Which method does agri benchmark successfully use to record, analyze and compare the production of farms globally? Global agricultural production is dynamic and complex as various factors impact it. Understanding global agricultural production systems and farmers’ decisions requires an internationally standardized and scientifically sound approach. A team of agri benchmark scientists clarified h[more]
During the most recent decade, fish and shellfish resources in marine and freshwater aquatic habitats have been impacted by climate change induced shifts in their distribution and/or productivity. The impacts on the global food systems, including seafood production, are thereby complex and exceed those of direct environmental impacts. Economic, social, but also technological and legal aspects ar[more]
At the same time, organic pork production is basically irrelevant[more]
The transport of live animals and chilled meat is accompanied by a number of challenges. For this reason, both the costs associated with transport and the role of transport distances and conditions for selected countries of our partners were examined in a workshop at this year's Beef and Sheep Conference in Ireland. On the one hand, the challenges for transport can be found in the great distance[more]
The first sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and sea bream (Sparus aurata) hatcheries came up in the middle of the 1980s, shortly after commercial rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) farming has marked the success start of Turkish aquaculture in the mid-1970s. An aquacultural friendly policy and diverse initiatives from the business sector led to rapid growth in production and sales volume, beginning[more]
With about 100 million tons of milk production in 2017 the US is the second largest milk producer in the world behind the EU. To be competitive in the world marked the costs of production play an important role. The USDA publishes these costs on an annual base which leads us to have a closer look on these numbers. The USDA differs farms in six groups: <50 cows, 50 – 99 cows, 100 – 199 cows, 20[more]
Looking at the figures from 2004 - to 2017 a tremendous structural change is taking place in open field vegetable production in Germany. While production area increased over the past ten years by about 12% (from 115,000 ha in 2007 to nearly 129,000 ha in 2017), in the same period the number of vegetable producing farms diminished by more than 50% from more than 13,500 to nearly 6,400 in[more]
For the European Union, wheat is the most important cereal. Wheat is cultivated on about 50% of cropland; in the 2016/2017 market year approximately 134 million tonnes of soft wheat and 10 million tonnes of durum wheat were harvested in the EU. Wheat accounts for two-thirds of all EU cereal exports. It´s therefore worth taking a closer look at this grain. To begin with, the distinction is made be[more]
Many traditional livestock production systems in Latin America - based on grass monoculture - tend to deplete natural resources in a process of continuous degradation. As an alternative, silvopastoral systems combine livestock production with rotational grazing using different pastures, forages, fodder shrubs and timber trees as parts of the same system. Taking in account the globally fast growi[more]
The social demand for more animal welfare is increasingly the focus of agricultural policy. For example, the current practice of castration of piglets without anesthesia is forbidden by law in Germany from the first of January 2019. This raises the question of viable alternatives for farmers. On this question, the Thünen Institute for Farm Economics has investigated alternatives to piglet castrat[more]
In Germany pangasius from aquaculture provides already an alternative to popular wild fish including cod or saithe. The EU whitefish market is fairly complex in terms of competition and substitution between species, especially since it has undergone significant changes owing to the growing aquaculture sector in recent years. Due to the large quantities produced at low production cost, the farmed [more]
While the organic farming sector is growing fast worldwide, the expected revision of EU legislation concerning production, processing, labelling and monitoring of organic products could not be agreed on in December 2016. Since 2014 the EU Commission, EU Parliament and EU Agricultural Council negotiated over a draft of new legal rules presented by the EU Commission. The proposed legislation w[more]
Slumped European demand, stagnant selling prices and rising competitors lead to challenges for the Vietnam Pangasius producers in the last years. In consequence, the sector restructures from family-own small scale to vertical integrated large-scale firms; new markets and diverse certification programs like BAP aim to ensure consumer expectations regarding product quality. The recent years were no[more]
Agriculture in Morocco has always been a strategic sector for the socio-economic development of the country. In 2013, agriculture represented 15.5% of the nominal GDP. Tomatoes constitute one of Morocco’s most important fresh exported agricultural products and a main revenue earner. At the social level, the sector creates an average of 9 million working days per year on production, packaging and[more]
Just recently Russia extended the import ban of certain food products from the EU to the end of 2017. Since 2014 – the first year of the Russian embargo – the EU agri-food sector has undergone major changes regarding its main export destinations and markets. The profound transformation of the pig meat market is a result of this process. Over the years 2011 – 2013 Russia had a proportion of more t[more]