Masvingo districts discussed in the last blog in this series, and they share many similarities, with a focus on maize production, combined with horticulture. There are fewer who are accumulating significantly, but there are still many who are doing well.

South Africa is a country of dichotomies and ironies and there is no economic sector that that typifies this more than the agri-food sector. 

The time is ripe for the wheat-based foods industry to better understand and highlight its role in saving the planet. That role could be nothing short of extraordinary.

Processed food alternatives have been around since ancient times.

Some  time ago, on the way home, I decided to buy an apple. It was a nice and round and red apple.

Africa will be unable to meet demand for meat and milk by 2050 and benefit from growth in the livestock sector unless countries adopt new policies and innovations, a new report has found.

The United Nations issued its annual hunger report July 13, ringing alarm bells the world over as governments gird for a coming COVID-19-induced food crisis.

Nedbank Agriculture has donated R1 million to South Africa’s largest food redistribution charity, FoodForward SA, in a bid to help scale and provide critical food provisions to the most vulnerable groups across the country.

From the barley fields of Uganda to cassava farms in Zambia, blockchain – the technology behind cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin – is helping make supply chain transparency to agriculture all over the world.

Adrian Poletti is an agronomist based at Pergamino city, the iconic city of the Pampas’ agriculture. He advices farmers and farming companies about Good Agricultural Practices and he is deeply concerned about the regulatory standards of their exports.

In this way, he created Agtrace-food, a platform to assure that the exports satisfied chemical standards from importers countries. “In many food products, like peanuts and legumes, it is not only important the physical qualities (color, diameter, size) but chemical ones, related to the Maximum Residue Levels, which could remain in the grain after the utilization of agrochemicals”, Poletti explains.

The Agtrace-food platform is able to know how the crop was produced and stored, from the fallow to the post-harvest. “The software incorporates geo-referenced information of the farm, the variety or hybrid planted, the chemicals applied during the fallow and the growing stages, and the post-harvest lab analysis. This information permits access to complete records of how the grain was produced”, Mr. Poletti explains.

But the most interesting aspect of the software is its alarm system. As the operators must input information about dose applied, product, brand, etcetera, the software match this information with the standards both of local regulatory authorities as importers ones, and shots the alarm if, for example, the active ingredient is not authorized for the importer country for that crop, or if there is a risk to surpass the MRL. “It is possible that the active principle is authorized by the Argentinian authorities but not by the European ones, or it is possible that the dose applied surpasses the recommended, or that minimum waiting period between application and harvest was not respected”, Poletti exemplifies.

“The software suggests, based on this data, how to group the batches in order to the hybrid, variety and active ingredient used. The processing plant operator is able to manage the food storage in the most efficient mode with this information and provide traceability to the product. In this way, we are able to avoid that a certain batch goes to the inappropriate market”, Poletti concludes.

Last week, food scientist and writer Joe Rosenthal spoke to former employees of the popular breakfast spot Sqirl and posted their experiences on Instagram, and their anecdotes were musty — literally.

If Australia is known for anything in the farming world, it is the ability to produce food from a brittle environment.

COVID-19 has prompted widespread discussion of the resilience of food systems and how efficiency and competitiveness have been previously understood.