PBH - Time to move on

Is the industry ready to let go of "5 a day"? Ready or not, the Produce for Better Health Foundation is asking for all 5 a Day signage to be removed by Jan. 1, 2009. Look for coverage in The Packer on this issue. My initial questions..

How much 5 a Day material/signage is still being used?
What's the adoption rate of Fruits and Veggies - More Matters in the industry?
How fast is the public embracing the "More Matters" message? How does public awareness of the "More Matters" message (this shorthand is problematic to some, I know but "Fruits and Veggies : More Matters" is too long..perhaps FVMM) compared to current awareness of "5 a day"?

PBH was right to put a sunset on use of "5 a day," but the challenge for Elizabeth Pivonka and others is to deploy the resources necessary to bolster the "More Matters" message. The CDC is on board with the new message, and it is time for the entire industry to move on as well.

Costa Rica - greenhouse vegetables

My last stop in Costa Rica was at a greenhouse vegetable operation. My hosts here Alex Rojas Vargas and Ana Marcela Hernandez. I will develop more coverage of the emerging greenhouse vegetable industry in Costa Rica, but the future includes cucumbers now and tomatoes in the near future...

Costa Rica - Empacadora La Perla

Costa Rica is a big exporter of cassava to the U.S. My stop at Empacadora La Perla during my visit to Costa Rica showed what cassva looks like in the field. Also pictured, plantains for the domestic market, pumpkins/squash packed for export to the Caribbean.

Costa Rica - canned pineapple and heart of palm

Another stop on my Nov. 11-15 trip to Costa Rica was at Alpigo, a shipper of canned pineapple and heart of palm. Their website is www.alpigo.com. The company offers canned heart of palm and also an air-shipped vacuum packed fresh product.

Nov. 21 National Retail report - of cranberries and sweet potatoes

From the USDA National Retail Report:

In this final full week before Thanksgiving, retailers focused ads on turkey and the trimmings for holiday meals; and many altered their ad schedules, mostly in the form of extensions, to accommodate the holiday. Turkey promotions commanded the bulk of front page space in the form of fresh and frozen sales and as the centerpiece of fully prepared meals. Cranberries and sweet potatoes were the most prominently featured produce items.
Overall fresh produce ad activity showed an increase of nearly 21% this week and corresponded to increases in both fruits (3.5%) and vegetables (36%). The top 5 featured items accounted for about 42% of total ads. These were: sweet potatoes, celery, asparagus, grapes, and pineapples. Sweet potatoes alone accounted for nearly 12% of total ads and 20% of vegetable ads. Cranberries, as reported in the seasonal section of this report, were almost as widely featured as sweet potatoes. An array of seasonal items have begun showing up in features over the last couple of weeks. These included: pomegranates, chestnuts, and persimmons as well as a variety of citrus and nuts. Features on potted poinsettia were also noted more often this week than last.

Google news alerts - fruit and vegetable headlines

As I said in the previous post, now is the time to clear out the inbox of some of my rapidly accumulating Google news alerts. For this entry, I'll hit some of the highlights of the broad "fruits and vegetables" category snatched from the Web in the past few days:

School children to get free fruits and vegetables - Another report from Europe on the new program to provide fruits and veggies to students

Celebs are eating organic - why not you?

7 Wonders of Mediterranean Diet

2009 Commodity outlook
Despite declining energy and agricultural ingredient costs, high financial leverage and weak cash flow generation continue to wreak havoc on the commodity food industry. Liquidity and debt reduction should take priority over share repurchases and acquisitions in 2009, regardless of significant stock price declines and additional assets coming to market. The well-anticipated bankruptcy filing by poultry processor Pilgrim's Pride Corp. (Pilgrim's) and the potential inability of fresh produce manufacturer Dole Food Co. (Dole) to refinance significant near-term maturities illustrate the challenges faced by a low-margin highly levered food company in a difficult operating environment.

Pollan says Obama should call for food reform
Author Michael Pollan -- described as the "Bruce Springsteen of sustainability" -- wants President-elect Barack Obama to work for sustainable foods.
Picture the White House lawn, a 17-acre triumph of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Now imagine five of those acres plowed into a garden where the first family pulls weeds and harvests snow peas for photo ops -- and then eats the peas for dinner.

Eat your veggies: get good grades - TK: Wow: thank the Lord for the great PR fresh produce receives...

In one study, done at the University of Prince Edward Island, 325 junior high school students kept a food diary. On average, the daily intake of fruits and vegetables as well as milk was below national recommendations. The children who ate the most fruits and vegetables on a daily basis had the best academic performance with average scores at about the 90th percentile. There was no association with milk.

Blue Cross/Blue Shield to invest in obesity messaging

Crop of the week - spinach From The Yuma Sun:
Yuma County producers grew more than 6,500 acres of spinach valued at more than $33.5 million in 2005, primarily for prepackaged salads with some grown for wire-bunches. Spinach is the No. 6 ranking vegetable crop grown in Yuma County.

Feast on fruits, veggies this Thanksgiving

For those lucky enough to still have a house, a table and a food budget, be thankful and let fruits and vegetables be the bulk of what you serve. Unknowingly or just not thinking about it, many of us usually do this anyway. A meat, if you can afford it, can still be the centerpiece of the meal, but it will probably be the most expensive item on the table.
So now, let the far less expensive, but perhaps the most nutritious, fruits and vegetables form the bulk of the meal. There's no doubt about it, the festive color comes almost exclusively from horticultural foods. The greens of the lettuce, cabbage and broccoli along with green beans combined with the yellows and oranges of carrots, squash, sweet potatoes and corn help make an attractive table of food in nearly anyone's eyes.

