Two Cuban agricultural inspectors plan to inspect the state's varieties and watch how seed potatoes are packed for shipping. Pedro Alvarez, head of communist Cuba's food import company Alimport, said the island already imports as much as 40,000 tons of seed potatoes annually from Canada and Holland, but that "of course we'd like to diversify our suppliers and varieties. He noted seed potatoes are more expensive than table potatoes and highly perishable - making the prospect of sending them...

Two hundred pounds of crayfish were finished off in three hours. Although she didn't have final attendance numbers for Sunday's event, Holt took the butter and crayfish consumption as a sign that the size of this year's fiesta surpassed last year's attendance of 5,000. But the most important item sweet corn remained plentiful, albeit in dwindling amounts. Food dwindles quickly at Sweet Corn Fiesta. Sixty pounds of butter was ordered for today's Seventh Annual South Florida Sweet Corn...

THE Grain Marketing Board has stopped selling maize to six millers after allegations that they were reselling the maize to private buyers and stockfeed manufacturers at inflated prices. To authenticate the claims, the GMB's loss control department is investigating two cases in which a manager with Eveready Milling Company is alleged to have sold grain secured from the GMB to stockfeed manufacturers while a worker with Golden Millers allegedly sold it to poultry producers. To authenticate...

Traditionally, the San are not farmers and poor rains during the past rainy season have worsened their food deficit situation. This year, the situation has been made worse by the fact that harvests have been poor and the other communities could not give them grain," she said. Meanwhile, Chief Mathuphula has called for the resuscitation of the food for work programme to alleviate the effects of a possible drought in the district. Mrs Banda-Ndethi said Tsholotsho was a perennially dry area...

The Bailonis are hoping to sell 100 50kg bags of corn ears - the cobs are lying round the back of their two-room house in a vast wooden cradle designed to keep the rats away. As Pollan says, the money, which in 2005 kept the price of corn at around half what it costs to produce, is in effect a subsidy for the big American companies that buy and process the corn - and these companies and their political supporters are the ones that dictate American farm policy. So why - and this is what...

BY RICK CALLAHAN Associated Press Writer INDIANAPOLIS . Indiana's second-driest May on record has left fields dusty across the state, raising fears that a drought could ruin farmers' hopes of capitalizing on high corn prices driven by the booming ethanol industry. Dry May might dash farmers' hope of cashing in on corn prices. BY RICK CALLAHAN Associated Press Writer INDIANAPOLIS . Indiana's second-driest May on record has left fields dusty across the state, raising fears that a drought...