ReportWire

Tag: Agri

  • Taiwan or China? Paraguay’s dilemma puts election race in the spotlight

    Taiwan or China? Paraguay’s dilemma puts election race in the spotlight

    ASUNCION, April 24 (Reuters) – From Paraguayan capital Asuncion to Taipei and Washington, diplomats, officials – and farmers – are closely watching a tight election race that could determine Paraguay’s future ties with Taiwan.

    Paraguay will vote for its next president on April 30, choosing between a ruling party candidate pledging to extend decades-long diplomatic relations with Taiwan and an opposition rival who favors switching ties to China to boost the landlocked country’s farm-driven economy.

    Pressure inside the South American nation has been rising, especially from its powerful agricultural lobby, to flip ties to China and open up the Asian country’s lucrative markets to Paraguay’s soybeans and beef, its main exports.

    “We’re a food-producing nation that is not selling to the world’s biggest buyer of food,” Pedro Galli, the head of the Paraguayan Rural Association (ARP), told Reuters. His organization represents some 3,000 local farmers.

    Were Paraguay to recognize China it would be a blow to Taiwan, which is facing an uphill battle against Beijing’s economic muscle to keep its remaining 13 allies worldwide, and a fresh sign of China’s growing clout in an area Washington has long regarded as its backyard.

    Galli cited the recognition of China by other countries in the region, which in recent years have included Panama, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Honduras was the latest to switch sides in March.

    “We’re watching the party from the balcony,” Galli said, referring to the loss the farming sector felt in terms of exports. “It’s just us and the Guatemalans left.” 

    Opposition candidate Efrain Alegre, who represents a center-left coalition, told Reuters in January and again in April that he would favor relations with China, the world’s largest beef and soybean importer, if elected president.

    “We are going to be where it is convenient, otherwise it would be a betrayal of the country,” Alegre told Reuters in the April 17 interview. “How can I deny a relationship that is beneficial for all Paraguayans, a people that need development, need investment, need industry?”

    The ruling conservative Colorado Party candidate, Santiago Peña, has vowed to stick with Taiwan. A cross-party delegation visited the island in February, seeking to calm Taiwanese jitters.

    Taipei, which argues that it provides economic support to its allies, said last week it was “perplexed” by the position taken by Paraguay’s opposition and it would do its utmost to maintain its diplomatic ties with the country.

    China has long argued that democratically-ruled Taiwan is part of its own territory with no right to state-to-state ties, a position Taipei strongly rejects. China demands that countries with which it has ties recognize its position.

    ‘WHEN, NOT IF’

    Among diplomatic circles in Asuncion there is a sense a switch is inevitable – regardless of the election outcome.

    “With Paraguay it is a matter of when, not if,” a senior European diplomat told Reuters, adding that given the pressures from the local business community and the fragile global economy, Paraguay could switch “within the next two years.”

    Even if the ruling Colorado party were to win the election, its leaders may not have the same staunch support for Taiwan as incumbent President Mario Abdo, whose father helped forge relations with Taiwan as a political aide over six decades ago.

    “We are brotherly peoples, and we have a destiny together,” Abdo said during February’s visit.

    “Current president Abdo had a strong personal commitment to Taiwan that goes back to his father,” said Evan Ellis, who specializes in China-Latin America relations at the U.S. Army War College Institute.

    “It is not clear that the same personal depth of ties is there with whoever takes over.”

    Opinion polls in April differed widely, with Atlas ranking pro-China Alegre narrowly ahead of Peña and Grau & Associated predicting a 16-point lead for Peña.

    Paraguayan rancher Fernando Serrati, who farms corn, soybeans and cattle, said the country was “trapped” in a diplomatic conflict hurting producers and exports, while the closed door to China meant it often lost a price premium.

    A severe drought that has hit regional farm production, poorer economic prospects globally, and war in Ukraine that has affected shipments of beef to sanctioned Russia have all further dented local sentiment, spurring more Paraguayans to favor new ties with China.

