January milk production in Germany, Europe’s largest dairy-producing country, stood at just over 2.6bn litres, which is a 2% decline compared with the same month last year.

Due to fodder shortages, German milk production has been in decline since last October.

Argentina’s soya bean harvest for the 2018/19 season is set to hit 53m tonnes, which would be a staggering 33% rise on the 40m tonne crop harvested last year.

According to Argentina’s agriculture ministry, over half of this season’s crop is in good to excellent condition.

US beef exporters set a new record for the volume of beef shipped last year. For 2018, the US exported 1.35m tonnes of beef, which was up 7% on 2017 exports and 5% ahead of the previous record for beef export volumes set in 2011.

Australian beef exports have made a very strong start to 2019. For February, Australia exported almost 95,000t of beef, which is up 11% on the same month last year.

This brings Australian beef exports for the first two months of 2019 to 162,500t – up 11% on the same period last year.