The guardians collect, trade and plant hundreds of seeds to preserve forgotten varieties of tomatoes, corn and other vegetables that were historically farmed by the Indigenous Mapuche people.

One such guardian, Ana Yanez, said the varieties the guardians aim to save are dwindling due to changing environments or farmers opting for higher-yield varieties.

“We are rescuing the seeds and knowledge of our ancestors,” said Delfin Toro, another guardian. “How they harvested, how they sowed, the dynamics of the moon, when to plant, when to harvest.”

The guardians are finding clients at high-end restaurants.

Pablo Caceres, a seed guardian and chef at Vik Winery’s Pavilion restaurant in the Millahue Valley in central Chile, said he normally finds no more than five varieties of tomatoes at markets and fairs.

“This year we’ll have 26 varieties of tomatoes and we think that there are more than 200,” Caceres said.

This diversification could also help crops adapt to new terrain and areas affected by a changing climate. Ricardo Pertuze, an agronomist at the University of Chile, said new varieties are needed when climate change makes a crop’s current location unsuitable.

The genetic diversity the guardians are collecting are essential to find those varieties, Pertuze said.

Wilson Hugo, an official at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said the trend of safeguarding traditional seeds exists in other nations such as India, China, sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in countries of the former Soviet Union.

“We have to congratulate them and support them and that’s probably not enough,” Hugo said. “We need more of them, we need to do more of this kind of work.”

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Over the last decade, Russia has become a major agriculture exporter and is striving to become a global agricultural superpower. However, it remains reliant on seed imports, primarily from Western countries.

In November, the Russian Agriculture Ministry said it planned to gradually decrease seed imports from Western countries.

The national food security strategy mandates that domestically produced seeds to constitute 75 per cent of total demand, and while figures vary depending on the seed type, they are significantly below this target. The lowest share if domestically produced sugar beet seeds, which stands at 8 per cent.

The watchdog attributed the ban on one company in each of the four countries to the discovery of pests such as sunflower phomopsis, corn leaf spot, and the brown marmorated stink bug in imported seeds.

The targeted companies are the Hungarian unit of the agrichemicals and seeds group Syngenta, which is Chinese-owned and integrated into Sinochem Holdings Corp, France’s Lidea, Turkey’s GLS Tohumculuk and Chile’s Pinto Piga Seeds.

In 2023, Russia introduced import quotas for sunflower and corn seeds, but these quotas were not fully enforced this year as Russian farmers have switched to domestically produced seeds.

— Reporting by Olga Popova and Gleb Bryanski

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Extreme weather conditions led the government to declare a state of catastrophe last week as dangerous rains pounded isolated communities and killed at least three people.

The government of President Gabriel Boric issued an agricultural emergency for 100 municipalities, approving some $8.3 million worth of aid to replace irrigation infrastructure, canal systems and other measures for farmers, who called for more help.

“There is damage to small, medium and large farmers, producers that supply the local market and also a lot of orchards that are dedicated to export,” the president of the National Agricultural Society, Antonio Walker, said at a press conference after meeting with Chilean agriculture minister Esteban Valenzuela Aug. 28.

Aside from damage to irrigation systems and riverside areas, there were also losses of fruit and vegetable orchards and fodder for animals, Valenzuela told reporters.

Besides being a top exporter of copper, the South American nation is also a strong agricultural and forestry exporter, with shipments of fresh fruit and nuts, pulp, wine and wood.

Walker said urgent measures were needed before the arrival of the southern spring in September, when certain crops are irrigated.

Farmers also now fear that the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has brought heavy rains to central Chile after years of water scarcity, could cause further instability in the coming spring months.

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Heavy rainfall has caused floods that have blocked roads and prompted evacuations in the centre of the country in what has been described as the worst weather front in a decade. That follows major fires at the start of the year. 

“We were affected by the fires and now the floods,” said Mario Flores, president of the National Beekeeping Movement (Monachi). 

Flores added that over 3,000 beehives were affected in late June by heavy rains in Chile’s south-central region. 

