Humankind’s gift of gab is not set in stone, and farming could help to explain why.

 The latest UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s annual Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition Report highlighted drought as one of the key factors contributing to the continuing rise in the number of hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa. And in South Africa, the Government’s Crop Estimates Committee announced that the country would harvest 20 percent less maize in 2019 because of drought conditions. 

 Despite a weak monsoon season, India’s Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare is forecasting record production of rice and near record production of wheat in 2018-19.

It’s an old proverb in these lands that since man has learned to shoot without missing, birds have learned to fly without perching — and the same is true with farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Zimbabwe prepares for the opening of the 2019 Tobacco Marketing season set to start on the 21st of March, the local market is hyped up in anticipation. In 2018, Zimbabwe produced an all-time high of 252.6 million kgs of leaf tobacco and raked $892 million from exports of 184 million kgs of the commodity to the world market.

The US and China have for the past three months been locked in discussions about how to overcome a trade dispute that has slowed Chinese economic growth and seen the US-China trade balance slump to a record low last year.