Central European countries are trying to thrash out a deal with Brussels on EU-wide measures to help agriculture after some of them unilaterally introduced import bans on Ukrainian food products.

“What the EU is offering us is offered with a delay, it is too little, a drop in the ocean of needs,” Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference.

Several central European countries became transit routes for Ukrainian grain that could not be exported through the country’s Black Sea ports because of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Bottlenecks then trapped millions of tons of grains in countries bordering Ukraine, forcing local farmers to compete with an influx of cheap Ukrainian imports.

The European Commission has offered 100 million euros (C$148.8 million) of aid for central European farmers in addition to an earlier 56 million-euro package.

It has also said it will take emergency “preventive measures” for wheat, maize, sunflower seeds and rapeseed, but the central European states want this list to be widened to include products including honey and some meats.

On Friday, the Polish government approved measures including increasing the amount of excise duty farmers can have refunded on diesel to 1.46 zlotys (47 cents Cdn) from 1.2 zlotys.

Morawiecki said the government would also ask the European Commission to give it permission to raise the amount that can be refunded to two zlotys. It will also pay subsidies to ensure farmers get a minimum price of 1,400 zlotys per ton of wheat.

— Reporting for Reuters by Alan Charlish and Pawel Florkiewicz.

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A Ukrainian official said that “ship inspections are being resumed, despite the RF’s (Russian Federation’s) attempts to disrupt the agreement.” Kyiv faces a struggle to secure an extension of the agreement, as well as growing opposition to transporting its grain through eastern Europe.

Weather forecasts, meanwhile, pointed to rainfall next week in some drought-affected U.S. hard red winter wheat belts, though planting of soy and corn was seen continuing.

“Corn fell as Ukraine is able to ship grain for now and forecasts allow for planting windows,” Charlie Sernatinger, head of grains for Marex Capital Markets, said in a note to clients.

A stronger U.S. dollar and weaker crude oil due to fears that looming U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate hikes could curb energy demand also dragged down grains prices.

The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) settled down 16-1/4 cents at $6.81-3/4 per bushel (all figures US$).

Soybeans settled 12-3/4 cents lower at $15.06-1/2 per bushel, and corn closed 5-1/4 cents lower at $6.72-1/4 per bushel.

Wheat markets rallied at the start of this week, recovering ground after hitting their lowest since 2021 in late March, on the bans on Ukrainian grain announced by several eastern European Union countries and growing uncertainty over the Black Sea grain deal.

Large expected Russian wheat exports were helping to cap prices, however.

The European Union plans to introduce restrictions on imports of Ukrainian grains, as pressure mounted on Wednesday for Brussels to work out an EU-wide solution after individual countries started banning some Ukrainian imports that had forced local farmers to compete with an influx of cheap Ukrainian products including maize and wheat.

— Reporting for Reuters by Cassandra Garrison in Mexico City, Gus Trompiz in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore.

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This year, he fears uncertainty around Britain’s departure from the European Union will keep his eastern European workers away and the asparagus will stay in the ground.

Asparagus grown in Britain is feted by chefs as among the world’s best but the seasonal worker shortage threatens the country’s asparagus industry and the viability of Chinn’s Cobrey Farms business.

It is a predicament shared by many British fruit and vegetable farmers, almost totally reliant on seasonal migrant workers from EU member states Romania and Bulgaria taking short-term jobs that British workers do not want.

At Chinn’s farm, which turns over more than 10 million pounds (C$17.7 million) a year, the workers pick the premium asparagus spears that can grow up to 20 cm a day by hand. Sometimes they pick them twice a day before dispatching them to customers such as Marks and Spencer, and Britain’s biggest supermarket, Tesco.

“It is incredibly clear cut — there is no U.K. asparagus on your supermarket shelves without seasonal migrant workers,” Chinn, whose great grandfather started as a tenant farmer in 1925, told Reuters.

“We’re really at the point where we either import the workers or we import the asparagus.”

Britain’s asparagus season is short and early — traditionally running from April 23, known as Saint George’s Day, to Midsummer’s Day in mid-June. It will be the first big test of the 2019 seasonal labour crisis.