“The situation we are experiencing today is critical for the national beekeeping industry,” he said. 

Chile’s bee population, hit hard in recent years by drought, is important for pollinating many of the South 

American country’s export crops including cherries, blueberries and apples, part of a multibillion-dollar food industry. 

The country is also one of Canada’s sources for imported boxed bees, along with nations such as Australia and New Zealand. 

Losses have mounted during recent floods, beekeeper Carlos Nunez said. About 300 of his 500 hives were ruined after the Cachapoal River broke its banks in a province to the south of Chile’s capital, Santiago. 

“It was a total loss. What was saved, we are going to see if it can be recovered,” he said. 

The government has decreed an agricultural emergency in areas affected by the floods to financially help farmers, particularly from Santiago to the southern Biobio region. 

“Whatever [help] we get will be welcome because we have been having problems in the beekeeping sector for a long time now, with the fires in the summer, the honey exportation, the fake honey competition,” said Nunez. 

“We are trying to keep our heads up and whatever help we can get will be good.” 

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But a lack of precipitation this year has left the towering and typically snowcapped Andes above the city mostly bare, reservoir levels low and farm fields parched. The scenes, government officials say, are clear evidence of global warming.

On Tuesday, a central Santiago weather station had recorded just 78 mm (three inches) of rainfall so far this year compared to last year’s 180 mm and an average amount of 252 mm, according to Chile’s Meteorological Service.

Science Minister Andres Couve told Reuters that the steady decline in water reserves due to climate change was now a “national priority.”

He added the government was addressing the crisis by investing in water conservation and storage, creating a post for a subsecretary of water and establishing a scientist working group on water management, as well as a climate change observatory.

“We already have overwhelming evidence and it is climatic evidence,” he said. “We are seeing a very significant decrease in rainfall and that is generating water shortages.”

On Monday, United Nations climate scientists warned that extreme heat waves, which not long ago struck once every 50 years, are now to be expected once per decade.

Droughts and downpours are also becoming more frequent, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said, and humans are “unequivocally” to blame through greenhouse gas emissions.

Couve said Chile, a long, thin nation with the world’s driest deserts at its north, glaciers, forests and wetlands throughout and the Antarctic at its south, had bountiful proof of climate change in action.

“The scientific evidence is there but also the weather events are happening with a frequency and intensity that makes it very easy for people to see,” he said.

‘Day Zero’

Some scientists and politicians in Chile are warning of growing, and potentially irreversible, water shortages in the central region whose Mediterranean climate has made it home to vineyards and farms, as well as a third of its population in Santiago, the country’s economic engine.

Two rivers that provide Santiago with water — the Mapocho and the Maipo — are drier than they were in 2019, the driest year in Chile’s history, Public Works Minister Alfredo Moreno said, prompting regulators to clamp down on water use and seek alternative sources.

Chile’s utilities companies have invested heavily in new infrastructure to avoid the arrival of “Day Zero,” — the day the taps run dry, a threat which prompted major water restrictions in Cape Town, South Africa, and Chennai, India, in recent years.

That day however “arrived almost a decade ago for nearly 400,000 people who inhabit rural areas of Chile and today receive water in tanker trucks,” said Raul Cordero, University of Santiago climatologist and leader of its Antarctic Investigation Group.

Cordero said the situation faced by rural communities in central Chile is likely to spread and worsen over time.

“It is unlikely the precipitation we once had in the central region in the 1980s and 1990s (will) return, or that we recover that climate,” he said.

Chile must build more reservoirs and desalination plants, which are increasingly relied on by its critical mining sector, he added.

“Our only advantage is we now know how climate change will hit us hardest, so we know what we need to do to face the consequences,” he said.

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According to Prairie Ag Hotwire data from Wednesday, high-delivered bids for yellow peas are now priced at $11.25 per bushel, $4.16 (59 per cent) higher than at the same time last year. Meanwhile, the price of green peas has dropped $1.50/bu., or 13 per cent, to $10.

