House Farm Bill Conferees named (finally)

We are down to the last week of farm bill negotiations before the April 18 deadline, and House Speaker Pelosi finally gave the green light to name House conferees. From the office of Chairman Peterson, chair of the House Ag Committee:

Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson today announced the list of Representatives appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives to participate in the conference committee that will negotiate the 2008 Farm Bill.

"The Members serving on this conference committee have a challenging job as we work to come to an agreement that will move the Farm Bill forward," Chairman Peterson said. "I'm confident that if everyone comes to the table willing to negotiate and compromise, we
can pass a new Farm Bill that will expand important nutrition and conservation programs and provide new resources for fruit and vegetable producers and renewable energy programs while improving the farm safety net."

The Democratic Members of Congress selected to serve on the conference committee are:
From the Agriculture Committee:
Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota
Congressman Tim Holden of Pennsylvania
Congressman Mike McIntyre of North Carolina
Congressman Bob Etheridge of North Carolina
Congressman Leonard Boswell of Iowa
Congressman Joe Baca of California
Congressman Dennis Cardoza of California
Congressman David Scott of Georgia

Conferees on Farm Bill provisions with jurisdiction beyond the Agriculture Committee:
Congressman George Miller of California (Education and Labor)
Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy of New York (Education and Labor)
Congressman John Dingell of Michigan (Energy and Commerce)
Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey (Energy and Commerce)
Congressman Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania (Financial Services)
Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California (Financial Services)
Congressman Howard Berman of California (Foreign Affairs)
Congressman Brad Sherman of California (Foreign Affairs)
Congressman John Conyers of Michigan (Judiciary)
Congressman Bobby Scott of Virginia (Judiciary)
Congressman Nick Rahall of West Virginia (Natural Resources)
Delegate Madeline Bordallo of Guam (Natural Resources)
Congressman Henry Waxman of California (Oversight and Government Reform)
Congressman Edolphus Towns of New York (Oversight and Government Reform)
Congressman Bart Gordon of Tennessee (Science and Technology)
Congressman Nick Lampson of Texas (Science and Technology)
Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez of New York (Small Business)
Congressman Heath Shuler of North Carolina (Small Business)
Congressman Jim Oberstar of Minnesota (Transportation and Infrastructure)
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia (Transportation and Infrastructure)
Congressman Charles Rangel of New York (Ways and Means)
Congressman Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota (Ways and Means)

The Republican Members of Congress selected to serve on the conference committee are:
From the Agriculture Committee:
Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Bob Goodlatte of Virginia
Congressman Frank Lucas of Oklahoma
Congressman Jerry Moran of Kansas
Congressman Robin Hayes of North Carolina
Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado
Congressman Randy Neugebauer of Texas

Conferees on Farm Bill provisions with jurisdiction beyond the Agriculture Committee:
Congressman Todd Platts of Pennsylvania (Education and Labor)
Congressman Joe Barton of Texas (Energy and Commerce)
Congressman Spencer Bachus of Alabama (Financial Services)
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida (Foreign Affairs)
Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas (Judiciary)
Congresswoman Cathy McMorris-Rodgers of Washington (Natural Resources)
Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio (Oversight and Government Reform)
Congressman Michael McCaul of Texas (Science and Technology)
Congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio (Small Business)
Congressman Sam Graves of Missouri (Transportation and Infrastructure)
Congressman Jim McCrery of Louisiana (Ways and Means)

The Members of Congress selected from Leadership to serve on the conference committee are:
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut
Congressman Adam Putnam of Florida

Government charge cards

Anyone in possession of a charge card is dangerous, and especially so if the charge card is not their own. Saw a report on the local TV news about the U.S. Government Accountability Office shining a light on government credit card misuse. Alas, someone from agriculture was responsible for high six figure abuse... From the GAO report:

