 billion euros (C$47.6 billion), according to Barclays estimates.

Slower to grow compared with the rest

The business, Unilever’s second largest by sales after personal care, grew at 2.5 per cent last year, more slowly than the rest of the group and well below the company’s own mid-term goal.

Underlying sales growth at Unilever’s foods division has lagged that of other units since the COVID-19 pandemic highs, repeatedly falling short of the company’s annual goal of sales growth of between four and six per cent.

Analysts and investors question the long-term prospects of the packaged food industry when politicians, including U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, have highlighted the potential health risks of processed foods.

Developed markets have reached saturation

Part of the problem is that the business is operating in two contexts: developed and emerging markets. Unilever’s food business is growing more slowly in North America and Europe than in countries such as India and parts of Latin America, where the group has a stronghold in food and private label products are less sophisticated, meaning they offer less competition.

“There is more growth in emerging markets, which accounts for 55 per cent of food for Unilever, but it’s still not enough to make up for Europe and the U.S. where the market is saturated,” Barclays analyst Warren Ackerman said.

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Kennedy, picked last week by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services, said during his own presidential campaign that he wanted to “Make America Healthy Again” and called out Kellogg’s Fruit Loops cereal in an interview two weeks ago.

Nestle is the world’s biggest packaged foods group with products ranging from KitKat snacks and Nescafe coffee to Maggi noodles and Purina pet foods.

Speaking on the sidelines of Nestle’s capital markets day for investors, Steve Presley, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Nestle’s North America business, told Reuters he was “less concerned” by Kennedy’s previous comments.

“If you step back from some of the emotional issues, what he believes in is more regenerative, cleaner agriculture, which we fully believe in,” he said.

Presley said Nestle, whose U.S. brands include Nesquik drinks, Hot Pockets and Stouffer’s frozen ready meals, had worked with the current U.S. administration and would work with the next.

“We have spoken to the (Trump transition) team absolutely as one of the largest manufacturers, both from an industry perspective and to help shape the agenda in terms of how they can help create economic opportunity in the U.S.”

Packaged foods stocks – from Kellogg to Coca-Cola Co and Nestle – fell on Friday when Kennedy’s appointment was announced.

“It’s still early,” said Presley. “What was campaign rhetoric and what will move to policy?”

Presley said Nestle, which is in 97 per cent of all U.S. households, had been driving changes for years around nutrition and health.

For instance, in 2019 the Swiss group said it would give its food products ratings according to their nutritional value so customers could better gauge the healthiness of their shopping.

“So for us, is it still too early to tell? Yes. But do we believe in the idea of better agricultural practices? Absolutely. Do we believe in better nutritional product profiles in the categories? We do.”

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The U.S. does not impose sanctions directly on Russian fertilizer, which is important to global food supplies and prices. On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department issued hundreds of fresh sanctions on other Russian targets over the war.

“What’s kind of shocking is there’s been all of this focus on not funding the Russian war machine and not buying Russian gas,” CF’s CEO Tony Will said on a quarterly earnings call. “And yet, the U.S. is arms wide open to take urea and UAN (urea ammonium nitrate) coming out of Russia, which is effectively just natural gas that’s been converted (into fertilizer).

“So the U.S. is funding the very war effort over there that on the one hand it’s condemning.”

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The biggest U.S. urea importers from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to March 2024 are ECO Fertilizers, Swiss-based EuroChem and U.S. grain-handling giant Archer-Daniels-Midland ADM.N, according to U.S. import data provided to Reuters by ImportYeti, a company that provides information about suppliers by tracking bills of lading.

ECO Fertilizers, the company Russian fertilizer producer Acron Group uses to import into the U.S., according to CF, imported about 575 million metric tons during the period.

The company’s address is listed online as Hollywood, Florida, but it could not be immediately reached at its email address.

EuroChem, founded by Russian businessman Andrey Melnichenko, imported at least 81 million tons of urea from Russia via its U.S. subsidiaries.

ADM imported at least about 16.8 million tons of urea from Russia between February 2022 and March 2024 via five subsidiaries. Some grain handlers, which buy crops from farmers, use those relationships to sell growers inputs such as fertilizer as well.

