Fresh Produce Discussion Blog

Created by The Packer's National Editor Tom Karst

Friday, October 10, 2008

National Retail Report - Oct. 10

From the USDA National Retail Report:

A variety of themes were noted in this week’s ads. In addition to a prevalent overall autumn theme, retailers chose to highlight October as Organic Harvest Month, National Seafood Month, and Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Some retailers had even begun to announce Thanksgiving promotions. Overall this week, fresh produce ads were down more than 5% and could be attributed to a decline of nearly 5% on fruit ads and a decline of more than 5% on vegetable ads. The top 5 featured items were: grapes, pears, OTV tomatoes, strawberries, and asparagus. As was the case last week, many seasonal items not regularly captured in this report were featured quite heavily. Of these, the most notable were a variety of apples, pears, and squash.



Fruits as Percentage of Total Fruit Ads - October 10, 2008
Mangoes 5%
Lemons 2%
Limes 1%
Honeydew 1%
Grapefruit, red 1%
Nectarines 1%
Oranges, navel 1%
Watermelon, mini 0%
Strawberries, organic 2%
Strawberries 11%
Pears, bartlett 16%
Peaches 7%
Pineapple 6%
Plums 3%


Vegetables as Percentage of Total Vegetable Ads - October 10, 2008
Broccoli, organic 0%
Broccoli 2%
Beans, round green 2%
Tomatoes, on the vine 11%
Tomatoes, organic 0%
Tomatoes 4%
Cabbage 2%
Carrots, baby
organic 5%
Carrots, baby 4%
Asparagus 10%
Tomatoes, grape organic 1%
Tomatoes, grape 4%
Celery 3%
Corn 1%
Cucumbers 3%
Lettuce, iceberg 3%
Lettuce, romaine 1%
Mushrooms, white %8
Onions, yellow 3%
Sweet Potatoes 5%
Squash, zucchini 4%
Potatoes, russet 4%
Peppers, bell red 8%
Peppers, bell green 4%
Onions, sweet 8%

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Crop Production - Fading grapefruit

Today's USDA crop production report shows that grapefruit output in the U.S. continues to wane. From the report:

The initial forecast of the 2008-09 U.S. grapefruit crop is 1.38 million tons, 12 percent lower than 2007-08 and down 15 percent from the 2006-07 final utilization. Florida's grapefruit production is forecast at 23.0 million boxes (978 million tons), 14 percent below last season and down 15 percent from 2006-07. The white grapefruit forecast is 7.00 million boxes (298,000 tons), down 22 percent from 2007-08 and 25 percent lower than the 2006-07 final utilization. The colored grapefruit forecast, at 16.0 million boxes (680,000 tons), is 9 percent lower than last season and down 11 percent from the 2006-07 utilization. If realized, this will be the lowest Florida grapefruit crop since the 1944-45 season, other than the hurricane-reduced 2004-05 and 2005-06 crops. Tree numbers of both white and colored varieties have been declining over the past decade. Excluding the recent hurricane- affected seasons, average fruit per tree of white grapefruit is close to the 40-year minimum of the 2002-03 season. Average fruit per tree of colored grapefruit is below seven of the last eight seasons.

The October 1 Texas grapefruit forecast is 5.30 million boxes (212,000 tons), down 13 percent from last season and 25 percent lower than the 2006-07 crop. The California grapefruit forecast of 5.50 million boxes (184,000 tons) is 4 percent lower than the 2007-08 season and unchanged from 2006-07. Grapefruit for the 2008-09 season continued to develop normally in California as harvest of the previous crop wound down. Arizona's forecast, at 150,000 boxes (5,000 tons), is up 50 percent from each of the last two seasons.


TK: U.S. consumption of fresh grapefruit peaked in 1976, when the USDA reported retail disappearance was 8.98 pounds per capita. How far down have we come? By 2006, U.S. retail disappearance of fresh grapefruit was a mere 2.24 pounds.

