Tag Archives: Agriculture

U.S. farmers scramble to harvest crops as hurricane looms

FILE PHOTO: Lester "Buddy" Stroud, a farm hand at Shelley Farms, walks through a field of tobacco ready to be harvested in the Pleasant View community of Horry County, South Carolina, U.S., July 26, 2013. REUTERS/Randall Hill/File Photo

By Tom Polansek and P.J. Huffstutter

(Reuters) – As powerful Hurricane Florence crept closer to the southeastern United States on Tuesday, farmers in North Carolina rushed to harvest corn and tobacco and stock up on pig rations, while the danger of deadly flooding threatened a state where millions of farm animals are housed.

The forecasts for devastating rain and winds also had WH Group’s Smithfield Foods [SFII.UL], the largest U.S. pork processor, planning to shut two of its North Carolina plants – including the world’s biggest hog slaughterhouse.

Meanwhile, pig farmers across the state were lowering levels of liquid manure in outdoor storage pits in an effort to avoid a repeat of Hurricane Floyd. The 1999 storm flooded manure pits and contaminated waterways with animal carcasses and waste.

FILE PHOTO: Farm workers place harvested tobacco on a conveyor at Shelly Farms in the Pleasant View community of Horry County, South Carolina, U.S., July 26, 2013. REUTERS/Randall Hill/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Farm workers place harvested tobacco on a conveyor at Shelly Farms in the Pleasant View community of Horry County, South Carolina, U.S., July 26, 2013. REUTERS/Randall Hill/File Photo

North Carolina is the country’s leading producer of tobacco, second-biggest producer of hogs and a major poultry producer. Its crops include corn, soy and cotton, making agriculture the state’s No. 1 industry, valued at $87 billion.

“The governor said that North Carolina is the bull’s eye of this hurricane,” Larry Wooten, president of the North Carolina Farm Bureau, said in an interview. “I’ll tell you, agriculture is in the heart of that bull’s eye.”

Florence, a Category 4 storm with winds of 130 miles per hour (210 kph), was expected to make landfall on Friday, bringing heavy, sustained rain and potentially deadly flooding to the U.S. Southeast coast. Some 1 million people have been ordered to evacuate.

Two-thirds of North Carolina’s farm income comes from poultry and livestock, including hogs and dairy cattle, according to Wooten. The state has 8.9 million swine, 12 percent of the U.S. herd, U.S. Agriculture Department data showed.

In 2017, its farmers raised 830.8 million chickens for meat, 9 percent of the U.S. flock, and 32.5 million turkeys, or 13 percent of the U.S. total, according to USDA data.

It is unclear how many farm animals are in the storm’s path, according to both Wooten and the North Carolina Poultry Federation.

Two years ago, more than a million poultry birds died when floodwaters from Hurricane Matthew covered areas across central and eastern North Carolina. Carcasses were composted inside the houses where the birds were being raised.

More than 20 inches (51 cm) of rainfall are possible across eastern North Carolina, said Don Keeney, senior agricultural meteorologist for weather forecaster Radiant Solutions.

The approaching storm also prompted commodity handler Cargill Inc [CARG.UL] to make plans to close meat processing plants in West Columbia, South Carolina, and Dayton, Virginia, on Friday. Both Cargill and Smithfield said the plant closures were due to safety concerns.

CORN ‘ROUND THE CLOCK

Bo Stone, who raises corn and hogs in Rowland, North Carolina, said he worked into the night to harvest his crop to avoid damage from high winds. On Tuesday, rain halted his progress. “We’ve been running as hard as we can go,” he said.

Stone said relocating animals in the storm zone was not an option for many farmers. “Nobody would have the capacity to handle your animals,” he said.

Tall corn and tobacco crops are most vulnerable to wind damage and difficult to harvest if knocked down, said Rhonda Garrison, executive director of the Corn Growers Association of North Carolina.

“They’re around the clock on corn,” said Andy Curliss, chief executive officer for the NC Pork Council, an industry group.

North Carolina’s corn crop was 43 percent harvested as of Sunday, while the type of tobacco most commonly grown in the state was 67 percent harvested, according to USDA data.

