FarmlyticsIn a shock referendum result the UK has voted by 52% to 48% to leave the European Union, leading to a period of increased political and economic uncertainty. The aftermath of the vote which saw the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron, has also exposed renewed tensions within the UK, with majority votes to remain within […]
The UK will hold a referendum on its membership of the EU on the 23rd June. If the UK votes to leave the EU and ‘Brexit’ occurs, the implications for UK agriculture and its supply industries will be profound. Since joining the ‘Common Market’ a significant two-way trading relationship has developed between the UK and […]
On Tuesday 6th October in Atlanta representatives of 12 countries signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a free trade deal which seeks to cut tariffs and introduce common standards across the Pacific region. The deal covers key developed countries including the US, Japan, Canada, Australia as well as emerging nations like Chile, Malaysia and Vietnam. […]
The threat of antibiotic resistance to human and veterinary medicine from the excessive use of antibiotics in livestock is moving up the agenda. In March McDonald’s unveiled their Global Vision for Antimicrobial Stewardship in Food Animals. Key goals for this vision include aiming to eliminate the use of medically important antimicrobial (defined by the WHO) for growth […]
The results of controversial field scale GM wheat trials in the UK have been published this week. The experiment conducted in 2012 and 2013 aimed to show that wheat with a genetic modification to produce aphid disrupting pheromone EßF could play an important role in aphid control. EßF is an alarm pheromone released by […]
The European Union is to apply the principle of “subsidiarity” and allow individual member states a greater say on the regulation of GM Crops. The move will allow member states to decide whether or not GM crop varieties can be grown or used for food and feed on their territories. The European Commission will still […]
The Chinese government is continuing to take steps to fight against a slowing economy – with an announcement to stimulate growth, by cutting the reserve requirement ratio for banks. This it hopes will boost lending by adding more liquidity into economy. The latest IMF economic outlook figures (April 2015) forecast that GDP growth in China is expected to […]
DEFRA have published the latest data on the use of fertiliser in UK agriculture. Long term data shows that the use of Nitrogen fertiliser on crops and grass on UK farms peaked in the mid 1980s at 1,674 thousand tonnes, when concerns over the impact on the environment, policy changes, and economic pressures lead to […]
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 […]
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 […]