U.S. President Joe Biden last May loosened restrictions on travel, remittances and migration, and promised the United States would do more to support the fledgling private sector in Cuba.

Change, however, has been too slow to come, said Paul Johnson, chair of the U.S. Agricultural Coalition for Cuba, a more-than-100-member organization that includes national and state farm organizations, corporations and producers.

“We’re losing, and we’re tired of losing,” Johnson told reporters on the sidelines of the gathering at a hotel in Havana.

The U.S. businesses are keen to both sell their own product to Cuba and to invest in private sector farms and cooperatives to help them develop.

Little has changed on the island since a similar group of would-be investors arrived last April. Many farms have been shuttered by lack of investment, equipment, fuel and supplies, leading to widespread shortages of food across Cuba.

“It’s frustrating to us in the United States, because we believe it’s something that we can fix. We need to go back to our government… and insist that the private sector is a path forward to development,” said Johnson.

Cuba, a long-time foe of the U.S., swapped capitalism for socialism shortly after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, preferring state over private enterprise.

But in August 2021, the communist-run government lifted a ban on private companies that had been in place since 1968. Upwards of 7,000 such businesses have opened since, according to an economy ministry list updated on March 23.

Canada, according to the federal Trade Commissioner Service, is Cuba’s second-largest source of direct investment, with “significant” stakes in mining, energy, agriculture and heavy equipment, as well as in tourism, with over one million Canadians visiting Cuba annually, pre-pandemic. Cuba is also Canada’s top market in the Caribbean/Central American sub-region.

Investors from countries including Mexico, Venezuela, Vietnam, China, Spain and Russia, among others, have also previously participated in state and private business in Cuba.

The United States remains an outlier. The U.S. Treasury Department last May authorized a company owned by entrepreneur John Kavulich to invest in a small private business in Cuba’s services sector, the first such approval in decades.

But many other similar requests remain unanswered, Johnson said.

“Obviously that’s just not good enough,” Johnson said. “We’re capitalists. We invest in private business all around the world. Why can’t we do it in Cuba?”

Despite the loosening of some restrictions, a Cold War-era U.S. embargo on Cuba remains in place, prohibiting some trade and financing between the two countries and complicating investment ties.

— Nelson Acosta is a Reuters correspondent in Havana. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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A new theory developed by a University of Guelph researcher suggests why. For the first time, plant scientists have shown that weeds can alter crop growth from a distance by affecting light signals used by the crop plants to communicate.

Clarence Swanton, a weed scientist in the plant agriculture department at the Ontario Agricultural College, has sought for 20 years to determine why crop yields still decline when weeds no longer pose a threat.

Why it matters: This research could offer a sustainable method for increasing crop yields while reducing the need for herbicides.

Current understanding of plant competition is based on limitations of light, water and nutrients available to plants.

Swanton doesn’t dispute that aspect, but he and colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture bring something new to the table. In the presence of weeds, crop plants become so stressed that they change their chemical and physical behaviour, the researchers write in Trends in Plant Science.

The paper introduces a new paradigm of plant competition, one that could increase crop tolerance to weeds while producing more food and reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint. It hints at the next steps needed to transform the theory into practice.

“We’ve discovered that when a plant detects a weed species, it’s asked to either grow or die. It only has a certain amount of resources it can sacrifice to defend itself,” said Swanton.

“There’s a trade-off, and that’s all new. It’s an entirely new mechanism of plant competition.”

Rapid yield loss

Plant scientists can chart the growth and yield of a crop in the presence of weeds.

“Early emerging weeds that are not controlled can result in a rapid loss in crop yield potential,” said Swanton.

In general, if weeds emerge at the first leaf stage of crop growth, yield loss can range from 10 to 20 per cent, he said. However, if weeds emerge two or three leaf stages later, yield loss is more likely to be three to five per cent.

