The Communist Party daily, Granma, said a state agricultural company had partnered with the unnamed firm for three years to cultivate the grain on 3,000 hectares (7,413 acres) in western Pinar del Rio province, hinting the lease and acreage would be extended.

“For the first time, a process of handing over land to a foreign company is being carried out to take charge of its cultivation,” engineer Jorge Feliz Chamizo, who is the deputy director of the Granos de Los Palacios agroindustrial company, was quoted as stating.

Cuba consumes up to 700,000 metric tons of rice annually, most imported from Vietnam.

But the import dependent county’s main staple has been in short supply in recent years due to an economic depression sparked by a lack of convertible currency to import food, fuel, spare parts, raw materials and agricultural inputs.

Local rice production peaked at around 250,000 metric tons of consumable rice in 2018 before the crisis began, and has fallen more than 80 per cent since then, the National Statistics Office has reported.

Granma also reported the venture would be the first to hire labor directly, instead of through a state-run hiring hall.

Many investors complain they are forced to hire labor through the hiring halls in hard currency which then pay their employees in pesos and in general make managing their labor force more difficult.

Foreign investment has declined in recent years due to tougher U.S. sanctions, according to the government, though no statistics are available.

Western diplomats and businesses also report difficulties repatriating profits due to the country’s cash shortage.

Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said in December the government would change the labor practice as part of reforms this year to the foreign investment law.

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Marcos, who was sworn in as president last week and has appointed himself agriculture minister, said the Philippines — the world’s second-biggest rice importer — was now at a disadvantageous position over its food supply.

“When we look around the world, everyone is preparing for it,” Marcos said during a meeting with senior agriculture officials, referring to the food crisis.

“So we should really pay close attention to what we can do.”

Marcos comes to power at a critical time, with inflation at its highest in more than three years and as the world faces a tightening food supply, resulting from the conflict between major cereals exporters Russia and Ukraine.

A transcript of the meeting provided by the presidential mentioned no specific remedial measures or targets, but Marcos said the government would ensure affordability of food prices.

To ensure long-term food sufficiency and affordability, Marcos reiterated a campaign promise to “reconstruct our value chain”, within his six-year term, to lessen dependence on food imports.

He also sought a review of a 2019 Rice Tariffication Law, which opened the Philippine door wider to imports by removing the annual quota on purchases and limiting the government’s role in rice trade to ensuring supply during emergencies.

— Reporting for Reuters by Enrico Dela Cruz.

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Container-based transportation has been hit by sky-high costs and delays amid booming shipping demand, while container terminals at ports struggle to deal with the flow.

Commodities such as refined sugar, coffee, rice, cotton and cocoa have moved from dry bulk vessels to containers in the past since the large boxes were more practical and offered good quality control. But now shippers are moving back, at least temporarily.

“Around 80 per cent of the trade on refined sugar was done using containers before the pandemic. This has now fallen to around 60 per cent,” said Paulo Roberto de Souza, CEO of Alvean Sugar, the world’s largest sugar trader.

According to Souza, the change is only not bigger because there are not a lot of small vessels available in the market.

Data from shipping agency Williams regarding port movement in Brazil, the world’s largest sugar exporter, shows that volumes of refined sugar transported using containers fell 48 per cent in June and July (latest data available) compared to the previous year.

Bob Cymbala, owner at food trader A+J Global USA, based in Vancouver, said that some clients are turning down offers due to high prices for container freight, looking for shipping alternatives instead.

One of his clients, a rice exporter in India, is looking to use a dry bulk cargo to ship to Western Africa a volume of rice equivalent to 10 full containers.

Coffee exporters are not considering a change away from containers yet, besides the difficulties, mostly due to concerns over quality. They say containers, with proper lining, better preserve coffee characteristics such as smell and taste.

— Reporting for Reuters by Marcelo Teixeira.

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The farmers, killed on Oct. 3 in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, were part of India’s longest-running agricultural protest, opposing laws they fear will reduce guaranteed minimum prices for their crops.

Police arrested Mishra late on Saturday after questioning him for more than 10 hours, said Deputy Inspector General Upendra Agarwal, who is heading the probe. Mishra had not responded to a police summons on Friday.

“We are taking Ashish Mishra in custody. He was not co-operating in the investigation,” Agarwal said.

Mishra’s lawyer and father could not be reached for comment.

Farmers say the car that crashed into the protesters, about 130 km north of the state’s capital Lucknow, was owned by the son of the junior home minister.

Ajay Mishra Teni said at the time his son was not at the site and that a car driven by “our driver” had lost control and hit the farmers after “miscreants” pelted it with stones and attacked it with sticks and swords.

The incident sparked protests that claimed four more lives, including that of a local journalist.

Tens of thousands of farmers have camped for months on major highways to New Delhi to oppose the three laws. They say the legislation will erode a longstanding mechanism that gives farmers a minimum guaranteed price for their rice and wheat.

The government says the laws will help growers get better prices.