    “We need to consider the real interests of our country and open up to the world,” Serrati said.

    Reporting by Lucinda Elliott and Daniela Desantis; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O’Brien

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    Source link

  • Over 18,000 cows die in Texas dairy farm blaze

    Over 18,000 cows die in Texas dairy farm blaze

    April 13 (Reuters) – More than 18,000 cows died after an explosion and fire at a family dairy farm in west Texas, marking the deadliest such barn blaze on record in the United States.

    Firefighters rescued one employee from the South Fork Dairy near Dimmitt on Monday as flames raced through a building and into holding pens, according to images and statements from the Castro County Sheriff’s Office.

    The cause of the fire was under investigation and it was not immediately possible to contact members of the family who own the farm in one of Texas’ biggest milk production counties.

    The blaze prompted calls from the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), among the oldest U.S. animal protection groups, for federal laws to prevent barn fires which kill hundreds of thousands of farm animals each year.

    There are no federal regulations protecting animals from the fires and only a few states, Texas not among them, have adopted fire protection codes for such buildings, according to an AWI statement.

    The blaze was the most devastating U.S. barn fire involving cattle since the AWI began tracking such incidents in 2013. Around 6.5 million farm animals have died in such fires in the last decade, most of them poultry.

    Reporting By Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Daniel Wallis

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    Source link

  • Exclusive: Russians, Ukrainians met in UAE to discuss prisoner swap, ammonia, sources say

    Exclusive: Russians, Ukrainians met in UAE to discuss prisoner swap, ammonia, sources say

    RIYADH, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Representatives from Russia and Ukraine met in the United Arab Emirates last week to discuss the possibility of a prisoner-of-war swap that would be linked to a resumption of Russian ammonia exports, which go to Asia and Africa, via a Ukrainian pipeline, three sources with knowledge of the meeting said.

    The sources said the talks were being mediated by the Gulf Arab state and did not include the United Nations despite the U.N.’s central role in negotiating the ongoing initiative to export agricultural products from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Ammonia is used to make fertilizer.

    However the talks aim to remove remaining obstacles in the initiative extended last week and ease global food shortages by unblocking Ukrainian and Russian exports, they added.

    The sources asked not to be named in order to freely discuss sensitive matters.

    The Russian and Ukrainian representatives travelled to the UAE capital Abu Dhabi on Nov. 17 where they discussed allowing Russia to resume ammonia exports in exchange for a prisoner swap that would release a large number of Ukrainian and Russian prisoners, the sources said.

    Reuters could not immediately establish what progress was made at the talks.

    The Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey, Vasyl Bodnar, told Reuters that “releasing our prisoners of war is part of negotiations over opening Russian ammonia exports”, adding “Of course we look for ways to do that at any opportunity”. Bodnar said he was unaware if a meeting took place in the UAE.

    Putin said on Wednesday that Russian officials would work to unblock Russian fertilisers stuck in European ports and to resume ammonia exports.

    The UAE’s foreign ministry did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

    Lana Nusseibeh, UAE’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said Abu Dhabi remains firmly committed to help keep channels of communication open, encourage dialogue and support diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine.

    “In times of conflict, our collective responsibility is to leave no stone unturned towards identifying and pursuing paths that bring about a peaceful and swift resolution of crises,” Nusseibeh said in a statement carried by state news agency WAM.

    Russia and Ukraine’s defence and foreign ministries did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

    Asked if the United Nations were involved in the talks, a spokesperson for the organisation declined to comment.

    WESTERN PRESSURE

    The export of Russian ammonia would be via an existing pipeline to the Black Sea.

    The pipeline was designed to pump up to 2.5 million tonnes of ammonia gas per year from Russia’s Volga region to Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Pivdennyi, known as Yuzhny in Russian, near Odesa for onward shipment to international buyers. It was shut down after Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

    The export of ammonia was not part of the renewal of the U.N.-backed grains corridor deal that restored commercial shipping from Ukraine.

