Fresh Produce Discussion Blog

Created by The Packer's National Editor Tom Karst

Friday, January 22, 2010

Truck-Involved Fatalities Drop 12.3% in 2008

Truck-Involved Fatalities Drop 12.3% in 2008


The rate of truck-involved fatalities in the United States dropped 12.3% in 2008 to a record low, American Trucking Associations said Wednesday.The figure fell to 1.86 fatalities per 100 million miles, the lowest since records began in 1975, from 2.12 per 100 million miles in 2007, ATA said in a statement.ATA calculated the figures based upon vehicle miles traveled data recently released from the Federal Highway Administration and crash data previously released by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.The drop is the largest year-to-year drop on record and the fifth consecutive drop in the annual rate. Injuries from truck-involved crashes fell 11% to 39.6 per 100 million miles, from 44.4 per 100 million miles in 2007, the association said.ATA attributes the declines to the hours-of-service regulations that took effect in 2005. The truck-involve fatality rate fell more than 20% since that year.

Kids pack in nearly 11 hours of media use daily CNET

Kids pack in nearly 11 hours of media use daily CNET


A new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows a "dramatic" rise in the amount of time children and teens spend using entertainment media, "especially among minority youth." The study, "Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-year-olds," only focused on recreational use of media, not homework, school-related online research, or reading books for school.The report, which was released Wednesday, showed that 8- to 18-year-olds "devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes to using entertainment media across a typical day." That adds up to more than 53 hours a week. And thanks to multitasking, they wind up packing in nearly 10 hours and 45 minutes of content during those seven and a half hours.The study looked at the use of TV, computers, video games, music, print, and cell phones. It found that media use increased by one hour and 17 minutes a day over the past five years.

Increase in "TV" watching--kids still read books

Although regular TV watching declined by 25 minutes a day, the consumption of online video through the Web, cell phones, and iPods caused an actual increase in total "TV" consumption from 3 hours, 51 minutes to 4 hours, 29 minutes. This includes 24 minutes online, 16 minutes on iPods and other media players, and 15 minutes on cell phones. When it comes to TV viewing, the study asked: "How much time did you spend watching TV shows or movies?" This question, according to
Victoria Rideout, Kaiser Family Foundation vice president and director of the study, refers to online or broadcast television programming and movies, not user-generated content from sites like YouTube. It concludes that "young people continue to spend more time consuming TV content than engaged in any other media activity."

Study Finds Marketers Embracing Social Media Marketing In A Big Way - Washington Post

Study Finds Marketers Embracing Social Media Marketing In A Big Way - Washington Post

Integrated marketing services provider Alterian today released the results of their seventh annual survey on social media marketing adoption. The survey covered 1068 marketing professionals worldwide (actually, it was 98% North America and Europe and only 2% Asia Pacific and other regions).Alterian found that 66 percent of respondents will be investing in social media marketing (SMM) in 2010. Of those, 40 percent said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their SMM activities.The survey also found more than a third (36 percent) of respondents are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools.Nearly half of respondents (42 percent), however, said they don't currently incorporate clickstream and web analytics data into their customer and e-mail database.

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Consumer groups seek ban on Monsanto sugar beets - Biz Journal

Consumer groups seek ban on Monsanto sugar beets - Biz Journal


Earthjustice and Center for Food Safety attorneys filed court papers this week on behalf of organic seed growers, conservation groups and food safety groups seeking a ban on Monsanto’s genetically engineered sugar beets and sugar beet seeds. The coalition asks for a moratorium on all planting, production and use of the seeds and beets until a federal court can further consider the government’s deregulation of the crop. In September, a federal court in California ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture failed to adequately study the environmental and economic risks of Monsanto's sugar beets and ordered federal officials to conduct a more stringent review of the crop.

The USDA approved Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beets without properly assessing how the genetically modified seeds contaminate conventional crops, increase weed resistance to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide and limit both farmers’ options to grow conventional and consumer choice to buy products with sugar not derived from genetically engineered seeds, Earthjustice and Center for Food Safety allege. Garrett Kasper, a spokesman for Monsanto, called the injunction request "inappropriate and unwarranted."


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Colo. Gov Wants to Speed up Candy, Soda Tax Plan

Colo. Gov Wants to Speed up Candy, Soda Tax Plan


Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter wants to speed up a plan to tax things such as candy and soda, pesticides and industrial energy use to help balance the state budget.In the fall, Ritter proposed suspending or eliminating 13 tax exemptions and credits starting in July to raise $132 million to help balance next year's budget. In December, lawmakers learned that tax revenues were forecast to drop even more, requiring them to cut another $48 million from the current year's budget for a total of about $600 million in cuts. Ritter is proposing that seven of the sales tax exemptions be lifted starting in
March instead of July. That would bring in another $18 million, which would mean lawmakers would have to cut only $30 million more than planned from the current budget.