EuroChem and ADM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

CF, based in Illinois, is one of the world’s biggest nitrogen fertilizer producers and competes against Russian imports. Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas and the U.S. has imposed sanctions on a project owned by Russia’s largest producer of liquefied natural gas.

CF does not import Russian fertilizer, company spokesperson Chris Close said.

Will did not say whether CF is calling on the U.S. to sanction Russian fertilizer.

Wholesale producers typically sell fertilizer to separate retail companies that sell it directly to farmers, or through their own retail stores.

– Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Richa Naidu in London; additional reporting by Steve Holland

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Loki, an Alaskan malamute dog in Ontario, Canada, did not have his usual Royal Canin kibble in the food bowl.

North American pet owners are struggling to track down certain foods from major retailers like Amazon.com, Target Corp and PetSmart as the sector grapples with increased demand and strains on the supply chain.

Costs for pet food ingredients have climbed 8 percent to 20 percent since the pandemic began, according to U.S. industry group the Pet Food Institute, outpacing a 5.4 percent jump in consumer prices in the 12 months through June.

Higher prices of basic foodstuffs such as corn, soy and meat, on top of rising transportation and labor costs, are affecting all food supplies – both for animals and people – as the U.S. economy picks up steam.

“The pet supply chain isn’t that different from the food supply chain,” said Coye Nokes, partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants. “That has obviously been really stressed by COVID – whether it’s the ingredients, raw materials, processing or downtime at different facilities.”

Prices for U.S. corn and soybeans, key ingredients in many pet foods, reached eight-year highs this spring, pinching manufacturers that use the crops.

Pet food makers are also facing increased competition for animal- and plant-based oils because more of those are going into renewable fuel supplies, according to the Pet Food Institute.

“Unprecedented price increases for ingredients and equipment jeopardize U.S. pet food makers’ ability to plan and execute strategies that will ensure America’s dog and cat food bowls are filled,” the institute warned U.S. agriculture officials in a June letter.

Supply constraints are taking pet owners by surprise, and there are many more owners since the pandemic began. About 12.6 million U.S. households indicated they acquired a new pet from March to December 2020, according to the American Pet Products Association.

In New Orleans, Aura Bishop, 39, searched local stores for weeks to find her cat Astra’s favorite treats, made by Mars Petcare. The company, the world’s biggest pet food producer, declined to comment.

The shortages were an inconvenience for the writer and actress, who said Astra helped her cope with anxiety and depression during the pandemic.

“I wish she was less of a finicky eater and would eat other flavours,” Bishop said. “It does feel a little silly to go on this quest to find specific flavours of kibble and treats.”

Extra work for charities

Limited supplies have made extra work for animal charities like the South Shore Pet Food Pantry near Boston.

Cofounder Kristen Clancy said she reviews online wish lists for pet food on sites like Amazon and Target about every two weeks, instead of every two to three months previously, because products are more frequently sold out. She updates the lists manually to provide alterative items for donors to buy.

Over the U.S. Independence Day holiday weekend, Clancy said she updated all the items on her Target list because they were not available.

“It can be time consuming because we’re looking for substitutions that are beneficial for the animals but are also cost effective for the people who are making a donation,” she said.

Target declined to comment.

Amazon said pet food manufacturers are prioritizing top-selling items over niche products because of increased demand. Pet treats and food brands that focus on health and wellness are popular as more people treat their animals as family, according to the company.

Shopping patterns change

Retailers are working with suppliers to keep pace with customers’ demand and changes in shopping patterns so they do not lose business.

U.S. consumers spent nearly $26 billion on pet food from July 2020 to July 2021, up 4.7% from a year earlier and 7.8% from two years earlier, according to NielsenIQ.

Supply shortages reduced online retailer Chewy’s net sales by $40 million in the quarter that ended May 2, but they were still up 31.7% from a year earlier at $2.1 billion, the company said.

