World in brief

According to Spain’s agriculture minister Luis Planas, poor planning by Britain for Brexit and cold weather conditions were to blame for a shortage of salad items in Britain.

Spain is one of Britain’s leading suppliers of fruit and vegetables. According to Reuters, British supermarket chains imposed limits on customer purchases of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, as southern Europe and North Africa suffered crop losses due to unseasonable weather.

However, the FEPEX association of exporters of fresh products recently said that Spain’s vegetable and fruit production was recovering and that supplies for export markets would improve soon.

ROMANIA

The Russia-Ukraine war has had a negative impact on Romanian agriculture, according to Petre Daea, minister of agriculture and rural development in Romania.

Farmers here were currently in a delicate situation, “with their barns full [with last year’s crops] and their accounts empty,” Daea told the Romania-Insider. This was due largely to “massive flows of grains and oilseeds from Ukraine” at low cost.

UNITED STATES

President Joe Biden recently announced that the US would take steps toward challenging a ban that Mexico had placed on shipments of genetically modified (GM) maize from the US, The New York Times reported.

These restrictions had threatened the profitability of many farmers, the newspaper added.

Mexico planned to phase out the use of GM maize by 2024.

About 90% of maize grown in the US was GM maize. Mexico was the US’s second-biggest buyer of maize, second only to China.