The USDA has released its latest data on milk production costs. The average costs of producing a cwt of milk in the US in January 2015, was 6% down on December 2014, and 8% down on January 2014. The biggest drop was in the cost of purchased feed which was 16% down on December, and […]
Month: March 2015
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Small not always beautiful
A chapter in the latest IFPRI Food Policy Report 2014-2105, highlights the importance of family farms. There are a 570 million farms in the world, but the majority of them are small – 80% operate on less than 2 hectares and occupy just 12% of the worlds farmland. Three-quarters of farms are in Asia, and 60% are in […]
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RIP Milk Quotas
April 2015 will mark the end of an era within EU milk production, after more than 30 years milk quotas will be abolished. The UK dairy sector has changed dramatically since the introduction of quotas, in 1984 there were 3.28 million dairy cows in the UK, with 50,625 dairy herds. In 2013 the herd has […]
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US and Russia Livestock Outlook
A relatively strong US dollar is impacting on the meat trade with beef imports into the US reported to be 63.7% up in January 2015, compared with January 2014. The increased imports are mainly coming from Australia, New Zealand, and Nicaragua. The USDA is predicting that US beef imports for Q1 2015 will be 31.7% […]
In his budget, the UK Chancellor George Osborne has announced a change in the way farmers are taxed. In the future taxable income will be based on an average of five years rather than two. The move is seen as a pre-election move to boost flagging support for the Tory party in rural areas; however […]
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Farm UAVs slowly taking off
The use of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) or drones has been talked about a lot in farming circles recently; however it is clear the use of agricultural drones is been held back in many countries. This is due to legislation, and in some case’s the lack of clear benefits to the farmers bottom line. In […]