2015 was a busy year for me, and resulted in my missing the deadline for the third newsletter of the year. I visited 35 countries (if you include the Western Cape that is) last year, and was involved in feeding poultry from the Sahara desert where the temperature often exceeds 40 degrees plus to the Russian steppes where temperatures can drop to minus 40. It says a lot for our ability to manage modern genotypes when I see the similarity in performance across all of these conditions.
Despite the fact that many of the large agribusiness giants in our country have been reporting record results, this happy state of affairs is not set to last. It is true that “physical” maize is in short supply because of last year’s small crop. More worrying tough is the looming drought this growing season, and a rail infrastructure that is only able to transport about a quarter of our raw material requirements.
I guess I do not need to feel too bad about missing an edition of the newsletter. My records show that the first edition SPESFEED News was published in Spring 1996 – so we have kept it up for 20 years.