“We started to develop this idea that the yield loss was actually occurring in the seedling stage, that something was changing the physiology of the plant and affecting its long-term growth,” said Swanton.

Stressful neighbours

That something is interference by weeds with the crop’s light signals. It can happen even before the crop emerges.

Plants depend on light to soak up vital nutrients, grow and photosynthesize. Swanton argues they also use light to communicate, a medium known as photobiology, and to detect whether they’re surrounded by siblings or competitors. Plant competition begins when crop plants detect light signals from weeds.

“We can put a corn plant in a pot and put a weed beside it, and that corn plant will detect that a neighbour is there,” said Swanton.

“When the corn plant realizes its neighbour is a competitor, it’s going to change its physiology in response to that stress.”

The changes the crop makes in response to that stress affect its developmental and physiological growth, ultimately impacting yield.

To demonstrate, Swanton referred to a PowerPoint presentation with two potted tobacco plants. The pots were concentric, with each tobacco plant growing in a central pot, ringed by an outer pot. In one case, the outer pot contained a grass; the other outer pot was empty.

“The only difference between these two plants is one is having a conversation with a neighbouring weed,” Swanton said, flipping through slides showing side-by-side images of the physiological changes to the plants over 12 to 48 hours.

At the six-day mark, the isolated tobacco plant was thriving. The other was dead.

“That’s six days,” Swanton said. “Nobody touched this plant. This is the first time in the biological world that we have evidence of one plant having the ability to kill another.”

Change the signals, increase the yield

To mitigate yield loss, Swanton and his colleagues are investigating ways to stop crop plants from responding to the signals from weeds altogether. If the crop plant’s light signals and other physiological aspects are altered, said Swanton, it may become more tolerant to weeds, stemming yield loss.

By understanding these new mechanisms of plant competition, the researchers hope to provide plant breeders with knowledge that may allow for development of crop plants that are more tolerant to weeds.

The possibilities are endless, added Swanton.

“You’d have greater diversity in the cropping system, better control of erosion, perhaps better nutrient supply, or ways to reduce the environmental footprint of agriculture.”

But further research is needed, he said, specifically at the genetic and molecular level to properly understand the light signals.

And the research presents some challenges of its own, said Swanton.

“Can you achieve that tolerance without altering other things that make the plant more susceptible to something else?”

This research was funded by Food from Thought at the University of Guelph.

The post Light signals from neighbouring weeds alter crop plant growth, yield appeared first on Farmtario.

This is a contrast to reaction from the sector in 2018, when the last major increase occurred.

According to one of the loudest voices of dissent from 2018, Hamilton-area broccoli grower Ken Forth, that doesn’t mean some farm sectors aren’t concerned about the repercussions from the latest increase.

Why it matters: Most agricultural jobs are exempt from Employment Standards Act (ESA) rules surrounding minimum wage but it’s generally accepted that an increase in the legislated minimum has a trickle-down effect on how much farmers pay their workers.

“We’re in an industry where, in most cases, we cannot absorb these increases,” Forth told Farmtario. Forth is chair of the Labour Section for the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, and said “farming has always been a low-margin industry.”

Even if the impact of the minimum wage hike amounts to only a slight increase in costs, it can be challenging if that slight increase comes at a time when other costs are also trending upwards, which has generally been the case in the post-COVID-19 period.

“In our industry, cardboard is a huge one,” Forth explained. “We’re looking at huge increases in the costs for packaging… Farmers cannot be expected to swallow up those input cost increases forever.”

Dave Thompson, coordinator of a recently-released farm labour study from the National Farmers Union’s Ontario region (NFUO), agrees in general that minimum wage hikes do trickle down into sectors that are officially exempt. “If you’re going to get better pay working at Tim Hortons, most people are going to work at Tim Hortons and not work on a farm,” he said.

Forth added that, with temporary foreign workers in particular, the contracts required under updated labour legislation are typically tied to the minimum wage. It’s illegal to pay a different rate to foreign workers doing the same work as their domestic counterparts.

