Apple Movement

From the Pro Act market report of March 17:

The Northwest continues to have shortages on small fruit particularly in the red varieties. As redundant as it sounds, it will continue for the remainder of the storage season. Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Gold Delicious and other varietal red apples continue to pack larger and in higher grades making it difficult for the foodservice sector and our weekly demands. Expect prices to increase on small apples and availability to continue short. Pear sizing is also large, but market prices are holding steady this week will into next week as well.

Allocations

Laura Phelps of the American Mushroom Institute passes on these figures from Congress Daily on how spending over baseline was divided among various titles. However, she notes not all Hill staff had seen these numbers, so it may be a work in progress:

The allocations for the five-year bill released Tuesday would increase spending on a 10-year basis for nutrition, including international food aid, by $9.5 billion; conservation by $4.95 billion; commodity programs by $1.4 billion and specialty crops by $1.4 billion in addition to the $2.2 billion for disaster aid. Those increases would be made by possible by reducing research spending by $1.2 billion, crop insurance by $4 billion and farm bill spending in other areas by $4.4 billion. That $4.4 billion presumably includes shifting the timing of farm bill spending outside the period the bill covers.

DOA?

Sen. Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., isn't happy about the latest plan to divide up the $10 billion or so over baseline: From Baucus yesterday afternoon:


Finance Chairman Baucus this afternoon called a new outline of proposed spending for this year’s farm bill “dead on arrival” with him and with other Senators. Baucus has led the Finance Committee in creating a fully paid-for $5.1 billion fund for permanent agriculture disaster assistance for America’s farmers, and in converting some farm payment programs to tax credit programs, both to free up funds for the Agriculture Committee to spend on additional farm bill priorities. Baucus is also a senior member of the Agriculture panel. From Chairman Baucus: “This new farm bill proposal is dead on arrival. I won’t vote for or help to fund any agreement that does not do disaster assistance right for our farmers in need. I bet other Senators will feel the same. The National Farmers Union made stable, permanent disaster assistance its number-one priority for the farm bill, but this slashes the Senate’s good plan for disaster assistance in half. “On the farm bill, the Finance Committee did something it’s done nowhere else,finding resources and freeing up funds for the Agriculture Committee to pursue priorities like nutrition programs. If we continue to work together, we can keep America’s farmers from getting the short end of the stick on disaster assistance. This proposed agreement isn’t good enough.”

Japanese market for oranges

Why are Japan's imports of U.S. fresh oranges less than what they used to be? It has something to do with the fact that young consumers eater fewer oranges than their older cohorts, while older Japanese tend to eat more oranges as they age. Those trends would tend to counteract each other. so...... Find an ERS report on the Japanese market for oranges here. From the report:

Japan has undergone a profound demographic shift in recent decades. Birth rates have fallen, life expectancy has risen, and as a result, Japan’s population profile has aged. The birth rate slowed steadily in the 1990s and early 2000s, until the population began to decline in 2005, a phenomenon that is expected to continue. Japan’s 20th century history involved great upheavals and shocks, including urbanization, war, economic depressions, and booms. Generations, or cohorts, of Japanese people born in different decades have had quite
different life experiences, and this may affect food consumption patterns. Studies suggest that fresh fruit consumption rises as individuals age.3 This means that older people will eat more fresh fruit than younger people. In Japan, the population has aged significantly—while the general population is decreasing, the number of people over 60 is increasing—and this might
lead to greater consumption of fresh fruits, like oranges. Another demographic change is the increase in women’s participation in the urban workforce in Japan. This has put pressure on at-home food preparation, which was traditionally done by women. In the case of oranges, this could mean that wives and mothers are less likely to peel oranges (and other fruits) for husbands and children. Women in younger cohorts are more likely to work outside the home than women in older cohorts. Food consumption in Japan has changed a great deal in the last century. Income and import growth have allowed the Japanese to purchase a wider variety of foods, including some that would otherwise have been unavailable or too expensive in the past. Increased access to imports and greater productivity in the domestic food chain have led to lower prices for some foods. Income and price changes can explain some of the broad shifts in Japanese consumption over the 20th century. However, the relatively small shifts in income and prices over the last 15 years do not seem highly important for continuing shifts in food consumption in Japan. Demographic effects may explain changes that economic effects do not. Using FIES data, research has assessed changes in Japanese food consumption over time and across a spectrum of age cohorts, finding that fresh fruit consumption has been highest in cohorts born in earlier decades, and lowest in those born most recently. Also, fresh fruit consumption increases with the age of an individual (Mori et al., 2006). Recent research confirmed the same findings for oranges. As in the case of fresh fruits, the research found that (1) orange consumption is higher, the earlier the person was born (i.e., higher in older cohorts, lower in younger cohorts); and (2) that orange consumption increases as an individual ages,
no matter when the person was born, although not at the same rate. In both cases, the effects are progressive and continuous, in general. Each cohort eats fewer oranges than the cohort immediately older than it, and orange consumption increases progressively with the age of an individual. Older cohorts die out, and are replaced by younger cohorts. Since the older
cohorts in Japan (e.g., cohorts born in the 1930s and 1940s) eat more oranges than younger cohorts, as these older cohorts die out, average orange consumption drops. On the other hand, Japan has been rapidly aging, and orange consumption increases with age. The orange consumption of a typical person born in the 1960s, for instance, is higher now than it was 20
years ago. This effect tends to increase average orange consumption. These two effects—cohort membership and aging—have opposite impacts on orange consumption and tend to offset each other. Thus, the gradual decline in orange consumption to date is not demographically straightforward. Cohort transition (the mortality of cohorts that ate more fruit at any age) in the next decades may have a negative effect on future orange (and fresh fruit) consumption.