Like barley and corn from North America, the yellow pea is yet another crop seeing larger shipments go to China as it repairs a hog industry decimated by African swine fever.

According to Canadian Grain Commission data, 1.3 million tonnes of peas were exported to China during the 2020-21 crop year up to the end of January, 33.5 per cent more than at the same time last year. Also, 204,800 tonnes of peas have gone to Bangladesh, 17 per cent more than last year.

“They’re trying to build up their swine,” Dale McManus, a trader for Johnston’s Grain at Welwyn, Sask., said. “They’re buying a lot of peas to feed them.”

“China has a shortfall on tonnage and they’re playing catch-up right now,” Kent Anholt, a trader for Rayglen Commodities in Saskatoon, said, adding that 80 per cent of Canadian yellow pea exports are going to China.

Mike Jubinville of MarketsFarm also mentioned the pea processing industry has grown in Western Canada and the crop is increasingly being used for feed to fill the void left by other depleted crops such as barley.

While he projects at least 3.5 million tonnes of Canadian peas going to China this year, other players have also emerged. Chile imported 68,000 tonnes of Canadian peas in January alone, more than twice as much as China. Ukraine and Russia have both upped their own pea exports to China in response to wheat tariffs, but Jubinville doesn’t believe they will affect the amount of Canadian exports until the next marketing year.

“It’s going to take another growing cycle just to get to a point where we start seeing overproduction issues and I don’t see that happening immediately,” he added. “There’s plenty of room in the Chinese market to incorporate more peas from other sources.”

Despite stronger pea prices, Jubinville expects similar seeding numbers (4.25 million acres) for peas in Canada compared to last year, as it competes for acreage against other high-priced crops.

“Historically, (the new pea crop price of) $9/bu. is a profitable price, but is it enough of an incentive to really encourage a lot of new acres to come in relative to the canola, the barley, the oats and the wheat? No, it’s not.”

— Adam Peleshaty reports for MarketsFarm from Stonewall, Man.

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In recent years, U.S. producers have claimed damages from what they argue are unfair trade practices by Mexico’s large farm exporters, particularly fresh fruit growers who compete against U.S. producers from politically influential states such as Florida.

The ITC “has determined that fresh, chilled or frozen blueberries are not being imported into the United States in such increased quantities as to be a substantial cause of serious injury, or threat of serious injury, to the domestic industry,” the independent body said in its ruling.

The Mexican government praised the ruling in a statement, adding that its blueberry exports complement U.S. production and provide a benefit to consumers with year-round supply.

The ruling in the so-called Section 201 safeguard investigation ends for now the possibility of the U.S. government imposing duties on imported blueberries.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) had requested that the ITC initiate the case to determine whether the foreign supplies were hurting domestic growers.

The same law was used in 2018 by the Trump administration to impose tariffs and quotas on imports of washing machines and solar panels.

The USTR, in its report last fall announcing it would seek a Section 201 investigation, cited U.S. Census Bureau data showing imports of blueberries into the U.S. had “more than doubled” between 2014 and 2019.

Those data showed the U.S. importing over US$1.24 billion in blueberries in 2019, with over 98 per cent coming from five countries: Peru ($485.2 million), Chile ($313 million), Mexico ($291.1 million), Canada ($116 million) and Argentina ($33.3 million).

In 2020, Mexico exported some 53,000 tonnes of fresh, frozen and processed blueberries valued at more than $355 million, according to agriculture ministry data.

Around 96 per cent of the shipments were sent to the United States.

— Reporting for Reuters by David Lawder in Washington and David Alire Garcia in Mexico City. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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The sale to Tianqi comes as Chinese companies increasingly scour the globe for the raw materials necessary to ramp up Chinese production of electric vehicles.

Lithium is a key component in the batteries that power everything from cellphones to electric vehicles.

“A minority stake in SQM is great from our perspective, especially when we look at long–term growth and expectations for the lithium industry,” said Ashley Ozols, business development manager for Tianqi, after the deal closed.

Tianqi struck a deal earlier this year to buy the stake from Nutrien, the company formed by the merger of Agrium and PotashCorp. As part of that merger deal, Nutrien was required to sell the stake.