    Last week, Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of U.N. agency UNCTAD, who leads the negotiations on fertiliser, said she was optimistic Russia and Ukraine could agree to the terms for the export of Russian ammonia via the pipeline, without giving details.

    Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has publicly set several conditions before allowing Russia to resume its ammonia exports via the pipeline, including a prisoner swap and reopening of Mykolaiv port in the Black Sea.

    Neither Russia nor Ukraine have released official figures on how many prisoners of war they have taken since Russia invaded in February. On Oct. 29, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy said that since March, Russia had freed a total of 1,031 prisoners.

    Russia and Ukraine have disclosed few details about direct meetings between representatives from the two countries following the abandonment of ceasefire talks in the first few weeks following Moscow’s invasion on February 24.

    Abu Dhabi’s efforts follow in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia, which scored a diplomatic win by securing freedom for foreign fighters captured in Ukraine in September.

    The UAE, like Saudi Arabia, is a member of the OPEC+ oil alliance that includes Russia and has also maintained good ties with Moscow despite Western pressure to help isolate Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls its “special military operation”.

    UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan visited Moscow last month where he discussed with President Vladimir Putin the possibility of Abu Dhabi mediating for an ammonia deal, two of the sources said.

    Ukraine is a major producer of grains and oilseeds. Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter and a major supplier of fertilisers to global markets.

    Since July, Moscow has repeatedly said its shipments of grain and fertilisers, though not directly targeted by sanctions, are constrained because sanctions make it harder for exporters to process payments or to obtain vessels and insurance.

    Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi in Riyadh, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev and Jonathan Saul in London, additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Jon Boyle

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    Source link

  • Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of U.S. dollars

    Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of U.S. dollars

    ACCRA, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Ghana’s government is working on a new policy to buy oil products with gold rather than U.S. dollar reserves, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia said on Facebook on Thursday.

    The move is meant to tackle dwindling foreign currency reserves coupled with demand for dollars by oil importers, which is weakening the local cedi and increasing living costs.

    Ghana’s Gross International Reserves stood at around $6.6 billion at the end of September 2022, equating to less than three months of imports cover. That is down from around $9.7 billion at the end of last year, according to the government.

    If implemented as planned for the first quarter of 2023, the new policy “will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency,” Bawumia said.

    Using gold would prevent the exchange rate from directly impacting fuel or utility prices as domestic sellers would no longer need foreign exchange to import oil products, he explained.

    “The barter of gold for oil represents a major structural change,” he added.

    The proposed policy is uncommon. While countries sometimes trade oil for other goods or commodities, such deals typically involve an oil-producing nation receiving non-oil goods rather than the opposite.

    Ghana produces crude oil but it has relied on imports for refined oil products since its only refinery shut down after an explosion in 2017.

    Bawumia’s announcement was posted as Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta announced measures to cut spending and boost revenues in a bid to tackle a spiraling debt crisis.

    In a 2023 budget presentation to parliament on Thursday, Ofori-Atta warned the West African nation was at high risk of debt distress and that the cedi’s depreciation was seriously affecting Ghana’s ability to manage its public debt.

    The government is negotiating a relief package with the International Monetary Fund as the cocoa, gold and oil-producing nation faces its worst economic crisis in a generation.

    Reporting by Cooper Inveen and Christian Akorlie
    Writing by Sofia Christensen
    Editing by Estelle Shirbon and Elaine Hardcastle

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    Source link

  • Washington bans fish-farming net pens, citing salmon threat

    Washington bans fish-farming net pens, citing salmon threat

    SEATTLE — Washington banned fish-farming with net pens in state waters on Friday, citing danger to struggling native salmon.

    Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz issued an executive order banning the aquaculture method, which involves raising fish in large floating pens anchored in the water and has been practiced in Puget Sound for more than three decades.