Operating profits for General Mills’ pet division rose 6% to $415 million in the fiscal year ended May 30 as bigger net sales trumped higher input costs. The company, which sells Blue Buffalo pet food, recently bought Tyson Foods’ pet treats business for $1.2 billion.

“Everything is doing well, because there’s more pets and more premiumization, but you’re seeing people switch faster than we’ve ever seen,” said Bethany Quam, president of General Mills’ pet segment, about changes in where people shop.

In Ontario, Mariella Garcia, 20, said she came up empty in June when she searched Amazon and PetSmart websites for a Royal Canin dog food made by Mars. At the time, COVID-19 restrictions prevented her from entering retail pet stores to shop for her dog Loki, named after the Marvel comic character.

“I was just in shock,” Garcia said. “It’s usually always in stock.”

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Over the past year, with the rise of companies including Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, “plant-based” has become a food industry buzzword and several major brands and restaurants have raced to offer such products. The plant-based meat substitute category is expected to be worth $140 billion in the next decade, according to Barclays (all figures US$).

Starbucks — which sells sausage breakfast-sandwiches, chicken wraps and smoked salmon bagels with cream cheese — did not say by when it would start offering plant-based items. A spokeswoman told Reuters the company is exploring meat alternatives for its breakfast menu, but declined comment on potential suppliers.

Shares in Beyond Meat, which makes pea-based sausages, chicken and burgers, rose as much 17.1 per cent to $127.80.

Starbucks also said it aims to eventually shift to reusable packaging from single-use cups and plastic, and invest in better waste management.

For now, the world’s largest coffee chain has laid out targets for 2030 including halving landfill waste from stores, and carbon emissions from its direct operations and supply chain. The targets were informed by research from the World Wildlife Fund and sustainability consultant Quantis, Starbucks said.

Starbucks, which uses about six billion cups a year at its more than 30,000 outlets, has failed in the past to meet some of its own environmental goals including making 25 per cent of its cups reusable by 2015. The target was revised to serving five per cent of its beverages in personal tumblers by 2015, which Starbucks also missed.

The Seattle-based company’s abundant use of containers, lids and straws has been criticized by consumers as well as activist groups for decades. To be sure, some of its goals have been met, such as a 2008 plan to buy enough renewable energy certificates to power all of its company-operated stores by 2015.

— Reporting for Reuters by Richa Naidu and Hilary Russ.

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Now, several stores are creating similar products that will compete with Beyond Meat.

Kroger Co., the biggest U.S. grocer, on Wednesday rolled out its own line of plant-based imitation meat burgers nationwide under its Simple Truth in-house brand. The retailer said its pea protein-based products would be sold at “more affordable prices” than competing brand-name imitation meat. A Kroger spokeswoman said a two-patty pack would sell at about $4.99 to loyalty-card-holding customers (all figures US$).

German-owned discount supermarket Aldi U.S., which sells Meatless Meatballs and Chickenless patties, said it keeps its plant-based meat products at prices ranging from $3 to $4.

In comparison, a package of two Beyond Burgers sells for about $5.99 at some major big-box stores.

Aldi, which plans to launch more products this year and is testing a meatless breakfast sausage, told Reuters that sales of its store-brand plant-based meats were up 300 per cent last year.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if it was up 300 per cent again this year,” Scott Patton, who co-heads corporate buying at Aldi, said. “If a customer is going to purchase a competitor’s plant-based product versus an Aldi one, ours will be significantly cheaper.”

For years, major retailers including Target and Walmart have invested in their in-house brands, lining up contract manufacturers to produce private-label food ranging from macaroni-and-cheese to ice cream.

As a result, companies including Kraft Heinz have reported multi-quarter sales losses as they lose share to private-label brands. Grocers typically do not give own-brand products better shelf-space, preferring to compete with lower prices.

Albertsons Co. Inc., whose grocery store chains include Jewel-Osco and the U.S. Safeway chain, told Reuters that it prices its imitation meat at 50 cents to $1 cheaper than products sold by Beyond Meat or Maple Leaf Foods’ Lightlife — another big plant-based meat maker.

