Frozen rising

Frozen fruit and vegetable consumption is rising, says this report from Global Industry Analysts Inc. The news release teases a $4,000 research paper, but here is the gist:

Consumption of frozen fruits and vegetables in daily diets is steadily increasing, driven shifting food preferences, and rising consumer emphasis on health and well-being. Factors such as fast paced lifestyles, more number of workingwomen, round-the-year availability, convenience and the development of innovative freezing technologies are all expected to drive growth in the marketplace, triggering a projected rise in world consumption to 21.5 million tons by 2012. TK: Frozen may have its advantages, but it has one clear disadvantage - it is a second rate product compared with fresh. Consumers will always prefer fresh over frozen, no matter how many new "innovative freezing technologies" are rolled out. End of discussion.

Can the poor afford fruits and vegetables?

Here is one recent USDA Economic Research report worth noting. Can low income Americans afford a healthy diet? Yes and no, the USDA explains. For the poor find what little money they have pulled in many directions. From the report:

Since the 1960s, changes in living standards and relative prices have reduced the average share of income spent on food from 30 percent to around 10 percent. Expenditures on many goods such as housing, utilities, medical care, transportation, and child care have been growing. Basic needs other than food are taking up larger shares of household budgets. Low-income households faced with allocating 30 percent of their income to the purchase of healthy diets would have to forgo many of the items on which other households currently spend almost 90 percent of their income.

In reality, most low-income households do not allocate their budget shares in the same proportions as households in the 1950s. Research conducted by ERS and USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) found that in 2006, the typical household with income below 130 percent of the poverty line spent about 5 percent less on food than the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan.

In low-income households, as in other households, budgets are clearly pulled in many directions. The extent of this pull is further illustrated by numerous empirical studies on the impact of additional resources on household food purchases. Results show that an additional dollar of income increases low-income household food expenditures by 5 to 10 cents. This suggests that when budget constraints are relaxed, households give priority to spending on other basic needs, not food. Even when households are given a dollar’s worth of SNAP benefits, they increase spending on food by only 17 to 47 cents. Even though they spend all SNAP benefits on food, these households simultaneously shift some of their previous cash expenditures on food to alternative uses.

Headline roundup Nov. 7 - the economy

Here are headlines snatched from the Web about the state of our economy this morning:

Crisis gives Obama a chance to leave mark
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said last month that Congress will enact legislation next year ''comparable to what Franklin Roosevelt and Congress did in the New Deal'' to eliminate lapses that allowed the U.S. credit markets to deteriorate.
Frank has said Congress should consider either creating a separate agency or empowering the Federal Reserve to assess risk across the financial markets and intervene if necessary.

Mortgage do-overs don't keep pace with foreclosures

Last week it was reported that the federal Hope for Homeowners program to swap into 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages had only gotten 42 applications since its Oct. 1 launch. Yet realty data says foreclosures are claiming more than 8,500 homes a day now. The toll is expected to be three million failed mortgages by year's end.

The pace is utterly mismatched. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development now expects only 20,000 borrowers will apply for loan modifications by next autumn. Yet $300 billion has been made available for Hope for Homeowners.

All signs point to recession

Other indicators include car sales. Carmakers such as General Motors reported a 45 percent drop in sales in October, and measures of consumer confidence last month hit all-time lows. With 10.1 million people now unemployed, consumption, which drives more than two-thirds of U.S. economy activity, is sure to take an even greater hit.

"Employment has fallen by 1.2 million in the first 10 months of 2008; over half of the decrease has occurred in the past three months," the Bureau of Labor Statistics report says. "In October, job losses continued in manufacturing, construction and several service-providing industries."

Supplies dwindle at food bank

Food banks gear up for tough winter

Here are some produce promotions slated for Nov. 12-18 in the suburban Kansas City market:

Hy Vee
Jumbo holiday seedless red grapes: $1.99/lb
Granny Smith or Gala apples 88 cents/lb
Florida sweet corn: 3 for $2
Dole salad blends: $1.88
Texas Rio Star grapefruit: 2 for $3
Grimmway Farms petite carrots: $1.38
Cortland or red delicious apples: $2.88/3 lb bag
Watermelon mini sweet: $3.48
Monterey sliced Baby Bella mushrooms: $2 8 oz. for $4

Aldi:
Red Delicious apples: $1.29/3lb bag
California navel oranges: $1.99/4 lb bag
Indian River grapefruit: 29 cents each/U.S. #1 large size
Acorn squash: 69 cents each

Hen House
Navel oranges (4 lb bag) 2 for $4
Driscoll's best red raspberries (6 oz) 2 for $4
Sonya apples: $1.28/lb
B size red or yukon potatoes: 79 cents/lb


Price Chopper:
California navel oranges (4 lb) $1.79 each
POM Wonderful Pomegranates: 2 for $3
Scarlotta red seedless grapes: $1.99/lb
Washington Fuji apples: $1.49/lb
Washington Bartlett pears: $1.29/lb
Kiwifruit: 3/99 cents
Large backing potatoes: 69 cents/lb
Santa Sweet grape tomatoes: 2/$5
Fresh green beans: $1.29/lb

Packer highlights

Looking at the Nov. 10 issue of The Packer, I'll give you a quick preview of what you will get in the mail this week. One reader asked me today if we still publish the digital image of The Packer(called the "Olive" version inhouse) We no longer have a link to the digital "page for page" Packer, but of course you can find much of the content of The Packer on www.thepacker.com Web site.

