India is newly the rice production champ of the world in the 2024-25 fiscal year, overtaking China amid escalating groundwater crisis. The subcontinent’s agriculture ministry announced on December 29 that annual rice output up to June 2025 was set to clock 149 million tonnes. This projection echoes the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s 2024-25 production...
The 2026 Osechi ryori (traditional New Year’s feast) culture in Japan is encountering tight supplies of chief ingredients like Hokkaido-derived salmon roe. Low catches of chum salmon and other species across 2025 has pushed up prices while the depreciation of the yen against the dollar has hiked condiment rates. Osechi ryori traditionally contains a three-tier dish that symbolize a pile...
A historic India-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on December 22, 2025 has provided India’s farmers with preferential treatment. While New Zealand will allow 100% duty-free imports, India will only give market access to 70.03% of imports. However, Delhi has excluded 29.97% of bilateral goods from any duty concession, including ammunition, dairy, sugar, peas, chana and corn,...
Waning global demand has lowered sugar prices to their cheapest point in 4 years, nearly matching crude oil’s related 4.75-year low. On December 22, 2025, raw white sugar was averaging $0.15 a pound in New York’s futures despite advancing by 0.94% day-on-day. Covrig Analytics forecasts a worldwide surplus of 4.2 million tonnes in the 2025-26 season due to Brazil’s...
The high proposed 2026 agriculture budget in the Philippines will leverage market access, boost farmers’ income and lower food prices. Lawmakers are already hailing the 214.39-billion peso ($3.65 billion) budget proposal for the Department of Agriculture (DA) as historic. Senator Francis Pangilinan called the allocation the biggest since 2010, per a Phil News report on December 21,...
A geographical origin certification delay hounds the world’s biggest bergamot orange production center, Reggio di Calabria province in southwest Italy. Ezio Pizzi, Conflagricoltura Reggio Calabria and Coldiretti Reggio Calabria have all objected to giving bergamot the Protected Geographical Indication (IGP/PGI) status. DOP Essence Consortium’s president Ezio Pizzi had in 2001 helped certify the orange with Europe’s Protected Designation of...
January 1, 2026 marks the first time oyster fishers will commercially access Apalachicola Bay on the Western Gulf of Florida since December 2020. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) ended fishing license application on December 16, 2025 after a November 10 start. As reflection of conservation measures for the flailing resource, the FWC even included an online...
A subsidy payment fall out in Greece barring thousands of farmers from receiving European Union (EU) benefits has tossed 3-week protests into major ports. The affected 40,000 livestock keepers and crop growers are taking part in the angry blockading protest, with a minister warning of ‘Grexit.’ By December 17, 2025, highway blockades to the customs points at...
Various boxed beef cuts in the United States traded lower on December 17, 2025 versus a day earlier but prices might generally remain high long-term. Live cattle markets saw futures slip by $0.85 on the 17th versus the 16th, to $230.3 a hundred pounds (cwt). Boxed beef cutouts meanwhile eased due to daily load counts increasing...
A recall of Grandma Belle’s Tomato Basil Soup in 14 states by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has spotlighted processed tomato ingredients. The December 12, 2025 recall declared the product by Lil’ Turtles as likely to contain “undeclared milk” allergic to people with milk sensitivity. Recalls are for the 17-ounce bottle with batch dates...