Page 13 - Malcolm Borg News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Farmers’ sales are slashed every time the European Union publishes another instalment of its “flawed” pesticides report, according to a local lobby group. Malcolm Borg, who heads the Għaqda Bdiewa Attivi, said farmers’ sales dropped by up to 25 per cent whenever the EU’s food safety agency released its findings on local pesticide use.  The repercussions, he said, last a few weeks after the report is made public as it puts many buyers off supporting local produce.  This, Borg said, was because the findings published annually by the European agency often made it seem as though a l...

Malcolm Borg, who heads the farmers’ lobby group, Għaqda Bdiewa Attivi, said the ban on chlorpyrifos had only just come into force when the tests were conducted. This, he noted, meant farmers would have likely been trying to use up a stock of the chemical they had invested in when the tests were done.  The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) report also says that legal action was taken against an unspecified group of Maltese farmers after they failed routine pesticide screening for a number of different insecticides. According to the national summary on Malta, some 200 samples from 20 dif...

The rules governing pitkala middlemen who auction farmers’ produce are set to be overhauled after tensions boiled over last month.  The government plans on contracting these middlemen, previously self-employed, to provide the auctioning service for farmers twice a week.   In April, Times of Malta reported how all of Malta’s registered pitkala had their licences suspended after they refused to put a guarantee in place to stop farmers from being left in the lurch.  For the past few weeks, farmers ended up having to sell their produce themselves at the pitkalija produce market, traditio...

With no pitkala in sight, food agency takes over running of food market Farmers step in after pitkali refuse to increase bank guarantees, but they also fear Pitkalija could end up being privatised 4 May 2021, 12:22pm by Paul Cocks “We do not want to end up working from people who will make a killing off our hard work, while we get barely enough to scrape by... I hope they know that our interests do not include bringing in big businesses to run things” A stand-off between the agriculture ministry and the pitkala – the middlemen who used to buy farmers’ produce to sell it on to retaile...

December to February this year saw more than double last winter’s rainfall at 141mm compared to the super low 66.8mm, but it was still way below climactic