No-shows

This year Chinn’s team has had to work much harder to recruit Romanians and Bulgarians who are perplexed by the long Brexit process as Prime Minister Theresa May seeks parliament’s approval for a divorce deal with the EU. They are also wary of the welcome they will receive from Britons, who voted in 2016 to leave the EU.

Though Cobrey Farms has signed up 1,200 workers who are due to start arriving at the end of this month, Chinn fears many will not turn up. He does not think he will be able to harvest the entire crop, meaning valuable asparagus will be left in the fields.

“If we’re 20 per cent short of people then we will harvest 20 per cent less asparagus,” said Chinn. “U.K. agriculture’s not a high-margin game, so 20 per cent less means we’re in loss-making territory. Fifty percent could sink us.”

Chinn’s concern grew after 20 of the 100 or so workers due to help cultivate the crops in January failed to turn up.

Of 247 workers due to arrive between March 31 and April 6, 125 are yet to book flights, he said. They include 38 who have worked at Cobrey Farms before and stayed in the dozens of static caravans that stand at the foot of the hills on the farm.

Chinn, who voted Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum, said uncertainty over eastern Europeans’ employment rights and how long they can stay, combined with a fall in the value of the pound, meant Germany and the Netherlands were now considered more attractive destinations.

“They go somewhere which is most straightforward and any, even minor, hurdles you put in their way is just nudging them ever closer to going somewhere else,” he said.

With just 11 days to go until Britain is due to leave the EU, the government is yet to agree a withdrawal arrangement or an extension, meaning the risk of a disorderly “no-deal” Brexit cannot be ruled out.

If Britain agrees on a divorce deal, a transition period will kick in, maintaining freedom of movement until the end of 2020. In the event of no deal, EU citizens arriving after March 29 would need to register to work for more than three months.

Elina Kostadinova, a 28 year-old harvest manager at Cobrey Farms who is from Varna on Bulgaria’s Black Sea, said many workers were worried about coming to Britain because of Brexit.

“They don’t know if they will be welcomed in the country, how long they may be able to stay, how they may be able to travel and what the future may hold,” she said. “It would be wonderful if the U.K. government could make a decision, so we can relay this message.”

British farms typically pay workers the national minimum wage of 7.83 pounds (C$13.90) an hour plus performance-related bonuses.

Chinn said the idea of British workers plugging the gap was fanciful. He does not expect much help from the supermarkets, where sales volumes have already been negotiated for the season and prices have been fixed, barring exceptional circumstances.

Permit trial

Britain’s fruit and vegetable sector relies on up to 80,000 seasonal workers from the EU each year. Having previously been inundated with applications, labour agencies say interest dropped off in 2017 and 2018 as workers from Romania and Bulgaria opted to go elsewhere in the EU.

For the last two seasons, Britain has been short by around 10,000 workers, threatening the food supply and forcing farms to pay higher wages and bonuses. At the end of the summer as workers want to leave, farms will offer free accommodation and to pay the cost of flights to try to persuade them to stay on.

Concordia, a labour agency charity that finds EU pickers for British farms, said it now has to work much harder to recruit.

“U.K. agriculture is definitely entering into a crisis. No labour means no harvesting, which means no fruit and no vegetables on shelves in British supermarkets,” Chief Executive Stephanie Maurel told Reuters.

She was speaking in Moscow after the British government sanctioned a pilot trial for 2,500 workers to enter the country from Russia, Ukraine and Moldova for up to six months over the next two years.

Chinn, who has 3,500 acres of land, wants the government to increase the numbers to 10,000 this summer and over 50,000 in the next couple of years.

“We can’t change this natural cycle of the crop… the crop will come out the ground when it warms up,” he said. “So the key is about not waiting for a total disaster that wipes out large swathes of UK horticulture.”

— Reporting for Reuters by James Davey and Kate Holton.

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The disease, African swine fever, can kill hogs in just two days. China, home to the world’s largest hog herd, has reported more than 100 cases of the disease in 27 provinces and regions since last August. Efforts to contain the fever have disrupted Chinese pork supplies.

