Firecracker promotions

One of the biggest summer produce selling weeks lays ahead of us. Here in Kansas City, the food ads dated June 27 have been released. Here is a window to the world of Midwest produce promotions. Lots of watermelon, but not as much sweet corn action as I would have predicted. Disney/Ito mango nectarines have a couple of spotlighted promotions. Both blueberries and cherries check in at hotter prices.

Wal Mart:
Fresh slicing tomatoes: 88 cents per pound
Fresh, juicy peaches: 76 cents per pound


Hen House: (rewards card)
Red ripe whole seedless watermelon: $3.99
Jumbo size sweet dark red cherries: $3.99 per pound
Del Monte Golden Ripe pineapple: $3.99
Earthbound Farm organic spring mix or baby spinach: $4.99 (16 ounce)
Mix and Match - 5 for $5 - Dole Classic Cole Slaw, Green Giant Baby Cut carrots (16 ounce), red radishes (16-ounce), green or red leaf, Romaine lettuce
Sweet Vidalia onions 99 cents for 1 pound
Green beans or new crop red potatoes: 99 cents per pound
Hot House tomatoes on the vine $1.49
Locally grown squash, yellow or zucchini, 99 cents per pound
Calif tree ripened peaches, nectarines, and red or black plums $1.99 per pound
Red and white seedless grapes: $1.99 per pound


HyVee:
Kandy label cantaloupe: 3 for $5
Stemilt cherries: $2.99 per pound
Black seedless grapes: $1.97
Dole salad: 9 to 12 ounce: $1.48
Blueberries (pint) 2 for $5
Sweet red peppers: 88 cents per pound
Disney mango nectarines: $3.99 per pound
Stemilt Artisan natural apricots: $1.88 per pound
Zespri gold kiwi: 2 for $1
Sunkist choice lemons 2 for $1
Fresh cut veggie tray 10 inch $8.88
Fresh cut fruit tray: $9.99


Dillons:
Red ripe whole seedless watermelon: $2.99 each
Northwest sweet red cherries: $2.99 per pound
Corn on the cob: 5 for $2
Cantaloupe: 2 fo $4
Large ripe hass avocados or Fresh Express Cole slaw: 4 for $5
California peaches/nectarines: $1.99 per pound
Driscolls strawberries or blueberries: 2 for $6
Vidalia sweet onions: 4 pounds for $5
Russet baking potatoes: 79 cents per pound
Fresh green onions or cucumbers: 69 cents each

Price Chopper:
Whole seedless watermelon: $3.77
Driscoll's strawberries: 2 for $5
Blueberries: 2 for $5
Superior Seedless grapes: $1.49 per pound
BC Hot House tomatoes on the vine: $1.49 per pound
Cantaloupe: 2 for $4
Green Giant sliced whole mushrooms: $1.69 pound
Green Giant baby cut carrots (2 lb( 2 for $5
Jumbo Del Monte pineapple: $3.99 each
Jumbo Vidalia onions: 99 cents per pound
Zucchini or yellow squash: 99 cents per pound
Pick of the Week: Ito mango nectarines: $2.99 per pound
Dole classic cole slaw (16 ounce) or Mann's broccoli slaw (12 ounce)

Double standard?

For retailers, the hot social trend is minimizing food miles and sourcing local produce. Does a grower with a six-week deal in Rhode Island have to jump through the same hoops as a year-round supplier from California?
Is there a double standard relating to food safety audits for home grown produce compared with fruits and vegetables from commercial shippers? If so, is a double standard defensible?
I think conventional shippers are wrong to think that locally grown produce is not produced responsibly. Still, there can be no doubt that some local produce growers don't have the checks and audits of larger shippers. Allowing for that, smaller growers in some cases must be certified to do business with schools and other buyers; many are moving toward that end.
That topic of food safety certification for smaller growers is addressed in this link.
From the winter 2007 article from the University of Rhode Island:

For the last five years, the New England Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) program, centered at URI, has been educating small farmers as to how they can take steps to eliminate the risk of pathogens in the produce they sell. Now with the resurgence of consumer interest in locally grown food the importance of that education-and the certification process-has taken on even more significance.
Recently several small farmers gathered at the US. Department of Agriculture conference room in Warwick to take the first step toward getting their farms GAP Certified. The afternoon-long series of presentations by Lori Pivarnik and Martha Patnoad, both URI food safety experts, covered such topics as water quality, soil amendments, worker hygiene and proper storage and transportation issues. Both professors are in the CELS Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences.
Some of the farmers present were interested in becoming a supplier to schools and in order to do that, Chartwells, a distributor of foods to schools in the state, requires that participating farms be GAP Certified. So far just two GAP Certified farms in the state are enrolled with Chartwells. There are 18 farms in Rhode Island that are GAP Certified.
Kenneth Ayers, chief of the state Division of Agriculture, told the gathering that federal guidelines are pushing for an increase in fresh foods in the schools.
"The schools are an untapped market for local farmers," he said noting that the farmers can usually sell their produce at prices between wholesale and retail.
In addition at least one insurer, Farm Family, is exploring the idea of offering premium credit for GAP Certified farms. Farm Family already offers the credit (10-15 percent of the liability premium) for some types of farming operations.