Ritter plans to formally introduce his plan on Jan. 27. But members of his staff met with business leaders on Wednesday to warn them of what was coming."These are not choices we want to make, but just like cuts to K-12 education or health care or prisons, these are choices we must make to balance the budget in a way that spreads the pain and preserves programs that promote job growth," Ritter spokesman George Merritt said. The industrial energy use sales tax would bring in the most money — $48 million a year. Taxing candy and soft drinks would bring in $17.9 million a year and taxing pesticides would bring in another $2.9 million. Ritter has also proposed suspending or limiting some tax credits, including one for conservation easements, but he's not asking for any of those to take effect early.

Republicans, meanwhile, are preparing to fight any tax changes, calling for more cuts instead.

If Democrats would agree to give up on ending tax breaks, Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, said both parties could look at completely reforming the biggest parts of the state's budget — public schools and Medicaid — instead.Tom Clark, executive vice president of Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., said some tax increases may be needed but said that his group would wait to see what legislation is introduced on Ritter's proposal before taking a position. In the meantime, he said his group is studying how the 13 proposed tax changes would affect businesses and the economy. "We all want a solution here, and we all realize that we're going to have to suck it up. But the question is, 'What's the best way we can get there with the least amount of job loss?'" Clark said.

The final decision on whether to eliminate the exemptions will rest with state lawmakers. House Speaker Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, said he thinks majority Democrats will support Ritter's proposal because he said it's getting harder to find other places in the budget to cut. "At the end of the day, this is still about us providing efficient government in a very smart and strategic fashion," he said.

Smithsonian Acquires Historic Food Coupons from USDA

Smithsonian Acquires Historic Food Coupons from USDA

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 -- At a special presentation, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History acquired Food Stamp Program coupons and other related materials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), the cornerstone of U.S. food assistance programs designed to ensure that low income citizens can obtain a nutritious diet. In October 2008, Congress renamed the Food Stamp Program (FSP) to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to emphasize the program's focus on nutrition.

This acquisition showcases nearly 40 years of significant program changes, from paper coupons to today's Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards, which have been issued nationally since 2004. The donation includes individual food coupons, booklets, proof sheets, early artist designs, printer's plates, and sample EBT cards.

The rare materials will be part of the National Numismatic Collection (NCC) housed at the museum, which consists of more than 1.5 million objects, including coins, medals and paper currency and preserves the role of money in economic history. The Collection's highlights include a colonial Massachusetts shilling from 1690-the first paper money in the Western hemisphere - the unique 1849 $20 gold coin as well as non-traditional currency and medals. The NCC's collection includes the history of the early FSP that began with the 1935 Agricultural Adjustment Act and lasted until 1943, as well as other forms of emergency currency, such as clamshells used by Americans during the Great Depression. With the new acquisition, the museum now holds the single most comprehensive research collection pertaining to food coupons.

"The inclusion of the Food Stamp Program in the National Numismatic Collection is especially significant considering the current economic hardships facing Americans today," said museum director Brent Glass. "Millions of Americans have relied on these coupons to sustain themselves and their families, and the museum is proud to join with the USDA to document this important program."

"It is important to preserve the history of this nutrition program and recognize its continued benefits to communities across the country," said USDA Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Kevin Concannon. "There has never been a time in history when SNAP , the successor to the Food Stamp Program, has been more critical to Americans since it puts healthy food in reach for millions of individuals, children and families in a difficult economy."

While billions of food coupons have been distributed by the USDA since the beginning of the program, only a small sample has survived, due to the practice of the coupons being destroyed at a Federal Reserve Bank once redeemed by grocers. By law, food stamp coupons were de-obligated on June 17, 2009 and are no longer legal tender.

Food Stamps began as a pilot in the 1960s under President John F. Kennedy. Today SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program, has the highest participation in the program's history, serving nearly 38 million people, half of whom are children. While feeding low-income Americans across the country, the program also helps stimulate the economy. Every $5 in new SNAP benefits equals $9.20 in local economic activity. SNAP is the largest of the Food and Nutrition Service's 15 nutrition assistance programs that touch the lives of one in five Americans each year, and work in concert to form a national safety net against hunger. For more information about FNS visit www.fns.usda.gov .

The National Museum of American History collects, preserves and displays American heritage in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. After a two-year renovation and a dramatic transformation, the museum shines new light on American history, both in Washington and online. To learn more about the museum, check http://americanhistory.si.edu. For Smithsonian information, the public may call (202) 633-1000, (202) 633-5285 (TTY).