The virus, which does not harm people, has spread to China’s neighbour, Vietnam. Eastern Europe has also suffered an outbreak and Belgium has found the virus in wild boar.

To prevent the disease from entering the United States, USDA said it will work with Customs and Border Patrol agents to add 60 beagle teams at key U.S. commercial ports, seaports and airports, for a total of 179 teams.

The dogs will help expand arrival screenings as U.S. authorities check cargo for illegal pork products and ensure that travelers who pose a risk to spreading African swine fever (ASF) receive extra inspections, according to USDA.

“We understand the grave concerns about the ASF situation overseas,” said Greg Ibach, the agency’s undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs.

USDA will also ramp up inspections of facilities that feed garbage to livestock to ensure the waste is cooked properly to prevent potential disease spread, according to a statement.

Hogs can be infected by African swine fever by direct contact with infected pigs or by eating garbage containing meat and or meat products from infected pigs.

In Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has cautioned that people such as farm workers, exchange students or hunters who travel to ASF-infected countries could bring back contaminated food, clothing and/or equipment.

Visitors who have visited a farm in an ASF-infected country must not visit a pig farm in Canada for at least 14 days, CFIA says on its website.

Also, the agency warned, travellers neglecting to declare all animal and food products at the border may face fines of up to $1,300.

Livestock producers should only purchase swine feed from trusted sources that have appropriate biosecurity controls, the agency said.

Furthermore, while ASF isn’t present in Canadian wild pigs, CFIA said it’s considered good biosecurity practice for producers and swine pet owners to keep their animals away from any areas where they could come into contact with wild pigs.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tom Polansek in Chicago. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Yellow mustard is currently topping out at around 36 cents/lb., while brown mustard bids are in the 30- to 31-cent range, according to Prairie Ag Hotwire data. New-crop bids are about two cents lower on average.

“I don’t think growers are getting a lot of market signals to put mustard in the ground again this year based on current spot pricing,” said Walter Dyck, general manager with Olds Products.

“At some point, someone has to come to the market,” said Dyck, noting a slight disconnect between the low spot prices and the fact that supplies were likely still on the tight side.

Canadian farmers seeded 503,800 acres of mustard in 2018, up from 385,000 the previous year and the second-largest acreage base of the past decade, according to Statistics Canada data.

“The (acreage) recovery was mainly on brown and oriental mustard, not so much on yellow mustard,” said Dyck.

Looking to 2019 planting intentions, he expected to see a rebalancing back towards more yellow acres at the expense of brown mustard. However, total mustard acreage will likely be steady to lower, given the lack of aggressive pricing signals.

While Canada remains the world’s largest mustard exporter and is known for its quality, increased production in other growing regions mean that domestic stocks that were once considered tight may no longer be so.

The U.S. has increased yellow mustard production over the past three years, and typically gets higher yields than in Canada, said Dyck. Eastern Europe is also becoming more self-sufficient on both yellow and brown mustard production.

In addition, good blending capabilities in Europe allow mustard processors there to easily bring in Russian or Ukrainian supplies when the price is right.

Looking closer to home, the release of Canada’s new food guide, with its focus on healthier eating, could conceivably bode well for mustard as a low-calorie, high-protein condiment – especially compared to mayonnaise.

However, Dyck said, “we have to remember that mustard goes on hot dogs.”

— Phil Franz-Warkentin writes for MarketsFarm, a division of Glacier FarmMedia specializing in grain and commodity market analysis and reporting.

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While it is widely acknowledged that farmers are squeezing their canola rotations too tightly, setting the stage for a rise in yield-crippling diseases such as clubroot, it’s because farmers see value in the crop, said Neal Gutterson, vice-president of agricultural biotechnology for DuPont Pioneer.

“I think the message we are hearing from growers is that they need other cash crop opportunities,” Gutterson said in an interview at the Ag in Motion 2015 outdoor farm show.

“Are there options we can provide that might replace some of the cereals with corn and soybeans to enlarge that rotation cycle, which may enable them to rotate canola more sustainably over the longer term?” he said.

The answer to that appears to be yes.

