AMÉRIQUES

When Miguel Aleman was posted at Peru’s embassy in Beijing in the early 2000s, he started to see South American table grapes popping up at Chinese New Year celebrations. 

Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (MAPA) has revealed that Mexico has granted an export licence to 26 new Brazilian establishments for poultry meat.

In Costa Rica's rainy season, bright mornings yield with deceptive suddenness to tropical downpours. So it was on September 10th, when the country’s civil servants went on strike. They oppose a fiscal reform that raises some taxes and limits automatic wage increases. Universities and public offices were deserted.

The world of soybean shipping has turned upside down thanks to the ongoing U.S.-China trade war. Argentina, the No. 3 global soy grower, is making major purchases of U.S. supplies. A weekly measure of US shipments to Argentina just rose to the highest in at least 35 years, U.S. government data showed Tuesday.

Representatives of the Brazil government and of the Brazil soy supply chain are planning to engage in renewed discussions with EU stakeholders and policy-makers in Brussels this week, writes Nathalie Lecocq.

Where once one type of landscape transitioned fluidly into the next – forest to wetland, grassland to forest – now there are breaks and separations resulting from human development. These areas, particularly in and around tropical forests, are among the most challenging areas for restoration, and yet their environmental importance can’t be emphasized enough, allowing biodiversity to thrive and animals to pass through freely. That was the message from forestry experts at the recent Green Business Forum in Asunción, Paraguay, organized by ITAIPU Binational, the world’s largest renewable clean energy provider, and the Environment Department of the World Bank.

In recent years, almost 2.3 million people left Venezuela to live, mostly, in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, and Chile. In the short term, migration places significant pressures on the provision of services, institutions, labor markets and the social dynamics of the receiving areas, affecting most the vulnerable populations in both the migrant and local communities.  However, if the short-term challenges are managed well, migration can boost growth in the long run.

The president elect’s plan to fuse the ministries has met with staunch resistance from environmentalists, scientists, and even some in the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby.

Bogota a pris, depuis le 1er novembre, des mesures pour faire en sorte que les importations de frites belges n'affectent pas la production colombienne. 

Argentine soy crushing factories want to revive their business with a deal permitting them for the first time to export soymeal livestock feed to China, a pact that the government said was being hammered out this week in Beijing. 

The trade war triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump has made Brazil even more dependent on its number one trading partner, China. The Asian giant now accounts for over one-quarter of all Brazilian exports and almost half of the country’s commodity exports since January. The United States, in second place, receives only 12 percent of total exports from Brazil.

Hector Padilla Gutierrez, the former president of the Mexican Association of Secretaries of Agricultural Development, spoke about the importance of diversifying Mexico's agricultural food trade with the countries of the Asian continent, where Mexico exports 5 percent of its primary products and from which it buys 3 percent of their products.

The Middle East and Latin America might seem like an odd pair for bilateral commercial deals - at literal opposite ends of the globe from each other, in fact. But there are many links between the Arabian Gulf and Latin America that, combined with strides in economic development in both regions, make a case for a much stronger trade partnership.

The decision of Central American people to flee north toward the U.S. is one effect of the destruction caused by neoliberalism.

Buenos Aires, November 16th. “We musn’t do what other countries have already done; we must do what no other country did” Self-confident and why not a little bit provoker, the CEO of Bioceres, Mr. Federico Trucco, challenged the audience in the formal presentacion of the HB4 Wheat, the transgenic wheat that added drought tolerance to glufosinate-ammonium herbicide tolerance.

A senior official from a leading farm state in Mexico said Sunday that the country should work to boost its agrifood exports to Asia.

Argentina is expected to harvest some 140 million tons of grain in the 2018/2019 season, the largest crop in the country's history, according to Argentina's Agriculture Secretariat.

Researchers warn that an area of Brazilian Amazon rainforest bigger than Ireland is at risk of losing its legal protection.

The Government of the People’s Republic of China is looking to import some US$10 trillion in goods and services from Latin America and the Caribbean over the next five years.

Brazil's record soy exports to China could grow further, an Agriculture Ministry official told Reuters on Wednesday, as the Asian nation's trade war with the United States boosts its demand for South American beans.

Ernesto Araújo has called climate science ‘dogma’ and bemoaned the ‘criminalisation’ of red meat, oil and heterosexual sex

Like most Argentines, Sabrina Pozo used to eat meat several times a week. But soaring inflation and the collapse of Argentina's currency, the peso, since April have forced her to abruptly change her diet.

Representatives from the United States’ agricultural sector arrived in Cuba on Thursday for a conference aimed at promoting sales, one of the few U.S. business areas allowed to deal with the island under a half-century-old trade embargo that Cuban leaders blame for most of its economic troubles.

Caribbean Ministers of Agriculture and the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) have approved a proposal from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) to introduce crops with a high nutrition co-efficient, in an attempt to reduce the incidence of conditions such as cancer, obesity, heart disease and obesity in the Caribbean and to create a culture of balanced dietary patterns.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says Venezuela’s hunger rate has tripled since 2010 and there are now 3.7 million people, or 11.7 percent of the population, living with hunger.