That share came from PotashCorp, which had bought into SQM starting in 2001 with an 18 per cent stake. SQM’s businesses also include specialty fertilizers and iodine.

The Tianqi deal, however, immediately met with scrutiny from regulators, competitors and consumer groups.

Chilean authorities initially expressed concerns that a tie-up between Tianqi and SQM would give the Chinese company a near monopoly over the global lithium market and unprecedented pricing power.

Tianqi, through Talison Lithium which it controls, is also in a joint venture with SQM’s top competitor, No. 1 lithium producer Albemarle Corp. in Australia, that owns the world’s biggest lithium mine, Greenbushes.

A Chilean antitrust court eventually approved the transaction, placing conditions on the sale that limit Tianqi’s access to SQM business secrets and sensitive information.

Ozols said Tianqi would nominate three directors to SQM’s board following the Chilean miner’s shareholder meeting in April.

Several groups, including SQM itself, filed appeals against the antitrust court’s decision to authorize the deal, but each was struck down, allowing it to proceed.

The country’s Constitutional Court in late October also rejected a last-ditch lawsuit by former chairman Julio Ponce Lerou, who controls SQM’s majority shareholder Pampa Group, to overturn the antitrust court’s decision.

“We will reach out to the Pampa Group and others and obviously form a good relationship so we can work together for the benefit of all SQM shareholders,” Tianqi’s Ozols said.

Nutrien has said it plans to use proceeds from selling stakes in SQM and two other companies to expand its network of farm retail stores in the U.S. and establish one in Brazil.

— Reporting for Reuters by Antonio De la Jara; writing by Dave Sherwood.

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Walmart is buying Cornershop, which offers deliveries in Mexico and Chile, for US$225 million. The deal, one of Walmart’s various global investments and tie-ups geared at helping the retailer compete with Amazon.com, is slated to close by year’s end.

In the U.S., Walmart is the largest seller of groceries but grapples with the challenge of swiftly delivering fresh food to the homes of online customers. The company has promised to make such deliveries in 100 U.S. cities by the end of 2018 and so far covers nearly 50 markets.

In a race to meet its goal, the company is working with several small delivery companies including Doordash and Postmates after ditching partnerships with ride-share companies Uber and Lyft.

Cornershop chief technology officer Daniel Undurraga said in an interview on Tuesday that Cornershop plans to launch in Toronto in the first quarter next year. If it does well, Vancouver and Montreal would follow.

If Canada is successful overall, Undurraga said, the U.S. could be the next target.

“Canada is a good test market for launching a service in the U.S. It is very similar, but smaller,” he said.

Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Judith McKenna, chief executive of Walmart International, said in September that Cornershop was expected to provide a learning experience for Walmart’s markets beyond Mexico and Chile.

An English-language version of the app will roll out within a month as part of preparation for the Canada launch, Undurraga said.

Cornershop still needs to partner with a local payments company and recruit workers in Canada. About 11,000 people currently work for Cornershop across 11 cities in Mexico and Chile.

Apart from Walmart the platform also offers deliveries from various retailers, including Costco Wholesale Corp. and Mexican chains Chedraui and La Comer. Undurraga said Cornershop is building firewalls so that Walmart cannot access customer data from other stores.

The company will also consider raising delivery fees to account for higher labour costs in Canada and the U.S. Cornershop generates other revenue through advertising, commissions from retailers and price mark-ups.

The technology, however, is already in place.

“We have our own tools for being able to do this without a lot of effort,” Undurraga said.

— Daina Beth Solomon reports on retail and e-commerce for Reuters from Mexico City; additional reporting by Nandita Bose in New York.

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The deal came as U.S. President Donald Trump vowed earlier in the day to press ahead with a plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, a move that other nations and the International Monetary Fund said could start a global trade war.

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will reduce tariffs in countries that together amount to more than 13 per cent of the global economy — a total of US$10 trillion in gross domestic product. With the U.S., it would have represented 40 per cent.