Private-label brands will need to sell plant-based products at a net wholesale cost that is about $1.25 lower than Beyond Meat and other rivals, private label consultant Jim Wisner of Wisner Marketing Group Inc said. “Product, of course, needs to be equally good or better.”

Vegan burgers made from beans and other ingredients have been around for decades, but Beyond Meat said its 10-year investment in making peas taste like meat won’t be easy for grocers to replicate.

The company’s proprietary food technology helped it list in a splashy initial public offering — Beyond Meat is now valued at about $5 billion, with its share price having more than tripled from the IPO.

“You can put something in the shape of a patty and put it on a shelf where we are, but the barriers to entry are low and the barriers to success are high,” Beyond Meat chairman Seth Goldman told Reuters in a recent interview.

The company said it has rebuffed approaches by several U.S. grocers to create plant-based meat sold under their private-label banners. “We’ve seen several retailers launch plant-based burgers that were private label and they just weren’t ready.”

A Kroger spokeswoman said the company’s own-brand plant-based meat was developed by an in-house R+D team and produced by a third party.

“Really, the pivot-point for the whole industry was the Beyond Meat IPO,” said Danny Goodman from Don Lee Farms, a food maker that has supplied a variety of products to top U.S. retailers over the years, including Kroger, Whole Foods and Albertsons. “I think it made a lot of companies sit up and put more resources into working on my plant-based line.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Richa Naidu in Chicago; additional reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bangalore.

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In a proposed class action, Phillip Williams said he bought an Impossible Whopper, a plant-based alternative to Burger King’s regular Whopper, at an Atlanta drive-thru, and would not have paid a premium price had he known the cooking would leave it “coated in meat byproducts.”

The lawsuit filed in Miami federal court seeks damages for all U.S. purchasers of the Impossible Whopper, and an injunction requiring Burger King to “plainly disclose” that Impossible Whoppers and regular burgers are cooked on the same grills.

Burger King, a unit of Toronto-based Restaurant Brands International, declined to comment, saying it does not discuss pending litigation.

Its website describes the Impossible Burger as “100 per cent Whopper, zero per cent Beef,” and adds that “for guests looking for a meat-free option, a non-broiler method of preparation is available upon request.”

Williams’ lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the disclaimer or the available cooking options.

Impossible Foods, which helped create the Impossible Whopper, has said it designed the product for meat eaters who want to consume less animal protein, not for vegans or vegetarians.

“For people who are strictly vegan, there is a microwave prep procedure that they’re welcome to ask for in any store,” Dana Worth, Impossible Foods’ head of sales, said in a recent interview.

Burger King began selling the Impossible Whopper in August.

Restaurant Brands, which also owns Canadian coffee and restaurant chain Tim Hortons and U.S. chicken chain Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, is overseen by Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital.

— Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Richa Naidu in Chicago.

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Cultivated painstakingly over years from an orchid plant, vanilla is the second most expensive spice in the world, after saffron.

In less than five years, the wholesale price has risen nearly 500 per cent, partly because of growing global demand for healthy, natural ingredients. But supply is an issue too: Cyclones, drought and crop-theft have hit Madagascar in recent years, slashing into the tender crop’s quality and quantity. The African island nation produces about 80 per cent of the world’s vanilla.

For McCormick and Co., the world’s largest spice company, the scarcity of vanilla has become too big a risk to ignore, spurring it to begin cultivating an alternative source on the north coast of Papua, Indonesia. McCormick, which sells vanilla and its extract to retailers, restaurants and packaged food makers, said it has been passing the higher costs on to buyers.

The price of black whole-bean Madagascar vanilla, the benchmark product, costs $520 per kilo (all figures US$). While this isn’t quite the spice’s record-high of $635 per kilo — reached after a ruinous cyclone in 2017 — it is still nearly six times the price of $87.50 per kilo in early 2015.

Back-to-back typhoons in 2017 and 2018 “definitely put input pressure on costs,” Nestle U.S. CEO Steve Presley recently told Reuters.

The world’s No. 1 food company raised prices for U.S. ice cream products in 2017, partly due to mounting vanilla prices, he said. The Swiss food giant makes Haagen-Dazs, Edy’s and Skinny Cow ice creams, which tout natural vanilla flavouring or beans on their labels.

