The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) recently published a report on the uptick climb of Africa’s value-added goods production. The report focused on the continent’s rising investment profile in the global supply chain. This leads naturally to the place of agriculture, which employs at least 52% of Africa’s working population as of 2021. With this in...
Two women leaders in the United States have given voice to the generational transition happening in the agriculture scene with two different modern approaches. On Monday, August 28, 2023, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Xochitl Torres Small toured North Carolina University where she hailed farming technology as a future solution for shrinking farmlands. In Minnesota, U.S. senator Tina Smith mentioned...
Eating lion’s mane mushrooms may have a link to better memory, according to a scientific finding. Researchers have concluded that Hericium erinaceus mushrooms contain a beneficial substance inside their large, snow-white edible ‘manes.’ The study on their memory-boosting ability first appeared in the European Journal of Neuroscience in January, 2023. Confirmation through tests on mice came this week and concluded that Hericene...
Following a surge by 80% in India’s green onion prices, Nepal and Bangladesh are facing a similar spike in this staple of Asian cooking. The culprit is inflation, which has battered India for the better part of 2023. Compounded by the sporadic monsoon rains of March, 2023 that destroyed local crops, inflation has made food costly. Wholesale...
Mexico and Peru are sharing the American love for fresh tropical avocados via back-to-back seasons. While Mexico is the de facto supplier of over 80% of all avocado imports into the U.S., Peru is the benefiting cheerleader. Since 2009, the country has been supplying the U.S. out of season. For an avocado season that peaks in May through...
The news overview this summer of US crabs hinges literary on a year-on-year continual drop in prices. Not just in the US, but in Canada too, where the regulators set a minimum wharf or wholesale price of $2.20 a pound and no less than $5.9 a pound for export prices back in May, 2023. The aim is...
The Florida lobster season started in early August after a two-day ‘appetizer.’ By midnight July 28, snorkelers, professional divers and sport fishing lovers were already turning their crawfish catches over fire grates. This was in the aftermath of the then just-concluded Florida lobster mini-season of July 26-28 each year. Florida Keys alone attracts around 40,000 folks in...
The American ginseng market has experienced phenomenal growth in 5 years. The annual wholesale market value of dried wild ginseng from the US stood at $27 million in 2015, while that of ginseng extracts stood at $1.3 billion in 2020. In this context, here are a few interesting happenings on this money mint of the United States....
Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recalled fresh American cherries by four U.S. suppliers after they failed the test for unauthorized pesticides. The move has made Taiwan enforce a temporary one-month suspension of imports of the American stone fruit. Cherries were among 20 other food imports from the U.S. that did not go past lab examination. They contained...
At VND250,000 per kg or $10.53, US cherries landing in Vietnam plummeted by nearly 50% to a fresh low in week 2 of August 2023, considering they cost double that price (VND500,000) in summer 2022. Customers are celebrating this boon in price by appearing in great numbers. A grocery operator in Ho Chi Minh City known as...