Market News - Terry Long powerpoint

Terry Long presented this powerpoint at the USDA F/V Industry Advisory Committee yesterday. A couple of the highlights of the presentation was talk about increased reporting of organic produce and continued enhancements of the retail report.

Getting started in DC

I've arrived at Ronald Reagan Airport this evening and took the yellow line metro to my Alexandria, Va., Holiday Inn. I'll be here week, starting with coverage of the f/v industry advisory committee meeting and ending with the WPPC.

Tomorrow is the Fruit and Vegetable Industry Advisory Committee meeting, three metro stops away at the Crowne Plaza at Washington National Airport. The agenda includes a "farm bill update" by Robert Keeney, deputy administrator of the F/V programs fro the USDA AMS. Also on tap is a look at developments in market news reporting of organic items by Terry Long, chief of the USDA AMS FV Market News Branch.

Also on the agenda:
Crop insurance, the issue of maximum pesticide levels, PACA license fees, and the committee's working groups on food safety/traceability, child nutrition reauthorization, labor/immigration, transportation, market news/inspection services.

If all works as planned, you may get some real time updates tomorrow....

National Retail Report - April 18

I had a good conversation with the USDA's Market News Service Terry Long while I was in DC. He said some interesting things about the market news portal, the retail report and more (I never knew Boston was the most popular wholesale market report). Anyway, he said at some point they will be able to provide year ago statistics for the retail report. Then we can really see how flexible and creative retail produce promotions are - or, as some suppliers like to say, whether retailers simply copy the same promotions they did the same time a year ago.
Here is the summary from the April 18 USDA retail report:

Seasonal and Organic Items Highlighted
There was a lack of a common overall theme this week among retailers. Several were promoting the beginning of Passover and featured packaged mixes, horseradish, dates, and walnuts. There were also several ads promoting natural and organic selections in honor of upcoming Earth Day celebrations. Still others, were celebrating Spring and the return of warmer weather and chose to promote items for outdoor grilling and picnics. Compared to last week, overall fresh produce ads this week were down close to 2 percent with decline of nearly 11 percent on fruit ads and an increase of over 7 percent on vegetable ads. Despite the declining ad activity of fruits, the top 5 items were predominantly fruits and included: grapes, strawberries, tomatoes on the vine, corn, and mangoes. Significant increases in activity were noted on pineapples, watermelons, corn, mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes on the vine.


Fruits as Percentage of Total Fruit Ads
April 18, 2008
Watermelon, seedless 4%
Watermelon, mini 3%
Strawberries, organic 6%
Strawberries 15%
Pineapple 8%
Pears, bartlett 6%
Oranges, navel 3%
Mangoes 9%
Limes 1%
Lemons 1%
Honeydew 3%
Apples, red delicious 5%
Bananas 0%
Bananas, organic 0%
Avocadoes, hass 9%
Blueberries 2%
Cantaloupe 7%
Grapefruit, red 3%
Grapes, green/red 15%


Vegetables as Percentage of Total Vegetable Ads April 18, 2008
Tomatoes, grape 5%
Tomatoes on the vine 10%
Tomatoes, organic 0%
Tomatoes, grape organic 2%
Tomatoes 2%
Asparagus 5%
Broccoli 2%
Beans, round green 5%
Sweet Potatoes 1%
Squash, zucchini 6%
Potatoes, russet 3%
Peppers, bell red 4%
Peppers, bell green 7%
Onions, sweet 7%
Onions, yellow 3%
Broccoli, organic 1%
Cabbage 1%
Carrots, baby 7%
Carrots, baby organic 4%
Lettuce, romaine 1%
Mushrooms, white 8%
Lettuce, iceberg 2%
Cucumbers 4%
Corn 8%
Celery 2%

Potatoes get second look

As the industry continues to fight to get potatoes in the WIC food package (the latest reported clarification from USDA is that all fresh potatoes - not just white potatoes - will be excluded) - the Drudge Report features this link today of a story about potatoes, so that means many millions of readers will see this Reuters report by Terry Wade about the "humble potato" now being accorded new respect. A few excerpts from the story:

As wheat and rice prices surge, the humble potato -- long derided as a boring tuber prone to making you fat -- is being rediscovered as a nutritious crop that could cheaply feed an increasingly hungry world.

Potatoes, which are native to Peru, can be grown at almost any elevation or climate: from the barren, frigid slopes of the Andes Mountains to the tropical flatlands of Asia. They require very little water, mature in as little as 50 days, and can yield between two and four times more food per hectare than wheat or rice.

"The shocks to the food supply are very real and that means we could potentially be moving into a reality where there is not enough food to feed the world," said Pamela Anderson, director of the International Potato Center in Lima (CIP), a non-profit scientific group researching the potato family to promote food security.

Like others, she says the potato is part of the solution.