North Carolina has waived transportation rules to help farmers move crops and livestock ahead of the most severe storm to threaten the U.S. mainland this year. “During harvest, time is of the essence,” Governor Roy Cooper said in announcing a state of emergency.

Altria Group Inc, the parent of Philip Morris USA, said the storm could potentially affect tobacco fields, and is exploring its crop-buying options to offset any losses. British American Tobacco’s Reynolds American, parent of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, declined to comment.

North Carolina hog farmers have been spraying hog manure on farmland to lower the levels of waste in storage pits, known as lagoons, said Andrea Ashby, spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

“The levels are in pretty good shape to handle the rain, but it all depends on how much rain we get,” Ashby said.

Most manure pits could handle up to 25 inches of rain, Curliss said.

Smithfield Foods said in a statement it has been lowering waste levels as necessary on its farms and encouraging farmers from whom it buys hogs to do the same.

(Reporting by Tom Polansek and P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago; Additional reporting by Julie Ingwersen in Chicago; Editing by Toni Reinhold and Matthew Lewis)

Guatemala warns of falling ash as volcanic activity picks up

Residents pause during a search at an area affected by the eruption of Fuego volcano in San Miguel Los Lotes in Escuintla, Guatemala, June 7, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

By Sofia Menchu

SAN MIGUEL LOS LOTES, Guatemala (Reuters) – Guatemalan officials warned of falling ash from the Fuego volcano late on Thursday and urged caution with flights as the Central American country recovers from devastating eruptions that have killed at least 109 people.

The seismological, volcanic and meteorological institute Insivumeh advised the civil aviation authority to take precautions with flights amid renewed activity from the peak, which produced a massive eruption on Sunday.

Relatives of victims of the eruption of the Fuego volcano receive food from volunteers outside the morgue of Escuintla, Guatemala 7 June, 2018. REUTERS/Luis Echeverria

Relatives of victims of the eruption of the Fuego volcano receive food from volunteers outside the morgue of Escuintla, Guatemala 7 June, 2018. REUTERS/Luis Echeverria

The death toll from Fuego’s most violent eruption in four decades has been gradually rising and now stands at 109, the Guatemala’s disaster and forensic agency Inacif said earlier on Thursday.

Authorities have said a communication breakdown between CONRED and volcanologists in Guatemala delayed evacuations from the surrounding area.

Guatemala’s public prosecutor said on Thursday it would open an investigation into whether protocols were followed to inform proper decision-making in the handling of the disaster.

Rescue teams have been searching frantically for survivors and victims in the ravaged landscape, which is covered in ash and lava.

The eruptions have showered volcanic ash over a vast area and spewed deadly, fast-moving pyroclastic flows through nearby towns.

The U.S. government expressed its “deepest condolences” to the victims on Thursday and said it was sending emergency aid at Guatemala’s request, including an unspecified amount of financial resources to help with food, water, and sanitation.

Residents wait in line to receive aid at an area affected by the eruption of Fuego volcano at the village of Sangre de Cristo in Chimaltenango, Guatemala, June 7, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

Residents wait in line to receive aid at an area affected by the eruption of Fuego volcano at the village of Sangre de Cristo in Chimaltenango, Guatemala, June 7, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

The White House said in a statement it was also dispatching aircraft to transport burn victims for treatment in Florida.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) raised concerns about the economic cost of the disaster in the poor country.

“We should not underestimate the scale of this disaster. Critical, emergency needs are still enormous, and affected communities will need sustained and long-term support,” IFRC President Francesco Rocca said in a statement on Thursday.

Rocca noted that ash had fallen across more than half of Guatemala, covering areas where agriculture is crucial.

“We hope it will not mean a secondary disaster,” he said.

The IFRC has pledged more than 250,000 Swiss francs ($253,000) to support rescue efforts and said those worst hit would need at least a year to recover.

The suspension of rescue efforts around the volcano may be lifted if conditions on the ground improve, CONRED said.

Volcan de Fuego, which means “Volcano of Fire” in Spanish, lies about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of the capital, Guatemala City.

