Container-based transportation has been hit by sky-high costs and delays amid booming shipping demand, while container terminals at ports struggle to deal with the flow.

Commodities such as refined sugar, coffee, rice, cotton and cocoa have moved from dry bulk vessels to containers in the past since the large boxes were more practical and offered good quality control. But now shippers are moving back, at least temporarily.

“Around 80 per cent of the trade on refined sugar was done using containers before the pandemic. This has now fallen to around 60 per cent,” said Paulo Roberto de Souza, CEO of Alvean Sugar, the world’s largest sugar trader.

According to Souza, the change is only not bigger because there are not a lot of small vessels available in the market.

Data from shipping agency Williams regarding port movement in Brazil, the world’s largest sugar exporter, shows that volumes of refined sugar transported using containers fell 48 per cent in June and July (latest data available) compared to the previous year.

Bob Cymbala, owner at food trader A+J Global USA, based in Vancouver, said that some clients are turning down offers due to high prices for container freight, looking for shipping alternatives instead.

One of his clients, a rice exporter in India, is looking to use a dry bulk cargo to ship to Western Africa a volume of rice equivalent to 10 full containers.

Coffee exporters are not considering a change away from containers yet, besides the difficulties, mostly due to concerns over quality. They say containers, with proper lining, better preserve coffee characteristics such as smell and taste.

— Reporting for Reuters by Marcelo Teixeira.

The post ‘Containergeddon’ drives sugar, rice shippers back to bulk vessels appeared first on Farmtario.

Mushrooms are a promising plant-based ingredient emerging along with those foodstuffs.

Why it matters: According to Natural Products Canada, fungi can transform solid matter, changing both its chemical composition and its physical properties, which opens new possibilities for food and beverage manufacturers seeking to make animal-free products. 

Chicago-based Nature’s Fynd, for example, uses fy, a naturally occurring fungus that is high in protein, as the basis for its plant-based breakfast patties and cream cheeses. 

Using biomass fermentation, the company grows microbes with simple sugars and foods in a controlled environment. According to chief marketing officer Karuna Rawal, the biggest advantage of being animal-free is how rapidly the protein can be grown compared to livestock. 

Forage Hyperfoods is a Canadian company building a mushroom-based business. A leading supplier of wild Canadian mushrooms, its specialty is chaga, a functional mushroom species used for medicinal purposes. 

Launched earlier this year, the product line includes chaga chunks, nuggets and powders, as well as high potency liquid extracts and a ground mushroom coffee blend. With antioxidant and immune-boosting benefits among their touted properties, the products are marketed as part of a preventive approach to health care.

“The view we have on these products is that people don’t need to change their everyday routine. You can have the benefit of mushroom products in your beverage in the morning or as an additive to a water bottle, for example,” said president and co-founder Jonathan Murray during a presentation at the recent Mycelium Congress Start-Up Showcase. 

“Our chaga is from Canada, so we’re providing economic benefit to the Canadian market, and we are trying to keep potency strong and quality high.” 

According to Murray, chaga naturally grows on tree trunks, and the leading global supply comes from China and Russia, where it is often a byproduct of deforestation. Forage Hyperfoods sustainably harvests wild-growing Canadian chaga, leaving about 30 per cent of the mushroom on each tree for regrowth. 

To keep up with demand and keep production sustainable, the company has implemented a cultivation practice outside of Ottawa, and a seeding program for woodlot owners in partnership with the Canadian Woodlot Association. 

“We think we can increase our supply five to seven times,” Murray said. 

He’s also optimistic about the potential of microbiome research undertaken by his company that shows a gut-brain connection and has started discussions with colorectal specialists about future studies and trials. 

Ben Lightburn’s company, Filament Health, focuses on the natural psychedelic properties of mushrooms. Based in Vancouver, the company sees natural psychedelics as a treatment option for mental illness, for example. 

“The overall natural mega-trend is coming to fungi. Consumers are becoming aware of the beneficial properties of various mushrooms, and as people want greater control over their own health, they want medicinal, functional and pharmaceutical mushrooms,” said Lightburn while speaking at the same event. 