General Mills, which sells Haagen-Dazs outside the United States and in the brand’s international ice cream parlours, said higher vanilla costs were forcing prices upward.

Now, Donald Pratt, managing director of McCormick’s global procurement arm, said the company is looking to Indonesia as a possible solution to the industry’s supply problem.

But pulling this off may be an uphill task.

Indonesia produces only about 100 tonnes of whole vanilla beans a year, a far cry from Madagascar’s output of about 2,000 tonnes, Pratt said. And some others who have tried to cultivate a secondary source for vanilla have not been successful — Unilever’s Ben and Jerry’s, for instance, “invested heavily” in a similar project that backfired in Uganda.

‘The dark side of vanilla’

Vanilla — sometimes called green gold — is so coveted thieves will kill for it.

“This is the dark side of vanilla. You don’t realize because it’s such a sweet thing,” said Cheryl Pinto of Ben and Jerry’s, which uses vanilla in most of its ice creams, as well as in other items such as cookie-dough chunks. Pinto said she is in charge of managing the company’s supply chain with a “social mission” in mind.

To protect their crop in Uganda, “farmers were sleeping in these fields and there were murders and beatings,” she said. “It was awful.”

This month, when setting harvest dates, the Ugandan government called out “cases of theft and loss of lives” spurred by higher prices. The violence goes both ways: Last year, Reuters reported Malagasy growers defending their fields by beating apprehended suspects to death.

Vanilla is valuable largely because it is laborious to grow.

New vanilla vines take three to four years to produce orchids and can only be pollinated — by hand — a few days each year during a pre-dawn, four-hour window. From bloom to sale, the average production cycle is 16-18 months, and 600 hand-pollinated flowers yield only about one kilo of dried beans.

The vines can flourish only if intertwined with small trees that provide support and shade. And they must be grown close to the equator.

Bourbon vanilla, which McCormick sells, is by far the most popular variety in the world. Though it has historically been cultivated in Mexico, it mostly has been produced in Madagascar for the past century because many farmers elsewhere found it such a time-consuming, delicate crop, not worth the uncertainty and price fluctuations.

Pratt said he doesn’t yet know how much Indonesia would have to produce to calm market prices.

Tam Hun Man Tombo, a vanilla exporter in Madagascar, is skeptical farmers elsewhere are up to the task.

“I’ve been in the vanilla business for more than 30 years, and every time I hear the same refrain: Buyers are looking for other origins, buyers will be working with farmers in other countries,” he said.

“It is a threat to which we are accustomed. But we do not fear that too much. Indonesia cannot produce vanilla as good as Madagascar.”

To boost production quickly, McCormick is scaling up training programs in Papuan farming communities. To produce beans of Madagascar’s quality — to which consumers are accustomed — McCormick has been changing some practices related to soil and water management.

McCormick is in discussions with CARE, a non-governmental organization that helped re-establish the market in Madagascar after the 2017 cyclone destroyed about 30 per cent of the island’s vanilla crops. The agency has founded co-operatives in Indonesia as well as Madagascar that provide training for growers — often women — on crop production and management, as well as aspects of financial literacy.

CARE has suggested other geographic alternatives, as well, including Uganda and Tanzania, said Elly Kaganzi, deputy director of CARE’s agriculture and market systems.

Pinto told Reuters Ben and Jerry’s efforts in Uganda foundered, however, because eastern buyers — mainly from China — swooped in and “showed up to the village with a boatload of cash” ahead of the government-sanctioned harvest date.

“We have not been able to get any vanilla out of Uganda,” Pinto said.

Ben and Jerry’s says it hasn’t raised prices due to vanilla costs, choosing to absorb them and stay competitive. But retail prices for other companies’ vanilla-containing products, from coffee sweeteners to yogurt to extract, continue marching upward.

As of May 30, a two-fluid ounce bottle of McCormick’s Vanilla Extract from Walmart.com cost $8.12, up from $5.94 in May 2015, according to the retail consulting firm GlobalData.