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien, Sandra Maler and Paul Tait)

Big Ag turns to peas to meet soaring global protein demand

FILE PHOTO: A box of Cheerios cereal, fortified with soy and pea protein, is seen in this photo illustration in Wilmette, Illinois, U.S., September 12, 2014. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo

By Rod Nickel and P.J. Huffstutter

(Reuters) – Cargill, the global grains trader, sees the future of protein in the humble pea.

In a joint venture at a Wisconsin plant, flour milled from Iowa yellow peas is mixed with water and spun at high speed through stainless steel drums, separating the protein from starch and fiber.

The resulting powder ends up blended into waffle mixes, sports drinks, nutrition bars and protein shakes – small examples of a much larger push by the world’s biggest agriculture firms to find alternative plant-based proteins to feed people and livestock worldwide.

“When we looked at where is the future going, the pea is the up-and-coming thing,” said David Henstrom, Cargill Inc’s vice-president of starches, sweeteners and texturizers.

Pea plants are shown at a PURIS seed plot in Oskaloosa, Iowa, in this June 2017 handout photo obtained by Reuters March 16, 2018. Bill Phelps/Puris/Handout via REUTERS

Pea plants are shown at a PURIS seed plot in Oskaloosa, Iowa, in this June 2017 handout photo obtained by Reuters March 16, 2018. Bill Phelps/Puris/Handout via REUTERS

Peas are in many ways the ideal modern American food: protein-rich, plant-based and gluten-free. While the market remains relatively small, the demand for pea powder and other emerging protein sources is soaring, from the middle classes in China and the health-conscious in California to livestock producers and fish farmers who need to fatten animals on ever-tighter budgets.

Cargill and its competitors – such as Archer Daniels Midland and Richardson International, the biggest Canadian grain handler – are investing in specialty ingredients in search of higher profit margins than they can extract from bigger commodity crops such as soybeans, corn and wheat.

Cargill invested an undisclosed sum in January in a joint venture with PURIS, a family-run company that started in Iowa as a seed company and now owns the Wisconsin pea-powder plant. The two firms are also working to boost the protein content in peas through cross-breeding, which has not been previously reported.

Cargill rival ADM is building its own pea processing plant in North Dakota and signing contracts with farmers to buy and grow yellow peas, Ken Campbell, ADM’s president of specialty ingredients, said in a statement to Reuters. Company researchers are also studying another 30 types of protein options, including nuts and seeds.

Other firms are trying draw more protein from canola, oats and many other so-called emerging proteins, and Cargill has explored insect-based feed for fish and poultry.

Seed and chemical firm DowDuPont Inc told Reuters it plans to launch a canola seed supercharged with protein through traditional cross-breeding as soon as next year.

Richardson International started construction in April of a C$30-million ($23 million) laboratory in Winnipeg to study proteins and other food ingredients. The firm is exploring a move into pea and oat protein concentrates that could start next year, senior vice-president of technology Chuck Cohen said in an interview. France-based food ingredient company Roquette is building plant in Manitoba to produce pea proteins in North America, which currently imports from Europe.

SOARING DEMAND

Projections for soaring sales from alternative plant proteins have enticed large grain traders that make money by buying, selling, storing, shipping and trading crops. Years of oversupplied grain markets and thin margins have squeezed the trading operations of ADM, Bunge Ltd , Cargill and Louis Dreyfus Co – known collectively as the “ABCDs” – although conditions have improved recently.

Global demand for protein – whether from meat, aquaculture or plant sources – is booming in part due to rising incomes in emerging markets in Asia and Africa, industry analysts say. In North America, consumers are shifting their diet preferences to include more protein, and 35 percent of U.S. households last year said they follow a specific protein-focused diet, such as Paleo or low-carbohydrate, according to research conducted by Nielsen.

The trend is driving a shift in grocery shopping. In the year ended July 8, 2017, sales of plant-based food and beverages in the U.S. increased 14.7 percent over the previous period, according to Nielsen. Sales of meat alternatives are growing especially within prepared foods, an indication that consumers are trying options once only available in niche stores.

Global pea protein sales amounted to $73.4 million in 2016, according to research firm Grand View Research, but are forecast to quadruple by 2025, reaching $313.5 million in sales, helped by popular diets free of gluten and lactose and an expanding middle class in developing nations.

