Author: Suchetana Choudhuri

FAO outlines a pragmatic, trust-first pathway for deploying environmental inhibitors at scale In an exclusive AgroSpectrum interview, Vittorio Fattori, Food Safety Officer at the FAO, explains how governments can urgently deploy environmental inhibitors to reduce methane and nitrous oxide emissions while upholding rigorous food safety standards. He emphasizes a stepwise, proportionate risk assessment approach, allowing rapid scale-up when residues are not detectable, and targeted human risk assessment when they are plausible—ensuring climate action does not undermine consumer trust. Fattori highlights the importance of harmonized Codex standards to reduce regulatory fragmentation, prevent trade disruptions, and provide predictability for innovators and producers…

Venezuela’s vast reserves offer theoretical relief to global supply concerns, but sanctions, infrastructure decay, and uncertainty mean markets continue to price risk—not barrels Global oil markets are increasingly defined by a contradiction. Forecasts from major agencies and analysts suggest that the world is not running out of oil; on the contrary, supply capacity appears sufficient to meet demand well into the future. Yet prices remain volatile, reacting sharply to geopolitical tensions, sanctions announcements, and political signals. This disconnect reflects a deeper transformation in how oil markets operate: geology matters less than governance, and confidence matters more than capacity. Venezuela epitomizes…

Cargill’s Yuchu Zhang on trust, texture, sweeteners, and how ingredient intelligence is reshaping pricing power and innovation across APAC In an exclusive interview with AgroSpectrum, Yuchu Zhang, Vice President – R&D, Cargill Food APAC, explains how ingredient perception has become central to brand trust, premiumisation, and competitive advantage in Asia’s rapidly evolving food markets. Drawing on insights from IngredienTracker, she highlights a structural shift where consumers scrutinise labels, reward familiar and natural-sounding ingredients, and are willing to pay selectively for quality, sustainability, and functionality. Yuchu discusses how manufacturers must balance advanced food science with cultural familiarity—across sweeteners, fats and oils,…

Jodok Betschart on why execution, ecosystems and capital will define the next decade of clean power In an exclusive Agrospectrum interview, Jodok Betschart, Co-Founder & CEO of Cloover GmbH, explains why Europe has reached a critical inflection point for decentralized energy as AI-driven demand, electrification and grid instability converge. He outlines how Cloover is positioning itself as the operating system for energy independence by solving the sector’s biggest bottleneck—financing—through embedded, asset-first credit and AI-led risk assessment. Betschart also highlights the significance of Cloover’s $1.2 billion institutional financing commitment as validation of distributed energy as a new infrastructure asset class. Looking…

Evelyn Long is an experienced agriculture writer with a focus on sustainability, climate resilience, and boosting farm efficiency. Her expertise is featured in Morning Ag Clips and Acreage Life, where she unpacks the evolving challenges and innovations in agriculture. As editor in chief of Renovated Magazine, Evelyn advocates for smarter, more resilient farming practices. Climate change is reshaping how India and the world’s agricultural sectors provide food. Unpredictable monsoons, temperature extremes and shorter growing windows disrupt traditional planting schedules, while population expansion demands bigger yields. In response, farmers are increasingly relying on technology to serve growing markets. Understanding Climate Change…

SAFET Executive Director Inga Wise explains how proven ocean technologies, if adopted at scale and tailored to local contexts, could mark a tipping point for sustainable ocean management under the UN Ocean Decade At the midpoint of the UN Ocean Decade, progress toward sustainable fisheries remains uneven—not because of a single missing piece, but due to the need for context-specific combinations of technologies, adoption pathways, and incentives, a challenge SAFET addresses through its SEA-TECH-IN-MOTION mapping tool. In an exclusive AgroSpectrum interview, Inga Wise, Executive Director of SAFET, describes the current moment as a “Fourth Industrial Revolution at Sea,” marked by…

How agricultural load flexibility can compete with peaker plants, batteries, and grid upgrades—at a fraction of the cost Agricultural flexibility isn’t a temporary workaround—it’s a permanent pillar of the future grid. As renewables increase and variability becomes the norm, the grid needs distributed, dispatchable flexibility everywhere, and farms are uniquely positioned to provide it. Yield’s roadmap expands beyond irrigation into a broader portfolio of farm DERs, orchestrated like a virtual power plant. In an exclusive Agrospectrum interview, Tyler Nuss, CEO of Yield Energy, explains why farmers aren’t just energy users—they’re infrastructure partners in the energy transition. Agriculture as Grid Infrastructure…

A second-generation planter and AI researcher explains how lived plantation wisdom, satellite intelligence, and public–private collaboration are reshaping Indian coffee from the ground up In an exclusive interview with Agrospectrum, Sooraj Kandathil Babu, Founder & CEO of NeuBiom Labs and a second-generation coffee planter with a deep research background in AI, explains how lived estate experience shaped Canopy, a satellite- and AI-driven crop intelligence platform built for real plantation decisions. He discusses how Canopy converts traditional field intuition into digital twins that strengthen climate resilience, improve quality consistency, and enable traceability and collective bargaining for growers and FPOs. The conversation…

Codex and FAO officials detail how updated standards aim to protect consumers without triggering disproportionate trade disruption for export-dependent economies In an exclusive Agrospectrum and NUFFOODS Spectrum interview with global food-standards leaders — Sarah Cahill, Codex Secretary; Lingping Zhang, Food Standards Officer, Codex Secretariat; Markus Lipp, Senior Food Safety Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); Gracia Brisco, Food Standards Officer, Codex Secretariat; and Hilde Kruse, Senior Food Standards Officer, Codex Secretariat — CAC48 emerges as a decisive moment for Codex amid rising geopolitical fragmentation. The experts reaffirm Codex’s science-based, consensus-driven mandate, which shaped major reforms including…

Resilience, efficiency & prosperity As Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveils Budget 2026, the nation demands more than routine allocations. Indian agriculture is at a historic inflection point. This Budget is expected to operationalise the Viksit Bharat 2047 vision, aiming to transform farming from a low-margin, input-heavy, staple-focused sector into a high-productivity, high-value, globally competitive engine. Economists, industry leaders, and multilateral agencies concur: Incremental tweaks have run out of runway, and structural reforms are imperative to bridge productivity gaps, restore soil and water health, and secure farmers’ livelihoods. “Budget 2026 must signal a decisive move from blanket input subsidies to outcome-linked…