Louis Dreyfus announced it has reorganised its top management team to include eight new members, including the head of finance, a Group COO and a strategy chief. It said the new team will focus on its Brazilian sugar company Biosev, which underwent a USD 1.45 billion recapitalisation in 2017, and on China’s soybeans market, which is exhibiting a higher feed demand. It also clustered its grains and oilseeds segments with its finance and freight divisions.
Cargill has leased its port-based sunflower processing unit in Quequen, on Argentina’s Atlantic Coast, to Renova, the joint venture between Glencore and Vicentin, for a year. Cargill has been struggling with workers protests which have affected soybean crushing and exports from Argentina. The situation has created concern that the company may not be able to export as much soybean as a result.
In the US, meanwhile, Cargill has donated USD 150,000 to set up a poultry research centre at the University of Arkansas. The facility will focus on developing alternatives to antibiotics, including probiotics, prebiotics and other nutraceutical-type products. Similarly, ADM is tying up with a Chinese group to open a lab in California that will focus on developing feed and enzymes to improve animal health and nutrition. ADM explained that adding enzymes to swine and poultry diets, for instance, helped their digestion, improved their wellbeing and reduced their carbon footprint.
Canada’s Walmart has officially committed to being waste free by 2025 by becoming more efficient, discounting food about to go off as well as by donating through local food banks. The group will also give USD 15 million to help find solutions to reduce wastage along the supply chain.
UK-based company AB Sugar has pledged to use all recyclable and biodegradable plastic packaging and reduce its carbon footprint by 30% by 2030, according to its first sustainability report. The company will also cut down water usage by 30% in association with its 25,000 producers.
In China, Nestle will sell 67 more items on Alibaba’s Tmall in an effort to grab a larger share of online sales. A company official forecast the Chinese online market will become bigger than Europe and the US combined in 2018. Meanwhile, Nestle is set to lose its KitKat four fingers patent case to Mondelez which would open the gates for other European candy producers to make similarly shaped items. Sources say the European Court is likely to agree with the attorney general’s findings that the shape is not distinctive enough to give Nestle its sole ownership.
US citizens throw away a total of 150,000mt of food per day. The USDA study found that the Americans with healthier diets consuming fruits and vegetables wasted the most followed by dairy and meat consumers. Discarded food translates into an annual waste of 30 million acres of land, 354,000mt of pesticide and 4.2 trillion gal of irrigated water, besides choking landfills and increasing methane release.
A campaign by the Eating Better coalition, consisting of 50 civil society groups, has drafted eight principles to guide consumers on making healthier choices on meat and dairy products and lessen the damage they inflict on the environment. The group recommends buying meat in smaller quantities to reduce waste and improve health. It advises lowering consumption of intensively reared animals like chickens and pigs in which there is antibiotic overuse. The coalition also demanded better labelling of foods.
In an era when 10 companies own 75% of global seeds trade and 94% of the vegetable seed varieties have been lost, Open Source Seeds (OSS) is trying to promote the common ownership of seeds. So far, however, it is struggling to win over plant breeders and has licensed only 3 varieties each of tomato and wheat. The group argues that having diverse crop varieties will come in handy at a time when climate change is a challenge. It added that having an open-source market will ensure continued development and breeding of multiple varieties of each seed.
On a more artistic note, click here to see the best contendants for the Food Photographer of the Year.
This report was prepared by ECRUU