Fresh Start in danger

California's Fresh Start Program, which provided an extra 10 cents for each student's breakfast to provide fresh fruit, could hit a budget wall soon. Here is a story about the program and the money woes at the state level, as reported by The Press Enterprise. One school foodservice official quoted said that she won't let go of the program easily. "You'll find a way to make it work," she said.

At a time when the federal fruit and vegetable snack program is desperately seeking solid farm bill funding to expand, this news of a reversal for California's Fresh Start program is disappointing.

Letter to FDA

Here is the link to a letter from members of Congress to the FDA with a tersely worded request for information about planned lab closings by the agency. The June 15 letter, from Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. with Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., asks the agency to provide Congress with a detailed explanation of what inspection services will go away if the labs are closed and more than 190 scientific specialists are cut from the agency. That number is about 40% of the total number of lab analysts working with the Office of Regulatory Affairs, the letter observes. With food imports doubling every five years, the Congressmen called planned reductions "deeply disturbing."

W-M delays green report

The Financial Times and others report that Wal-Mart is delaying its "green report."
The story notes Wal-Mart has not set a date for the release of the report, which deals with the retailer's commitment to the environment and social sustainability.

Flashback: The Packer's David Mitchell wrote in November of last year:

Now suppliers who do business with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Bentonville, Ark., and its Sam's Club division soon will be asked to take one more step to bring their products to market.
The world's largest retailer announced in September that it planned to reduce packaging from its global supply chain by 5% by 2013. On Nov. 1 at the Conference at Pack Expo, Wal-Mart spelled out how it planned to reach that goal with Web-based scorecards that will rank suppliers and packaging manufacturers. By 2008, packaging sustainability information gleaned from those scorecards will be one of the factors Wal-Mart considers in purchasing decisions, including produce.
"We at Wal-Mart recognize that we have unique strengths and a unique opportunity to have a positive impact on the environment through our own actions, those of our customers and those of our suppliers," said Matt Kistler, vice president of package and product innovations for Sam's Club. Starting Feb. 7, Wal-Mart plans to begin a one-year trial, during which its 60,000 global suppliers -- including more than 1,000 produce shippers in North America -- will input, store and track data about their packaging. Suppliers will be rated on greenhouse gas emissions, material content, cube utilization, transportation, recycled content, renewable energy, innovation and other factors related to their packaging.


TK: Wal-Mart''s scorecard on itself has been delayed. While such an effort is undeniably complex, Wal-Mart's follow through on this issue is a measure whether it can walk the talk as well as talk the talk.

New Vegetable Melon and Outlook report

The USDA Economic Research Service has released its bi-monthly Vegetable and Melon Outlook report here.
Some highlights:

If the direction of spring potato prices in California, Florida, and Texas is an indicator of average domestic prices for the 2007 crop, growers may expect another year of both higher production and prices. Projected average prices across the 3 States for spring-crop potatoes are $19 per cwt compared with $12.30 per cwt in 2006. Demand for potatoes and available supply are both stronger than in 2006 as evidenced by the 4-percent expansion of market shipments through May 2007. For the 2006/07 crop, potatoes used for processing is up 8 percent through May.

And this about the general vegetable outlook:


During the first 5 months of 2007, fresh-market vegetable prices at the point of first sale (e.g., grower or shipping-point) averaged 31 percent above a year earlier. Higher average prices were received for crops such as fresh dry-bulb onions, celery, snap beans, and broccoli—easily outweighing lower average prices for tomatoes, cucumbers, and head lettuce. Following a winter quarter which saw fresh vegetable prices average 36 percent above a year earlier, farm prices this spring were up 23 percent from 2006. This summer, fresh vegetable prices are expected to average below the highs of a year ago as harvested area rises slightly and yields improve from last summer’s weather-reduced levels.

