Browse Data and Analysis

The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), representing 9,000 unionized workers at Canadian National (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd (CPKC), officially walked off the job at midnight Eastern time on Thursday, August 22, reportedly marking the first time that simultaneous stoppages have occurred for Canada’s two major rail lines.

FAS/Sofia has revised downward its estimate for Bulgaria’s MY 2024/25 corn crop to 2.2 million metric tons (MMT), which if realized would be the smallest crop in over a decade. This is due to severe summer heat and drought in July and in early August.

After a 2023 outbreak, and the authorization of three types of vaccines, a new Bluetongue disease outbreak occurred again in the Netherlands in the summer of 2024. The disease is also spreading to neighboring countries Belgium and Germany.

Rice export prices increased 2-4 percent due to the strengthening of the Thai baht and strong export demands for Thai rice.

On August 13, the Hong Kong Centre for Food Safety (CFS) confirmed to ATO Hong Kong that effective February 14, 2025, the Special Autonomous Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will transition from a “systems-based” approach to recognizing foreign meat and poultry establishments to an “establishment or plant-based” registration system.

On August 1, 2024, the Egyptian Organization for Standardization and Quality notified the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) of a draft amendment to Egypt’s shelf life for certain food products (see G/TBT/N/EGY/212/Add.8).

As of May 15, 2024, Turkiye’s Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry announced a ban on the importation of live cattle from the United States following confirmed Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) cases in some U.S. lactating dairy cows.

Stone fruit production in Australia is forecast to increase in marketing year (MY) 2024/25, after above-average rainfall impacted some regions during the harvest period for MY 2023/24, which impacted overall production and quality.

Korea’s pet food market has been growing strongly. But, while imported products have traditionally dominated the market, imports declined in 2023 for the first time in over a decade.

Colombia’s raw milk production has remained steady in the last decade, with an average annual growth rate of 0.8 percent. The sector is still largely informal, with a 47 percent collection rate in 2023 from producers into the formal market.

Kazakhstan is expected to have a bumper crop following last year’s troubled production. After heavy rains and flooding in May 2024 delayed planting, Kazakhstan’s primary growing regions have had near perfect weather, greatly raising the outlook for the upcoming fall harvest.

Ukrainian chicken meat production recovered in 2024 and is expected to continue its slow recovery in 2025, with total production still below the pre-full-scale invasion level. Ukraine’s largest producer, MHP SE, reports stable production at full capacity.