DuPont used the new farm show near Saskatoon as its backdrop for launching six new corn hybrids, including three which are ultra-early, plus five new soybean varieties bred for Western Canada.

These are already significant crops in Manitoba but many believe a combination of earlier-maturing varieties and climate change is poised to open up a new Corn Belt across the West.

• Click here for Laura Rance’s video interview with DuPont Pioneer’s Neal Gutterson

The new Pioneer hybrids range from 2,000 heat units (70 comparative relative maturity or CRM) — which is the earliest-maturing corn in Western Canada — up to 2,600 heat units (85 CRM). The hybrids combine high yield potential with traits ranging from disease resistance to pest protection, and stacked herbicide tolerance, the company said.

As well, the company launched new canola hybrids that combine improved yields with better protection against sclerotinia and clubroot. It also offers growers protection against pod shatter through the company’s HarvestMax technology.

Genetic editing, not modification

Gutterson said the new releases reflect DuPont Pioneer’s recognition of Western Canada as one of five regions in the world along with China, South America, India and Eastern Europe that offer significant potential for growth in agricultural productivity.

It also reflects an increasingly integrated approach to crop development whereby companies such as his provide farmers not only with the genetics and traits that offer improved yields, but the agronomic aids needed to achieve that potential.

Gutterson said recent breakthroughs in biotechnology are making it possible for researchers to engage in “genome editing,” which tweaks a seed’s genetic profile without inserting foreign genes.

“We can do things like delete the gene — turn it off. You can edit the gene, just as you’d like a little different variant on the word you chose, or even bring in something from a wild germplasm,” he said. “Genome editing is a tool that can allow us to actually pluck that specific gene out that exists naturally in the germplasm pool and bring it out into an elite variety.”

Gutterson said the technology offers potential for a wide range of applications in plant breeding. But wheat is one of the crops that stands to gain the most from this approach. Wheat has proven difficult to improve through traditional genetic modification and there continues to be controversy around transgenics.

“I think hybridization plus genome editing can help us achieve a similar value proposition to what biotech is trying to achieve,” he said.

While genome editing is a form of mutagenesis, Gutterson said it remains to be seen how varieties developed using the technology will be regulated.

“Our basic position is we will work with the regulators to bring the best science to understanding the risk balance and come up with the right regulatory framework,” he said. “We think of this technology as bringing to the market the same sorts of products that you get through breeding — just quicker, more efficiently — so we hope that regulators will look at it the same way.”

Biological solutions

DuPont Pioneer has also set up a new division to focus on commercialization of biological solutions to agronomic challenges.

“Ultimately what we care about is delivering a particular solution to a grower, and to be honest, the shorter the time is to getting that solution to the market the better,” he said. “Unfortunately, biotech traits are a long cycle.”

As well, specific traits can rapidly become obsolete as pathogens rapidly evolve resistance.

“The more solutions you can combine — the fungicide with a biological trait to make it work, stabilize it and get more durability — is great for the farmer and is good for the company as well.

“We see them as definitely compatible,” he said.

Pioneer’s new releases for 2016

Corn — The new hybrids range from 2,000 heat units (70 comparative relative maturity or CRM) — which is the earliest- maturing corn in Western Canada — up to 2,600 heat units (85 CRM). The hybrids combine high yield potential with traits ranging from disease resistance to pest protection, and stacked herbicide tolerance, the company said.

Soybeans — Five ultra-early T-Series soybean varieties — suited to as little as 2,300 heat units (maturity group 001) will be available for 2016. Variety P006T78R is at 2,425 heat units (maturity group 006) and offers excellent yield potential and harvest standability. All of the Pioneer-brand soybean varieties are glyphosate tolerant with one variety having the Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield trait.

Canola — Pioneer launched new canola hybrids under its Pioneer Protector brand that combine improved yields with better protection against sclerotinia and clubroot. They also offer growers protection against pod shatter through the company’s HarvestMax technology. The Pioneer Protector clubroot resistance trait provides effective resistance against the most prevalent race of clubroot (Race 3) as well as Races 2, 5, 6 and 8, the company said.

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