Canada

Climate change is likely to reduce yields of major crops such as corn, wheat and rice on a large fraction of the world's cropland by mid-century, says a team of researchers from the University of Birmingham in Britain. "Large shifts in land-use patterns and crop choice will likely be necessary to sustain production growth rates and keep pace with demand," say the researchers in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

If the EU fails to approve a free-trade agreement with Canada, its trade policy will be "close to death," in the view of the bloc's director-general for trade, reported Politico.

France's junior minister for trade, Matthias Fekl, said it will be "impossible" for the EU and the United States to complete a free-trade agreement this year, reports the EurActiv news site. Fekl threw cold water on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on the same day the EU announced a slow-down in the approval process for a sweeping EU-Canada trade pact.

Government agencies in the U.S., Canada and Mexico can't say for sure whether the herbicides they spray on pubic lands to control invasive species are doing more harm than good, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Montana and their Canadian colleagues. The huge amount of herbicides applied by land managers every year—largely glyphosate (the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup)—may in fact prevent native species from germinating.

The population of snow geese is booming and creating an environmental disaster in Canada, where they breed on the tundra, says Harvest Public Media. A reason behind the boom, it says, is the "Midwest farmland buffet" that eases the twice-a-year, 5,000-mile migration to and from the southern United States.

The agricultural arm of Saudi Arabia's state-owned Public Investment Fund is now the largest private investor in grain handler G3 Canada, the descendant of the Canadian Wheat Board, says Reuters.

Two weeks before Vermont's first-in-the-nation GMO food-labeling law takes effect, a member of Canada's Parliament proposed mandatory labeling of GMO foods, a step that was proposed fruitlessly in the past. Meanwhile, in Washington, leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee said they were making progress on U.S. labeling legislation.

With less than 1 percent of North American oceans under protection, the continent is falling far behind international targets to conserve ocean ecosystems, says a report out by NGOs in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

The genetically engineered AquAdvantage salmon is cleared for sale as food in Canada, the first food animal approved for the commercial market, said Canadian health officials. The salmon, which also was the first GE animal approved by U.S. regulators, will not be required to carry a label in stores to say it was genetically modified, said the CBC.

Fish farms are hurting species diversity downstream, says a study out of Novia Scotia, the first of its kind in Canada. The study found that the number of different benthic invertebrate species -- small creatures like mayflies and caddisflies that live in the silt at the bottom of waterways -- was significantly lower downstream from fish farms than previous counts, according to the CBC.

Farmers in Canada intend to plant a record amount of land to lentils and dry peas, a combined 9.4 million acres this year, "betting that strong demand from drought-stricken India will soften the blow of low prices for wheat, corn and other field crops," said the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Algae blooms are poisoning marine life farther north than they ever have, says a new study by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Officials from Canada and the United States will launch the Protein Highway initiative this summer to brand six U.S. states and three Canadian provinces as the region with potential to become the world's biggest supplier of protein, says the Pierre (SD) Capital Journal.

In the first official visit by a Canadian prime minister in 19 years, President Obama said repeal of country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for pork and beef "bring the United States into compliance with its international trade obligations."

U.S. and Canadian maple syrup producers asked the FDA to stop food companies from selling products that claim to contain maple syrup when it isn't the real thing, says CBC. Maple syrup is made by boiling down sap from maple trees, while others are diluting the product with corn syrup.

With U.S. repeal of country-of-origin labels (COOL) for beef and pork, a notable increase in shipments of Canadian hogs is forecast by USDA economists.

In his first visit to the United States since appointment as Canadian Agriculture Minister, Lawrence MacAuley thanked U.S. allies for their help in winning repeal of a law that required packages of beef and pork to say where the animals were born, raised, and slaughtered. Congress repealed the country-of-origin labeling (COOL) law a month ago, averting up to $1 billion in retaliatory tariffs by Canada and Mexico.

Canada and the United States are a global example of cross-border trade in food and agriculture products, forecast to exceed $65 billion this year. But Arun Alexander, Canada's deputy ambassador in Washington, said Tuesday "we are concerned about the real world consequences" of changing the rules on the voluntary "Product of USA" label.