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WASDE: Ending Stocks Are Projected Residually At 975,069 MT

Sugar
U.S. 2014/15 beginning sugar stocks are increased 13,874 short tons, raw value (STRV) to 1.810 million based on revised processors’ estimates of 2013/14 cane sugar production and other miscellaneous adjustments that resulted in an increase to the ending stocks estimate for 2013/14. Imports for 2014/15 are increased by 36,524 STRV to 3.464 million, stemming mostly from sugar entering under free trade agreements that was previously expected to be imported in the first quarter of 2015/16. With no other changes, the 2014/15 ending stocks projection rises by 50,398 STRV to 1.700 million, implying a 13.9 percent ending stocks-to-use ratio.
 
Mexico 2014/15 sugar production is reduced by 101,372 metric tons (MT) to 6.050 million due to a slower than anticipated production pace, especially in the state of Veracruz that has experienced excessive precipitation in the first 3 months of 2015, with especially severe weather in March. Deliveries for human consumption are increased by 50,000 MT to 4.250 million, based on a strong pace-to-date through February. Exports to destinations other than the United States are reduced by 125,000 MT to 200,000 because of much lower world raw sugar prices than existed when certain contracts for export were originally negotiated. Exports to the United States are still forecast at 1.306 million MT, the maximum amount as set under the terms of the Agreement Suspending the Countervailing Duty Investigations on Sugar from Mexico, dated December 19, 2014. Ending stocks are projected residually at 975,069 MT, an increase of 26,372 from last month. 
 
Source: WASDE

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Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”