International

The results for the 2021 London Wine Competition were announced earlier this month and the prestigious Wine of the Year award went to Lévrier Wines’ Anubis Cabernet Sauvignon. The competition, in its 4th year, is unique in that each wine is judged on quality, value and package. The 2021 edition saw entries from 36 countries. Congratulations to Jo Irvine for taking top spot in the whole competition.

Despite the global economic shocks like those produced by the COVID-19 pandemic, agricultural sectors and economies overall are better off when exposed to international trade, the latest ABARES research paper shows. The research report, Understanding effects of supply disruptions on globally and locally focused economies, examines the effects of exposure to the global market on supply chains, and the risks and shocks of this exposure.

Researchers at UniSA have developed a cost-effective technique that could deliver safe drinking water to millions of vulnerable people using cheap, sustainable materials and sunlight ... A team led by Associate Professor Haolan Xu has refined a technique to derive freshwater from seawater, brackish water, or contaminated water, through highly efficient solar evaporation, delivering enough daily fresh drinking water for a family of four from just one square metre of source water.

Innovative Australian food and agri startups have the opportunity to showcase their businesses on the world stage by applying for a spot on this year’s international FoodBytes! Pitch program. FoodBytes! is global agribusiness bank Rabobank’s food and agriculture innovation platform – designed to drive collaboration between startups, corporate leaders, investors and farmers as part of a major international program to help address food system challenges.

Weipa Town Authority chairman Michael Rowland says officials must move quickly to bring the 20 men stranded on a cargo vessel to Weipa and take care of them here. Another crew member left the ship last week, taking the number to 20 on board, from 22 originally. Movers 3 has been anchored off the Port of Weipa for seven weeks and needs major repairs for it to be seaworthy. Mr Rowland said it was now a humanitarian issue and urged the relevant authorities to intervene.

Bad decisions are made when people are in a panic and a lot of bad decisions have been made since the advent of Covid-19. Indeed, the responses to Covid-19 seem to have been driven by a desire to 'look tough and organised', as exemplified by the myriad of often 'extreme' lockdowns and the closure of our international borders. Generally unknown-about public health regulations lurking in obscure Acts of the Parliaments around Australia have armed politicians and health bureaucrats with previously unheard of amounts of power over our daily lives.

In the hope to improve native vegetation within the municipality, Greater Shepparton City Council are inviting schools and community groups to take part in the ‘One Tree Per Child’ project, a global project that aims to plant one native indigenous plant for every child under 18 years old between 2017 and 2021.

Twenty-one men on board a vessel tasked to pick up bauxite from Weipa were left to starve by the Qatari shipping company that owns the vessel, angering officials in Australia. The Panama-flagged bulk carrier Movers 3 has been anchored off Weipa for a month and food had to be purchased and delivered to the ship after the crew ran out of provisions. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which placed the ship in detention on March 4, has slammed operator Aswan Shipping for its negligent practices. Rio Tinto has responsibility to avoid bad operators, say unions.

Rabobank. The long price surge in Agri commodities markets subsided last month, as la Niña weather worries eased and South American crop advances pushed frenzied speculators to catch their breath. Wary consumers start to think of the most consequential US summer harvest in the last eight years. Then, as now, high US acreage and inputs will be no panacea; corn and soy must also yield well to keep corn and soy stocks from falling into scarcity.

CSIRO. The US government has announced it will fund a pilot-scale test facility to demonstrate a next-generation concentrated solar thermal (CST) technology that Australia helped develop. The falling particle CST technology is 100 per cent renewable and can store multiple hours of thermal energy for firm, fully dispatchable power generation.

Consumers are being warned of inferior fruit due to arrive for the first time from Taiwan. Growcom, the peak industry body representing the Australian pineapple industry, has today voiced concerns about reports that six tonnes of fresh pineapple are to be imported into Australia from Taiwan in May.

Insect protein is creating a global buzz, with demand for the fast-emerging ingredient in the animal feed and pet food sectors expected to reach half a million metric tonnes by 2030 – significantly up on today’s estimated market of 10,000 metric tonnes, according to agri banking specialist Rabobank.

Australia’s wheat crop is estimated to have surged by 119.8% to a record 33.34 million tonnes in 2020/21, according to ABARES (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences). ABARES has raised its estimate of national production of winter crops by 7.4% to 55.2 million tonnes in 2020/21.

Rural communities provide much of the food and energy that fuel our lives. They are made up of people who, after decades of exploitative resource extraction and neglect, need strong connective infrastructure and opportunities to pursue regional prosperity. A lack of investment in broadband, schools, jobs, sustainable farms, hospitals, roads and even the U.S. Postal Service has increasingly driven rural voters to seek change from national politics.