The potato has potential as an antidote to hunger caused by higher food prices, a population that is growing by one billion people each decade, climbing costs for fertilizer and diesel, and more cropland being sown for biofuel production.

To focus attention on this, the United Nations named 2008 the International Year of the Potato, calling the vegetable a "hidden treasure".

Governments are also turning to the tuber. Peru's leaders, frustrated by a doubling of wheat prices in the past year, have started a program encouraging bakers to use potato flour to make bread. Potato bread is being given to school children, prisoners and the military, in the hope the trend will catch on.

Supporters say it tastes just as good as wheat bread, but not enough mills are set up to make potato flour.

"We have to change people's eating habits," said Ismael Benavides, Peru's agriculture minister. "People got addicted to wheat when it was cheap."

Even though the potato emerged in Peru 8,000 years ago near Lake Titicaca, Peruvians eat fewer potatoes than people in Europe: Belarus leads the world in potato consumption, with each inhabitant of the eastern European state devouring an average of 376 pounds (171 kg) a year.

USDA Ag Outlook Forum - Terry Long

Terry Long, chief of the Fruit and Vegetable Market News, Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA delivered remarks Feb. 22 to the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum horticultural luncheon. Here is the link to Long's 35 page pdf presentation on developments in the market news service, "From market reports to market information" Answering the question of "what's next?," Long listed these points:

• Portal Communities
• RSS notification of updated information
• Add Districts to rail movement data
• Improve display on Portal queries
• Make additional graphing options available
• Add improved functionality to the Retail
Report

TK: The USDA's Market News portal has been a very useful tool to extract market information on fresh produce movement and prices, and reports that price charting functions of the system are being integrated by March is another piece of welcome news for users of fruit and vegetable data.

Looking out for Number One

Wal-Mart didn't get to be number one by sitting on their hands. Here are couple of stories that highlight the fact that Wal-Mart is looking for inroads in health care and international markets, not to mentioning fending off would be rivals in the grocery business. What's more, not all stock analysts are bearish about Wal-Mart.

From The Salt Lake Tribune:
For Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the road to a higher share price is paved with chicken feet and Spam. The world's largest retailer, long the biggest importer of goods into the U.S., last year joined a list of the top 100 U.S. exporters for the first time. It sent 39 percent more shipping containers overseas than General Motors Corp., and surpassed cigarette maker Altria Group Inc. Although only a fraction of the $18 billion in goods it bought from China alone in 2005, exports will increase further as Wal-Mart targets a third of its sales growth from abroad amid the slowest gains at U.S. stores in at least 27 years. International sales will expand to 30 percent of Wal-Mart's total in 2010, up from 22 percent last year, estimates Citigroup Inc. analyst Deborah Weinswig. International markets ''could be like a savior for Wal-Mart,'' said David Abella, an analyst at Rochdale Investment Management in New York, with $2.4 billion in assets including Wal-Mart shares. The expansion may help end the seven-year stock slump for Wal-Mart. The shares will rise 29 percent in the next 12 months, says Weinswig. She is top-ranked by Institutional Investor and rates the stock ''buy.'' Since reaching a record $69.44 in December 1999, the per-share price has dropped by a third. Wal-Mart will report quarterly financial results Aug. 14. The stock trades in the $45 range.

From The Wall Street Journal, reprinted online at JournalNow:


Twelve years ago, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executives welcomed Terry Leahy to the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.
Leahy, newly promoted at Tesco PLC and considering an overhaul of the British retailer, spent an afternoon discussing operations with Wal-Mart executives.
Today, Wal-Mart is doing everything it can to stop Leahy from crashing its last big growth business: groceries. It has a team of executives hunkered down far from Bentonville in the San Francisco Bay area devising two new small-footprint stores, including a response to the November launch of Tesco’s U.S. grocery stores, according to people familiar with the group.
Their brainchildren represent an unlikely step for staid Wal-Mart: One idea calls for urban convenience stores less than a tenth of the size of the company’s supercenters and stocked with groceries geared to more affluent tastes. Another plan calls for stand-alone stores offering a variety of health services and products. The new outlets are being prepared for introduction early next year.
David Wild, the Wal-Mart senior vice president of new business development, is leading the initiatives. He declined to comment. A Wal-Mart spokesman wouldn’t provide specifics but said, “Our business is constantly evolving, and we’re always looking for new and innovative ways to serve our customers.”
The company may have waited too long to develop successors to its big-box U.S. stores. Analysts now chopping their profit estimates for this and next year say that Wal-Mart has seemed tone-deaf to consumer trends. Failed pushes in women’s fashions and home decor continue to sap profits, and high gasoline prices are eating into supercenter visits. Recently, Wal-Mart has tried running ads promoting its low prices as worth the extra travel.
Nonetheless, the smaller stores could help Wal-Mart do more than fend off Tesco. The retailer has been largely shut out from upper-income and urban markets, including those in California and New York. High land costs and local opposition have limited the discounter to just 28 supercenters in California, a tenth of the number in Texas. Smaller stores are less likely to stir up opponents than the hulking 200,000-square-foot big-box stores.
In health care, Wal-Mart sees itself providing an array of services and home-health equipment along with the prescription eyeglasses and pharmaceuticals that it already sells, according to a person familiar with the effort. “In five years, Wal-Mart wants to be on its way to becoming the No. 1 health-care company in America,” that person said.

