Kenya’s National Cereals and Produce Board is purchasing Sh1 billion worth of maize for strategic reserves this winter and encouraging farmers to use their storage facilities under the warehouse receipt system. Top issues leading to PHL for Kenyan farmers are poor storage facilities and commodity prices. http://allafrica.com/stories/201111021299.html
Kenyan Farmers Beat Drought – And Then Battle Pests
Kenyan farmers are dealing with extraneous factors such as drought and pests and to lower the impact on PHL, they are using special varieties of maize and metal storage silos. http://www.trust.org/item/?map=kenyan-farmers-beat-drought-and-then-battle-pests
WFP Provides Capacity Building Training to Farmers
The World Food Programme’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative has helped train 70 farmers in Northern Ghana on how to be more competitive players in the value chain, especially in terms of maize and cowpea production. The next stage of the program will be to train 520 smallholders on how to use modern farm implements […]
Cereals Board Launches New Drive to Boost Maize Harvest
The Kenyan Cereals Board launches a new drive to boost maize harvest by providing farmers with much-needed fertilizer and training on how to improve yields. This process should take about three months and 2.4 million bags of fertilizer, which are expected to save farmers’ losses by up to 30 percent. http://www.nation.co.ke/News/regional/Cereals+board+launches+new+drive+to+boost+maize+harvest+/-/1070/1239910/-/2yu921z/-/
U.S. Federal Reserve Beige Book: Richmond District
Hurricane Irene took 56% of available corn crop for harvesting from South Carolina, while North Carolina reported wide-scale damage to storage facilities, field crops, and agricultural businesses. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-07/u-s-federal-reserve-beige-book-richmond-district-text-.html
Querries Over Gazetting of Biosafety Law
Kenya raising standards and import requirements for GMOs The government in gazetting the Biosafety Regulations seeks to regulate the cultivation, importation and trade, in Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) as a way to prevent unscrupulous importation of the GMOs into the country. Kenya is the fourth country in Africa to allow GMOs. Government trying to encourage […]
GRAINS-U.S. Wheat Surges on Talk of Low Yields
Wheat crop quality not good, prices high, due to weather “U.S. wheat prices surged on Tuesday for a sixth straight session of gains as talk of low yields from the spring wheat harvest helped the market reverse early losses.” The turnaround in wheat futures also helped corn and soybean futures to pare losses, with corn […]
Corn Production up in 1st Half
The Philippines witnessed increased corn crop production, due to good weather, area expansion, availability of corn varieties, good farmgate prices, and stable prices of inputs. This boom in production is seen as positive as the country is trying to shift from total dependency on rice as a staple crop to white corn, in order to […]
Investors Target Harvest with Mobile Maize Dryers
Lesiolo Grain Handlers Limited (LGHL), which exhibited its mobile drier at the ninth edition of the annual agribusiness fair by the Eastern Africa Grain Council (EAGC), is the latest to join other players eyeing this window. Poor drying due to overreliance on heat from the sun has been cited as a major cause of Aflatoxin […]
Mixed Weather
US mixed climate and weather issues, as well as foreign trade prices and imports, are affecting the trading prices of cash grains, early purchasing and selling, and quality decline in corn and beans. http://www.insidefutures.com/article/297400/MIXED%20%20WEATHER.html