Over the past few years as global agricultural commodity prices have soared and commodity stocks declined, quite a few commentators have gained prominence forecasting the demise of humankind as we know it, predicting a future dominated by famines and wars over land and water, as humans struggle to produce sufficient food to survive. Global commodity reports and data released over the last few weeks suggests that - to paraphrase Mark Twain - predictions of the demise of humankind appear to have been a little premature! View the rest of the post here

Economists are once again predicting the end of the family farm, and suggesting that the future of Australian agriculture belongs firmly with corporate farming. The end of the family farm has been predicted in the past, yet the model prevails. Is there anything different this time? View the rest of the post here

The Head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Rod Sims has again called for those who feel they have been unfairly treated by major corporations in concentrated markets to come forward and report it to the ACCC, and has even suggested some degree of anonymity for 'whistleblowers" who would otherwise lose their business the minute they complained. View the rest of the post here

The debate about the future of the US Farm Bill has stepped up a gear over the past two weeks, with President Obama releasing budget proposals that would cut agricultural expenditure, and lawmakers shaping up to support or oppose some of the proposals it contains. View the rest of the post here

Commentary in the US media at present about the state of the US agriculture sector paints a very rosy picture of the situation, with persistently high prices and resulting high levels of farm income. The picture from an Australian perspective is a bit different, with the high Australian dollar deflating prices, and prospects of interest rate rises and a Chinese recovery leading to suggestions that the $A will go even higher, further reducing agricultural export prices. View the rest of the post here

Try matching the following government departments with their mission statements; View the rest of the post here

Much has been made about the dominance of the Coles-Woolworths duopoly, their possible anti-competitive behaviour towards suppliers and the reluctance of the ACCC to intervene and protect farmers and small businesses. View the rest of the post here

One of the tried and true adages of investment is that if everyone agrees that something is a sure bet, then the chances are that it's time to sell! Hopefully this adage will be proved wrong in the case of agriculture, which suddenly seems to be the hot tip as a good investment. Perhaps this is because a lot of other investment classes are looking pretty uncertain at present. View the rest of the post here

Over recent years there has be a sustained push to implement ecolabelling, in order to inform consumers of the environmental credentials of the food products they purchase, and presumably to influence those consumers not to buy environmentally bad products. But one of the major proponents of the ecolabelling push has decided to abandon its efforts, as realisation sinks in about how difficult and uncertain the calculations are in order to provide the data for labelling systems. View the rest of the post here