Author: Timothy Wahome (Timothy Wahome)

Cocoa powder
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Cocoa and weather crossroads favor Ivory Coast’s mid-crop

Ivory Coast is experiencing a good rapport between rain and cocoa, favoring a mid-crop that has delayed from previous dry weather.   According to Reuters on June 9, 2025, soil moisture from good saturation is buoying hopes of gains for the April-September crop.  Unlike the 2023-2024 season when a virus enjoined to cut production, in 2025 rainfall...

Odisha squeezes its celebrated mangoes into France, Belgium markets
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Odisha squeezes its celebrated mangoes into France, Belgium markets

The eastern India state of Odisha has in June 2025 secured market entry for its popular mangoes in France and Belgium. Successful negotiations by the state’s Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Empowerment in conjunction with Palladium India locked the deal. The bilateral development brings Odisha’s mangoes to seven lucrative city destinations that include Dubai, Rome,...

Rice producers in Japan feel for consumers on soaring prices 
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Rice producers in Japan feel for consumers on soaring prices 

Over 50% of paddy producers in Japan feel that rice prices are “too high” for consumers, in a survey by an agricultural association.  In a first for a country that lived for decades without inflation, consumers have lately been queueing to purchase affordable rice.  With retail rates doubling in the year ending May 2025, 43.1% of...

FAO sugar index continues triple-month decline by -2.6% in May 2025
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FAO sugar index continues triple-month decline by -2.6% in May 2025

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on June 6 reported a third consecutive monthly sugar price index decline by 2.9 points for May 2025. May’s sugar index dropped -2.6% from April’s, to 109.4 points, even as the global prices of most other categories performed better. This follows a similar decrement in both March and April, driven by a positive...

Lobster
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The Maine lobster sector expects Trump to ease lobstering

Lobster fishermen and sector representatives in Maine hope President Donald Trump will ease fishing by reopening an important fishery.   Initially, President Barack Obama made the lobster-rich Cape Cod coast adrift 4,900 square miles a marine park.  Trump reverted the decision in 2020, only for President Joe Biden to close it again in 2021.  The...

Uganda farms bamboo into economic empowerment
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Uganda farms bamboo into economic empowerment

In what began in 2019 as a ten-year national reforestation drive, bamboo (bambusa polymorpha) farms in Uganda are slowly but surely flourishing.  Along the Nile in Njeru, Buikwe District in central Uganda, a biofortification company has established a tissue culture laboratory. Modern Laminates Ltd intends to extend its virgin role of kraft paper production and transform...

Beef
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The Malaysia beef price reaches a cut above in Sarawak

Sarawak on northwest Borneo island in Malaysia is courting a steep beef price after import controls, preempting circular farming system plans.  Parts of the state had the highest beef rates countrywide at 95 ringgit ($22.41) a kg by June 6, 2025.  While retail offers across Malaysia in early June clocked 27-48 ringgit ($6.37-11.32) a kg, Sarawak’s averaged 64 ringgit ($15.10). State...

Coffee value addition in Peru gaining among Huánuco’s smallholders
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Coffee value addition in Peru gaining among Huánuco’s smallholders

The Alto Hualluga coffee belt on the banks of Hualluga river in the Huánuco region of central Peru is lately embracing caffeine value addition. All this is thanks to an intervention program by the National Commission for Development and Life Without Drugs (Devida), reports Agraria.  The program will give specialty coffee and processing know-how to 200 smallholders...

Fruit display at FRUIT LOGISTICA, Berlin
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Apples from the Netherlands to make landfall in China 

The Netherlands has secured mandate to export apples to China following the signing of a customs protocol dating from May 14, 2025.  China’s General Administration of Customs reiterated that the protocol covers quality requirements that the European source will ably meet.  The apple protocol is lookalike to the existing one that covers pear imports from the Netherlands...

Softshell crabs from Chesapeake Bay
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A Florida oyster bay reopening after lengthy closure

A Northwest Florida bay whose oyster riches were once of fabled status could reopen in fall 2026 after a five-year closure.  Once supplying 90% of oyster under consumption in Florida, Apalachicola Bay on the Gulf of Mexico closed fisheries in December 2020. The ban happened two years after Mississippi also instituted an oyster harvest moratorium that lasted...