Rice assistance payment rolls out
More than a year ago, members of the rice community began working with Sen. John Boozman, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, and his staff for an assistance program to alleviate skyrocketing fertilizer, fuel, and input costs. Now this funding has finally come to fruition with a $250 million Rice Production Program which was included in the Consolidated Appropriations Act that passed last winter.
Kelly Robbins, executive director at Arkansas Rice, said, “We are extremely thankful for Senator Boozman and his staff who were instrumental in making this a reality. We are also appreciative of USA Rice and farmers in the rice community around the country for working together to encourage our members of congress to be supportive of this effort.”
Diary sector should refrain from inter-state competition
Milk Federations in the country should re-dedicate themselves to the founding ideals of the co-operative dairy movement and strive to build a robust dairy sector while refraining from inter-state competition, said K.S.Mani, chairman, Kerala Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (KCMMF), known by the brand Milma.
On the occasion of World Milk Day, Mani said in the 1970s taking into account the circumstances prevailing in each state a decision was taken to move forward on co-operative and federal principles.
“This was a path-breaking initiative, backed by goals such as higher milk production and stronger generation of employment. The bottom line was to end malnutrition and presently we are now world’s largest milk producer and milk co-operatives have contributed immensely in achieving this.
Why is OPEC+ cutting oil output?
OPEC and its allies, including Russia, meet in Vienna on June 4 to decide on their output policy.
The group, known as OPEC+, agreed on April 2 to increase crude oil production cuts to 3.66 million barrels per day (bpd) or 3.7 percent of global demand, after several members pledged unilateral cuts.
The surprise announcement helped to push up prices by about $9 a barrel to above $87 per barrel over the days followed, but Brent prices since lost those gains.
Digitization guides tea production in a county in southwest China
An Agriculture digital platform, supported by the Alibaba Foundation, has been developed to provide timely insights into various indicators of the tea industry. This platform is now becoming a crucial starting point for digital transformation among tea enterprises in a county located in Guizhou, a mountainous province in southwest China.
An Alibaba Group employee, who specializes in rural revitalization in Pu’an County in Guizhou, collaborated with Lingyang – a data intelligence service company founded by Alibaba – to develop and design a public welfare digital screen. This innovative technology has brought local tea picking into the digital era. Pu’an is known for its tea production, with 21 companies from 14 townships generating a total revenue of 1.7 billion yuan ($240 million) in the tea industry as of 2022. In the past, Alibaba Group utilized traceability codes to provide customers with information about the cultivation process of their tea.
With bumper crop this year; wheat procurement in final stages
Where climate change impacts are hitting countries across the globe raising food security issues for many, its making extremely important for countries having rich agricultural potential to not only cater needs for their own population but exporting to other counties as well having less agricultural yields to avoid food crisis. Pakistan’s major and most important national food security policy goal is to grow ample wheat, not only to meet its consumption needs but also create a surplus for buffer stocks and export. There were 2.1 million tonnes of grain carryover stocks, taking the overall availability of the commodity during the year 2023-24 to 29.6m tonnes, reducing the import requirement to around 1m tonnes. After wheat harvesting, the next challenge was its procurement and in this connection, the Punjab Food Department was vigorously carrying out a wheat procurement campaign in response to an unexpectedly bountiful harvest and achieve its set procurement target of 3.5 MMT.
India’s sugar output pegged lower by 3.63pc at 4.5 mn tons in 2022-23: AISTA
With an estimated decline in production, AISTA expects exports to be lower around 7 million tonnes this season, compared to 11.2 million tonnes in 2021-22. Releasing the first estimate, All India Sugar Trade Association (AISTA) said: “Indian sugar production during 2022-23 season is closer to be 34.50 million tonnes”. The country’s sugar production is projected to be 34.5 million tonnes in the 2022-23 marketing season, a decline of 3.63 percent compared to the year-ago period, trade body AISTA said on Friday. The production in India, the world’s major producer of the sweetener, stood at 35.8 million tonnes during the 2021-22 marketing season. The season is from October-September.
Iran races ahead in enriched uranium production: UN report
Iran is growing its enriched uranium stockpile to levels well beyond limits set out in the 2015 nuclear deal, according to a new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA report found that Iran now holds 10,460 pounds of enriched uranium, up from 8,289 pounds in February, according to the Associated Press. Within that stockpile, 251 pounds is enriched to 60 percent purity, a short technical step away from the 90 percent needed to produce a nuclear weapon. The 2015 international agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), limited Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile to 661 pounds and its enrichment level to 3.67 percent, enough for a civilian nuclear power plant. The IAEA found Iran’s nuclear program to be within those limits until 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA and reimposed sanctions that had been lifted under the deal. Shortly thereafter, Iran resumed enrichment activities.