Agribusiness Update for Friday 11/27/15

The FDA is stepping up its microbiological surveillance of key commodities that have had issues with contamination in the past. The agency says it is now aiming to collect a larger number of food samples over a shorter period of time - between a year and 18 months - as part of a bolstered surveillance program it launched in 2014. The goal is to better understand which commodities make consumers sick and why as the FDA gears up to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act. So far, the FDA has looked into sprouts, whole fresh avocados and raw milk cheese (aged 60 days), though it has yet to release its findings.

Climate scientists have said that a warming planet will take a heavy toll on the world's agricultural productivity, but some have added that it could boost trade between nations. However, a new study co-authored by an MIT economist and published in the Journal of Political Economy suggests that international trade will do little to alleviate climate-induced farming problems. Researchers used a detailed dataset that divided the Earth's surface into 1.7 million grid zones and looked at the agricultural output within them for 10 crops, including wheat and rice.

That's today's Agribusiness Update from the Ag Information Network of the West.