A month before the province’s Nov. 2 announcement, a smaller minimum wage hike had come into effect on Oct. 1 — raising the rate from $14.25 per hour to $14.35 per hour — based on the 2020 annual Consumer Price Index increase. The Nov. 2 announcement outlines an increase to $15 per hour on Jan. 1.

Forth noted this is significantly smaller than the onetime, 28 per cent increase proposed in 2018 by the Kathleen Wynne government, to be followed by smaller hikes in subsequent years. That difference in scale is the main reason, he suggested, why no outcry erupted this time from farm country.

But in the case of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), the contrast to the response compared to 2018 was clear. Aylmer-area horticulture producer Mark Wales, OFA director at the time, wrote in 2018 that the Wynne government proposal would “throw a major wrench in the province’s own plans to support the continued growth of the agri-food sector.”

But earlier this month, current OFA president Peggy Brekveld — in her response to the province’s Fall Economic Outlook and Fiscal Overview which contained the minimum wage announcement — wrote that, although “we acknowledge this will impact some of our farm businesses with tight margins and restaurants that are some of our greatest supporters in purchasing local Ontario products… OFA supports the government’s efforts to assist those impacted by this wage to meet a better living standard.”

The NFUO wasn’t among farm groups calling in 2018 to scrap the Wynne government’s proposed hikes. But according to Thompson, that doesn’t necessarily mean they wholeheartedly agree the rate should go up.

A big reason for this lukewarm view is because, in so many cases, financial uncertainty means that farm owners fail to pay even themselves a minimum wage – and sometimes pay themselves significantly less than the minimum.

Speaking to Farmtario, Thompson explained he was hired to lead a study by NFUO into labour practices on small and mid-sized Ontario farms, and the findings and recommendations were released in July 2021. He added he came from a labour union career background and had always supported minimum wage increases as a way to create more stable living conditions for those at the bottom of the wage scale.

Meeting and working with Ontario’s farmers, though, changed that view somewhat.

“I was always thinking about it in terms of people like coffee baristas – where you’re not competing against coffee baristas in Mexico,” he said.

Thompson says NFUO wanted to understand if labour “pinch points” were similar on small and mid-sized farms compared to more widely-publicized challenges faced in larger-scale Ontario agriculture.

“We heard this hue and cry of a labour shortage” in large-scale farming, he recalled.

The study, encompassing 772 farmer surveys and smaller numbers of follow-up interviews and regional focus group meetings, revealed the smaller and mid-sized farmers faced particular challenges accessing human resources expertise and getting connected with potential workers.

Thompson says many would like to grow their businesses through hiring more staff but don’t know how to or don’t have the time to initiate the hiring process, so they continue toiling alone or with family.

Also compared to larger farms, a greater proportion of workers on small and mid-sized farms come from cities or towns instead of from nearby farm families. Information about job opportunities hasn’t traditionally flowed unhindered across rural/urban boundaries so it’s often difficult to make connections with potential employees.

But one thing Thompson believes is the same for large-scale and smaller-scale Ontario farmers is that, when it comes to their lowest-earning non-family employees, they’re already paying above minimum wage. Workers responding to the NFUO survey reported an average wage of $17.50 per hour, and Thompson said this was often boosted by incentives such as housing, food or bonus pay on big harvest days.

It’s to the point, he argued, that the farm labour exemption from minimum wage legislation appears unnecessary. Thompson worries that unscrupulous farm employers can and do take advantage of other aspects of the exemption — including holiday pay, overtime pay and hours of work — even though they continue to pay above the minimum hourly wage.

Forth, who is also president of Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services (F.A.R.M.S.), agrees that, despite the exemption from minimum wage legislation, farmers are generally paying above the minimum. “Nobody’s going to work for less anyway,” he said, echoing Thompson’s Tim Hortons job comparison.

