Ag Prices - August 29

Here is the link to the Aug. 29 Agricultural Prices report. From the summary, the USDA said the all farm index of prices received by farmers in August, at 155, based in 1990-1992 equals 100, decreased 2.5% from July.

SF sustainable with local food

Of course, it helps to live on California's coast when one determines the sufficiency of "local" food production. Here is coverage from the San Francisco Business Times on the study by American Farmland Trust about San Francisco and its local food supply:

As Slow Food Nation, a festival dedicated to healthy eating practices, kicks off in San Francisco today, the American Farmland Trust wants to remind dwellers of this city that unlike most Americans, people here can feasibly buy all their produce from farms within a 100 mile radius.

That distinction is based on the idea that the more local food is, the better.

“No place in the United States, and perhaps in the world is as blessed as San Francisco by an amazing cornucopia of products grown nearby,” said Ed Thompson, California director and senior associate of the AFT, who helped write a study called Think Globally-Eat Locally: San Francisco Foodshed Assessment. “But, the answer to the question is a qualified yes because there are challenges to increase both the production, marketing and consumption of local food.”

Here is the San Franciso "Foodshed" report by American Farmland Trust. As far as I can tell, the take home message is - "We can eat local and the rest of America can't."

McCain picks VP - Sarah Palin

Wow. McCain made a bold choice. I think it will help him.

Retrolabeling

As you can see, I'm tinkering with the blog again. One useful feature for readers is the list of posts are sorted by labels at the bottom of the blog. However, of the more then 2,900 posts to the blog over the past almost two years, the vast majority still need to be labeled. So this will be a work in progress. Still, I think the label system is more useful than the simple archive format.

I've removed a couple of the spreadsheets on retail promotion trends at the bottom of the blog, but I will continue to update those and post charts from the data. I might link to the spreadsheets from the discussion group as well.

Speaking of the discussion group, we have 156 members now. You will find a trove of useful files and post in the group, and the site is also a springboard to industry networking, as we have a companion group in www.linkedin.com.

National Retail Report - August 29

From the USDA's National Retail Report:

This week’s retail ads focused on the upcoming Labor Day holiday. In celebration if this unofficial final weekend of summer, produce ads were dominated by melons, stone fruits, corn and other picnic items. Complementary items in other departments such as beverages, chips, charcoal, and grilling meats were also featured. The top 5 featured fresh produce items this week were grapes, peaches, corn, nectarines, and plums. There were twice as many ads for fruit this week as vegetables. Watermelon, strawberries and cantaloupes were also strongly featured by retailers, as well as tomatoes on the vine.

Vegetables as Percentage of Total Vegetable Ads - August 29, 2008
Tomatoes, grape organic 1%
Tomatoes, grape 4%
Lettuce, romaine 2%
Peppers, bell red 6%
Mushrooms, white 5%
Onions, yellow 3%
Peppers, bell green 6%
Onions, sweet 4%
Squash, zucchini 4%
Lettuce, romaine 1%
Sweet Potatoes 1%
Potatoes, russet 2%
Tomatoes, Organic 1%
Tomatoes on the vine 8%
Tomatoes 4%
Cucumbers 7%
Celery 2%
Corn 15%
Carrots, baby organic 2%
Carrots, baby 6%
Cabbage 3%
Broccoli, organic 0%
Broccoli 3%
Beans, round green 6%
Asparagus 2%