News

Astarta’s agricultural subsidiaries started the 2023 planting season. Farmers in the Poltava region were the first to begin sowing sugar beet.

The negative impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the ensuing high input costs and food inflation, continue to weigh on agricultural markets and consumers’ purchasing decisions. In addition, large parts of the EU experienced winter droughts after the hot and dry summer of last year, further worsening water availability in regions with already record low water reservoirs. This might lead impacted farmers to substitute away from more water-intensive crop cultures. The current EU macroeconomic forecast is relatively more positive than in autumn 2022, despite uncertainties about energy supply for next winter and recent financial market tensions. High commodity prices last year helped countering high input costs and farm income increased on average, with significant sectorial and regional disparities.

Nearly half of the honey imported into the European Union is suspected of being fake, according to an EU probe.

The research, spearheaded by the European Commission’s Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC), revealed the massive fraud and that many may be buying counterfeit honey labelled as authentic.

Romania and Poland are in talks with the European Commission over export tracing mechanisms for Ukrainian grains to ensure local farmers are not hurt by a flood of cheap imports, the Polish and Romanian prime ministers said on Tuesday.

Ukraine, one of the world's largest grain exporters, has seen its Black Sea ports blocked since Russia invaded more than a year ago and has been forced to find alternative shipping routes through European Union states Poland and Romania.