Is China's Breadbasket Set for Another Bumper Harvest? 

Greetings again from beautiful England – I’m up in Sheffield, UK this week, visiting our 5m home office. It’s been in the upper 60s and low 70s F (16-20s C), which everyone says it’s quite warm for England in June.

Last week included a Benchmark Holdings meeting which brought together teams from our 10 companies for a day of learning and updates on progress in the business. Benchmark companies as a whole are based around sustainable food production and what we call the 3Es – Environment, Economics and Ethics. To learn more, click here.

In news this week… Wheat harvest started last week in China's major breadbasket of Shandong Province, and the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture forecast an output rise of summer grain and the 11th consecutive bumper harvest.

A wheat expert with the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences said both per-unit wheat yield and total yield this year in Shandong would increase. China produced 120 million tonnes of wheat last year, one-fifth of the world's total.

The planting area of summer grain is estimated at 27.67 million ha this year, almost 70,000 ha more than in 2012. This year, more than 14 million mechanical harvesters will be used for 92 per cent of the harvesting work.

A new study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center covers AgTech and why it’s important to agriculture. AgTech is defined as innovative technologies in the agricultural sector that demonstrably enhance the sustainability of the practice by increasing productivity, improving the efficiency of resource use, and reducing ecological impacts. They also yield sustained or enhanced profitability to investors by increasing the long-term value of ag production.

While the end result of the paper is to make a case for investment in AgTech companies, there is really interesting info that leads up to that data. So if you have a few minutes, I hope you’ll take a peek at the study.

The study looks at models for future food prices, increases in production that will be needed in corn, wheat, soy, cotton and rice, key variables influencing agricultural production through 2050 and how climate change could add to price increases. And all of that is before it even gets to the good stuff! Click here to view. 

This week on Twitter: In a set of three cartoons, see how the hunger season – the period when a small holder’s crop stockpiles start to run out – affect a family’s ability to survive. Definitely worth the two minutes to read through. Click here to view.

Find me on Twitter @SarahMikesell

Have a great week!

~Sarah