Potatoes: During the first 5 months of 2007, grower prices for potatoes averaged 3 percent above a year earlier due largely to good demand from processors and exporters. Grower prices for processing potatoes were up 8 percent through April while fresh-market prices were down 6 percent. In contrast, retail potato prices have remained fairly steady during the first 5 months of 2007, with fresh white potatoes averaging just 1 percent above a year ago (at 52 cents /lb.) and potato chips down 1 percent to $3.45/lb.

Blue skies

Very strong demand is noted from one major blueberry shipper this morning, who said prices really aren't expected to bend lower than $18-20 per flat despite ample supply from New Jersey and Michigan. Higher prices for blueberries from processors, plus higher labor costs, have put upward pressure on prices this year. Michigan's harvest is running five to seven days ahead of schedule. Good supply is generally expected through July.

Worthy links

If you one of the growing number of readers that subscribe by email to the full feed of this blog, I wanted to alert you that you may want to check out new links on the Web site as well. As the farm bill heats up and food safety issues continue to percolate, I've added RSS headline links to several bloggers who worth reading in the course of the debate.

Check out Ken Cook and Mulch Blog here.

The Blog for Rural America

Farm Policy blog by Keith Good.

Also we have the RSS feed of Marlerblog, from Seattle food safety lawyer Bill Marler.

Explore the fresh produce industry discussion group linked to the blog and you will find it has some active members. I've added a consumer-oriented discussion group that has only just begun but may prove interesting in time.

Monday headline roundup 6/25

Food safety worries grow By Shelley Shelton , Arizona Daily Star
Gist: Safey of imported food, COOL
Lede:
For those who've been alarmed by recent scares involving tainted imported products, there's bad news and … moderately comforting news.
Sources: Consumer Federation of America; Lee Frankel of Fresh Produce Association of the Americas; Arizona Dept. of Health Services

His latest challenge; keeping food supply safe Q and A with FDA's David Acheson
Produce related quotes:
Q. Give an example of how a prevention focus changes FDA actions.
A How do you prevent E. coli 0157:H7 from getting on spinach? That's the bug that caused the spinach outbreak. You need to do the basic science to understand how that contamination can occur. How do you prevent it? Do you test the water on a regular basis? Do you push cattle further away? Do you need better washing strategies in the processing plants? You then educate industry on how to do that. And then, potentially down the road, verify they are doing it.
Q Is that happening now?
A No, it's not. But it's where we need to go.

Q Critics make the case for a single food safety agency with recall authority and a mandate to standardize inspections.
A Simply creating a single food safety agency, moving groups of federal employees around under a different organizational structure, frankly, I think is more likely to create a bigger hole in food safety, certainly for sure in the short term. I worry about that.

Q Is mandatory recall authority among new powers the FDA seeks?
A It's on the table as an authority that could be looked at.
Q Which other new powers would be helpful?
A [We're] looking at what the strategic plan, overall, would shape up like. What could be achieved with current authorities? What could be achieved with what you might call a tweak on current authorities? And what needs new authorities? There needs to be overall buy-in to the strategic approach . . . I don't want to jeopardize anything or preempt anything by jumping too far in front.


Tesco trains staff in generational talk This describes Tesco's training of older workers in the U.K. on the strange talk of the younger generations. Some examples:

Bad: Good (but this can also mean bad. When in doubt, just nod).
How’s it hanging?: How are you today?
Laters: Cheerio, goodbye.
Minging: Ugly, unattractive.
Phat: Wicked (in the good sense), cool.
Slammin’: Pleasing to the eye.
Talk to the hand: I’m not listening.
Wack: Weak, boring

China's apple invasion

This AP story, published in USA Today, talks about how U.S. apple growers are bracing for imports from China. The story notes that Chinese workers make 28 cents an hour, compared with $9t o $14 per hour in the U.S. The Chinese have been seeking access for their apples in the U.S. market since 1998, but significant hurdles remain.
From the story:

The U.S. Apple Association said the Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service sent a list of more than 300 insects and diseases of concern to the quarantine inspection agency of the Chinese government in 2003. The Chinese government responded the next year, and then the United States asked for information on 52 pests from the list.

TK: John Rice and Jim Allen are quoted in this story, and the context is the issue of country of origin labeling. If Chinese apples are allowed into the U.S., country of origin labeling becomes a bigger issue for U.S. apple growers. By that time, however, the issue of COOL will already be settled. Most think it will be some years before Chinese apples are allowed into the U.S., while final action on COOL should be in this year's farm bill. Beyond COOL, the story notes of the tree fruit industry's technology road map that seeks research funds to address issues such as mechanical picking machines. I recently had a Q and A with U.S. Apple Association's Jim Cranney on that issue that will be forthcoming.