Even with such explosive growth, pea proteins would have high potential upside because they would account for a fraction of the projected $48.77 billion global animal and plant protein ingredients market by 2025, which is led by meat, according to Grand View.

POWERING UP THE PEA

Cargill’s partnership with PURIS includes breeding pea crops for higher protein content. Standard peas contain 18 to 22 percent protein, but PURIS this year will start selling peas packed with 28 percent protein for planting by farmers in the northern Plains and Midwest, said PURIS president Tyler Lorenzen. Once processed, pea powders can contain about 80 percent protein.

Creating new varieties of protein-packed peas, however, can take seven years or more because it is done through conventional breeding rather than genetic modification, Lorenzen said. The lack of genetic modification, however, also attracts many consumers who prefer more organic foods, said Pascal Leroy, head of Roquette’s pea and new protein business line.

In Canada, one of the world’s biggest pea exporters, at least three pea protein plants are planned or increasing production, including Verdient Foods in Saskatchewan, whose investors include Titanic director James Cameron. That gives farmers an incentive to vary plantings that are now dominated by wheat and canola.

Roquette is building what it says will be the world’s biggest pea plant in Manitoba, on the belief the vegetable has unique consumer appeal. German company Canadian Protein Innovation plans a plant in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

Illinois-based ADM told Reuters it is building a new pea protein processing plant at the site of one of its soybean processing complexes in Enderlin, North Dakota. The location gives the company proximity to yellow pea producers and transportation to domestic and international customers, according to ADM’s Campbell.

ADM will launch its line of pea powders as an ingredient for food manufacturers early next year and introduce other plant-based protein product lines in the following two years, the company said, declining to give further details.

Unlike Cargill, ADM is seeking to boost pea protein levels in the processing plant – rather than through crop breeding – and is buying most of its supplies from nearby North Dakota farmers, the company said. ADM officials declined to detail how it can boost protein in a factory, citing competitive concerns.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel and P.J. Huffstutter; Editing by Brian Thevenot)

Monsanto, BASF weed killers strain U.S. states with crop damage complaints

Monsanto's research farm is pictured near Carman, Manitoba, Canada on August 3, 2017.

By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. farmers have overwhelmed state governments with thousands of complaints about crop damage linked to new versions of weed killers, threatening future sales by manufacturers Monsanto Co and BASF.

Monsanto is banking on weed killers using a chemical known as dicamba – and seeds engineered to resist it – to dominate soybean production in the United States, the world’s second-largest exporter.

The United States has faced a weed-killer crisis this year caused by the new formulations of dicamba-based herbicides, which farmers and weed experts say have harmed crops because they evaporate and drift away from where they are applied.

Monsanto and BASF say the herbicides are safe when properly applied. They need to convince regulators after the flood of complaints to state agriculture departments.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last year approved use of the weed killers on dicamba-resistant crops during the summer growing season. Previously, farmers used dicamba to kill weeds before they planted seeds, and not while the crops were growing.

However, the EPA approved such use only until Nov. 9, 2018, because “extraordinary precautions” are needed to prevent dicamba products from tainting vulnerable crops, a spokesman told Reuters in a statement last week. The agency wanted to be able to step in if there were problems, he said.

Next year, the EPA will determine whether to extend its approval by reviewing damage complaints and consulting with state and industry experts. States are separately considering new restrictions on usage for 2018.

Major soybean-growing states, including Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois, each received roughly four years’ worth of complaints about possible pesticide damage to crops this year due to dicamba use, state regulators said.

Now agriculture officials face long backlogs of cases to investigate, which are driving up costs for lab tests and overtime. Several states had to reassign employees to handle the load.

“We don’t have the staff to be able to handle 400 investigations in a year plus do all the other required work,” said Paul Bailey, director of the Plant Industries division of the Missouri Department of Agriculture.

In Missouri, farmers filed about 310 complaints over suspected dicamba damage, on top of the roughly 80 complaints about pesticides the state receives in a typical year, he said.