Here are the front page stories;

Sinaloa growers set up "safe tomato" program
Federal snack program begins
Top issues for Obama administration may be food safety, immigration

Front page pic: Lorelei DiSogra and A.G. Kawamura at Santa Monica school unveiling snack program Oct. 30.

Page 2
Ag secretary list emerges
Earnings for Whole Foods drop precipitously
USDA picks AMS administrator

page 3
EU produce drops beauty standards - column, Fred Wilkinson
Colorful Harvest expands Florida strawberry deal
Florida growers discuss food safety in wake of outbreak
Seed company plans $20 million Idaho facility expansion

Inside: More PMA coverage

Opinon page

Columns:
Produce packaging: protection, promotion, profits - Larry Waterfield

PMA 59 and counting - State of the Industry - Bryan Silbermann


Editorial: Industry ready to work with Obama


Sections:
Texas citrus
Yuma fall vegetables
Montreal Know Your Market
Potatoes and Onions Marketing

A few ads that caught my eye:

Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement: Ad copy:"The LGMA has over 100 certified members. Subject to change at any time." Nice PR ad asking readers to visit a Website to check certification status.

Idaho potatoes: Colorful comic book type ad featuring mad scientist unsuccessfully trying to create a simulated Idaho-like potato. Message: "It's madness to think that another potato could duplicate the consistent great taste and quality of Idaho potatoes."

Theater of Selling Excitement - Birds Eye - great story-telling ad copy selling the company's leadership position in category management

Shrink happens. But it doesn't have to. Not to you. Not in this day and age - American Classic

Redlands Christian Migrant Association - purchase of Christmas cards to help support children and families of Florida's farm workers

Huh?

The food industry continues to seek out measuring sticks for sustainability. Note the following Nov. 7 press release concerning packaged goods from the Grocery Manufacturers Association. The news release describes research to determine the environmental "footprint" of a typical consumer's average weekly grocery purchases. I wonder how much of this market basket measurement tool will be shared with consumers, clearly a "stakeholder" in this issue. An environmental footprint measurement will tend to devalue certain high value items in a grocery store - meat for example - and how that process dovetails with the business interests of retailers escapes me. Unless retailers and marketers are serious about making this scoring system a key purchase criteria for all goods sold in their store (let's get rid of bottled water while we are at it), then such a scoring system should be tabled and replaced with a commitment to earth-friendly policies - but without hanging environmental blame on a particular product or group of products.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) today announced the selection of McKinsey & Company, Inc. to conduct landmark research on behalf of the industry into the environmental footprint of consumer packaged goods. The Market Basket Measurement Tool for Sustainability, a project of the GMA Sustainability Leadership Committee, will seek to establish the environmental footprint of a typical consumer’s average weekly grocery purchases, setting key benchmarks against which the industry can measure the progress of sustainability initiatives going forward.

“McKinsey & Company has made a major commitment to be an unparalleled thought leader in the area of sustainability and brings a deep expertise in both CPG and retail industries to the project,” said Stephen Sibert, GMA senior vice president of industry affairs. “We are pleased to be building on our already strong partnership with McKinsey.”

The Market Basket Measurement Tool for Sustainability will analyze key data from a lifecycle perspective to estimate the environmental impact of a representative consumer market basket of CPG products in areas such as energy use, water use and greenhouse gas emissions. The study will determine the footprint of the same set of products 5-10 years ago as well as today, and will make projections as to the expected future impact. The end result will outline the evolution of CPG products’ environmental footprint, communicate to stakeholders the progress that the industry has made, and help define reasonable expectations for the future.

“The industry is rapidly moving forward with leadership and execution of sustainable business practices,” Sibert continued. “The Market Basket Measurement Tool will provide thought leaders with insights that will further their sustainability initiatives and help consumers and other key constituents understand just how far the industry has come and where we are going.”

Rewind - WPPC-FDA meeting - More from John

Okay, my (nearly) word for word transcription of the meeting is painfully slow. But here is another selection from John Guzewich, senior environmental health scientist in the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition of the Food and Drug Administration, addressing WPPC attendees in the FDA auditorium on Sept. 11. More coming..


Part 7

And we have the problem of repacking that you have all heard about in this traceback. We had more than one instance of where there was repacking going on – that really compounded the problem. Along with repacking, we also had co mingling of tomatoes, and that compounded the problem.
We also had a lot of product with no address information, invoices and bills of lading with no address information, making it very difficult to trace back the step before that.
As is always the case with traceback, the locations where the tomatoes and peppers were exposed (to consumers), they (the restaurant or retailer) may have got that product in some kind of case or container, but that case or container has long since been thrown away by the time we get there, days or weeks after the fact. Any labeling on those tomatoes or peppers is gone, all we have to work with invoices or bills of lading. The range of record keeping was very broad, with some keeping records in a shoebox; at other times we were handed a box of computer printouts and (told) the information was "in there somewhere."

We had producing states of products importing (and repacking ) product from other places, confounding the traceback. We weren’t sure if was shipped out of that area or not. Some of the produce (repacked) was shipped with their own labels on the product.

Later, contrasting the traceback of tomatoes and peppers with that of the salmonella-tainted peanut butter…

I would contrast the traceback with what happened in February 2007, when we had had a traceback on salmonella that was tied to peanut butter. Once we had a jar with a label, by the next morning we had completed the traceback. That’s what we call traceback.