Wal-Mart Struggles to Expand in Chicago - NYT

Wal-Mart Struggles to Expand in Chicago - NYT

In the room behind the City Council chambers during the Jan. 13 meeting, a high-ranking Wal-Mart official asked Mayor Richard M. Daley if he was committed to the company’s plans to expand beyond its only store in Chicago.

Mr. Daley replied with a curt profanity and walked away, according to a source who witnessed the exchange but did not want to be identified for fear of angering the mayor.

The mayor’s response at that meeting revealed his frustration over a rare instance in which he has been unable to get the council to support his position. Although Mr. Daley has voiced support for more Wal-Mart stores in the city for years, the world’s largest retailer is still unable to break ground on more outlets.

Before walking out of the back room encounter with Rolando Rodriguez, Wal-Mart’s regional general manager for Illinois and northern Indiana, Mr. Daley urged the company to do a better job of swaying public opinion, the source who witnessed the conversation said.

Citing the recession and the need to create jobs, Mr. Daley in recent months has encouraged Wal-Mart to make another push for the city’s approval. But those efforts have stalled, with neither the mayor nor a majority of aldermen willing to expend the political capital to overcome organized labor’s opposition to nonunion Wal-Mart.

While Wal-Mart’s allies say new stores could help combat high unemployment, critics want the company to promise higher wages and health insurance for all workers. They also say the retailer’s arrival swamps competitors, destroying as many jobs as it creates.

Wal-Mart officials are so confounded by their lack of success in Chicago that they plan to bus people from inner-city neighborhoods to shop at their stores outside the city, said Alderman Anthony Beale and other council members who want the company to build stores in their wards.

Mr. Beale is pushing to win over reluctant aldermen to Wal-Mart’s side. “We are losing billions of dollars a year to suburban area stores,” said the alderman, who hopes to have a Wal-Mart as part of a 270-acre development in his Ninth Ward on the Far South Side. “How do you in good conscience vote against any type of job in this economy?”

Wal-Mart’s store in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side employs 430 people, said John Bisio, a company spokesman. Mr. Bisio also said the store inspired other new retail outlets in the neighborhood since it opened in September 2006.

Efforts to broker a deal for a new store in the Chatham neighborhood failed again on Jan. 11. The council had rejected the Chatham plan in 2004 at the same time that aldermen approved the West Side Wal-Mart.

Almost six years later, the issue remains divisive, especially in the predominantly black neighborhoods where Wal-Mart wants to open five Supercenters that sell groceries as well as other retail items.

Mr. Daley could merely instruct his top planning aide to sign off on the new Wal-Mart in Chatham, but he has balked at doing so. “We’re leaving it up to the aldermen,” Jacquelyn Heard, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said this week.

For Mr. Daley, allies say, forcing the issue would feed criticism that he rules Chicago like a monarch. But he has unapologetically decided other controversial issues by fiat — for instance, he ordered the midnight bulldozing of runways at Meigs Field in 2003.

By deferring to the aldermen, Mr. Daley also avoids a direct confrontation with the unions. They did not support his re-election bid in 2007 and spent millions of dollars to help unseat several of his council allies in that election.

With another election a year away, many aldermen are also not eager to make themselves targets of the unions. In the 2007 election, labor’s financing and manpower for council challengers dwarfed the support provided by the mayor and pro-business groups for their allies.

More than a dozen black churches and labor unions countered Wal-Mart’s newest lobbying effort by creating a group called Good Jobs Chicago. The organization has placed advertisements on billboards in the 9th and 21st Wards demanding that large retailers provide “living wages” and “affordable health care.”



The racially charged nature of the issue was evident at an event on Monday to celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Speakers at the rally in Hyde Park noted that Dr. King was killed while fighting for workers’ rights and derided Wal-Mart’s unwillingness to negotiate with its critics, according to a news release from Good Jobs Chicago.



“You should have seen them wheeling and dealing to build five plantations in Chicago,” the Rev. Booker Vance said in the release.

Besides promising more jobs, Wal-Mart officials said their Supercenters would address the problem of “food deserts” — neighborhoods without places to buy fresh fruit and vegetables.

Pat Dowell, an alderman in the Third Ward, was first elected in 2007 with union support and said she would prefer a Roundy’s grocery store at 39th and State Streets over a Wal-Mart.

“I’m going to address the issue of the food desert by bringing in a company that is responsible,” she said, noting that Roundy’s is a union employer.

But some aldermen said the economy had become so bad that they should re-consider their opposition to Wal-Mart.

