A bee researcher’s bees kept dying. The culprit was a nearby ethanol plant.
In FERN's latest piece, and the last from our special food issue with Switchyard magazine, reporter Dan Charles takes us through an agricultural mystery that leads, disturbingly, to a regulatory failure that threatens bees and other pollinators still today.
Squeeze on supplies drives global sugar prices to 12-year high
A combination of factors, including the El Niño weather pattern, congested Brazilian ports, export limits in India and Thailand, and expanded use of biofuels, has propelled global sugar prices to their highest level since 2011, said two analysts with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) on Tuesday. Sugar supplies "will likely shrink further if production impacts from El Niño worsen, putting continued upward pressure on prices," they said in a blog.