Over the past several years, GAO has issued numerous reports and testimonies on internal control breakdowns in certain individual agencies' purchase card programs. In light of these findings, GAO was asked to analyze purchase card transactions governmentwide to (1) determine whether internal control weaknesses existed in the government purchase card program and (2) if so, identify examples of fraudulent, improper, and abusive activity. GAO used statistical sampling to systematically test internal controls and data mining procedures to identify fraudulent, improper, and abusive activity. GAO's work was not designed to determine the overall extent of fraudulent, improper, or abusive transactions.
Internal control weaknesses in agency purchase card programs exposed the federal government to fraud, waste, abuse, and loss of assets. When testing internal controls, GAO asked agencies to provide documentation on selected transactions to prove that the purchase of goods or services had been properly authorized and that when the good or service was delivered, an individual other than the cardholder received and signed for it. Using a statistical sample of purchase card transactions from July 1, 2005, through June 30, 2006, GAO estimated that nearly 41 percent of the transactions failed to meet either of these basic internal control standards. Using a second sample of transactions over $2,500, GAO found a similar failure rate--agencies could not demonstrate that 48 percent of these large purchases met the standard of proper authorization, independent receipt and acceptance, or both. Breakdowns in internal controls, including authorization and independent receipt and acceptance, resulted in numerous examples of fraudulent, improper, and abusive purchase card use. These examples included instances where cardholders used purchase cards to subscribe to Internet dating services, buy video iPods for personal use, and pay for lavish dinners that included top-shelf liquor. GAO identified some of the case studies, including one case where a cardholder used the purchase card program to embezzle over $642,000 over a period of 6 years from the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service firefighting fund. This cardholder was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay full restitution. In addition, agencies were unable to locate 458 items of 1,058 total accountable and pilferable items totaling over $2.7 million that GAO selected for testing. These missing items, which GAO considered to be lost or stolen, totaled over $1.8 million and included computer servers, laptop computers, iPods, and digital cameras. For example, the Department of the Army could not adequately account for 256 items making up 16 server configurations, each of which cost nearly $100,000.

TK: It's discouraging that better management systems are not in place system wide to cut back on this type of abuse.

Costa Rica Pineapple Tour

It’s pretty nice to sample fresh pineapple, picked and sliced right in front of you in the field.
Feb. 28-29, I traveled to Costa Rica to see two pineapple operations of San Jose-based Frutas de Exportacion Frutex SA. We also visited the banana operation of Finca Bonita, based in Monteverde. The tour was arranged by Frutex’s North American pineapple distributor, The Oppenheimer Group, Vancouver, British Columbia.
Coverage ran in the March 10 issue of The Packer. But not all the photos I took from the trip made it into the paper or digital editions.
Here are some more photos from the trip. It’s not possible to provide cutlines of all the photos in this format, but here are a few identifiers: the blonde lady is Karin Gardner, communications manager for Oppenheimer; the lady in the pink shirt is Ana Lucia Lopez, marketing manager for Frutex and tour guide; the man cutting the fruit with the large knife in the yellow shirt is Sergio Delgado, harvest manager at the Babilonia operation.

Citrus greening report

Today the USDA put out this news about the December summit on citrus greening. No silver bullets, unfortunately, but I wonder if biotechnology will be part of the answer. From the USDA:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced the findings from the Dec. 2007 meeting between federal, state and industry leaders to improve America's defense against citrus greening and its insect vector, the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP).

"This summit provided 65 citrus health experts the opportunity to share their ideas about enhancing cooperative prevention, preparedness, response and recovery efforts for citrus greening and the Asian citrus psyllid," said Bruce Knight, under secretary for marketing and regulatory programs. "This was the first step towards developing an integrated National plan that once implemented will help protect the domestic citrus and nursery industries from this devastating disease."

Throughout the course of the meeting, five key needs emerged: (1) strong and decisive national leadership; (2) enhanced and coordinated research; (3) increased funding to support a wide array of activities; (4) improved communication among all federal, state and industry sectors and (5) better coordination between the United States and Mexico to address potential pathways and to harmonize disease and vector-control activities.

USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) proposes to develop a national plan that will result in a coordinated and holistic approach for conducting ongoing and future activities to target these pests. APHIS will select a national citrus greening/ACP coordinator who will lead the effort in the development of the national plan. The coordinator will be responsible for forming a Leadership Steering Committee to assist in the development of the national plan and in the coordination of citrus greening/ACP management and control activities. APHIS also will work with key federal, state, tribal, citrus health experts and industry leaders to create working groups that will gather information and help address the critical issues identified at the summit. However, these working groups will have no direct influence over Federal and State appropriations or regulatory activities.

Interested parties can review the full report at www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/citrus_greening/. APHIS seeks feedback on this document and invites the public to submit comments to the following e-mail address: CitrusGreeningPlan@aphis.usda.govail. Individuals also can mail comments to the Citrus Health Response Program, APHIS, USDA, 920 Main Campus Drive, Suite 200, Raleigh, NC 27606-5213. Consideration will be given to comments received on or before May 9.

Citrus greening, also known as huanglongbing, is one of the more serious diseases of citrus fruit. The Asian citrus psyllid is the primary insect vector that spreads citrus greening from infected trees to healthy trees as the insect feeds on a plant. Currently, there are 30 counties in Florida quarantined for citrus greening. Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Guam, as well as 32 counties in Texas are quarantined for the Asian citrus psyllid

Putting off the "what ifs"

Another teleconference by Sen. Tom Harkin this morning. He related that he is focused on finishing work by April 18 on a farm bill that is $10 billion over baseline. All the "what ifs" if that doesn't happen, what would a baseline farm bill include if it is put forward, what type of extension might be sought, etc. All these details Harkin was unwilling to address at this point. I'll try to post the audio later today....

By popular demand: More PMA Match Game

In the group responses to a couple of the questions during PMA Match Game, an orientation activity on April 3 as part of the PMA Consumer Trends '08 conference in Newport Beach, Calif., four of six groups said tomatoes were the produce item least likely to be displayed properly in the supermarket. Also of note, only two of six groups answered “lettuce” to the question, “If vegetables were competing in a flavor tournament designed to resemble the NCAA Basketball Tournament, the No. 1 seed from the West would be (blank).”

Another great George Wooten anecdote: PMA Match Game ’08 didn’t have Gene Rayburn or Richard Dawson like the ’75 version had, but did feature George Wooten, of Wayne E. Bailey Produce, Chadbourn, N.C., whose company specializes in sweet potatoes. When asked the question, “Before mom serves her kids vegetables, she (blanks) them,” most players assumed “them” referred to the vegetables and said mom “washes” or “disguises” them, but Wooten took it a different direction and assumed “them” referred back to the kids … “Before mom serves her kids vegetables, she threatens them.” Now, that’s the kind of outside-the-box thinking many conference attendees feel the need for more of.

Dan Galbraith is sections editor for The Packer and a contributor to the Fresh Talk blog. Check out more of his materials on The Packer's Web site, www.thepacker.com, and at Dan's personal Web site/blog, located at http://dangalbraith.blogspot.com.

Another Fresh & Easy worry: Wal-Mart's Marketside

Here is the link from a TimesOnline article that provides another worry for Tesco's F/E concept.


Tesco, due to report full-year results in two weeks’ time, has already lost ground on fears that its Fresh & Easy business in the western US is not doing as well as hoped. These were first raised by Mike Dennis, the Piper Jaffray analyst. Yesterday he pointed out that Wal-Mart intends to open four fresh-food convenience stores called Marketside this summer in Phoenix’s suburbs, near Tesco’s stores. He said that consensus 2009 sales forecasts for Fresh & Easy could be halved from $1.2 billion to $600 million.


TK: Here are some links to Wal-Mart's Marketside....

No reason Marketside won't succeed

Wal-Mart v. Tesco

Marketside unveils logo