Alderman Sandi Jackson of the Seventh Ward, who was once a Wal-Mart critic, said this week that she had recently switched sides. In 2007, she campaigned with union support and said she backed an ordinance requiring “big box” retailers to pay higher wages and offer benefits. Mr. Daley had used his veto power for the only time in his 21-year tenure to defeat that ordinance in 2006, setting off the election battle with the unions.

“I still believe paying a decent wage is appropriate, but now is not the time to be taking action that would keep out the jobs that five Supercenters would bring,” Mrs. Jackson told the Chicago News Cooperative this week. “Not one person has told me to vote against Wal-Mart coming into Chatham, the 9th Ward, the 34th Ward or any of the other food deserts in the city.”

She predicted that thousands of people would line up for a shot at one of approximately 400 jobs available at any new Wal-Mart.

“People are willing to take any job,” she said. “To get money to put food on the table is more important than dickering over a dollar here or there.”

The alderman is the wife of Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Democrat of Illinois, and the daughter-in-law of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who loudly criticized Wal-Mart when it first tried to enter the Chicago market. Alderman Jackson said she had not discussed the issue with her father-in-law; he did not return calls seeking comment.

Even some union leaders seem weary of the battle and reluctant to engage in another confrontation with the mayor. “We’re in a different time,” said Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor. “There should be some resolution so we can move ahead as a city. We don’t want to go through what we went through. We really kind of divided the city.”

But Mr. Gannon expressed frustration at Wal-Mart’s unwillingness to sit down with labor leaders to come to a compromise.

Ms. Heard, the mayor’s spokeswoman, and Mr. Bisio, the Wal-Mart spokesman, declined to comment when they were asked about Mr. Daley’s abrupt termination of his discussion with Mr. Rodriguez.

“Our passion and conviction to better serve Chicago customers has not diminished,” Mr. Bisio said. “We remain hopeful.”

Target Curbs New Store Expansion - WSJ

Target Curbs New Store Expansion - WSJ
Discount Chain Shifts Tack, Will Remodel More Outlets to Emphasize Groceries


Target Corp. is slamming the brakes on store expansion and will pour $1 billion this year into remodeling its existing shops to accelerate a push into groceries.

The discount-store chain on Thursday said it will open fewer than 10 new stores in 2010, down from about 60 last year and an average of a 100 a year for the past several years. It has struggled in the last two years as consumers shied away from buying all but necessities.

Executives expect little relief. "Consumers are still buying with caution and shopping closer to the moment of need," said Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel.

Best known for affordable and fashionable apparel and home furnishings created by big-name designers, the chain more recently has emphasized low prices on household basics and experimented with adding more food, including fresh produce, to its discount stores to entice customers in the door.

The Minneapolis-based retailer, in a meeting Thursday with analysts in Philadelphia, outlined major initiatives for the next five to 10 years that include opening stores abroad for the first time and testing smaller stores for urban areas.

During most of the recession, Target's sales at stores open at least a year—a key measure of retail health—fell. Its profits declined for eight quarters, a streak that halted in its fiscal third quarter ended Oct. 31. After posting higher-than-expected December same-store sales of 1.8%, the company said it expects fourth-quarter earnings to "meet or exceed'' analyst estimates of $1.11 a share. It plans to release results Feb. 23.

The company plans to remodel 340 stores this year, adding expanded food areas that have boosted growth 6% in previously remodeled stores.

Target also laid out other changes, including remodeling shoe departments and adding new fixtures in the video game and home goods area.

Wall Street analysts have expressed concern that Target, in its recent move to emphasize value, has been losing some of the distinctive features that set it apart from discount rival Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which posted strong sales gains through much of the recession.

The exact number and pace of new store openings beyond this year will depend on factors such as the state of the economy, as well as internal operational performance, it said. While the company is slowing store growth in the near term, it is not forsaking U.S. expansion altogether. Mr. Steinhafel said the company still expects to eventually open as many as 3,000 more stores in the U.S. It had 1,743 stores open as of Oct. 31.

Target said it plans to test small urban store concepts that would range from 60,000 to 100,000 square feet and feature high volume products. The company has said it expects 2010 capital expenditures of about $2.5 billion, up from about $1.8 billion. Wal-Mart also has expressed interest in opening smaller stores in urban areas.

Target said its international push would most likely be in Canada, Mexico or Latin America but not for at least another three years. Shares of Target fell 1%, or 50 cents, to $50.22 in 4 p.m. composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock rose by about 40% in 2009 and has continued to climb since the start of the year.

Write to Ann Zimmerman at ann.zimmerman@wsj.com