Category: Agriculture

May 07, 2008 (LBO) – High import duty rates and a ban on packet tea imports by Iran is preventing Sri Lankan tea exporters from better penetrating a potentially lucrative market, industry officials said. Instead, a lot of the Sri Lankan tea that reaches Iran is smuggled over its borders, with Dubai as the region’s […]

MADRID, May 3, 2008 (AFP) – The Asian Development Bank on Saturday promised financial help for nations fighting the global food price crisis and attacked plans for a rice cartel.Loans will help countries subsidise the price of food staples for the poor, ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda said on the first day of the banks four-day […]

May 02, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lankan tea prices have begun to decline with the end of the western quality season and increasing crops, brokers said. “The market is coming down because of high crops and because seasonal quality is over,” said a broker. “Now the Colombo market is very attractive, almost in line with […]

BERLIN, April 14, 2008 (AFP) – Massive production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity” because of its impact on global food prices, a UN official said Monday on German radio.. “Producing biofuels today is a crime against humanity,” UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Bayerischer Runfunk radio. Using arable […]

April 13, 2008 (LBO) – Poultry breeder Three Acre Farms Limited (TAFL) plans to relocate some of its operations to a facility which is being fitted with modern farming equipment and infrastructure, the company said. “Over the next two years, the commercial broiler operation at Bulathsinghala will be relocated and the existing facility will be […]

April 04, 2008 (LBO) – The volume of transactions on Sri Lanka’s automated tea export document processing system is on the rise but the number of exporters using it is still limited, a senior Tea Board official said. . Tea commissioner N. Udugampola said the electronic data interchange system started last August speeded up transaction […]

April 02, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Tea Board has turned down an appeal by export firms to ship tea below government stipulated standards, saying it no longer allowed such shipments. Tea board director-general H D Hemaratna said exports of sub-standard teas was a “serious matter” and the trade was concerned such shipments could tarnish […]

Mar 27, 2008 (LBO) – The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is teaming up with Sri Lanka’s Hayleys group to lift rural subsistence farmers into commercial high value agriculture, the US embassy in Colombo said. The first pilot project will start in April involving 120 farmer families in two of Sri Lanka’s poorest […]

PHNOM PENH, March 26, 2008 (AFP) – Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday banned rice exports in a bid to halt the staple food’s spiraling prices, which have reached highs of nearly one dollar a kilogramme.The move comes amid the steady climb in the price of most staple goods, including the doubling of the […]

Mar 23, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s exporters of value added coconut products are asking to authorities to free edible oil imports, so that profits from oil milling would fall, freeing more nuts for other industries. Sri Lanka’s coconut milk powder, coconut cream and desiccated coconut producers have been found their cost of production increasing […]

Mar 21, 2008 (LBO) – Torrential rains lashing Sri Lanka during an ongoing crucial harvest season is likely to lower the quality of rice but keep prices high in the domestic market, an official said. “In some districts around 50 percent of the crop has been harvested and the remaining 50 percent has to be […]

March 18, 2008 (LBO) – The privatization of Sri Lankan tea estates and branding were largely responsible for the industry’s export earnings exceeding a billion dollars last year, a top business chamber said. The effectiveness of the Colombo tea auctions and storage and brokerage services also played their part, said a statement by the Ceylon […]