Another Canadian start-up using mushrooms is Chinova Bioworks. The New Brunswick company has developed a natural and clean-label shelf-life extender suitable for food and beverage manufacturing. 

Its trademarked product is called Chiber. It’s based on a dietary fibre called chitosan, extracted from white button mushroom stems that mushroom growers traditionally compost or send to landfills. The company has three products in the market suitable for beverages, dairy and plant-based dairy alternatives. The latest innovation is a vegan-friendly mushroom fining agent for breweries. 

Alberta’s Ceres Solutions grows gourmet mushrooms using a mixture of spent grain from local craft breweries and agricultural byproducts. The leftover mushroom substrate is high in protein and marketed into a trademarked cattle feed called Mycopro. 

The post Mushrooms offer new products and opportunities appeared first on Farmtario.

Big fast food chains, including McDonald’s and KFC owner Yum Brands, have been aggressively expanding their international operations to counter slowing growth in the U.S.

Toronto-based Restaurant Brands, the owner of Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, has been looking to boost its businesses by deploying various initiatives that range from app-based ordering to loyalty programs for its customers.

The company, which held its first-ever investor day on Wednesday, did not immediately respond to a request for investment details of its expansion program.

Restaurant Brands, which has been hit by a slowdown at its three iconic brands, hopes to grow its coffee, burger and chicken markets by five to six per cent annually over the next five years.

Last month, the company reported a 0.6 per cent drop in comparable sales at Tim Hortons for the quarter ended March 31, while same-store sales at Burger King grew 2.2 per cent, down from 3.8 per cent a year earlier.

The announcement of the ambitious expansion plan comes just months after Jose Cil took the helm at the company, after having headed its Burger King unit.

Rival Yum Brands opened 372 new KFC outlets in 46 countries in the first quarter ended March, while McDonald’s plans on opening roughly 1,200 restaurants worldwide this year.

Tim Hortons, Restaurant Brands’ coffee and doughnut chain, also said it would introduce three new sandwiches using the vegan burger maker Beyond Meat’s plant-based sausages as demand for vegan alternatives grows in the country.

Shares of Restaurant Brands, which have risen nearly 26 per cent this year, were up marginally at $89.67 on the TSX late Friday afternoon.

— Reporting for Reuters by Shradha Singh in Bangalore.

The post Restaurant Brands to boost outlets by 54 per cent within 10 years appeared first on Farmtario.

Restaurant Brands shares rose almost three per cent after the company announced the Tim Hortons move into China in a joint venture with private equity firm Cartesian Capital Group, the chain’s biggest expansion outside the core Canadian market.

The move is part of a two-pronged strategy by Tim Hortons’ new president Alex Macedo, who is trying to cope with mounting competition in the fast-food industry at home while also fixing the chain’s reputation, bruised after some franchise operators alleged that Tim Hortons mismanaged its franchise operations and bullied some restaurant owners.

“One is improving and increasing our leadership in Canada, and the second is taking a little bit of Canada to the world,” Macedo told Reuters in an interview at the parent company’s Oakville, Ont. headquarters.

Tim Hortons will keep its beverage offerings the same in China but will customize its food menu for the local market, Macedo told Reuters. The move into China adds to the chain’s global footprint, after last year’s entry into the Philippines, Britain, Spain and Mexico.

Tim Hortons has operated in the U.S. since 1984 and the United Arab Emirates since 2011. It lists 4,256 locations across Canada, 725 in the U.S., 125 in the Middle East and between five and 20 in the countries it entered last year.

Macedo, who took charge in December, is seeking to stem profit declines and sweeten customer sentiment. A bitter and public feud with a group of unhappy franchisees in Canada and the U.S. pushed public perception of the chain to 50th place in a January survey from fourth a year earlier.

China’s coffee and tea consumption is expected to climb to 750,218 tonnes by 2020, from 693,748 in 2015, according to market and consumer data provider Statista. Shanghai alone has an estimated 6,500 coffee houses, with small chains, independent stores and bakeries battling for a slice of a market that research firm Mintel says could grow to 79 billion yuan (C$15.6 billion) by 2022 from 60 billion yuan last year.

