An employee loads wheat near a grain store in the settlement of Raduga in Stavropol Region, Russia June 30, 2021.

Putin’s drive to tame food prices threatens grain sector

The move to address domestic concerns could make a key competitor less competitive

During a televised session with ordinary Russians in late June, a woman pressed President Vladimir Putin on high food prices. Valentina Sleptsova challenged the president on why bananas from Ecuador are now cheaper in Russia than domestically produced carrots and asked how her mother can survive on a “subsistence wage” with the cost of staples



Bangladesh Looks To Africa For Food Land

Bangladeshi firms have joined Chinese and other companies looking to lease farmland in Africa as part of efforts to feed a growing population and offset creeping urbanization at home. Over the next two years Bangladeshi firms plan to lease a total of 600,000 hectares of unused arable land in African countries including Kenya, Ghana, Senegal,

The Climate Change Conundrum

ith the June 20 crop insurance past, farmers and their crop insurance agents are pulling on their galoshes to assess the W damages from yet another spring with too much water. Cattle producers are worrying about winter feed supplies as they watch flood waters inundate their hayfields. We are told this year is one for


Scientists Race To Avoid A Bitter Climate Change Harvest

Charlie Bragg gazes across his lush fields where fat lambs are grazing, his reservoirs filled with water, and issues a sigh of relief. Things are normal this year and that’s a bit unusual of late. His 7,000-acre farm near the Australian town of Cootamundra is testament to the plight facing farmers around the globe: increasingly

More Support Needed For Small-Scale Farming

U.K. charity Oxfam, warning that food demand will have jumped by 70 per cent by 2050, said soaring food prices and weather and financial shocks had aggravated the hunger crisis and that the global food economy was broken. “The food system is pretty well bust in the world,” Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking told reporters,


Cyclone May Be Tipping Point In Australia Climate Policy Debate

Australia has endured two of its deadliest summers on record, blamed in part on global warming, but record fires, floods and cyclones have not persuaded it to take strong action on climate change. But some experts hope that the arrival of giant Cyclone Yasi on the coast of Queensland, already hit by massive floods last

Gulf Arab Governments Tackle Higher Food Prices

Countries in North Africa and the Middle East are urgently seeking ways to soften the blow of surging food prices for their citizens, alarmed by protests against authoritarian rulers from Algeria to Yemen. Unprecedented demonstrations have erupted around the region, triggered by events last month in Tunisia where President Zine al- Abidine Ben Ali was


EU Slaps Duties On U. S. Biodiesel Imports

Akey European Union trade panel approved on March 3 temporary anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on imports of biodiesel from the United States, sources with knowledge of the decision said. “It went through with no problem,” one source told Reuters on condition of anonymity after a meeting of the EU’s anti-dumping committee of 27 national trade

USDA economist sees more corn, less wheat

U. S. farmers will plant close to 90 million acres of corn in 2009 and cut back a bit on wheat, the Agriculture Department’s chief economist said Dec. 2. Chief economist Joe Glauber said at a conference sponsored by Farm Journal magazine that grain and soybean prices would remain volatile because of tight supplies. Food