
Cuba plans to enlarge to 40,000 hectares a Vietnamese-aided test farm to expand production of rice, official media said on Monday.

It is the generation of thirty-something who as children were the first to benefit from well-funded primary and secondary education following the Islands’ economic turn-around in the late 1980’s. They were the first generation of locally educated children who could graduate in careers of their choice.

A report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, in seventeen Latinamerican and Caribbean countries discovered an intense concentration and foreign-held land process.

The Bolivian government strongly rejected a statement from a FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) official saying that 26% of the population (2.5 million people) is on the hunger fringe since they can not satisfy their basic food needs.

Cuba has authorised banks to loan money to small businesses, private farmers and people who want to repair or build homes - a revolutionary step for the island's government.

Global oilseed production is estimated at record 472 million tons in the 2011-12 marketing year starting October but the growth in output will be subdued, FAO said in a report. Similarly soy bean production is expected to fall to 260.7 million tons from 265.8 million in 2010/2011.

Agriculture ministers from Mercosur full members plus Chile and Bolivia, as members of the Agriculture Council of the South, CAS, urged a quick conclusion of the World Trade Organization Doha Round negotiations to help combat poverty and ensure food security.

Uruguay’s Central bank sees “few probabilities” of a strong deceleration in emerging economies or a ‘significant’ fall in commodities prices even when lately there has been a drop in the value of grains although still above their historic average.

The World Bank approved last week a loan for 49 million dollars to support Uruguayan farmers in adopting environmentally sustainable practices to improve the resilience of their production systems in response to the effects of climate variability.

Argentina's 2011-12 soybean area will likely rise 0.6% on the year to 19 million hectares, the Agriculture Ministry said in its weekly crop report. The forecast is the first from the ministry for soybeans, the country's top crop and export.