Starbucks has about 3,000 outlets in China now and aims to have 10,000 there within a decade, which would make China a bigger market for the company than the U.S.

“I wouldn’t say (Tim Hortons) has saturated the market in Canada, but they’re mightily close,” said Brian Madden, portfolio manager at Goodreid Investment Counsel in Toronto. Madden is waiting for the franchisee issues to be resolved and for valuations to come down to buy the stock.

Macedo said Tim Hortons could have communicated better with franchisees and acted faster to address the their issues. He said the chain is now acting on many of their ideas, and ticked off a slew of measures, including upgrading outlets, a new kids menu, all-day breakfast and a loyalty program. Tim Hortons also began testing deliveries this week and plans to introduce self-service kiosks, he said.

Macedo added that he was trying to improve relations by meeting disgruntled franchisees throughout Canada.

The Great White North Franchisee Association, formed last year, has filed two suits against the company alleging mismanagement of advertising funds and intimidation of franchisees. Its U.S. arm also has a lawsuit against the company.

A person who has spoken with many aggrieved franchisees, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that members have not yet seen improvements in their circumstances or profits, even though some of them have met individually with the company and the franchisee advisory board, which represents all Tim Hortons restaurant owners across Canada.

The official franchisee advisory board has distanced itself from the association that is suing the company. Lou Gossner, chair of that board, attributed the association’s grievances to miscommunications and misunderstandings.

Regardless, “public perception of this brand has really been tainted and tarnished over the last year to 18 months,” Goodreid’s Madden said. “It’s going to require things that put money back into the pockets of franchisees to fix it.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Nichola Saminather in Toronto and Karan Nagarkatti in Bangalore; additional reporting by Laharee Chatterjee and John Benny in Bangalore.

The post Tim Hortons to enter China appeared first on Farmtario.

Brazil is the top global exporter of soybeans, sugar, coffee and chickens. The strike over high fuel prices has paralyzed Latin America’s largest economy, emptied Brazilian roadways and left major cities running short on food, gasoline and medical supplies.

Farmers and merchants have been unable to get their supplies to key ports during the nine days of industrial action. The strike has been slow to unwind even after the government agreed to subsidize diesel prices in a bid to end protests.

The strike has had a devastating impact on livestock. Tens of millions of chickens have been killed because feed supplies have failed. If they begin to starve, chickens start eating each other, so meat packers have culled flocks quickly, according to poultry and pork processing association ABPA.

“Lack of feed leads chicken to start pecking each other and blood and cuts appear, making them confuse flesh for food. That’s when cannibalism starts,” an industry source said on condition of anonymity because the person is not authorized to speak to the media.

Some 70 million chickens had died as of Monday, ABPA said, adding that farmers were running out of space to dispose of their carcasses. Brazil is the world’s biggest chicken exporter, supplying over a third of all shipments. The Latin American country is a big supplier of chicken to Asia and the Middle East.

ABPA estimated that the country had lost 120,000 tonnes in potential exports since truckers began protesting.

Nearly 4,000 trucks of beef are sitting on roadsides throughout the country, and the meat will soon rot, said beef packer trade group Abiec. Only two of Brazil’s 109 beef processing plants continued to operate, according to Abiec, and even those plants were working at half their capacity.

Brazilian beef processors said they had lost an estimated 40,000 tonnes of potential exports worth US$170 million since the strike began.

Force majeure considered

Soybean exporters are considering declaring force majeure on shipments, a contractual clause that releases them from obligations because of events beyond their control, according to Anec, a trade group representing grains exporters such Archer Daniels Midland and Louis Dreyfus.

No trucks had delivered soybeans to Santos, the largest port in Latin America, since the protests started on May 21, an Anec exporters group spokesperson said.

Brazil is one of the biggest suppliers to top buyer China.

Soy crushers group Abiove said on Tuesday all soy crushing units had ground to a halt in Brazil because of lack of supplies.

“There are reports that road blockades have been lifted in some places but we don’t know if the units started receiving raw materials to resume crushing,” an Abiove representative told Reuters on Tuesday.