The protests have gained momentum in Uttar Pradesh ahead of a state assembly election next year, with a group of influential farmer leaders ratcheting up pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to roll back the laws.

— Reporting for Reuters by Saurabh Sharma; writing by Nidhi Verma.

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In India, the world’s biggest rice exporter, the conventional method of rice cultivation requires farmers to sow seeds in nurseries and then wait for 20 to 30 days before manually transplanting the seedlings into plantation fields that are ankle-deep in water.

With the new seed varieties, developed by the state-run Indian Agricultural Research Institute, farmers only need to irrigate the field once to moisten the soil before sowing the rice.

The conventional cultivation method also uses a lot of water to control weeds as herbicides are costly and often do not distinguish between the rice and the unwanted vegetation.

Government scientists said the new rice varieties contain a gene that would allow farmers to spray a common, inexpensive herbicide without worrying about any side effects.

“Our focus is very high on more nutritious seeds, that can be adopted to new conditions, especially in changing climates,” Modi said.

Water conservation is likely to be the main attraction of the new rice varieties in India, where farmers rely heavily on monsoon rains.

The conventional method uses 3,000 to 5,000 litres of water to produce one kilogram of rice. The new varieties could cut water use by at least 50-60 per cent, farmers and government officials say.

“For farmers like us, the main concern was the management of weeds, and the new varieties take care of that concern,” said Ravindra Kajal, who grows rice on his nine-acre plot in the northern state of Haryana.

India is also the world’s biggest rice producer after China.

— Mayank Bhardwaj reports for Reuters from New Delhi.

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Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat on Wednesday launched the “latest iteration” of its flagship Beyond Burger, billed as “produced locally at a co-manufacturing facility in Canada” and available now through major grocery retailers across the country.

Beyond Meat didn’t say in Wednesday’s release who its co-packer is or where in Quebec it operates, but said “producing the Beyond Burger locally in Canada enables Beyond Meat to better serve the Canadian market, while reducing the company’s environmental footprint.”

Per patty, the latest Beyond Burger offers 20 grams of protein from plant-based ingredients such as peas, mung beans and rice, with marbling made from cocoa butter to melt and tenderize like beef, the company said.

Beyond Meat didn’t say Wednesday exactly how the new product differs from what it has sold until now at Canadian retail, but said it “represents Beyond Meat’s commitment to creating plant-based protein that is indistinguishable (in terms of taste, texture, colour and cooking experience) from its animal protein equivalent.”

Beyond Meat early this year announced it had locked in a multi-year pea protein supply deal with French processing firm Roquette, which itself is expanding its space in the Canadian pea market with a plant under construction at Portage la Prairie, Man.

Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger has been in the Canadian retail market since June last year, followed by Beyond Beef and, more recently, Beyond Sausage.

The company has also brought its products to the Canadian fast food market, through chains including A+W, McDonald’s, Tim Hortons and Subway.

Tim Hortons last year dialed back its Beyond Meat use to the Ontario and B.C. markets. McDonald’s ran a 12-week test of a “P.L.T.” Beyond Burger in southwestern Ontario earlier this year, but hasn’t yet said if it will take that sandwich into other markets, either within Canada or anywhere else.

Beyond Meat didn’t say Wednesday whether its Quebec partner will supply faux-meat for the company’s Canadian restaurant or foodservice customers, or strictly for retail. A message to company representatives Wednesday wasn’t immediately returned. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The main symbol of the Depression-era mentality was the two enormous chest freezers in my grandparents’ basement. This was in addition to the canned fruits and root vegetables that were stored in the basement. These stocks were for essentially three people. One of the lessons from the Depression was that food supplies for at least one year were required — just in case something bad was going to happen. The world may have been moving to a just-in-time food-distribution model, but it was not a theme in my grandparents’ house.

Food security is coming to the fore in this COVID-19 world and there are signs that supply chains are beginning to buckle under the strain. Meat supplies will be strained if plant closures due to COVID-19 continue to occur. One of the largest clusters of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is now located in South Dakota, at the Smithfield Foods pork plant in Sioux Falls. Argentina and Brazil are experiencing delays in loading grain vessels due to COVID-19 and China is having trouble unloading boats that arrive. Russia, Romania, Ukraine and Kazakhstan all have issued some form of grain or flour export restrictions as those countries monitor progress of their 2020 crops.

Stocks of grains globally are more than adequate to buffer these supply chain interruptions. At least, that is what the markets currently believe. The only problem is that although stocks are at near record levels, most of the surplus grain in the world is now in China. The three major grain staples — wheat, corn and rice — are projected to hit 777.5 million tonnes by the end of the respective crop years. Of those stocks, 60 per cent will be located in China. Ten years ago, 35 per cent of the global stocks were located in China. Since China does not normally export significant amounts of grain, these stocks are not available to the market.

The rest of the world (ROW, in the graph shown above) has maintained relatively constant stocks of the three major grains as China has been increasing its stocks. Only 310 million tonnes of major grain stocks are located in the ROW countries. This is up by only 15 per cent from 2010-11 levels.

