Thankfully for most Australians the impact of COVID-19 has been in the abstract, at least in terms of health. With case numbers still low at the time of writing, the financial impacts have been highlighted in expanding queues outside Centrelink Office as government...
The world is still in the early days of the COVID-19 experience but there is already much to learn from the 70-odd days since news of the virus broke in China. There isn’t a lot of hindsight to work with just yet. The apparent reluctance of Western governments to act...
Working from home and limiting movement has pushed a lot of shopping online in many countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. The question that is starting to rise as economies tentatively open, is will some of these changes become...
COVID-19 has exposed supply chain shortcomings in the US where the rise in unemployment and sudden shuttering of foodservice caused a spike in demand for US food banks. But of filling the supply gap, US farmers were left with food rotting in the fields. In the first...
There have been plenty of distressing stories of businesses going to the wall as COVID-19 lockdowns hit most countries around the world. True Respite Brewing Company in the US state of Maryland is the story of one business that saw the writing on the wall in the early...
Food security is not a thing many people in developed countries have ever had to worry about. Highly productive, integrated and specialised supply chains have delivered abundant supplies of food to consumers through increasingly concentrated retailers at cheap prices....
There has been a flurry of complaint in the ag media recently about the delay in the payment of a milk price step-up in the current Australian milk production season which runs to the end of June 2021. Step-ups are a milk payment increase, usually announced once the...
The worsening relationship between the governments of Australia and China has resulted in China’s imposition of punitive tariffs and bans on some major agrifood imports from Australia, alongside a slowdown in trade activity across many other categories of trade. The...
When COVID-19 first emerged in the city of Wuhan over 12 months ago, movement restrictions imposed by the Chinese government all but closed down major ports. China handles 30% of global cargo – around 715,000 containers per day in 2019 – the disruption to global trade...
The European Union has some of the highest standards for organic foods and has largely rejected gene editing and genetic modified foods. Member countries only have the option to further tighten those rules, or simply follow regulations set by the Union. But in the UK,...