But he cautions against a blanket removal of all exemptions when it comes to farm work. It takes only a very small increase in what consumers or retailers are asked to pay for their food for them to start looking for an alternative supplier, he argues. And when Mexican farms have a “labour co-efficient” of US$1.25 per hour, said Forth, their Ontario counterparts need access to some legislative leeway to stay competitive.

Without any support, he continued, “I’m concerned about the future of our industry… I believe some of these young, smart (farm owners) are looking at moving” to other jurisdictions instead of staying in Ontario.

The NFUO report also calls for strengthened government support — although it advocates for direct financial help rather than exemptions to labour law.

“Farm labour grants and wage subsidies, improved access to EI, and ideally a Basic Income are urgently required to ensure farm workers and operators are receiving a decent annual income regardless of their hourly wage, farm earnings, or the length of their season,” the report states.

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Organigram, headquartered at Moncton, grows cannabis and makes cannabis-derived products in the Canadian market, where marijuana was legalized in 2018.

Big tobacco and liquor companies in North America have already made large investments in the nascent industry, with cannabis seen as a less harmful alternative to cigarettes.

With top Democratic lawmakers in the United States also promising to decriminalize marijuana use, analysts and experts predict record investment in the industry this year.

The deal will give BAT access to R+D technologies, product innovation and cannabis expertise, it said in a statement, with an initial focus on natural remedy cannabidiol (CBD).

“This move takes us into a new space and we are not ruling out any product innovation,” David O’Reilly, director of scientific research at BAT, told Reuters.

Organigram CEO Greg Engel said the companies will jointly develop new products for cannabis delivery, both oral and vapour based, and will be able to commercialize any products developed under their own brands.

Both BAT and Organigram will contribute scientists, researchers and product developers, BAT said. It will become Organigram’s largest shareholder and can appoint two directors to its board.

Natural fit

“We view this move as a strong positive. Cannabis overall provides a natural fit for tobacco and a big incremental growth opportunity,” Jefferies analyst Owen Bennett wrote in an note.

BAT has expertise in operating in a regulated environment and experience of growing a crop similar to hemp CBD, Bennett said, adding that the timing of the deal before Organigram’s possible entry into the United States is also a big positive.

Bennett estimates U.S. CBD market sales of over US$16 billion by 2025.

Organigram’s U.S.-listed shares surged around 30 per cent to US$3.75 in morning trading on the Nasdaq. BAT’s London-listed shares were up slightly.

BAT’s investment comes two days after the Lucky Strike and Pall Mall cigarette maker laid out environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets, including switching more people to less harmful products.

The group aims to achieve at least five billion pounds in revenue from sales of e-cigarettes, tobacco heating and oral nicotine products in 2025.

Elsewhere in the industry, Marlboro maker Altria has invested in pot producer Cronos Group, while Corona beer-maker Constellation Brands has a stake in Canopy Growth, the largest cannabis company globally by market value.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tanishaa Nadkar, Aby Jose Koilparambil, Shariq Khan and Siddharth Cavale in Bangalore.

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Generally, grafts have been thought to be compatible only between the same or closely related species. However, scientists at Nagoya University and colleagues in Japan recently found that the tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana promotes adhesion of tissue and can maintain grafts between a broad range of species.

Their findings, published recently in the journal Science, have also shown that using tobacco as an intermediary, the upper part (scion) of a tomato plant grafted onto the lower part (rootstock) of a Chrysanthemum morifolium (widely known as Florist’s daisy) successfully bore fruit.

Grafting has been conducted for thousands of years for the propagation of fruits and vegetables, in which a productive scion is attached onto a rootstock that is resistant to diseases and environmental stresses. However, exactly how grafts are established has been unclear, and grafting is considered difficult between different family species.

A team of scientists from Nagoya University, Teikyo University, Riken, Chubu University, and Gra&Green Inc. (a start-up venture company from Nagoya University) recently conducted a study on grafting between different family species.

