No to two farm bills

Here is the official statement from the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance in response to the House Agriculture Committee announcement of Friday about the handling of the upcoming farm bill.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance (SCFBA), a national coalition of more than 110 specialty crop organizations, has issued the following statement regarding the announcement by U.S. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson that he is separating the Farm Bill into two bills:
"Although details of the Chairman’s proposal are not fully available, we are vehemently opposed to fracturing the Farm Bill into two separate pieces of legislation since this will not allow Congress to develop a farm policy that positively addresses the full breadth of agriculture, conservation and nutrition issues. This approach will make it difficult to enact legislation that reflects the needs of the specialty crop industry, which include pressing production, food, nutrition and research components. Our industry accounts for nearly half of all cash crop receipts, yet the way this Farm Bill approach is structured the needs of specialty crop producers will be not met. The 2007 Farm Bill represents a unique opportunity to enact a paradigm shift in agriculture policy for the 21st Century, but the proposals announced today fall short of needs of many American farmers. We look forward to working with Congressional leaders and the House Agriculture Committee on drafting a Farm Biill that is more equitable for specialty crop producers.

TK: We will knew much more by Friday, but specialty crop interests are reluctant to endorse what House Agriculture Committee chairman Peterson has done, notwithstanding the paid-for baseline of $685 million Peterson said he will establish for fruit and vegetable programs.

Produce en fuego

Here are some new produce ads in the Kansas City area; how do they rate compared with your market? I see Price Chopper backed down bing cherries to $1.99 per pound, which may rate as the best promotion of the week. Hen House is heavily promoting its local growers, with a meet and greet in a couple of stores.


Price Chopper (rewards card) July 4 through July 10
Washington Bing cherries: $1.99 per pound
Washington Ranier cherries: $3.99 per pound
Ripe 'N Ready peaches or nectarines: $1.49 per pound
Extra Large California red or black plums: $1.49 per pound
Extra Large green bell peppers or cucumbers: 2 for $1
Vine ripened cantaloupe: 2 for $4
Mann's 8 ounce pack of sugar snap peas or 6-ounce sno peas: 2 for $5
Tommy Atkins mangoes: 2 for $1
Green Giant whole mushrooms: $1.29 per 8-ounce package
Melissa's organic 4-count peach or nectarines or 8-count plum bits: $3.00



Dillons (rewards card) July 5-10
Driscoll's strawberries 1 pound: 2 for $3
Red or green seedless grapes: $1.77 per pound
Large crisp celery: 10 for $10
Northwest sweet red cherries: $2.99 per pound
Fresh peaches or nectarines (conventional or organic) $1.69 per pound
Tomatoes on the vine: $1.999 per pound
Zucchini or yellow squash: 4 for $5
Cantaloupe or honeydew: 2 for $5
Walla Walla or red Italian sweet onions: 10 pounds for $10


HyVee one day savings: July 7
Hy Vee garden salad 16-ounces: 77 cents

Hy Vee July 4 to July 10
Greenhouse red ripe tomatoes: $1.28
Stemilt rainier cherries; $4.88 per pound
Coupon: Buy two Dole Fresh Discoveries blends for kits, get any produce up to $1 free
Red seedless grapes: $1.28 per pound (More Matters logo); HealthyBites Note: Some research indicates that grapes may protect against heart disease and certain cancers. (grapes from California logo)
Mangoes: 3 for $2
Bland Farms sweet Vidalia onions: 99 cents/pound
Green line trimmed green beans: 2 for $5
Hass avocados: 2 for $3
Fresh cilantro(bunch) 3 for $1
Melissa's baby dutch yellow potatoes 24 ounces $2.99
Fresh sweet corn 3 for $1
Sweet honeydew melon: 2 for $5
Dole salad kits: 10 to 13.5 ounces: 2 for $4
Grimmway Farms baby carrots (16 ounce package): 88 cents
New Zealand braeburn appoles: $1.38 per pound
Dole iceberg lettuce: 88 cents
Melissa's peeled garlic: $2.49 for 6-ounce package
Sno peas: $2.48 per pound
Green peppers: 2 for $1
Monterey Mushrooms: portabella caps: sliced 6 ounce or whole white 16 ounce: $2.77



