Fresh Produce Discussion Blog

Created by The Packer's National Editor Tom Karst

Saturday, February 13, 2010

A Balance Between the Factory and the Local Farm NYT



A Balance Between the Factory and the Local Farm NYT


Three books by Michael Pollan criticizing the system of giant corporate farms and food factories have topped the best-seller lists. A graphic documentary, “Food, Inc.,” based in part on his books, has been nominated for an Academy Award.

In Washington, Michelle Obama grew vegetables on the White House lawn as an example of self-sufficiency. And across America, more farmers’ markets and restaurants have popped up that sell vegetables and meat produced on small farms.

Diners now scan the menus at their local restaurants for provenances like “Cattail Creek Ranch lamb” or “Hudson Valley rabbit.” And home cooks now await boxes of fresh produce delivered weekly from local growers.

Some of these so-called locavores may think they are part of a national movement that will replace corporate food factories with small family farms. But as much of the East Coast lies blanketed beneath a foot or more of snow, it’s as good a time as any to raise a few questions about the trend’s viability.

First, how practical is local food sourcing in a nation that enjoys a diversity of food? From a practical standpoint, there isn’t much that can be grown in winter in most parts of the country.

“You can dig parsnips out of the ground,” said the chef Payton Curry, referring to his native state of Minnesota. “It’s 10 below there.” Mr. Curry features locally sourced food at his Caffe Boa restaurants in Tempe and Mesa, Ariz.

The problem isn’t confined to the snow belt. Recently, I asked a neighbor who was bringing in her weekly box of locally grown produce what she got this time. “Kale,” she said. “A lot of kale.” And this is in Northern California.

Then there are the inconsistencies in locavore behavior. People who eagerly order microgreens — tenderly cut with scissors by a farmer that morning — would be scandalized if a Chilean grape was served next to them.

But their wine and water? Those tend to be shipped in from far-flung places. Rarely, for example, do you hear a New York restaurant bragging of its Long Island wine. Even at Chez Panisse, the Berkeley, Calif., restaurant where Alice Waters got the whole local-ingredients trend started, two out of three wines on a recent evening — the wine list changes daily — did not come from the acclaimed wine regions that begin only 25 miles away.

A friend of Mr. Curry’s, Pavle Milic, has gone to the extreme of serving only Arizona-made wines at FnB, his small restaurant in Scottsdale, Ariz. The concept may surprise some customers, but he says that some of the same people who sneer at a Pillsbury Casa Blanca Pinot Gris from Cochise County will declare in blind taste tests that they thought it came from a famous wine-growing region.

“I develop a thick skin here with what I do,” he said. And he acknowledges that “I risk losing a guest who doesn’t want to drink an Arizona wine.”

Granted, wine doesn’t have to be fresh to be good. And freshness is the compelling reason driving the locavore movement. Unlike organic food, which can taste no different from food grown with chemicals, fresh food does taste better.

But what started as an effort to source fresher ingredients from nearby family farms is now as much about reducing the carbon footprint and the “food miles” of food. Ordering water from the South Pacific island of Fiji or wine from New Zealand when the local stuff is quaffable seems to run counter to those ideals.

PEOPLE who grow vegetables in empty lots and schoolyards have a nice, wholesome hobby — but one that can make little sense economically. A few years ago, William Alexander wrote a delightful book chronicling his gardening travails, “The $64 Tomato.” He revealed a truth about do-it-yourself gardening: It is more efficient to buy a fresh tomato in the farmer’s market for $1.50 a pound.

(In San Francisco, where I live, that means going to a market patronized largely by immigrants, not the foodie-dominated ones with inflated prices that put fresh food out of the reach of the poor. )

As a sustainable trend, localism bears at least some resemblance to Mao Tse-tung’s Great Leap Forward. In the late 1950s, Mao decreed that steel production be localized in backyard steel furnaces. Villagers began melting down pots and pans and creating their own steel, which amounted to low-quality and largely useless pig iron.

It was a bad idea that dragged down the nation’s productivity and played a role in widespread famine.

Localism is difficult to scale up enough to feed a whole country in any season. But on the other extreme are the mammoth food factories in the United States. Here, frequent E. coli and salmonella bacteria outbreaks are the food industry’s version of Toyota’s sudden-acceleration and braking problems. It may be a case of a manufacturing system that has grown too fast or too large to be managed well.

Somewhere, there is a happy medium.

Food for Thought - Village Voice


Food for Thought - Village Voice

Wait a Minute: Corby Kummer Defends Walmart?

In the latest issue of The Atlantic and on the Atlantic Food Channel, Corby Kummer baits us: "What, me nice to Walmart?" he taunts. Apparently, the mega-chain is getting more of its fresh produce from farms within a day's drive from its main distribution centers. They're calling it, sneakily, Heirloom Agriculture, suggesting the rare, tasty produce cited on the fanciest of menus. But, really, the term refers to a return to traditional farming in the most industrialized areas, which is itself a noble effort. Kummer comes out in favor of Walmart's initiative, but practically begs for criticism: "Lots of people won't like this, and certainly won't take kindly to my being kind about Walmart... let open season begin!"

OK, Corby, you asked for it...