Nationwide, states launched 2,708 investigations into dicamba-related plant injury by Oct. 15, according to data compiled by the University of Missouri.

States investigate such complaints to determine whether applicators followed the rules for using chemicals. Those found to have violated regulations can be fined.

Monsanto has said that U.S. farmers spraying this past summer failed to follow detailed instructions of up to 4,550 words printed on labels.

The companies will change usage instructions in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the past summer’s problems.

“With significant adoption and a lot of interest in this new technology, we recognize that many states have received a number of reports of potential off-target application of dicamba in 2017,” Monsanto spokeswoman Charla Lord said last month.

 

PHOTOGRAPHING DAMAGED SOYBEANS

State investigators try to visit fields within days after farmers report possible damage to take photos before signs of injury, such as cupped leaves on soybean plants hit by dicamba, disappear. They question farmers and the people who applied the herbicide, and often gather samples from plants to test.

In Arkansas, farmers filed about 985 complaints associated with dicamba, the most of any state. Investigators are probing about 1,200 total complaints involving pesticide use, which includes weed killers, said Terry Walker, director of the Arkansas State Plant Board.

Arkansas delayed inspections of animal feed and allowed overtime to handle the dicamba cases, which is not normal practice, Walker said. He was unable to provide a cost estimate for dealing with the complaints.

Among the farmers who reported damage was Reed Storey, who said he wanted to ensure state officials knew dicamba caused damage even when users follow the instructions.

“I’m calling strictly to let y’all know that we have an issue with this product,” Storey, who spoke last month, said he told Arkansas regulators.

Illinois received about 421 total pesticide complaints, the most since at least 1989, said Warren Goetsch, acting chief of the Bureau of Environmental Programs at the Illinois Department of Agriculture. That includes at least 245 complaints associated with dicamba, which could take until next year to finish investigating, he said.

“It’s frustrating I think for us that we’re as behind as we are,” Goetsch said.

 

MONSANTO’S BIG BET

Monsanto is betting on dicamba-tolerant soybeans to replace those that withstand glyphosate, an herbicide used for decades but which is becoming less effective as weeds develop resistance. The company aims for its dicamba-resistant seeds to account for half the U.S. soybeans planted by 2019.

Monsanto, which is in the process of being acquired by Bayer AG  for $63.5 billion, said it plans to open a call center to help customers use dicamba next year and is talking with states about the product.

Monsanto’s net sales increased $1.1 billion, or 8 percent, in fiscal year 2017 due partly to increased sales of its dicamba-resistant soybean seeds.

The company and BASF already face several lawsuits from farmers alleging damage to plants from dicamba used by neighbors.

 

ANALYZING PLANT SAMPLES

The EPA provides grants to states that help fund investigations into pesticide damage and this year offered 35 states extra assistance analyzing plant samples for dicamba, according to the agency.

Minnesota and Illinois turned to the EPA for help, with the latter saying the federal agency has better equipment to detect low levels of dicamba.

In Iowa, the state’s laboratory bureau received 515 samples to test this year, up 35 percent, as dicamba use helped drive up the total number of pesticide complaints to 270 from a typical range of 70 to 120, according to the state. Each test costs up to $9.

“We are really anxious to flip the page and look ahead to 2018 and try to figure out the things that can be done to improve the situation,” said Mike Naig, deputy secretary of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

 

(Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Jo Winterbottom and Matthew Lewis)

 

Trump reassures farmers immigration crackdown not aimed at their workers

Migrant farmworkers with H-2A visas walk to take a break after harvesting romaine lettuce in King City, California, U.S

By Mica Rosenberg and Kristina Cooke

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said he would seek to keep his tough immigration enforcement policies from harming the U.S. farm industry and its largely immigrant workforce, according to farmers and officials who met with him.

At a roundtable on farm labor at the White House last month, Trump said he did not want to create labor problems for farmers and would look into improving a program that brings in temporary agricultural workers on legal visas.

“He assured us we would have plenty of access to workers,” said Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, one of 14 participants at the April 25 meeting with Trump and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.

During the roundtable conversation about agriculture, farmers and representatives of the sector brought up labor and immigration, the details of which have not been previously reported. Some farmers told Trump they often cannot find Americans willing to do the difficult farm jobs, according to interviews with nine of the 14 participants.