The team focused on Nicotiana in the Solanaceae family, because a previous study had shown that its scion can be grafted onto the rootstock of Arabidopsis thaliana in the mustard family. The team conducted grafting experiments using plants of seven Nicotiana species and their partners from 84 species in 42 families. The results showed that Nicotiana, used as either scion or rootstock, succeeded in maintaining grafts for more than a month with 73 species in 38 families.

Next, the scientists examined the cellular mechanisms that enable Nicotiana to form grafts with plants from a wide range of families. They analyzed transcriptomes at graft junctions between Nicotiana and Arabidopsis and hypothesized that the expression of β-1,4 glucanases secreted into the extracellular region is involved in cell wall digestion. In further experiments, when β-1,4 glucanases were overexpressed in Arabidopsis, the adhesion property of the grafts was enhanced. Thus, they concluded that the expression of β-1,4 glucanases is a key in facilitating tissue adhesion of the grafts.

In addition, they conducted experiments to see whether Nicotiana can act as an intermediary in the grafting of different family species, by using a tomato scion and the rootstock of Florist’s daisy, a garden plant resistant to environmental stress. About three months later, the tomato plant successfully produced a small fruit.

“Using Nicotiana as an intermediate, we also achieved other grafts in which the scion, interscion, and rootstock all belonged to different plant families,” says Nagoya University bioscientist Michitaka Notaguchi, the corresponding author of this study.

“Our latest results regarding the key molecules involved, not just interfamily grafting itself, could help improve plant grafting techniques so that the variety of root systems available to aid crop production can be increased with minimal destruction of ecosystems.”

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The total number of Canadians killed by the coronavirus edged up by 0.9 per cent to 7,773 from 7,703 on Saturday, the public health agency said, further evidence that the worst of the pandemic has passed. The total number of cases rose to 95,057 from 94,335.

Canada’s 10 provinces are all gradually reopening their economies and relaxing restrictions on social gatherings. Unemployment, though, has soared to record levels amid widespread shutdowns and market analysts say it could take years for the economy to recover.

“I am concerned about Canadians’ mental health … more Canadians have increased their consumption of alcohol and junk food or sweets since the beginning of the pandemic,” chief public health officer Theresa Tam said in a statement.

Tam, citing the results of a recent Statistics Canada survey about the effects of the pandemic, said Canadians needed to make mental health a priority.

“While social interactions and activities might look different right now, Canadians should be actively looking for safe ways to socialize, engage in physical activity and make … healthy food choices,” she said.

Almost 20 per cent of respondents in the StatsCan survey reported symptoms consistent with moderate or severe anxiety.

Last month, StatsCan said factory sales of beverages and tobacco rose by 6.7 per cent in March from February on higher demand for beer, wine and soft drinks. Food sales increased by 8.2 per cent.

— David Ljunggren is a Reuters political correspondent in Ottawa.

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The Kingdom of Wakanda is the home of Black Panther, the Marvel superhero, and is portrayed in comic books and the 2018 blockbuster movie as an isolated African nation with the most powerful technology on the planet.

“While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong #WakandaForever,” USDA tweeted Thursday from its official account.

The agency did not immediately respond to questions.

A spokesman told the Washington Post that inclusion of the mythical African nation from the universe of Marvel superheroes was a mistake made as part of a test officials were running.

Francis Tseng, a New York-based software engineer who was looking for data on U.S. agricultural tariffs for a fellowship he is pursuing, first noticed the reference to Wakanda on the U.S. tariff list and called it out on Twitter.

“I was very confused at first and thought I misremembered the country from the movie and got it confused with something else,” Tseng told Reuters.

Before it was removed, Tseng managed to download an Excel sheet listing “Harmonized Schedule” tariff codes for various categories of goods traded between Wakanda and the United States including live animals, dairy goods, tobacco and alcohol.