Statistics from Florida's Citrus Administrative Committee show that fresh shipments of Florida grapefruit in 2007-08 totaled about 19.8 million cartons. Of that total, just 7.3 million cartons were sold in the domestic market; more than half the fresh output, or 12.4 million cartons were shipped offshore - primarily Japan and Europe.

Ten years earlier, in the 1997-98 season, domestic grapefruit shipments totaled 20.7 million cartons and offshore exports equaled 19 million cartons.

Why is consumption so much lower now? From a University of California study in 2006:

While per capita consumption of most citrus products has remained strong or increased in recent years, per capita consumption of grapefruit has weakened. In 1970, per capita consumption of grapefruit was about 21 pounds per person, peaking at nearly 24 pounds in 1976 and 1977. By 2003, consumption had decreased to 12 pounds per capita. Part of the decline in grapefruit consumption is attributable to decade-old studies finding that grapefruit consumption intensified the effects of certain medication. Because a large percentage of grapefruit consumers are older and more prone to taking medication, it is thought that this has affected overall consumption (ERS 2005).


TK: That isn't the full story, of course. The role of canker, citrus greening, freezes and hurricanes can't be overlooked. What's ahead ? Duke Chadwell of the Citrus Administrative Committee said shippers there were just getting started with grapefruit harvest on Oct. 10. Chadwell said the Florida citrus industry is in a transition period with a future promising more easy peel seedless varieties to meet market demand and more disease resistant grapefruit varieties to combat citrus canker. Given the length of time it will take to find new varieties, Chadwell said the erosion of citrus crops may continue for several years.

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Deja vu all over again

I dialed up the Drudge report today, hoping against hope that the Asian stock markets had calmed down and Wall Street might recover its footing today. Apparently not, and President Bush will address the country tonight after another bloodletting because interbank lending remains tight and fear reigns. Thank God we passed that rescue package, right? As I read on one Internet board, our 401Ks are now 201Ks....



Nikkei has biggest one day drop since '87 crash From Reuters:

Japan's Nikkei stock average dived 9.6 percent on Friday, its biggest one-day loss since the 1987 stock market crash, on growing fear the financial crisis will spark a global recession. The benchmark average's drop of 24 percent for the week was more than double the weekly drop right after the 1987 market crash.

London bloodbath after panic selling sweeps Asia From the Times Online:

Panic shot through stock markets around the world today, suggesting that drastic actions by central banks have failed to calm investors.
The sell-off in stock markets worldwide came after after devastating falls on Wall Street yesterday.
London shares dropped below 4,000 for the first time in five years, and were down 325 to 3,988 at noon. The pound fell to $1.6909, its lowest level against the dollar since 1992, and was down 1.2 per cent against the euro.

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Trust but E-Verify

The fate of the E-verify program is drawing more and more attention in newsrooms across the country, with the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation each taking up the issue from opposing views. With the current economic environment, there is no way in my view that the E-verify system is not extended and bolstered. Here is an excerpt from Cato and Heritage:

How to save E-verify - grow the federal government From Cato:

But the productive sector would be less productive under his eleven-point plan for E-Verify, which I will review and critique ever-so-briefly:

  • Require universal employment verification. Taking E-Verify national would increase yet again, in yet another way, the burden on productive U.S. employers. It’s the kind of bureaucratic accretion that Republican revolutionaries in 1994 came to town to stop.
  • Reauthorize E-Verify and provide adequate funding for implementation. Spend that billion dollars (and get rid of those revenues).
  • Improve government data to further reduce erroneous tentative non-confirmations and provide opportunities for individuals to review the accuracy of their personal data in government files. Among other things, this is the idea that there could be a system in which people could use government-licensed contractors to check whether the information about them in government databases was correct. Perhaps “government-licensed contractors” would do a better job than the government itself of preventing identity fraudsters from checking the information of other people, but it’s not likely. At its core, a national E-Verify system requires a national biometric database to work well.
  • Penalize employers who continue to employ workers who have failed verification. These are those fines - luckily, not jail - for employers.
  • Facilitate information sharing between DHS and SSA. That’s dataveillance. There will be a lot more of it in the future. Real-time or near-real-time monitoring of your behavior through your data.
  • Increase penalties, in law and in practice, for unlawful hiring. More fines on employers and more money spent on enforcement.
  • Issue clarifying letters to employers regard­ing Social Security mismatch notifications. This sounds innocuous, but “clarifying” in this case creates the legal predicate for fining employers when they have failed to be good deputies of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
  • Do not restrict state efforts to limit the em­ployment of illegal aliens. This doesn’t directly grow the federal bureaucracy. It suggests states should force employers to submit to federal bureaucracy.
  • Establish supplemental procedures to pre­vent employment by means of identity fraud. Again, a national ID is essentially required to implement a national system for adjudicating personal rights, but Rector proposes something less: a complex program where people would be notified if it appeared that their identities were being used by others in the employment sector. The logistical and data security issues with this are forbidding. It’s something like describing how to build the cathedral of Notre Dame by saying, “Well, you put up a church . . . .”
  • Establish supplemental procedures to reduce “off-the-books” employment by illegal aliens. More dataveillance and more penalizing of employers.
  • Incorporate the current new-hire data collec­tion for child support into E-Verify. Yet more dataveillance - rolling employment information about every American into federal government databases.

Last week at the Heartland Institute’s 24th Anniversary Dinner, Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation debated immigration policy with Peter Brimelow of VDARE.com. Hornberger returned again and again to the theme that immigration law is a statist interference with the freedom of migrants and citizens alike.

He did not force the scales from the eyes of Brimelow or many of the other immigration opponents in the room, but people who appreciate freedom and limited government hope for the day when those scales do fall.


Reducing illegal immigration through e-verify Heritage Foundation:

Since employment is the magnet that draws illegal immigrants into the U.S., it follows that the best way to reduce illegal immigration is to shrink the employ­ment magnet. To accomplish this without resorting to the method of routinely rounding up and deporting thousands of illegal workers only to have them return and obtain another readily available job, policy should focus on the businesses that hire illegal immigrants and let general employment rules rather than individ­ual arrests drive the reduction in illegal immigration.

The policy should be based on the principles of empowerment, deterrence,and information. It should empower honest employers by giving them the tools to determine quickly and accurately whether a new hire is an authorized worker. It should hold employers free from penalty if they inadvert­ently hire an illegal worker after following the pre­scribed procedures.

Further, the policy should empower honest employers by freeing them from the burden of com­peting with dishonest businesses that deliberately hire illegal workers. This means that it must deter dishonest employers who willfully employ unveri­fied and unlawful workers by imposing substantial penalties on the employers when such hiring occurs. For deterrence to work, however, both the government and employers must have timely and accurate information regarding new hires.

The most promising solution to this problem is a tool called E-Verify. A real-time, Web-based verifica­tion system run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administra­tion (SSA), E-Verify can determine with great accu­racy the authenticity of the personal information and credentials offered by new hires. In most cases, verification occurs almost instantly.


Later...


Of the millions of illegal immigrants in this country, the best evidence suggests that some 50 percent to 60 percent of this employment occurs "on the books."[3] It is unclear how much "on-the-books" employment of illegal aliens is done with fic­titious information and how much is done by iden­tity fraud.

To reduce illegal immigration, all three means of illegal employment must be addressed, but this need for a broad approach should not be used as an excuse to do nothing. Although it is true that reduc­ing "off-the-books" employment will be the most difficult task, that does not mean that the govern­ment should do little or nothing about the high lev­els of "on-the-books" illegal employment until it has devised a foolproof means of stopping underground employment as well. Proper policy should take the critical first step of controlling "on-the-books" employment of illegal aliens.

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