This Month
- Exclusive
- Biosecurity
Farmers cottoning on to threat to $4.2b industry
Cotton exports have nearly doubled recently but an increased threat from diseases has threatened to wipe-out crops.
- James Hall
Irrigation automation biz Rubicon in raise; ex UBS boss climbs to 19.9pc
Three years on from its heavily backed float, shares have sunk from $1 to 32¢ and Rubicon is rattling the tin to repair its balance sheet.
- Sarah Thompson, Kanika Sood and Emma Rapaport
Elders makes biggest wool investment in 20 years with robot handlers
Boss Mark Allison is rolling out the robots as the agribusiness makes a high-tech return to wool handling 185 years after its founders started out in the game.
- Brad Thompson
July
Court ruling rejecting weedkiller link to cancer welcomed by farmers
Federal Court rejects class action linking Australia’s most widely used farm chemical, glyphosate, to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
- Brad Thompson
ASIC says Beijing-owned agriculture giant manipulated wheat contracts
COFCO placed improper trades on the exchange in 2022, improperly affecting the futures’ settlement price, ahead of the Ukraine war, the corporate regulator alleges in court filings.
- Max Mason
End of the road comes in two-decade saga over sandalwood group Quintis
The company once known as TFS Corporation will be split up and liquidated after KordaMentha failed to find a buyer for the entire business.
- Simon Evans
Cattle farmers go to war with Labor over class action
Cattle farmers have accused Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus of launching an appalling, contemptuous and “outrageously misleading” attack on them.
- Ronald Mizen
Giant farming co-op looks to exit flour mill partnership with Salim
Australia’s biggest co-op, farmer-controlled CBH, wants to sell its stake in a network of flour mills in South-East Asia owned with the Indonesian family.
- Brad Thompson
‘No water equals no milk’: big dry, cold snap hit farmers
Victorian farmers have been hit by a combination of dry and cold conditions as dairy producers also face a 15 per cent cut in farm gate milk prices as of July 1.
- Gus McCubbing
Agribusiness sells livestock vessel and share price jumps 117pc
Paul Holmes à Court-backed Wellard is selling its oldest carrier, the Ocean Ute, in a move that has more than doubled the company’s share price.
- Brad Thompson
June
Competition red flags for Olam in battle for Namoi Cotton
ACCC commissioner Stephen Ridgeway says the bidding war for Namoi Cotton could “all fall over” if rival bidders can’t overcome “serious competition issues”.
- Brad Thompson
Riding the wave: this Regal-backed fund is betting big on water
Kilter Rural’s Euan Friday predicts water prices will rocket 300 per cent this year, after huge government intervention and the weather dries up.
- Cecile Lefort
GrainCorp looks beyond life as a rainy day stock
Wet conditions have boosted hopes of another bumper crop. The ASX-listed agribusiness’s share price has been a big beneficiary.
- Brad Thompson
Louis Dreyfus refuses to back down in battle for Namoi Cotton
The French agribusiness giant has turned up the heat on rival bidder Olam as the competition watchdog casts a big shadow over the fight for the ASX-listed group.
- Brad Thompson
Consumers urged against panic-buying after Coles imposes egg limit
One supermarket giant is limiting customers to two cartons of eggs after an outbreak of bird flu in Victoria worsened.
- Gus McCubbing
May
The disease detectives trying to keep the world safe from bird flu
Frontline work in low-income countries is increasingly vital to a global system to detect viruses that jump between animals and humans, the way COVID-19 did.
- Stephanie Nolen
Bird flu fears put health authorities, farmers on edge
Two unrelated cases of the potentially deadly virus have been detected in Victoria.
- Andrew Tillett
Queensland industries fear migration cut will worsen worker shortage
Slashing migration numbers risks compounding stretched workforces, Queensland industries warn.
- James Hall
Elders plunges to worst result in 10 years on wayward BOM forecast
Farmers sold livestock and cut orders for farm chemicals based on the weather bureau’s prediction of an El Nino hot and dry period, which did not eventuate.
- Simon Evans
- Updated
- Food bowl
Fonterra puts its Australian dairy assets up for sale
The New Zealand-based co-operative is behind household brands such as Western Star butter and Mainland cheese and has eight local manufacturing sites.
- Updated
- Brad Thompson