After the list was corrected, Tseng tweeted: “Well, the USDA took Wakanda off the list. Guess we’re in a trade war with them too.”

There was no USDA entry for vibranium, the fictional metal from space that is the source of Wakanda’s power.

Marvel is owned by Walt Disney Co.

— Reporting for Reuters by Karishma Singh; additional reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago.

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Lennon comes to the OFA from the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers, after a long career with agriculture organizations.

Why it matters: Neil Currie has with the OFA for 19 years, so the choice of his successor will have significant implications for the largest farmer organization in the province.

Lennon was raised in Perth County and began her agriculture career with the Agricultural Adaptation Council. She served as general manager of Ontario Sheep Farmers, leading the organization through upheaval and trade disputes related to the BSE crisis. She was a program manager with Agricorp and as a senior lender with Farm Credit Canada working across all agricultural sectors and commodities.

Most recently, Lennon was general manager of the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers (OPVG), where she helped move the organization through repeated attempts by the Ontario Farm Products Commission to change how processing vegetable are marketing in the province.

“It’s an exciting new era for OFA as we welcome Cathy into the organization,” says Keith Currie, OFA president. “Agriculture has big opportunities and no end of challenges, and Cathy’s experience in so many facets of the agricultural sector will be a tremendous asset for the entire OFA organization.”

Lennon graduated from the University of Waterloo with a BA in political science, and is a Class 9 Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program (AALP) grad. Over the last two decades, her professional career has centred around working for farmers to make a positive difference in their lives and their farm businesses. She and her daughter live in Rockwood, Ont.

“OFA is grateful to the long-term leadership of retiring general manager Neil Currie,” says Keith Currie. “He had led our organization through 19 years with significant changes and challenges, and he leaves OFA with a strong team in place for Cathy to step into.”

The post Lennon to be new OFA general manager appeared first on Farmtario.

That’s according to the latest satellite data from the federal Crop Condition Assessment Program (CCAP), created in partnership between Statistics Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Crop development was much lower than normal across all three Prairie provinces.

“Dry conditions in the last few weeks preceding May 26 allowed seeding to take place normally, however the low moisture content of the topsoil is a concern and more rain is needed for normal crop growth,” Statistics Canada reported.

Rainfall across the Prairies was 40 to 60 per cent below normal in the previous two months, according to AAFC.

Meanwhile, spring precipitation in eastern Ontario and Nova Scotia was as much as 50 per cent above normal, according to the report. The conditions were delaying planting, and warmer and drier weather will be needed.

Detailed interactive maps are updated on a weekly basis by the CCAP and are available online.

The post Canadian crop development behind average appeared first on Farmtario.

Two decades ago Mugabe’s government carried out at times violent evictions of 4,500 white farmers and redistributed the land to around 300,000 black families, arguing it was redressing imbalances from the colonial era.

But land reform still divides public opinion as opponents see it as a partisan process that left the country struggling to feed itself.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government sees the paying of compensation to white farmers as key to mend ties with the West, and set aside US$17.5 million in this year’s budget to that end. The initial payments will target those in financial distress, while full compensation will be paid later.

“The registration process and list of farmers should be completed by the end of April 2019, after which the interim advance payments will be paid directly to former farm owners,” Zimbabwe’s ministries of finance and agriculture said in a joint statement on Monday.

They said the process to identify and register farmers for compensation was being undertaken the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) and a committee representing the farmers.

A committee comprising government officials and former farm owners is currently valuing improvements made on the farms. That process should end next month and will determine the full amount due to the farmers.

The government, which maintains it will only pay compensation for infrastructure and improvements on farms and not for the land, is talking to international financial institutions on options to raise the full amount to pay farmers.

Colonialists seized some of the best agricultural land and much of it remained in the hands of white farmers after independence in 1980, while many blacks were landless.

— Reporting for Reuters by MacDonald Dzirutwe.

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