Google eyed

Show of hands - how many of you all have Google as your home page? How many play blocks or Ms. Pac? Guilty on both counts. That is, on very rare occasions and only after hours, of course. The customized Google home page is the eighth wonder of the world.

Anyway, I want to point out a Google feature that you can use with this blog. On your right about halfway down you will find a symbol and the words "subscribe in a reader." Hit that link and you can put Freshtalk headlines from my posts on your Google home page.

Toward the bottom of the page you have the option of entering your email to receive a daily email of partial posts from Freshtalk. Enter your email and you will get one email each day of new posts to the blog, though to get the full content you will have to click through.

The new ketchup

Salsa, of course. Cilantro is an ingredient in salsa and a driver in the growing sales of ethnic vegetables. The Packer's Susie Cable recently keyed me to this Business Week article about East Coast growers. An excerpt that cites Bill Sciarappa, a Rutgers agricultural extension agent:

Farmers are expanding their product line, using familiar growing techniques to transition from parsley to cilantro, standard Italian eggplant to Chinese eggplant, peas to edamame beans, Sciarappa said. He is part of a team at Rutgers University developing a comprehensive production and marketing plan for ethnic vegetables to help East Coast growers.

Rutgers is using Census data to help growers scope out markets for ethnic veggies, which can fetch triple the prices of standard fare.

Susie also gave me a heads up about the "Where's the fruit?" study by Strategic Alliance.
A sad fact is that many food manufacturers are trading on the appeal of fresh fruit.

So where is the fruit in yogurts, cereal, juices and other packaged products covered with pictures of glistening strawberries, juicy oranges and apple slices? In just 27 percent of the products, such as the dried apple pieces in Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. Another 6 percent of products consisted of 100 percent fruit juice, such as Juicy Juice and Capri Sun Fruit Waves.


Instead of buying "Fruit Loops," Mom, try some real fruit.

Finding supply

Just what citrus is available from where is a question that is frustrating some buyers, one West Coast citrus industry leader told me today. While some buyers are counting on oranges from Spain, the source said suppliers in Spain there have not had required insect trapping procedures in place that would allow for shipments to the U.S. Argentina can't ship to the U.S. now because of phytosanitary reasons. At the same time, California navel shippers will have limited supply into March. The f.o.b. price for first grade size 72 California navels has moderated slightly, trading at $26-28 on Jan. 31, down about $4-6 per carton from Jan. 22 but up about $15 per carton compared with Jan. 10.

Only light volumes of Mexican oranges were observed in the import column of the USDA's weekly shipment report, found among the links on the right.

Just because a country grows citrus doesn't mean it can be shipped to the U.S., but the USDA may need to do a better job of defining the world of potential suppliers. Developing...

Spinach and food safety

A UPI story reveals that spinach sales are still sagging. From the story:
Packaged spinach sales were down 37 percent the week ended Dec. 23, compared with the same period a year earlier, to $976,699, the Perishables Group of West Dundee, Ill., said. Bulk spinach sales, a smaller market, were off 22 percent. Sales of packaged salads that contain spinach are down 28 percent year-over-year to $1.4 million, it said.


It is surprising that sales are apparently lagging by that margin. I would have guessed that retail sales of bagged spinach were off by 10% to 15% off at this point. However, spinach has been beaten up pretty badly, from sketches on late night comedy shows to a mortgage commercial I've been hearing on the radio for weeks. The dialogue goes something like this: "You'd be stupid not to refinance. But not as stupid as my brother - he eats bagged spinach!" I kid you not.


Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office yesterday published a document that has some criticism of federal food safety oversight.

Example:

However, the patchwork nature of the federal oversight of food safety calls into question whether the government can plan more strategically to inspect food production processes, identify and react more quickly to any outbreaks of contaminated food, and focus on achieving results to promote the safety and integrity of the nation's food supply.

More grist for the mill as Congress looks at federal oversight of food safety in coming weeks and months.

Everything you wanted to know about flavonoids

I really can't pronounce flavonoids, much less speak intelligently about what they do. However. new research has been conducted that adds to the store of knowledge speaking to why fruits and vegetables are good for the body. Here is the link to the ARS database, updated in 2007.

The research was mostly consistent with earlier literature but found considerable variability between samples. The study measured levels of 20 flavonoids in more than 60 fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts collected at two different times of the year from commercial markets in four regions of the U.S.

Gauging reaction

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns farm bill proposals that would boost fruit and vegetable purchases by hundreds of millions of dollars and provide money for other specialty crop priorities quickly gathered industry praise yesterday, though Robert Guenther of United told me yesterday the suggested removal of the planting flexibility restriction was troubling. What's more, the Administration didn't identify block grants as a funding priority.

Guenther said United will soon introduce research highlighting the economic impact on fruit and vegetable growers if the fruit and vegetable planting restriction on farm program acres were to be lifted.

Meanwhile, this article describes some of the pushback the Administration's proposal is getting so far. The dreaded words "dead on arrival" may not apply yet, but the package will be a tough sell to entrenched farm interests.