Do these relatively low level of stocks matter? The answer is that the low stocks levels will not matter until we encounter a problem in the major exporting countries. If a problem does occur, there is only one country with the equivalent of my grandmother’s freezers, and that is China. Markets, in my opinion, continue to be lulled by the overall stocks levels and are not pricing in the current risks to the global supply chain.

— Bruce Burnett is director of weather and markets information for MarketsFarm, a premium subscription service owned by Glacier FarmMedia.

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Naeem al-Maksousi was replaced by Hassanein Mahdi Elwan, a document reviewed by Reuters showed.

The reason for the replacement, which comes after a week of unrest in Iraq in which more than 100 people have been killed, was not clear.

A government source told Reuters the move was routine, but a Middle East grains trader with close knowledge of the Iraqi market linked the change to the current protests over living conditions.

“The government has to make some changes with all what is happening in the country,” said the trader, who declined to be identified.

The unrest in Iraq represents the biggest security and political challenge for Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government since it took power a year ago.

Iraq’s grain board is responsible for billions of dollars worth of wheat and rice purchases each year to supply the country’s massive food rationing program. Maksousi has headed the organization since 2018.

The state buyer falls under the trade ministry and holds regular international purchasing tenders to import wheat and rice for the rationing program, which covers flour, cooking oil, rice, sugar and baby milk formula. The program was first created in 1991 to combat U.N. economic sanctions.

Iraqis have taken to the streets in the last six days to protest poor living conditions which they blame on what they see as corrupt leaders.

— Reporting for Reuters by Moayed Kenany in Baghdad and Maha El Dahan in Dubai.

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The WTO has strict rules about the size and nature of payments, and member governments keep a close watch for any competitors who might be cheating. Their questions — 62 pages for the June 25-26 meeting — can range from requests for clarification to outright allegations of illegal handouts.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have both made boosting farm incomes a priority. Trump is trying to offset domestic damage from a tariff war with China; Modi faces a slowdown in India’s agriculture-dominated economy.

The European Union asked India to explain how Modi proposed to spend 25 trillion rupees (C$479.8 billion) on agriculture and rural development, doubling farmers’ incomes by 2022 as part of a 100 trillion-rupee, five-year infrastructure splurge.

“How will this be done, taking into account global market prices of produce and measures put in place to prevent excess production?” the EU asked.

The United States queried India’s five per cent export subsidy for non-Basmati rice and its growing state buying of wheat at rising prices, despite back-to-back record harvests, noting that it was on track for a record wheat stockpile.

The United States and Australia also wanted details of India’s new “transport and marketing assistance” for agriculture, which Australia said was an export subsidy that should be phased out.

The United States faced questions from Australia, Canada, China, the EU, India, New Zealand and Ukraine about Trump’s US$16 billion (C$21.45 billion) “market facilitation package,” the second payout under a program that had been described as a one-off.

China said the package appeared likely to breach the allowed “product specific” ceiling of five per cent of the value of production.

The EU also queried a US$19 billion disaster bill approved by Congress this month, saying it would let the U.S. Department of Agriculture boost “the prevented planting payment factor on crop insurance to 90 per cent instead of 55 per cent for corn and 60 per cent for soybeans.”

India criticized the U.S. 2018 Farm Bill, saying it benefited not only farmers, but also their first cousins, nieces and nephews, with children and spouses qualifying for $125,000 of payments.

Among other questions, Canada and Australia asked about the impact of Brexit, and the United States was concerned Pakistan’s wheat subsidies were creating “huge surpluses” and said China appeared to be exporting state-owned rice below cost.

— Tom Miles is Reuters’ chief correspondent in Geneva.

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The ruling, issued by the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), stated China did not apply the TRQs on imports of wheat, rice and corn from the U.S. on a “transparent, predictable and fair basis.” China could have imported more of those commodities from the U.S.

In the dispute, China contended it only needed to give public notice on the total amount of the TRQs made available, not the amounts actually allocated to the U.S.

The DSB stated in its ruling that China did provide public notice for the total TRQ amounts available for allocation each year. However, the body found China did not do so for TRQs that were allocated, unused and returned.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimated US$3.5 billion of corn, wheat and rice could have been imported by China in 2015, if the latter applied the TRQs in a proper manner.

It wasn’t until December 2016 that the U.S. requested consultations with China regarding the latter’s application of TRQs. Eight months later the U.S. turned to the WTO to settle the matter, and submissions from the U.S. and China were made during the spring of 2018. Hearings were held during that summer and fall, and in March the U.S. and China reviewed the body’s findings.

The ruling pertains to state and non-state trading enterprises.

“Making sure our trading partners play by the rules is vital to providing our farmers the opportunity to export high-quality, American-grown products to the world,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a USDA press statement.

However, the DSB’s ruling was based only on the agreement to which China joined the WTO. The DSB ruled against the U.S. when it came to further complaints filed under the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

— Glen Hallick writes for MarketsFarm, a Glacier FarmMedia division specializing in grain and commodity market analysis and reporting.

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