How can anyone come out against an entity, no matter how corporate and usurping, that proposes to bring fresh produce to the country's food deserts? But this is Walmart we're talking about. The company that brings you cheap housewares and back-to-school clothes and -- let's not forget -- potato chips. The very fact that they do so drives mom-and-pop shops out of business. Does the company get to atone for its sins by tapping smaller, more local farms for its produce, as it has already started doing in Illinois? Well, sort of.

We already know that the increasingly low cost of food, encouraged for years by companies like Walmart, is responsible, in part, for the poor health and diet of many Americans. Sure, supporting family farms is admirable. But small local food producers and purveyors wouldn't be in the shape they're in now if it weren't for the aggressive price undercutting of Walmart in the first place.

Many Americans don't have access to fresh foods at reasonable prices. And offering them that option is a good thing. It's just a shame that it has come down to Walmart to be our savior. The company has done -- and continues to do -- so much to not only drive small purveyors out of business but also to peddle cheap packaged foods full of empty calories. Still -- sorry to disappoint, Corby -- it's difficult not to agree that this is a positive step for the evil giant, as well as for the unlucky masses it services.

New Future for fruit & vegetables - Economic Times - India



New Future for fruit & vegetables - Economic Times - India

NEW DELHI: Kishore Biyani’s Future Group is making a vigorous push to increase its share in the fruit and vegetables
business, a category that
has traditionally been an Achilles heel for the country’s largest retailer.

The group behind supermarket chains such as Food Bazaar and Big Bazaar is forming a specialised entity that will set up and manage an efficient supply chain for fruits and vegetables (F&V), marking a shift away from the outsourced model it has followed so far.

“Globally, F&V sales for most retailers is about 10% and we want to take it to that level. Within a year, we want to definitely hike the billing share of fruits and vegetables to 8-10%,” Mr Biyani, chief executive of the Future Group, told ET.

Fruit and vegetables currently account for 3-4% of total supermarket sales for the group, which expects to end the fiscal in June with retail sales of 9,200 crore.

A team headed by S Radhakrishnan, a 15-year veteran of the retail trade, will manage the new company and own an equity stake in it. Mr Radhakrishnan helped set up the Food World chain for RPG Group's Spencer Retail and was head of Reliance Retail's value format businesses until the beginning of this year.

Mr Biyani is betting that by putting in place new sorting and grading technologies, better cold storage and aggressively cutting out middlemen, he can bring down the prices of fruits and vegetables by about 15-20% across categories. "The efficiencies created by this exercise will be passed on to the consumer," he observed.

He declined to reveal how much he was investing in new company or what stake the new management team will have.
The Future Group now outsources retailing of fruits and vegetables to vendors, who are allowed to use space in its shops in exchange for a share of their revenue.

Mr Biyani’s move to take direct control of the fruits and vegetables business brings to focus the challenges faced by organised retailers in selling fresh and perishable goods. India lacks a network of cold storages and refrigerated trucking facilities that can efficiently transport fresh fruits and vegetables from a farm to the shop-floor while retaining its freshness.

Smaller, unorganized ‘kirana’ stores sell fruits and vegetables to most of the country’s population, but the extensive network of middlemen and high levels of wastage mean that the price paid to farmers is only a fraction of the retail price.

The organised retail trade relies heavily on APMC ‘mandis’ and agents to source the bulk of its stock of fruits and vegetables. Among the large ones, Reliance Retail procures the most from farmers – about 50% of its daily need of 700 tonne, a company official said.

Future Group has a separate company that handles its dry vegetables supplies as well, but the new entity will have independent profit and loss responsibilities as well.

It will rent out space from Future Group’s stores and separately branded counters will handle sales of fruits and vegetables.

“The new company will have end-to-end responsibilities. That way the back-end won’t be able to blame the front-end and vice-versa for poor produce or sales performance,” a person familiar with the initiative said

February foreclosure forecast: bleak to bleaker - Examiner


February foreclosure forecast: bleak to bleaker - Examiner


Long time data tracking RealtyTrac.com reported over 315,000 homeowners were issued foreclosure notices in January 2010. While that number is down from 349,000 reported in December, one of the biggest months for foreclosures in history, it is still up over previous Januaries.

Industry insiders and economists agree we have not seen the end and as summer approaches if employment continues to decline, incomes stay low or decreasing and even moderate inflation continues more foreclosures are on the way.

This next wave will not be of home owners who purchased using the more dangerous adjustable rate mortgages or other sub-prime loans. Homeowners in this round of foreclosures will consist mainly of mortgagors who have standard, 30 year fixed rate loans including those who made down payments of up to 20% or more.

"Among states, Nevada posted the nation's highest foreclosure rate, followed by Arizona, California, Florida and Utah. Rounding out the top 10 were Idaho, Michigan, Illinois, Oregon and Georgia." That according to a report in Yahoo.com earlier in the week.

In all with increasing unemployment and housing values down as much as 30% on average nationally and foreclosures exceeding 300,000 for 11 months straight it is difficult to imagine the housing market or economy improving any time soon. Predictions likely are accurate that foreclosures will continue to stay at a higher level as even better prepared home owners begin to default on their loans in the coming months.