Kenya, whose biggest foreign- exchange earner is horticulture, late yesterday airlifted 300 metric tons of vegetables and fruits in three flights to the south of Spain.

The flights are the first since April 15, when ash from an exploding volcano in Iceland forced the closure of airspace across Europe. “We are preparing to get some more flights today,” Stephen Mbithi, chief executive officer of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya, said in an interview in the capital, Nairobi, today.

Kenya is still holding fresh produce worth $12 million due to the closure of European airspace, which has led to the cancellation of 81,000 flights, Mbithi said. In the best-case scenario that all scheduled flights take off today, farmers would lose about $6 million, he said. The back log of fresh produce could be sent to Europe by April 24.

From Spain, the produce carried on yesterday’s flights will be transported by road to France, Germany, the U.K. and Netherlands, Mbithi said. Tesco Plc, the U.K.’s largest retailer, landed a Boeing 747 from East Africa “quite recently” in Spain and goods were being trucked overland to the U.K., a spokeswoman said by phone from London today. “We will not lose all because some of the produce is in the stores,” Mbithi said. “They can still last seven to eight days.”

Most of the loss will come from produce that is yet to be picked from the farms, particularly flowers, he said. Vegetables will lose their “softness” while flowers will “open up,” he said.

Source: businessweek.com

In recent years, Tunisia achieved an increase in the harvest volume of vegetables to reach an agricultural production of 50% since 1987 contributing to 10% of the country’s GDP, 10 % of exports and 18% in employment sector.

With a view to reduce financing costs encouraging farmers to more production, President Ben Ali ordered “to extend the measures adopted for seasonal credits related to large-scale farming so that they cover the other agricultural activities, by applying the monetary market rate plus one point (TMM+1) to farmers who pay back their debts in due time”, while “extending the period of application of this measure from 2011 till 2014”.

He also ordered “to increase by 50% the ceiling of investments for agricultural projects, and also for revising the criteria for granting loans and allowances to small and medium farmers, and updating them according to the cost”.

Besides, President Ben Ali ordered the opportunity to “consolidate the pilot experience currently conducted in the cereals jointly by the agricultural organization and the national institute for agricultural research, in coordination with the national institute for large-scale farming”.

FROM: tunisiaonlinenews.com

Johannesburg — THE Cape Winemakers Guild, started in 1982, is widely regarded as creating the finest wines in the country. Membership of the guild – this year it has 41 members but the number fluctuates as new people make the cut and others don’t or leave – is by invitation, and impressing your peers has always been notoriously difficult.

As membership lies with the winemaker, not the estate, a member who moves to another winery retains membership, provided he or she has produced “outstanding wines for a minimum of five years and continue to do so”.That is, produced outstanding wines specifically for the guild, for sale at the annual Nedbank CWG Auction (this year on October 2) and which will carry the exclusive CWG label.

Member Philip Constandius was guild chairman for 2007 and 2008 and is the maker of Solo Wines – “Nobody can pronounce my name, so I didn’t think I should put it on the label.” Constandius is responsible for initiating the trust’s highly regarded protege programme in 2006.

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Nairobi — Kenya’s coffee has found its way into new markets across borders amid a global shortage of the commodity. Meanwhile, farmers with the beans are enjoying bumper incomes.

At the start of last year, coffee output responded well to improved export prices, reaching a high of $4.69 per kilogram by December, an increase of over 100 per cent from a price of $2.08 per kilogram in December 2008. At the auction last month, average coffee prices hit $5.01 per kg — a 141 per cent jump over December 2008 prices.

“Farmers who took good care of their crop are getting compensated generously. The future is looking good for smallholder coffee farmers,” said Jeremy Block, the chairman of coffee buyers and exporters, C. Dorman Ltd. However, the top price for Grade AA eased to $555 per 50kg, while the average stood at $236.34 per 50kg at the auction in March.

Traders blamed the decline on there being few top quality coffees on offer. An official of the Kenya Coffee Producers and Traders Association (KCPTA) said: “We have not seen such high prices in the recent past.”

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South African poultry producers are facing shrinking exports after the Zimbabwe government banned all poultry importation from South Africa, according to Supreme Poultry manager Izaak Breitenbach.

The Zimbabwean Poultry Association (ZPA) has alleged that South African and South American poultry were heavily injected with a brine saltwater solution, to levels as high as 40%, the South African newspaper The Star reported on Tuesday. The solution increased bird weight when frozen, but it seeped out before or during cooking, leaving the actual meat content at 60-70% of the original weight, the ZPA said.

The association said it also suffered of unfair competition because South African chickens were fed genetically modified maize ingredients, which compromised the quality of the meat. Zimbabwean farmers are understood to have lobbied their government because they had built up large stockpiles, which they had failed to sell because of competition mainly from South Africa and Brazil.

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