“Today, we can proudly conclude this process, sending a strong message to the international community that open markets, economic integration and international cooperation are the best tools for creating economic opportunities and prosperity,” said Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

Heraldo Munoz, Chile’s minister of foreign affairs, said he expected Chile’s trade with China, its top trading partner, to continue growing alongside trade with CPTPP countries.

Even without the U.S., the deal will span a market of nearly 500 million people, making it one of the world’s largest trade agreements, according to Chilean and Canadian trade statistics.

The original 12-member agreement, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), was thrown into limbo early last year when Trump withdrew from the deal three days after his inauguration. He said the move was aimed at protecting U.S. jobs.

The 11 remaining nations finalized a revised trade pact in January. That agreement will become effective when at least six member nations have completed domestic procedures to ratify it, possibly before the end of the year.

“We are very hopeful like others that we will see the CPTPP coming into effect about the end of the year or shortly thereafter,” said Australia Trade Minister Steven Ciobo.

Canadian commodity and industry groups on Thursday hailed the signing. Chris White, CEO of the Canadian Meat Council, said the council is “confident that this deal has the potential to increase beef and pork sales by at least $1 billion, creating the potential to support an over 11,000 new jobs” in Canada.

For the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, representing groups in several exporting sectors, “the big prize” in CPTPP membership is access to Japan, a “high-value and stable market for agrifood products, importing $4 billion of Canadian agrifoods every year.”

The deal also affords Canadian agrifood exporters “a competitive advantage in the (CPTPP) region over the U.S., since it is not part of the agreement,” CAFTA said.

Grain Growers of Canada, among others, urged the Canadian government to be among the first six to ratify the deal, as “being part of the first wave will ensure that Canada can take full advantage of the initial round of tariff cuts.”

Noting the CPTPP countries make up nearly 27 per cent of Canada’s wheat export market, Kevin Bender, chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission said the deal will also “ensure that Canada isn’t losing market share to our main competitors within the CPTPP zone.”

The Canola Council of Canada noted that when tariffs are “fully eliminated” in Japan and Vietnam over five years, exports of Canadian canola oil and meal to those countries could increase by up to $780 million per year.

Markus Haerle, chair of Grain Farmers of Ontario, noted the deal “covers three important export markets for food-grade soybeans” — specifically, Japan, Vietnam and Malaysia — “and will improve access to pursue further growth.”

Cam Dahl, president of Cereals Canada, said the deal’s “benefits and influence are also expected to grow as potential new entrants such as Indonesia seek to join.”

GFO, Haerle added, “would like to see the agreement ratified without any non-tariff barriers inserted and to see a similar agreement with China get underway.”

‘The way forward’

The revised agreement eliminates some requirements of the original TPP demanded by U.S. negotiators, including rules to ramp up intellectual property protection of pharmaceuticals. Governments and activists of other member nations worry the changes will raise the costs of medicine.

The final version of the agreement was released in New Zealand on Feb. 21. The member countries are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

“We’re proud … to show the world that progressive trade is the way forward, that fair, balanced, and principled trade is the way forward, and that putting citizens first is the way forward for the world when it comes to trade,” Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Phillippe Champagne said.

In January, Trump, who also has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, told the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that it was possible Washington might return to the TPP pact if it got a better deal. However, New Zealand’s trade minister said that was unlikely in the near term, while Japan has said altering the agreement now would be very difficult.

On Thursday, Munoz said CPTPP was not an agreement against anyone and several governments had said they want to join it.

Trump vowed on Thursday to impose a 25 per cent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports, although he said there would be exemptions for NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada.

He announced the plan for tariffs last week, rattling financial markets.

Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo, in Santiago for the CPTPP signing, told Reuters he would not allow the U.S. to use the tariffs to pressure it in the NAFTA talks. Champagne told Reuters that Canada would not accept duties or quotas from the U.S.

— Reporting for Reuters by Dave Sherwood and Felipe Iturrieta; writing by Dave Sherwood and Caroline Stauffer. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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