Brazil Needs Corn! Opportunity For U.S. Exports

In what Agri-pulse reports could open doors to US exports, Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture, desperate for new feed supplies for the livestock industry, is asking the country's biotech regulatory agency to temporarily lift restrictions on corn imports from the U.S. Brazil's second yearly corn crop, is looking worse and worse as the harvest continues and there are fears that Brazil will run out of corn by 2017,” Export demand has also reduced domestic supplies. The different factors had pushed domestic corn prices to record highs and resulted in Brazilian pork and poultry producers cutting production.

As of the June report, Chicken production was down 10 percent and pork producers reduced insemination rates by 15 percent due to the feed shortage.

Western Farm Press: Mississippi State University Extension/Research Apiculturist Jeff Harris says “There are no big data sets to support that pesticides are the leading cause of Colony Collapse Disorder,” no data, or metadata, linking huge losses of honey bees in the U.S. to any single insecticide. Harris was part of a team that developed a honey bee line with resistance to the varroa mite a vector of viruses that have wiped out thousands of bee colonies in the U.S.