International sugar futures notched their biggest percentage one-week rally so far this year as the strike prompted worries that millers in the world’s top sugar producer and exporter would slow crushing and be unable to get product to ports.

Cane harvesting in Brazil’s center-south, the world’s largest cane belt, has slowed because of fuel shortages.

As many as 340 mills in Brazil’s centre-south could be shut by Thursday if the strike persists, up from 220 already shut, said trade group Forum Nacional Sucroenergetico late on Monday.

Around 150 sugar mills have shut down in the state of Sao Paulo, trade group UNICA said in a statement on Monday. About 60 percent of the country’s ethanol and sugar are produced in the state.

Brazil’s top coffee exporter Cooxupe warned foreign clients last week about possible shipping delays due to the protests.

Brazil is the biggest grower and exporter of coffee, and the strike helped drive international benchmark Arabica coffee futures on ICE up two per cent to just above US$1.20/lb. last week. The strike came just ahead of Brazil’s main arabica harvest.

The Brazilian coffee industry is losing an estimated 70 million reais (C$24.3 million) per day due to the protests, trade group Abic said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ana Mano and Jose Roberto Gomes in Sao Paulo; additional reporting by Marcy Nicholson and Chris Prentice in New York.

The post Chickens culled as Brazil truckers disrupt commodity exports appeared first on Farmtario.

Second Cup on Thursday announced a “strategic alliance” with National Access Cannabis Corp. (NAC) to roll out a network of NAC-branded recreational cannabis dispensaries, initially in Western Canada and expanding eastward “where legally permissible.” (See sidebar below.)

Ottawa-based NAC’s business model so far has been in the medical marijuana market, with three clinic sites in Calgary and one each in Toronto, Ottawa, Victoria, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Halifax.

NAC recently moved to carve out space in the Manitoba retail market for recreational cannabis ahead of legalization this summer, signing deals in December with four Manitoba First Nations (Long Plain, Peguis, Opaskwyak, Nisichawayasihk) to operate stores.

The Manitoba government in February also approved NAC as one of four provincial licensees to operate privately-owned retail cannabis stores.

Thursday’s deal calls for NAC to seek licenses to dispense cannabis products and work with Second Cup and its franchisees to leverage Second Cup’s “extensive” Canadian retail footprint to set up cannabis retail stores.

At the end of fiscal 2017, the Mississauga-based coffee chain — which recently expanded its product offerings to include bagels and, in some outlets, Pinkberry frozen yogurt — included 286 outlets across Canada.

The NAC-branded stores would offer “leading” cannabis products, including pot supplied by Ottawa-based distributor CannaRoyalty Corp., NAC said in a release. CannaRoyalty is already California’s largest legal distributor of cannabis products.

Conversion of any existing Second Cup site to a pot dispensary would depend on getting the appropriate retail licenses from provincial regulators, and on the approval of Second Cup and the store’s franchisee and landlord, NAC said.

“This relationship allows us to quickly expand our footprint in proven high-traffic retail locations across Canada,” NAC CEO Mark Goliger said in Thursday’s release.

“With an initial focus on Western Canada, we’ll look to work with Second Cup to license select storefronts, utilizing our proven business model to deliver secure, safe and responsible access.”

Given the coffee chain’s “exceptional quality real estate located across Canada, our alliance with Second Cup will offer consumers access to quality cannabis products and the superior service in the comfortable setting they’ve come to expect from NAC,” he said.

Second Cup CEO Garry Macdonald, in the same release, described the deal as “a great opportunity to leverage our select real estate assets to increase value for shareholders and franchisee partners.”

The coffee chain, he added, “remain(s) focused on growing our Second Cup brand and sales through continued product innovation and expanding our network across Canada.”