“Vanilla has always been a store-cupboard staple, a common product,” said Neil Saunders, who heads the firm. “Consumers might be surprised at the high cost, but what can they do if everyone from Amazon to Walmart is raising prices?”

— Reporting for Reuters by Richa Naidu in Chicago and Lovasoa Rabary in Antananarivo.

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Sales of California-grown garlic are now increasing after decades of losing ground to cheaper Chinese imports. Sales are poised to get even better as Chinese garlic faces even higher tariffs, with no end to the trade war in sight.

“In a perfect world, we’d love to see the tariffs stay on forever,” said Ken Christopher, executive vice-president of family owned Christopher Ranch, the largest of three remaining commercial garlic producers in the United States.

While many farmers are suffering through the trade war because they relied heavily on imports to China, U.S. garlic growers benefit because they rely overwhelmingly on domestic sales.

Tariffs on Chinese garlic increased from 10 to 25 per cent on May 9, when the U.S. hiked tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods and dashed hopes that a U.S.-China trade deal could come soon (all figures US$).

While soybean farmers in the U.S. Midwest watched silos fill with unsold crops as top buyer China all but stopped purchases, Christopher Ranch saw domestic garlic sales rise 15 per cent in the last quarter of 2018 after the U.S. applied a 10 per cent tariff on imports of Chinese garlic in September.

Then Trump ordered even higher tariffs this month after trade talks broke down when China backtracked on a host of issues crucial to U.S. officials.

The escalation came just a few weeks before the U.S. garlic harvest.

“The timing couldn’t be better for us,” Christopher said. “We anticipate a surge in demand for California garlic in the coming weeks.”

Christopher, 33, whose farm has 5,900 acres of grass-like garlic fields at Gilroy, traveled to Washington, D.C. in July to urge the Trump administration to include garlic in the list of imports that would face tariffs.

In lobbying for tariffs, Christopher follows in the footsteps of his grandfather, who fought to implement an anti-dumping duty of up to 400 per cent on Chinese garlic in the 1990s.

“We understand in a broader economic sense that a trade war is not in the U.S. best interest,” he said, “But since the tariffs were happening anyway, we needed to be sure that garlic was part of the equation.”

Not everyone is a fan of the garlic tariff. While Christopher was testifying in favour of tariffs to the U.S. International Trade Commission, executives from one of the world’s top seasoning companies, McCormick and Co., were arguing against them.

McCormick says its recipes mostly rely on Chinese garlic, calling it a different product from what is grown in the U.S.

“They’re not substitutable,” CEO Lawrence Kurzius told Reuters in an interview. “Just like wine, origin matters and terroir matter.”

Taste differences aside, California garlic has traditionally sold at far higher prices than Chinese garlic. It now sells for about $60 per 30-lb. box on the wholesale market, according to Christopher. Until recently, Chinese garlic sold for $20 per box, but that has risen to $40 with tariffs and will likely soon rise further, he said.

The new profits U.S. garlic farmers have enjoyed from tariffs are an exception in the U.S. farm sector.

China last year retaliated to Trump’s tariffs with duties on U.S. goods including soybeans, corn and pork. Farm incomes in U.S. Midwest and mid-southern states continued to decline in the first quarter of 2019, according to banker surveys released this month by regional federal reserve banks.

Trump has pledged up to an additional $20 billion in aid to help U.S. farmers hurt by the prolonged dispute after groups such as the American Soybean Association criticized the failure to reach a deal. That’s on top of $12 billion the administration promised last year to compensate farmers for trade-war losses.

The trade war has also left many West Coast specialty crop farmers, like nut and cherry growers, scrambling to find alternative markets after China imposed steep duties on imports that made their products too expensive to sell there.

Jamie Johansson, an olive farmer and president of the California farm bureau — which represents 400 crops and 36,000 members — said the Trump administration had put California farmers in the middle of tariff wars with four of the state’s five top markets, including China.

“Among our members, I have not heard of anyone benefiting from the current trade war and tariffs,” Johansson said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Lucy Nicholson and Richa Naidu; additional reporting and writing by Caroline Stauffer.

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