    California, Oregon and Alaska have already outlawed net-pen aquaculture, and Canada is working on a plan to phase it out of British Columbia’s coastal waters by 2025. Supporters say fish-farming is an environmentally safe way to feed the world’s growing population; critics argue that it can spread disease to native stocks and degrade the environment.

    “As we’ve seen too clearly here in Washington, there is no way to safely farm fish in open sea net pens without jeopardizing our struggling native salmon,” Franz said. “I’m proud to stand with the rest of the West Coast today by saying our waters are far too important to risk for fish farming profits.”

    Salmon aquaculture is among the fastest-growing food production systems in the world, according to the World Wildlife Foundation. It accounts for about 70% of the market. In 2018 the World Resources Institute released a report that said the industry needs to more than double by 2050 to meet the seafood demands of 10 billion people.

    Since 2016, all of the net pens in Washington’s marine waters have been owned by the same company — New Brunswick, Canada-based seafood giant Cooke Aquaculture. In a statement earlier this week, after the state said it would terminate the company’s remaining leases in Puget Sound, the company said it was disappointed.

    “Environmental organizations and Commissioner Franz are choosing to ignore the fact that farm-raised fish is one of the healthiest and most efficient ways to feed the global population with a minimal environmental impact and the lowest carbon footprint of any animal protein,” Cooke said. “Farmers work closely with world-renowned scientists from academia, government, and the private sector to develop rigorous standards and implement best practices for fish health and environmental protection.”

    In 2017, a net pen operated by Cooke off Cypress Island, near the San Juan archipelago, collapsed and released 260,000 nonnative Atlantic salmon in Puget Sound. The escape prompted a frantic response by the Lummi Indian tribe, which mobilized its fishing crews to capture tens of thousands of the Atlantic salmon before they could intermingle or breed with native salmon.

    The company argued that the fish were sterile and would simply die without threatening native salmon stocks, but the Legislature responded in 2018 and banned raising nonnative fish in the pens.

    Cooke transitioned to raising native steelhead, but many Native American tribes and environmental groups, including Wild Fish Conservancy, still objected, saying that the unnaturally large clusters of farmed fish spread disease to wild populations and that their bulk feeding and excretions degrade the marine environment.

    Several studies have found that young sockeye salmon from British Columbia’s Fraser watershed were infected with higher levels of sea lice after swimming past fish pens, The Seattle Times reported. And in March, an audit revealed sea lice counts at about five times the legal limit at a farm in Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The lice can affect salmon growth, and in severe cases, cause death.

    “It’s about the disease vectors and how that can escape into wild populations,” said Todd Woodard, natural resources director for the Samish Indian Nation. “When you say, ‘We’re raising native fish,’ native fish are not raised and reared in those kinds of concentrated environments.”

    After the 2017 collapse, Washington’s Department of Natural Resources ramped up its inspections of net pens. In Port Angeles, on the Olympic Peninsula, the department terminated a net-pen lease for failing to maintain the facility in a safe condition and operating in an unauthorized area. Cooke challenged the decision unsuccessfully in court.

    And earlier this week, the state terminated Cooke Aquaculture’s remaining net-pen leases, in Rich Passage near Bainbridge Island and near Hope Island in Skagit Bay. The company has until Dec. 14 to finish steelhead farming and to start deconstructing its equipment.

    The decision will force Cooke to kill 332,000 juvenile steelhead that were planned to be stocked at its two remaining net pens next year, the company said.

    “This is a big victory for everyone who values the Puget Sound ecosystem,” Suquamish Tribe Chairman Leonard Forsman said, according to The Seattle Times. “This action eliminates a harmful impact in our ancestral waters. The Rich Passage net pens have … blocked and polluted our fishing grounds for too long, and we are relieved to know they will be removed, restoring our waters back to a more natural state.”

    Source link