Where's Bruce?

Bruce Peterson announced his resignation from Wal-Mart Feb. 2 and that same day I had a chance to talk to retail consultant and industry giant Dick Spezzano about Bruce's legacy. I don't know where Bruce will land in produce next - perhaps he is riding his Harley in the Arkansas hills as I write this with no thoughts of produce - but I thought I would let you hear a rewind of Dick's take on Bruce. Here it is.

Getting psyched

I got a call from a cherry shipper in California today. She mentioned that the bloom has been unbelievable and they are anticipating a strong crop of cherries come May. She wondered if I was doing the California cherry section. While I did it last year, Jim Offner is handling that section this year, I told her.

Packer writers - notably Jim, I think - do an amazing job of covering week to week news stories in addition to handling travel and writing duty for special sections.

Another trip I won't be on - I'm noticing a trend here - is United's FreshTech event. United sent out this notice about what promises to be a strong food safety program there.
From the United release:

One of Time magazine’s 2006 “most influential people to shape the world,” FDA Chief Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D., will keynote the opening session at the all-new Produce Safety Summit in Palms Springs. The summit, which will take place April 25 & 26th, immediately precedes the United FreshTech Expo & Conference.
Dr. von Eschebach's keynote presentation, which kicks off the summit, will take place at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25. The Produce Safety Summit will focus on discussing food safety challenges and developing solutions to address produce safety concerns. Produce business leaders, researchers, academia, food safety experts, foodservice and retail quality assurance staff, government officials and suppliers of food safety services will come together for this first-of-its-kind event.




TK: Here is the CDFA news release about approval of the GAPs for the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement. This type of news is reassuring to the public, just what they wanted to hear - until another outbreak occurs.
From the release:

The metrics, which are guidelines for good agricultural practices (GAP) to be followed by marketing agreement signatories, were proposed by a coalition of leafy greens industry members, and were reviewed and endorsed by food science experts in academia and government. A link to the metrics may be found at www.cdfa.ca.gov
"We recognize and appreciate the numerous GAP initiatives coming forward from trade organizations and private companies," said marketing agreement board chairman Joe Pezzini. "However, the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement program is the only initiative that will incorporate on-site field inspections that are conducted by a government inspection and verification entity. The California Department of Food and Agriculture will be using state and federal inspectors trained by the USDA.
The Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement's role is to verify and certify that signatories are following industry's guidelines, using a USDA-designed inspection program in use across the country, and CDFA inspectors. The fiscal year for the marketing agreement will begin on April 1. At that time, signatory handlers will be assessed two cents per carton for operation of the agreement, which is administered by CDFA. Handlers must sign-up by March 31 to participate. To date, 54 handlers representing 98 percent of leafy greens produced in California have signed up for the marketing agreement.

Bee buzz

There is legislation already introduced in the House of Representatives to help research the bee colony collapse events taking place.


Here is the witness list for Thursday's House Ag Committee hearing on the nation's bee crisis.

WITNESS LIST

Panel I
Associate Administrator Caird E. Rexroad, PhD, Agricultural Research Service, USDA, Washington, D.C.
Dr. Diana Cox-Foster, PhD, Professor, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
Dr. May R. Berenbaum, Professor and Head, Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois
Panel II
Mr. Paul Wenger, First Vice President, California Farm Bureau Federation, Modesto, California
Mr. David Ellingson, Commercial Bee Keeper, Ortonville, MN
Mr. Gene Brandi, Legislative Chairman, California State Beekeepers Association, Los Banos, California
Mr. Jim Doan, Commercial Bee Keeper, Hamlin, New York
Mr. Richard Adee, Legislative Committee Chairman, American Honey Producers Association, Bruce, South Dakota
###


The House Agriculture Committee web site http://agriculture.house.gov/ has additional information on this and other subjects.

The corn question

After all the corn is planted, will there be enough land for potatoes, beans and onions? That's the half-serious question that some economists are pondering. Booming ethanol demand is having a widespread impact on producer decisions; Friday's USDA's prospective plantings report will show a big increase in corn acreage - from about 75 million acres to as much as 90 million acres - and those acres will have to come from some place. Wheat and soybean prices are also quite high, so taking acreage from those crops is not a given.

One economist I spoke with said potato acreage may still expand slightly - perhaps two percent - but growers should receive fairly good prices next year.

The spike in ethanol demand and corn production may have unintended consequences, including higher food prices and a wage-price spiral, the economist speculated.

"We may even get a depression out of it, who knows?" he said cheerily.

On the bright side, potato growers may have another good year.

Headline news

Doing a quick check of the headlines, I see that bees are back. The Chicago Tribune has this story about the collapse of bee colonies and a Congressional hearing on Thursday to address this important issue.
From the story:

This baffling situation has sent shock waves through the agriculture industry nationwide, particularly almond growers in California, where 80 percent of the world's almonds are produced. The growers rely on pollination by bees.While the U.S. honey-production industry generates more than $150 million annually, honeybees' pollination of crops is valued at about $14 billion a year, according to a Cornell University study. Beekeepers truck billions of bees to orchards and farms to pollinate crops including apples, grapes, cucumbers, cauliflower, cherries and almonds.About three decades ago, S.E. McGregor, an apiculturist from Arizona, estimated that one-third of what is eaten by humans is a direct result of the work of honeybees. Bromenshenk suspects that today McGregor's words are an understatement.On Thursday, a U.S. Department of Agriculture subcommittee on horticulture and organic agriculture is scheduled to conduct a public hearing on the collapse of honeybee colonies.

Getting enough of what

This LA Times story points to inconsistencies in the way researchers track fruit and vegetable consumption.
From the story:

The NHANES and USDA keep track of various kinds of fruits and vegetables, but the BRFSS doesn't. This can lead to head-scratching differences. The recent NHANES report says that more people are getting enough veggies — but not fruit. The BRFSS paper says the opposite: More Americans eat their fruit. Some experts say that counting fruits and vegetables separately is important because the two have different nutrients. Not everyone agrees. "Whether something is called a fruit or a vegetable means nothing," says Dr. David Heber, director of UCLA's Center for Human Nutrition. The tomato, he says, is botanically a fruit but classed as a vegetable by decree of the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1893. This made tomatoes legally vegetables so they could, unlike fruits, be taxed. Nutritionists everywhere wonder if it will take such drastic measures to get us to eat our fruits and vegetables. ,

TK: This brings to mind a comment from one consultant I was visiting with recently who mentioned that fruit and vegetable marketers are still woefully deficient in the level of information they possess about consumer purchases and preferences of fresh produce. We don't know enough about how consumers interact with fresh produce in general, even to the point of statistical uncertainty about who is getting enough of what. We do know that nearly everyone could eat more, and that at least confirms More Matters is a good message to latch on to.