May 17, 2025

Spotlight Stories

Spotlight 1 – Civil Eats does a spotlight on Oatman Flats and asks if this Arizona ranch could be a model for southwest U.S. farmers. Check it out, here.

Spotlight 2 – The World Economic Forum says the world urgently needs more young farmers. Read the story, here.

Spotlight 3 – Grist writes that as temperatures rise, the U.S. Corn Belt could see insurance claims soar. Take a read, here.

Industry Updates

Nestlé Nigeria has disclosed plans to source at least 50 per cent of its key ingredients from farmers practicing regenerative agriculture globally by 2030. The partnership between AGRA, Nestlé, and TechnoServe aims to support 25,000 smallholder farmers and eight aggregators across Kaduna and Nasarawa States, promoting sustainable production of maize, soybean, rice, and sorghum. Nestlé is investing $1 million in the project over the next three years to contribute towards establishing regenerative agriculture as the standard in the food industry. [link]

PepsiCo and Yara have announced a long-term partnership for the supply of crop nutrition programs in Latin America to help decarbonize the food value chain. This follows a similar agreement signed last July between PepsiCo and Yara in Europe, through which Yara will supply PepsiCo farmers with best-in-class crop nutrition products and advice as well as digital tools for precision farming. In its initial phase, Yara will supply PepsiCo with products and services in Latin America, benefitting potato farmers in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina. [link]

China’s state-owned agricultural conglomerate, Cofco, is building its biggest export terminal outside China at Brazil's largest port in Santos to manage alternative shipments of corn, sugar and soybeans from the United States. The new port will increase the company’s annual export capacity to 14 million tons from 4.5 million, but isn’t expected to reach full capacity until next year. The Santos port fits into China’s wider plan to secure access to South America’s agricultural bounty amid shortages of water and arable land at home. Chinese companies are laying hundreds of miles of railroad across Brazil’s agricultural heartland and finishing work on a $3.5 billion deep-water port on Peru’s Pacific coast. [link]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced several Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) enrollment opportunities for agricultural producers and landowners. USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) is accepting offers for both the General and Continuous CRP beginning May 12 through June 6, 2025. For four decades, CRP has provided financial and technical support to agricultural producers and landowners who place unproductive or marginal cropland under contract for 10-15 years and who agree to voluntarily convert the land to beneficial vegetative cover to improve water quality, prevent soil erosion and support wildlife habitat. [link]

Canadian farmers and landowners across Manitoba are being encouraged to apply for the Prairie Watersheds Climate Program being led by the Manitoba Association of Watersheds. The program provides funding to adopt beneficial management practices (BMPs) in three areas; cover crops, nitrogen management and rotational grazing. The money comes from the On Farm Climate Action Fund, from Agriculture and Agri-food Canada. [link]

Purdue University’s Institute for a Sustainable Future (ISF) has released the first Indiana Statewide PFAS Assessment report summarizing the uses, exposures to, and sources of contamination from PFAS across the state. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are commonly known as “forever chemicals” because they persist in the environment. The report serves as a comprehensive review of what is known about PFAS in general and provides specific information on PFAS in Indiana. It describes what PFAS are, where they come from, how they move through the environment and what is known about potential health impacts. [link]

Brazilian microbiologist Mariangela Hungria, whose research has helped farmers in the country sharply boost grain production, has been named the 2025 World Food Prize Laureate, the Iowa-based foundation organizing the prize announced. Hungria has been a researcher for more than 40 years at Brazil's state-run agricultural center Embrapa, where she works on seeds and soil treatments that enable plants to source nutrients through soil bacteria, a particularly important development for soybean crops. [link]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has reversed course and committed to restore climate-focused webpages purged from its websites. This follows a lawsuit from Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY), NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), and the Environmental Working Group (EWG). Resources purged from USDA websites include information on climate-smart farming, accessing federal loans, forest conservation, and rural clean energy projects. USDA erased entire climate sections from the U.S. Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service sites, including information helping farmers access billions of dollars for critical conservation practices. It also disabled interactive tools, such as the U.S. Forest Service’s “Climate Risk Viewer,” a “one-stop shop for climate-related geospatial data” with over 140 data layers. [link]

The European Commission proposed weakening more of the environmental conditions tied to the EU's huge farming subsidy program, as part of plans to cut back regulations and paperwork for farmers. Farmers across Europe wielded their political clout last year during months of protests over issues including strict EU regulations and cheap imports. In response, the EU diluted some green conditions attached to farming subsidies. [link]

Thirty dairy farms across the Netherlands are taking part in a three-year pilot project initiated by FrieslandCampina, focused on regenerative agriculture. With financial support from Lidl and backing from the National Growth Fund Program ReGeNL, FrieslandCampina’s member dairy farms are taking concrete steps towards a farming system focused on soil restoration, biodiversity, and a future-proof earning model for dairy farmers. The aim of the pilot is to jointly develop an open-access standard for regenerative agriculture, with a strong focus on measurability of impact. The project explores how regenerative practices, such as herb-rich grasslands and grazing, can contribute to soil health, biodiversity, sustainable food production, and a robust earning model for farmers. Lidl is the first supermarket chain to take and support this initiative. [link]

In Case You Missed It…

In mid-April, a new study in Science said that nearly 17% of the world’s croplands are contaminated with heavy metals. See more, here.