Today, South Africa’s Crop Estimates Committee will release its preliminary planting estimates for 2019/20 summer crops. This is important data as it will give an idea of the potential size of major grains harvest, such as maize.

In recent years, the high prices recorded and the growing consumption of blueberries have led to increases in the volume produced and in the number of growing countries.

Maize: The tight old crop ending stocks for both white and yellow maize supported prices.

Accounting for roughly one-third of the world’s annual vegetable oil production, palm oil — cultivated in the Asian, African and Latin American tropics — constitutes the most widely consumed, traded and high-yielding vegetable oil commodity in the world.

Rain over the weekend in the Hex River Valley has brought packing to a standstill as growers assess damage and the need for post-rain spraying programmes, which have implications regarding withholding periods, so that packing will resume by Thursday or Friday this week – unless it rains again tomorrow, in which case packing can only resume next week.

There is a new way of testing milled maize that can pick the dangerous aflatoxin contamination and improve food safety, a study says.