FarmlyticsThe 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 […]
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 […]
Press coverage of falling milk prices and the impact on the UK dairy sector is borne out by the latest statistics from DEFRA, (UK Food and Farming Brief Jan 2015) dairy farm incomes in England are expected to be 11% down for 2014/15, driven by the falling farm-gate milk prices. Higher milk commodity prices and […]
According to the latest report from Mckinsey productivity growth in developed country agriculture will come from precision technology. Essentially this is producing more with less, using precision sensors and satellite data to target inputs. This will also be accompanied by productivity growth in the food processing sector – with less waste, more efficient storage and […]