Reuters — Rogers Sugar, Canada’s largest sugar refiner, said Tuesday it has suspended production at its largest plant as workers went on strike after wage talks at the 128-year-old Montreal-based facility collapsed. The company is implementing contingency measures to minimize disruption to customers. “There’s inventory, the company’s (other) facilities and other alternatives,” said a spokesman […] Read more
Rogers Sugar suspends production at Montreal after strike
Russia not planning expanded ban on Western foods
Moscow | Reuters — Russia does not plan to expand the list of banned Western food products, Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev told reporters. Earlier on Friday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered his ministers to draft proposals to extend Moscow’s food import ban until the end of 2017. The Agriculture Ministry has already started preparing […] Read more
South Africa’s parliament approves land expropriation bill
Johannesburg | Reuters — South Africa’s parliament on Thursday approved a bill allowing state expropriations of land to redress racial disparities in land ownership, an emotive issue two decades after the end of apartheid. Most of South Africa’s land remains in white hands and many commercial and small-scale farmers are currently facing tough times because […] Read more
Monsanto rejects Bayer bid
Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, has rejected Bayer AG’s US$62 billion acquisition bid as “incomplete and financially inadequate” but hasn’t slammed the door on further talks. Reuters on Tuesday quoted two unnamed sources as saying Monsanto can see the logic of combining with the German drugs and crop chemicals group, as per Bayer’s proposal […] Read more
Fertilizer maker CF Industries, OCI end merger deal
Reuters — U.S. fertilizer maker CF Industries Holdings Inc and Dutch rival OCI NV ended their merger agreement on Monday, following the U.S. Treasury’s steps to curb tax avoiding inversion deals. CF Industries had agreed to buy OCI NV’s North American and European plants for US$6 billion in August, in addition to assuming US$2 billion […] Read more
Bayer confirms US$62 billion cash offer for Monsanto
Frankfurt | Reuters –– German drugs and chemicals group Bayer AG said it had made an offer to buy U.S. seeds company Monsanto for US$122 per share in cash, or a total value of $62 billion including debt, to create the world’s biggest agricultural supplier. Bayer said on Monday that the proposal made to Monsanto’s […] Read more
Ex-Dreyfus CEO leaves board in latest shakeup
Paris | Reuters — Global agricultural trader Louis Dreyfus Co. announced board changes on Thursday in which former CEO Serge Schoen will leave the group, another step in a leadership shakeup under main shareholder Margarita Louis-Dreyfus. Schoen oversaw rapid growth at the trading house as CEO between 2005 and 2013. Last year, Louis Dreyfus promoted […] Read more
Syngenta offer deadline extended as regulators probe deal
Zurich | Reuters — The deadline for shareholders in Swiss pesticides maker Syngenta to accept a US$43 billion takeover bid from state-owned ChemChina has been extended to allow for some outstanding regulatory approvals, the company said Tuesday. Syngenta said the offer will now run from May 24 to July 18. “We don’t have all the […] Read more
Forecasters see rising likelihood of La Nina in 2016
Reuters — A U.S. government weather forecaster on Thursday heightened its projections for the La Nina weather phenomenon to take place in the Northern Hemisphere later this year, on the heels of an El Nino likely to fade by early summer. The Climate Prediction Center (CPC), an agency of the National Weather Service, in its […] Read more
France’s Senate suspends palm oil tax, delays neonic ban
Paris | Reuters — The French Senate on Thursday adopted a revised version of its biodiversity bill in which senators scrapped an additional tax on palm oil and delayed until 2020 a ban on pesticides blamed for harming bees. The decisions are not final as the two houses of the French parliament now have to […] Read more
Canadian Cattlemen Presents: Depth of Field