They said they were worried about stricter immigration enforcement and described frustrations with the H-2A visa program, the one legal way to bring in temporary seasonal agricultural workers.

The White House declined to comment on the specifics of the discussion, but described the meeting as “very productive.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not respond to a request for comment on the April meeting.

About half of U.S. crop workers are in the country illegally and more than two-thirds are foreign born, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agriculture Workers’ Survey.

During the roundtable, Luke Brubaker, a dairy farmer from Pennsylvania, described how immigration agents had recently picked up half a dozen chicken catchers working for a poultry transportation company in his county.

The employer tried to replace them with local hires, but within three hours all but one had quit, Brubaker told the gathering at the White House.

Trump said he wanted to help and asked Secretary Perdue to look into the issues and come back with recommendations, according to the accounts.

While other issues such as trade, infrastructure and technology were also discussed, participants were more positive after the meeting about the conversation on foreign labor “than about anything else we talked about,”  said Bill Northey, a farmer and Iowa’s secretary of agriculture.

RED TAPE

Tom Demaline, president of Willoway Nurseries in Ohio, said he told the president about his struggles with the H-2A guestworker program, which he has used for 18 years.

He told Trump the program works in concept, but not in practice. “I brought up the bureaucracy and red tape,” he said. “If the guys show up a week or two late, it puts crops in jeopardy. You are on pins and needles all year to make sure you get the workers and do everything right.”

While use of the program has steadily increased over the past decade, it still accounts for only about 10 percent of the estimated 1.3 million farmworkers in the country, according to government data. In 2016, the government granted 134,000 H-2A visas

Employers who import workers with H-2A visas must provide free transportation to and from the United States as well as housing and food for workers once they arrive. Wage minimums are set by the government and are often higher than farmers are used to paying.

Steve Scaroni, whose company Fresh Harvest brings in thousands of foreign H-2A workers for growers in California’s Central valley, says, however, that he could find work for even more people if he had more places to house them.

Trump recently signed another executive order titled “Buy American, Hire American,” calling for changes to a program granting temporary visas for the tech industry, but not to visas used by farmers and other seasonal businesses, including Trump’s own resorts.

FARMER CONCERNS

Trump also signed two executive orders, just days after taking office, focused on border security that called for arresting more people in the United States illegally and speeding up deportations.

Roundtable participants said that many farmers have worried about the effect of the stepped up enforcement on their workforce, but Trump told them his administration was focused on deporting criminals, not farmworkers.

“He has a much better understanding about this than some of the rhetoric we have seen,” said meeting attendee Steve Troxler, North Carolina’s agriculture commissioner and a farmer himself.

The farmers at the meeting said they stressed to the president the need for both short-term and permanent workers. They said there should be a program to help long-time farmworkers without criminal records, but who are in the country illegally, to become legal residents.

Last Tuesday, Democrats in the House and Senate said they would introduce a bill to give farmworkers who have worked illegally in the country for two consecutive years a “blue card” to protect them from deportation.

Brubaker, the Pennsylvania farmer, said he liked what he had heard about the bill and hoped it would get the president’s support to make it a bipartisan effort.

“The administration has got something started here,” he said of the meeting with farm leaders. “It’s about time something happens.”

(Reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco and Mica Rosenberg in Washington; Additional reporting by Julia Love in Salinas, California; Editing by Sue Horton and Mary Milliken)

Spanish lettuce shortage likely to continue into March, say farmers

iceberg lettuce farm

By Emma Pinedo and Francisco Bonilla

LOS ALCAZARES, Spain (Reuters) – A shortage of iceberg lettuce is likely to continue into March, Spanish farmers say, because freak weather conditions in the south of the country early in the agricultural year prevented the planting of seedlings to replace ruined crops.

The southern region of Murcia, where most Spanish lettuce grown for export is cultivated, suffered the worst floods in two decades followed by its first snow storm in over 30 years in December and January.

“This has been extraordinary, it’s not normal to have so many problems at once,” said Jose Antonio Canovas, a farmer and salesman in Murcia for Kernel Export, which grows, packages and delivers a range of vegetables from cauliflower to broccoli.