Hen House; (rewards) July 4 to July 10
Meet the Growers promotion highlight: Meet local grower of hydroponic heirloom tomatoes and local grower of herbs
Andy's Candy Corn grown by Andy Daniels of Columbus, Nebraska: Peaches and cream variety: 8 for $3
Locally grown Kirby cucumbers grown locally by Twin County Family Farms: $2.50 per half peck:
Locally grown zucchini or yellow squash by David Moyer of Richmond, Va.: $2.50 per 1/4 peck
Locally gown candy sweet onions by Twin County Family Farms: $3 for 1/4 peck
Blueberries: 2 12 ounce packages for $5
Earthbound Farms certified organic: 4 to 5 ounce packages of baby mixed greens, baby romaine, baby spinach or baby lettuce: $2.99 each
Green cabbage 3 pounds for $1 by Twin County Family Farms
Green bell peppers or cucumbers: 2 for $1
Locally grown living basil: $3.49 per bunch
Hot House tomatoes: $1.49 per pound
Chunked seedless watermelon: $1.49 per pound

Hot grape market

Grape marketing conditions are very competitive now, with Mexico, Coachella and the San Joaquin Valley in production.

One Fresno area grape shippers notes that the Bakersfield Arvin region has been going strong since last week. Flame seedless promotions from California's central valley will heat up this month, and quotes now for the nicer fruit is $12 to 14 per lug.

One of the issues for suppliers this week will be temperatures forecast at near 107 to 110 degrees. Harvest crews will have to quit work by noon to avoid the heat, which could crimp the supply somewhat.

Not happy yet

There is no clear picture yet what is included for specialty crops in the House Agriculture Committee's chairman's mark of the 2007 farm bill, which will be released Friday. On Friday past, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson said that his mark will include an unprecedented $685 million over five years as baseline funding for fruit and vegetable priorities. He didn't say how that money would be divided and what programs he included in the figure.
Right now there is skepticism about the chairman's mark by at least one industry lobbyist I spoke with today. Whatever it includes, he said the $685 million over five years falls too far short of what the industry is looking for, considering the EAT Healthy America Act asks for $1.6 billion PER YEAR for industry priorities.

What is the industry's bottom line number? At what point will the industry be satisfied? I don't think the industry has a firm idea yet, but apparently $685 million over five years is not enough.

Food or fuel

Over the weekend, I attended a 30-year high school class reunion of my wife's suburban K.C. Shawnee Mission South High School class of '77. During the computer "slide show," interspersed with pictures of students, football games, cheerleaders, etc., were snapshots of the world as it existed back then. Along with several shots of President Jimmy Carter in various settings, one picture showed an attendant at a service station raising gas prices -- ALL THE WAY TO 52.9 CENTS PER GALLON.

Those are officially the good old days for my generation, I suppose. Pretty soon I will be buying the "Malt Shop Memories" Collection from Time Life Records.

This column talks about how the U.S. is passing a threshold in relation to the cost of food. Called "The Impending Food Fight," the article by Davis Hanson looks at the tension between agricultural production for food versus fuel. Hanson also speculates that f/v have increased in price in part because of increased immigration enforcement at the border.

