Limes—the lemon's little brother—are a staple in many diets worldwide. Colombia is the 10th largest supplier in the world, producing about 2.29% of fresh limes globally. Colombia is prone to experiencing rainy and dry seasons; its rainy seasons are typically from March to May and September to November, but this year, the country’s rainy season is beginning earlier and more intensely, creating a riskier environment and potentially disrupting the growth and price of the fruit we all know and love.

Francisco Martin-Rayo, Co-Founder and CEO of AgTech startup Helios joins host Megan Thomas to discuss how his firm uses AI and large data sets to predict field, country, and global production of agricultural crops. This episode will break down how the team at Helios has built its tech stack, how it delivers meaningful insights, including predicted future pricing, to customers, and the surprising ways it is building buy-in with seasoned buyers and traders.

Turkey, the world’s leading cherry exporter, is closing out one of its most difficult seasons in recent memory. Severe frost in spring wiped out large portions of the crop, and persistent drought has devastated many of the surviving orchards. With only a short time left in the season, yields are already well below average, fruit quality is inconsistent, and buyers are paying higher prices to secure a limited supply.

Let's face it: Americans love avocados. But with the United States heavily reliant on Mexico for avocado imports, a new player is entering the game: Guatemala. The relatively small Central American country produced only about 50,000 tons of avocados in 2024, prompting the question: Could Guatemala become America's next major alternative exporter?

Olive oil isn’t just an export for Greece—it’s a staple of daily life, a rural economic engine, and a symbol of cultural identity. But today, Greek producers are grappling with one of the worst harvests in recent memory. Heatwaves, drought, and pests have slashed yields and pushed prices to painful highs.

If your Fourth of July barbecue has blueberry pie on the table, you can thank an early start and amazing timing. After a week of intense heat waves across the East Coast, New Jersey’s blueberry crop went eye-to-eye with a bitter fate. 

As summer rolls in, farmers’ markets, grocery shelves, and kitchen tables around the country begin to fill with the season’s brightest bounty: juicy berries, crisp lettuce, zesty citrus, and garden-fresh veggies. But behind this cheerful cornucopia, food prices are telling a more complex story.

The monsoon season on the southwest coast of India has started earlier than usual in 2025, bringing with it severe disruptions to the vegetable industry. In Nishik district– a crucial region for producing vegetables– heavy and continual rainfall through May has damaged over 1,000 hectares of farmland.

Russia's Rostov Oblast, crucial for over 10% of the country's grain production, faces climate disruptions in 2025 that threaten domestic supply and export stability. A state of emergency was declared in late May due to severe spring frosts and a dry start to the season, raising concerns about grain exports through the Azov and Black Sea corridors.

As global agriculture grapples with climate variability, land constraints, and the imperative for sustainable intensification, second-season or "safrinha" crops have emerged as a strategic solution. These crops, cultivated immediately after the main harvest, offer a pathway to enhance land productivity without expanding agricultural footprints.

A closer look at Turkey’s 2025 growing season reveals a troubling trend: persistent cold, lingering wet conditions, and rising agronomic volatility. These stressors have left their mark on multiple crops, but nowhere more critically than in Malatya, the country’s apricot heartland. Malatya accounts for nearly 80% of Turkey’s apricot production and dominates the global dried apricot export market.

As spring unfolds across Europe, a concerning pattern emerges: a significant absence of rainfall. In what meteorologists are identifying as the driest spring in over a century, northwestern Europe faces an acute water deficit, raising alarms throughout the agricultural sector.

Soil degradation is a mounting global crisis with direct consequences for food systems, ecosystem health, and climate stability. Earth.Org reports that the world is losing over 100 million hectares of healthy soil each year, equivalent to four football fields per second. If current degradation continues unchecked, up to 95% of the Earth's land surface could be degraded by 2050.

In April 2025, McDonald’s announced a major pivot in its global sourcing strategy: a strategic commitment to regenerative agriculture. Framed as both an environmental imperative and an operational necessity, this move signals a new phase in how multinational food corporations respond to the climate crisis.

In early 2025, a federal budget impasse froze over $3 trillion in discretionary funding, and while defense and healthcare headlines dominate the news cycle, one of the least discussed yet most impactful casualties is agricultural research. At least 57 USDA-funded projects were paused nationwide, affecting core programs in crop resilience, livestock health, and ag-environment interactions.

Across North America, March and April 2025 have brought anomalously high temperatures. In parts of Texas, daytime highs exceeded 91°F in late March — 7–11°F above average — prompting early planting activity but also crop stress reports. In contrast, regions like the Upper Midwest experienced cold fronts and flooding, creating a fragmented planting window. These extreme contrasts illustrate why spring is becoming harder to predict—and harder to manage.

Every spring, children around the world wake up on Easter morning excited to hunt for chocolate eggs and bunnies. In fact, an estimated 94% of people who celebrate the holiday do so with chocolate. But this year, behind the scenes, the cocoa industry is facing a crisis that could make these beloved treats harder to find, as well as significantly more expensive.

The newly implemented U.S. Reciprocal Tariff Policy, announced on April 2, 2025, then paused on April 9, 2025 for everyone except China, is poised to reshape not only global trade but also the contents — and cost — of the average American grocery basket. When this new policy begins, a baseline 10% tariff is applied to all imports entering the U.S., with significantly higher rates of up to 50% imposed on select countries.

For centuries, Sicily has been synonymous with Mediterranean staples like lemons, olives, and grapes. But over the past two decades, a quiet transformation has taken root across the island: mango cultivation. Once limited to tropical and subtropical latitudes, mangoes are now thriving in Sicily’s evolving climate.