You can still eat healthy on a budget - TK: the industry needs more consumer messaging about value....

Another way to save: consume foods that pack in a lot of nutritional value. By eating a piece a fruit instead of a serving of chips, you're more likely to feel satisfied and full for longer.
A good rule of thumb, recommends Nelson, is to shop primarily in the perimeter of the store; it's in the middle aisles where people can be easily tempted to pick up the grab-and-go foods and snacks.


Brussels and the cucumber The Wall Street Journal
For decades the EU has spent much of its time issuing minute rules that govern the use of mayonnaise, the definition of an egg, the diameter of a peach. All this was in the name of "consumer protection" -- as if European grocery shoppers might just drop dead at the sight of a misshapen carrot. It also kept an army of bureaucrats in business, and even a few editorial writers. But rules like these also cost consumers billions in higher grocery prices and taxes that support Europe's notorious Common Agricultural Policy. Ms. Fischer Boel cites the revised regulations as an example of the European Commission's drive to cut administrative costs and respond to high food prices and economic distress. "We simply don't need to regulate this sort of thing at the EU level," she says. "It is far better to leave it to market operators." What a thought. Still, this little triumph in deregulation isn't total. The new rules met stiff resistance from 16 of the EU's 27 member states. The EU will also continue to set standards for 10 other fruits and vegetables that account for 75% of the value of EU trade, including apples and tomatoes. The days of "bonkers Brussels bureaucrats," alas, are far from done.


Del Monte takes it all off in "Fruit Undressed"
In "Fruit Undressed," created by Smith Brothers of Pittsburgh, pineapples "go wild," wearing bead necklaces, peaches declare "It's better in the buff," and grapefruit admits it likes "to take it all off.


EU biotechnology report - USDA FAS report 47 pages from USDA FAS
There are seven Member States (MS) commercially producing genetically-engineered (GE) crops, with Spain being, by far, the largest producer. Under the EU policy framework for agricultural biotechnology, MS policy varies greatly. Coexistence frameworks have been set up in most MS or are currently being prepared, and 5 MS continue to maintain national bans. However, the EU is a major consumer of biotech products, mainly soybean meal imported to feed livestock and poultry, with at least 80 percent of EU soy crush estimated to be genetically modified. Finally, agricultural biotechnology research in Europe is declining, mainly due to political pressure.

Russian Federation talks about food security - USDA FAS

South Africa deciduous - USDA FAS 16 pages from USDA FAS
South Africa's Marketing Year (MY) 2008/09 apple production is expected to decrease 2 percent from last year to 720,000 metric tons (MT) due to continued decrease in apple area.
Pear and grape production is estimated to both increase 3 percent to 358,000 MT and 270,000 MT respectively in MY 2008/09.

Mexico announces support program for sorghum, wheat and yellow corn - USDA FAS

Green gets a holiday update - Putting veggies in the Thanksgiving dinner

Farm lessons to city kids - the importance of bees and other topics

The real enemy : corn Not sweet corn, of course. Activists link corn, junk food.

Riding high in April, shot down in May - Roubini and other headlines

Back at my old familiar place, on my laptop in the middle of the night, updating the Fresh Talk blog, now accompanied by the Michael Buble version of the old Frank Sinatra standard 'That's life" in the background.

"I thought of quitting baby, this heart wasn't going to buy it"

Yes, it's hard to stay away from this blog, even during my vacation days Thanksgiving week. As I review my Gmail inbox, I acknowledge my compulsion for Google news alerts has again created for me a a pile of unread emails. Let's sort through this together....


One my email alerts is for Nouriel Roubini, the economist who has been eerily accurate about the twists, turns and tumbles of the U.S. economy. Here is Roubini on the Web and in my Google news alerts...

State governments in better shape to handle The Great Disruption than The Great Depression
But troubles may only be beginning for state governments, which will be one of the epicenters for what New York University economist Nouriel Roubini predicts will be the "most severe recession since World War II, much worse and longer and deeper than even the 1974-75 and 1980-82 recessions."

How many U.S. banks will fail? A bailout stretching to infinity
Many experts think the FDIC list is much too short and that it is a form of "window dressing" to keep the public from getting panicky. That is almost certainly true. If residential and mortgage failures pick up and consumers default on more and more of their obligations, the actual number of banks which fail could rise sharply between now and the beginning of 2009..New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini predicts that the head count of banks taken over by the agency will go well into the hundreds.

Why is this time different?
So what does Mr. Sunshine conclude? Check this out lads and lassies: "The current recession may end up being three times as long and at least three times as deep (in terms of output contraction) than the last two." Whew!! That's one dour dude, dear friends. Yet, if you look at the market, and the data that is being released on a daily basis, Roubini's case is well founded, as we may be entering the early stages of a deflationary spiral, something not seen to this degree since the 1920s.


Roubini told us so
In early October I predicted – in an interview for Tech Ticker – that the Dow could fall towards the 7000 level by next year and that US equities would fall by 50% relative to their 2007 peak. Such predictions were considered too bearish and extreme at that time but, at the rate at which equities are falling now with this acceleration of a savage deleveraging by leveraged institutions (and even disorderly sell-off by many unlevered players too), the Dow may reach the 7000 before year end rather than in 2009 and we are getting close to a 50% drop in overall equity prices from their peak.


TK: Roubini's bad news extravaganza can last only so long, right? As Sinatra himself said - speaking for all Americans now, "I know I'm going to change that tune, when I'm back on top in June."