The deal also calls for NAC to issue warrants, expiring April 12, 2023, for Second Cup to buy an aggregate of five million NAC common shares at 91 cents a share. NAC is publicly traded on the TSX Venture Exchange. — AGCanada.com Network

Lounge licenses? Not yet

An NAC/Second Cup shop may be able to get a provincial license for retail sales of cannabis in Western Canada, but the concept of cannabis lounges doesn’t yet feature in any of the four western provinces’ plans for pot regulation:

• Manitoba’s planned legislation specifically forbids it, stating a person “must not consume cannabis in any manner in a cannabis store.”
• British Columbia’s licensing process for cannabis retailers, as laid out in February, doesn’t include plans to license cannabis lounges “at this time.” The province said it will give consideration to “other types of licences at a later date.”
• Likewise, Alberta has said cannabis cafes and lounges “will not be permitted” right away on July 1 this year, but the province’s legislation authorizes it to regulate such establishments should it decide to allow them at a later date.
• Saskatchewan plans to allow private cannabis retailers under a provincial permitting system but hasn’t yet said whether it would allow cannabis lounges, only that it will take a “strict approach” on consumption in public areas. — Staff

The post Second Cup to set up cannabis lounges in West appeared first on Farmtario.

More coffee farms are being developed in the western part of Bahia state, which was unsuitable to raise the beans before wide-scale irrigation systems started to be installed there a decade ago. The region’s flat fields allow for a fully mechanized harvest, reducing producing costs.

These farmers cultivating coffee along with other crops such as soy and cotton are finding the arabica beans more profitable, even in the current scenario of reasonably high international prices for soy and low values for coffee.

“Coffee is what provides the largest return,” said Glauber de Castro, one of the owners at Fazenda Cafe do Rio Branco, a family-owned agricultural company managing 500 hectares of arabica coffee and 200 hectares of soybeans in Luis Eduardo Magalhaes, Bahia state.

He said both coffee and soy should have good yields this year, due to favourable weather, after a couple of years of poor climate that was never fully offset by irrigation.

Castro estimates coffee yields to jump to 47 60-kg bags this year from 33 bags in 2017, as soy productivity also reaches high levels.

Fazenda Cafe do Rio Branco produces high-quality, washed arabicas that it sells directly to Italian processor Illy.

He said that to achieve higher profitability with soybeans, he would have to put more land under cultivation, to gain scale.

Caetano de Carvalho Berlatto, a coffee producer in the neighbouring town of Sao Desiderio, has reported a peak yield of 60 bags per hectare, double the national average. He works with two large irrigation systems in the 200 hectares where arabica coffee plantations were set up.

He says production could be even higher if not for pests such as the “mineiro bug,” a tiny worm that eats through plant leaves, reducing production potential.

Warmer weather in Bahia, compared to traditional coffee cultivation areas such as Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo, leads to increased infestations at times.

— Reporting for Reuters by Roberto Samora; writing by Marcelo Teixeira.

The post Coffee may profit more than soy in Brazil’s new farming frontier appeared first on Farmtario.

The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) had previously rated coffee as “possibly carcinogenic” but has changed its mind.

It now says its latest review found “no conclusive evidence for a carcinogenic effect” of coffee drinking and pointed to some studies showing coffee may actually reduce the risk of developing certain types of cancer.

“(This) does not show that coffee is certainly safe… but there is less reason for concern today than there was before,” Dana Loomis, the deputy head of IARC’s Monograph classification department told a news conference.

At the same time, however, IARC presented other scientific evidence which suggests that drinking anything very hot — around 65 C or above — including water, coffee, tea and other beverages, probably does cause cancer of the oesophagus.

Lyon-based IARC, which last year prompted headlines worldwide by saying processed meat can cause cancer, reached its conclusions after reviewing more than 1,000 scientific studies in humans and animals. There was inadequate evidence for coffee to be classified as either carcinogenic or not carcinogenic.

IARC had previously put coffee as a “possible carcinogen” in its 2B category alongside chloroform, lead and many other substances.

The U.S. National Coffee Association welcomed the change in IARC’s classification as “great news for coffee drinkers.”

“We believe that this is the first time that IARC has completely turned its classification around, which is likely because of the great body of evidence showing the benefits of coffee consumption,” Lesya Balych-Cooper, interim president for the Coffee Association of Canada, said in a separate release.

The Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee, whose members are six of the major European coffee companies — illycaffè, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Lavazza, Nestlé , Paulig, and Tchibo — said IARC had found “no negative relationship between coffee consumption and cancer.”

Let it cool

In its evaluation of very hot drinks, IARC said animal studies suggest carcinogenic effects probably occur with drinking temperatures of 65 C or above. Some experiments with rats and mice found “very hot” liquids, including water, could promote the development of tumours, it said.

The agency said studies of hot drinks such as maté, an infusion consumed mainly in South America, tea and other drinks in several countries including China, Iran, Japan and Turkey, found the risk of oesophageal cancer “may increase with the temperature of the drink” above 65 C.

“These results suggest that drinking very hot beverages is one probable cause of oesophageal cancer and that it is the temperature, rather than the drinks themselves, that appears to be responsible,” said IARC’s director, Christopher Wild.

Oesophageal cancer is the eighth most common cause of cancer worldwide and one of the main causes of cancer death, with around 400,000 deaths recorded in 2012.

The WHO’s official spokesman in Geneva, Gregory Hartl, stressed that smoking and drinking alcohol were among the most serious risk factors for oesophageal cancer and urged people to focus on reducing these as a priority. He said IARC’s evaluation of hot drinks was based on limited available evidence in humans and animals and more research is needed.

“We say: be prudent, let hot drinks cool down,” he told Reuters, adding that the WHO’s advice was to “not consume foods or drinks when they are at a very hot — scalding hot — temperature.”

Drinking very hot beverages is now classified as probably carcinogenic in IARC’s group 2A category, alongside red meat and nitrogen mustard.

But David Spiegelhalter, a professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Britain’s University of Cambridge, said he was concerned that IARC’s review would confuse people.

“Last year the IARC said that bacon is carcinogenic, but it became clear that when eaten in moderation it is not very risky. In the case of very hot drinks, the IARC concludes they are probably hazardous, but can’t say how big the risk might be,” he said in an emailed comment.

“This may be interesting science, but makes it difficult to construct a sensible response.”

— Kate Kelland is a Reuters health and science correspondent in London, England. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

The post Can coffee cause cancer? Only if it’s very hot, says WHO agency appeared first on Farmtario.

Despite the undisputed quality of its mild arabica coffees, Colombia now supplies only a tenth of global exports versus 18 per cent around 1990, prompting fierce debate over what steps one of the country’s largest employment providers should take to regain share.

The study, carried out over two years, recommends scrapping the minimum quality standard for exportable beans so growers can enter the fast-growing low-end coffee segment, where prices are higher abroad.

The report, to be delivered this week or next to President Juan Manuel Santos, was commissioned to address Colombia’s marginalization in global coffee.

Controversially, it advocates a smaller role for the National Coffee Growers’ Federation, which exports about a quarter of Colombia’s coffee, a suggestion that has drawn a fierce response from federation members when raised in the past.

The report suggests splitting the farmer-funded entity into a private trading arm and one that would provide technical support to growers. It argues growers may earn more by dealing with a more competitive, exclusively private, export sector.

Private exporters complain the federation, which publishes its fluctuating guaranteed purchase price daily to set a market floor, competes unfairly because it is tax-exempt and because its shipments face fewer bureaucratic hurdles.

The federation says its presence ensures growers receive a better price, while the study says it is a drain on government funds, which are used to supplement the six cents per pound the federation earns from a tax paid on coffee shipped by private exporters.

Growing Colombia’s prestigious high-altitude beans provides a livelihood for 350,000 families and provides important social cohesion in a country where a 50-year war with leftist guerrillas has been fought mostly in rural areas.

The federation has opposed tampering with the sector’s economic model, while private exporters say that lack of flexibility has led to Colombia’s decline, as the industry has not adapted to new trends in global coffee.

Instead of the federation’s price guarantee, the report recommends government-funded support for growers when prices drop low enough. This would emulate the mechanism used in the world’s top coffee grower, Brazil, to ensure growers’ variable costs are always met.

— Peter Murphy reports for Reuters from Bogota, Colombia.

The post Colombia’s coffee sector seen needing complete overhaul appeared first on Farmtario.