From the column:

The pubic furor over illegal immigration has, despite all the government inaction, still translated into some increased border security. And with more vigilance, fewer illegal aliens are crossing the border to work in labor-intensive crops like fresh fruits and vegetables.
The U.S. population still increases while suburbanization continues. The sprawl of housing tracts, edge cities and shopping centers insidiously gobbles up prime farmland at the rate of hundreds of thousands of acres per year.
In turn, in the West periodic droughts and competition from growing suburbs have made water for farming scarcer, more expensive - and sometimes unavailable.
On the world scene, 2 billion Indians and Chinese are enjoying the greatest material improvement in their nations' histories - and their improved diets mean more food consumed than ever before.
The result is that global food supplies are also tightening up, both at home and abroad. America has become a net food importer. We seem to have developed a new refined taste for foreign wines, cheeses and fresh winter fruits even as we are consuming more of our corn, wheat, soybeans and dairy products at home.
Now comes the biofuels movement. For a variety of reasons, ranging from an attempt to become less dependent on foreign oil to a desire for cleaner fuels, millions of acres of farmland are being redirected to corn-based ethanol.
If hundreds of planned new ethanol refineries are built, the U.S. could very shortly be producing around 30 billion gallons of corn-based fuel per year, using one of every four acres planted to corn for fuel. This dilemma of food or fuel is also appearing elsewhere in the world as Europeans and South Americans begin redirecting food acreages to corn-, soy-, or sugar- based biofuels.


TK: The author wonders how consumers will balance spending for fuel and food and have any left over for consumer goods. With more than 92 million acres of corn planted - 19% more than last year - farmers are trying to ease both food and fuel prices as quickly as they can. There does not appear to be an easy answer for America's agricultural employers. If immigration reform is not passed by Congress, labor shortages will likely limit harvest and raise fresh produce prices in coming years.

GM resistance

The USDA reported June 29 that biotech varieties accounted for 73% of all field corn planted in the U.S. this year, up from 61% from last year. Meanwhile, I got this email from a Germany biotechnology research group over the weekend, clearly frustrated by continued harassment in Europe about biotech research. It reads:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In a repeat of last year’s events, parts of a trial field with GM maize in Forchheim (Baden-Württemberg) have once again been destroyed. The field is part of the coexistence research programme funded by the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV), which is investigating practical questions of coexistence between genetically modified and conventional maize farming. Another attack happened in Gießen: Once again, parts of a trial field on land belonging to the University of Giessenhave been destroyed. The field is being used to investigate whether genetically modified barley has undesirableimpacts on beneficial soil fungi like mycorrhizas. The project is being publicly funded as part of the biological safety research programme.

TK: Here is a link to the story. Clearly, some fringe elements in Europe continue to hamper research by government authorities and commercial application of biotechnology in agriculture. With three quarter of corn planted and 87% of cotton planted to GM varieties, it is not so in the U.S. The breakthrough for GM in fresh fruit and vegetable production in the U.S. has not arrived, but can it be far off?

Aldi produce values

I went to our local Aldi store yesterday and found the produce "aisle" as stocked as I had ever seen it. The refrigerated salads were along the wall in the cold case, but all the rest of the produce was set out, without refrigeration.

Here is a rundown of what Aldi was doing with their produce values:
Bananas: 35 cents per pound; merchandised in bag
10-pound bag of russets: $2.29 from Del Monte
3-pound bag of onions: $1.89
5-pound baking potatoes: $2.29
5 pound bag of red potatoes: $1.99
20 ounce shrink wrapped broccoli: $1.29
Iceberg lettuce: 89 cents each
Cauliflower: $1.49 each
Cabbage: $1.19 each
Celery: 99 cents each
8 ounce mushrooms: $1.19
Avocados: 69 each (Mexico)
20-ounce packaged romas $1.29
Seedless watermelon: $3.49 each
Green seedless grapes: $2.98 per 2 pounds
Red seedless grapes; $2.98 for 2-pounds
Strawberries: 99 cents per pound
Cantaloupes: 99 cents each
20-ounce Sweet corn : $1.69 for 20 ounces
Peaches and nectarines: $2.49 for 2-pound clamshells
Pink lady apples: $2.29 for three pound bag
Granny smith: $1.69 for 3-pound bag


Here is one retailer that doesn't claim to have the best produce in town, and they don't. But for families on a budget, you can get a lot of bang for your buck at Aldi.