The ruined harvest and subsequent shortage of produce has led some British supermarkets like Tesco <TSCO.L> and Sainsbury <SBRY.L> to ration iceberg lettuces to three per visit. The limited supply follows a shortage of courgettes in Britain and supplies of broccoli and aubergines have also been affected.

Vegetable production in the European Union has fallen to 60 percent of normal levels in recent weeks due to bad weather affecting producers across the Mediterranean, from Greece to Spain, Spanish exporters say. Spain accounts for around half of EU vegetable exports.

Not only did floods and snow ruin crops, leaving lettuces ready for harvest withered and battered in the fields, but the bad weather prevented the planting of polytunnel-grown seedlings which meant more delays to the next harvest of Spain’s biggest fruit and vegetable export after tomatoes.

“We have notified our customers that there may be production delays in March because the planting of seedlings has been delayed and in the rush to supply the market some crops were picked ahead of time,” said Fernando Gomez, general manager of The Murcian Federation of Producers and Exporters of Fruit and Vegetables (Proexport).

The production of lettuces, one of the most badly affected crops, has fallen by up to a third in the peak winter months of production when Spain harvests over 100,000 tonnes of the 700,000 tonnes it exports annually.

Production is likely to return to normal by the end of March or the beginning of April, Proexport’s Gomez said.

Many farmers in the area do not insure their crops. In a sector with very slim profit margins of between 1.5 and 4 percent, profit relies on big volumes. Higher prices have not made up for the losses farmers have suffered.

Alongside the hit from ruined crops, the hiring of specialized labor to work the flooded and frozen fields has also eaten into profit margins at farms.

(Writing by Sonya Dowsett; Editing by Angus Berwick and Adrian Croft)

California seeks long-term water savings as drought lingers

Mud cracks along a dried riverbed are pictured near San Ysidro, California

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – California water regulators on Wednesday recommended tighter oversight of agricultural irrigation and a permanent ban on over-watering urban lawns, a first step toward developing a long-term conservation plan amid ongoing drought.

The proposal comes as nearly two-thirds of the state heads into a fifth year of severe drought despite a wet fall and heavy rains last winter that have ameliorated conditions in many areas.

“The last few years provided the wake-up call of all wake-up calls that water is precious and not to be taken for granted,” said Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, one of several state agencies that worked on the proposal.

California has been in the grip of drought since 2013. It has cost billions to the state’s agricultural economy, led a half-million acres of farmland to be fallowed and deprived some communities of reliable sources of drinking water.

In January 2014, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown declared the drought an emergency and in 2015 he ordered urban areas to cut back their water use by 25 percent. Earlier this year, Brown ordered the state to develop a long-term conservation plan.

“We learned during this drought that our planning efforts just weren’t robust enough,” said Max Gomberg, climate and conservation manager for the water board. Going forward, the most populous U.S. state will need to provide water for yet more people while also facing warmer and drier weather associated with climate change, he said.

Rain has returned to Northern California parts of the south over the past year, leading scientists at the U.S. Drought Monitor to declare about 25 percent of the state drought-free. Even so, 60 percent of California is still experiencing severe drought and it is not clear how long those conditions will persist.

The draft proposal released Wednesday will now go through a period of public comment before it is finalized, likely early next year. The legislature must also sign on to parts of the plan.

It calls for urban areas to submit annual water use budgets and plan for droughts of at least five years in length. Suppliers of agricultural water will be required to submit reports on water usage and show that they are working to increase efficiency.

Water utilities must also report how much water they lose through leaks, and speed up repairs.

Temporary requirements such as bans on over-watering lawns, hosing down sidewalks and washing cars with hoses that do not have a shut-off valve would become permanent under the plan.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Britain To Lose Up To 1/3 Of Wheat Crop

The National Farmer’s Union of Great Britain says the country’s wheat harvest could be over 30% smaller than last year due to the extreme weather that has battered the country since last fall.

Flooding, severe rain and snow has caused significant damage to crops. A figure released in April showed that the area planted with winter wheat was already ¼ lower than the previous year. Continue reading →