Sobering truth

Luis of the Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group passes along this ppt.

Bringing it with passion

On the heels of the McDonald's CSR blog, I found this Village Soup blog by Holly Noonan. With passion, Holly writes about food prices and government subsidies

One one hand, that's a real shame because fruits and vegetables are already too expensive for many Americans to buy LOTS of them, nevermind good quality and organic. This is frustrating when you realize that the US government is significantly subsidizing food products in our food supply IN ORDER TO make food affordable to working Americans. This is why you can get either 5 hamburgers or one salad at McDonalds for the same price. Only one of those products is created with subsidized commodities: wheat and beef fed on subsidized grain (which are, incidently, reared in horrid cattle cities called "CAFOs" that are not cleaning up after themselves, so the burger is also being subsidized by whomever is downwind and downstream of these places. The impact and the cleanup costs that SHOULD be added to the price of that burger are not.) So government is subsiding our food! But why the hell are they subsiding hamburgers instead of fruits and vegetables??! Right when I start getting worked up over that question, I remember that $1.5 BILLION goes to subsidize TOBACCO! (excuse my yelling, but someone should be yelling.)

TK: I have a feeling that Holly should get online with the McDonald's CSR blog and vent a little bit more.

McDonald's CSR blog

We've seen Wal-Mart's buyer blog, and now we stumbled across a McDonald's social responsibility blog, found here. As one might expect, there are skeptics....
From the preamble:

Corporate social responsibility through the eyes of Vice President, Bob Langert, and the other people at McDonald's who work on corporate responsibility issues that matter. Get personal perspectives on the issues, hear open assessments of the challenges we face, and engage in civil dialogue with the people behind the programs at the Golden Arches.

From a post in February:

Back in School: Key Learnings From the Harvard Agribusiness Seminar

Main takeaway: Sustainable agriculture is gaining momentum. As I listened to--and learned from--other agribusiness leaders at this executive development seminar, it became clear to me that sustainability has become an integral part of running a food business.

The majority of executives there had a firm handle on the issues behind the term "sustainability" and demonstrated an understanding of how important it is to manage sustainability in their businesses. This is very exciting to me. In my opinion, five to ten years ago "sustainability" would have generated a big yawn of either indifference or sense of irrelevance. Not now. It was part of practically every discussion we had.

Still, I think the nuts and bolts of how to execute on sustainability day to day remain a mystery to many. I was fielding many questions about how to identify priorities, when and how to work with NGOs, if and how to set goals and targets. They were asking a lot of the same questions we have been asking here at McDonald's for quite some time. And, to be truthful, the answers are never simple.

The landscape is continuously evolving, so we never have all the answers--or for that matter, all the solutions. We focus on continuous improvement and progress, both of which mean that we never leave the classroom for good.

Being back in school at Harvard was intense. We were scheduled from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., and we had a stack of businesses cases that added up to the biggest textbook I've ever had to read. It was also a fantastic learning experience and one that I will turn to frequently over the next several years as I work to advance sustainable agriculture within the McDonald's System and across the industry.

-- Bob

TK: Here is one comment on that post....

Posted By: scott ohso on February 16, 2008
Comment:
did you ever ask WHY the 'answers are never simple' - especially at a place like mcdonalds? if you look at sustainability from a system point of view it might just be the mcdonalds business model runs counter to the very essence of sustainability. case in point, annie leonard ('the story of stuff') suggests sustainability equals community. i think you would be hard pressed to find many who would suggest mcdonalds = community. net/net, forgive the candor but my point of view is that you are simple attempting to ameliorate many unsustainable practices by putting band-aids on things without recognizing the real systemic issue at hand. that said, love your passion. perhaps it would be better served cultivating the seeds of a more sustainable and authentic brand.
Response: Dear Scott,
As noted in his most recent post, Bob Langert is currently on sabbatical, but the rest of the CSR team is happy to address your comments. We actually feel quite strongly that McDonald's = community. Yes, we are a global brand with a presence in over a hundred countries around the world. However, the vast majority (roughly 75%) of our restaurants are owned and managed by local franchisees who are very much involved in their communities. In addition, it is our policy to purchase locally whenever possible. So, your characterization of the McDonald's business model is misleading.
That said, we ask ourselves "why" and "how" and "what more can we do" all the time, but we believe in the McDonald's System. So the intent of those questions, and the answers that stem from them, are focused on continuously improving. We do not accept the premise that our business model prevents us from achieving sustainable solutions. And so we continue to meet the challenges head on and endeavor to be the best company we can be.
You should consider visiting our corporate social responsibility site at http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/values.html to learn more about the progress we have made on a number of social and environmental issues.
-The McDonald's CSR Team