Killing us softly

Julia Havey has a blog, and the mission statement of the blog (note to self: come up with a mission statement) is "To bring about a decline in the obesity epidemic and empower people to improve their lives."

Here is a recent entry by Julia about Coke and McDonald's.

MSNBC: Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.
For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.
Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.
“Something’s wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Many factors
Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.
But “it’s not as simple as saying we don’t have national health insurance,” said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. “It’s not that easy.”

Among the other factors:
Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
“The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy,” said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. “We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times.------
The problem is huge and the solution is so simple yet we seem to keep our heads buried in the sand. What do I mean? Recently the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation burned through money to do a study on how to make us live longer only to advise us on getting flu shots, taking aspirin daily and checking for chlamydia! While those are certainly valid health tips, I was amazed that their study totally ignored the Obesity Pandemic, the biggest reason that we are the dying sooner than other humans around the world!
The Vice Busting Diet is the only "diet" book with the integrity to tell the truth and tell the reader that if they want to live healthfully and longer--they can't eat McDonald's and drink Coca-Cola and continue to lay on the couch hour upon hour watching TV at the expense of getting some physical activity!
We wonder why we are so fat and lazy? A recent study showed children prefered carrots out of a McDonald's bag rather than a generic carrot despite the fact that both carrots were exactly the same shape, size and taste! They have been brainwashed by this generation's Hilter--Ronald McDonald! Shocking statement? Not if you think about it. I think when it is said and done more lives will have been lost to McDonald's fat genocide than Hilter's murderous regime. I realize this is a stretch, but if we found out that Ronald McDonald hated fat people and was purposefully feeding them poisonous toxic food that would make them morbidly obese, contract illness and disease and die prematurely--we would be outraged.
The only difference is, he doesn't 'hate' them, but make no mistake about it, he is killing millions of human beings one bite at a time.
And you think the execs at Coca-Cola are any better? They come up with every way imaginable to have us suck down their sugar laced Coke or aspartame punch. They make it readily available in soft drink machines everywhere! They know that what they serve is unhealthy, they have the ability to make a great deal of money selling us bottled water yet they continue to push their poison despite the fact people drink enough of it to get big and fat. Do you think they care about your bottom line or theirs?
If we stopped eating fast food; McDonald's, Wendy's, Chick Filet, etc., stopped drinking soft drinks; Coke, diet Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade, Monster, etc and got up off the couch it is guaranteed that we would live longer and healthier lives.
Guaranteed.
Keep eating that crap, keep drinking the crap--keep feeling like crap and die young. Guaranteed


TK: Julia is bringing it strong..."They have been brainwashed by this generation's Hitler--Ronald McDonald!" As a frequent customer of the double cheeseburger, Julia goes too far for me. Wouldn't it be better to sell more produce through McDonald's than to vilify them? While we would all be better off if we drank orange juice and had carrot sticks instead of Coke and McDonald's, Julia's call for total abstinence of all quick serve restaurants casts her on the far fringe of foodies. Yet her message does resonate with a part of the public that is truly sick of their unbalanced eating habits and overweight bodies and want a scapegoat as a catalyst to change.

Real update from New Orleans

Rick here: Given the time of year and especially this holiday weekend, I thought it might be nice to provide some first hand on the ground news updates from New Orleans. We have an inside track there you know given that one of our members is located right in the city and has been serving as the emergency food provider there since the event hit over 18-months ago. Our member there is called Second Harvest of Greater New Orleans & Acadiana. We’ve actually had four members serving residents now on a regular basis including our members located in Baton Rouge, Theodore, AL and Beaumont, TX. America’s Second Harvest has provided more than $25M in food to these members to service unprecedented increases in food demand. Below is an update provided by Roger Hahn, Grant Writer for the food bank.

Roger: Things here in New Orleans and throughout the Louisiana Gulf Coast region just one-and-a-half years after Katrina’s landfall are probably both better and worse than the impression conveyed by the major news media. While large portions of metro New Orleans and parts of the westernmost coastal parishes remain pretty badly damaged, it seems clear that the spirit of most residents has begun to adjust to the blow that was dealt by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and is now firmly committed to rebuilding, however long it takes – and in the view of some professionals it could take anywhere from 10 to 15 years to fully restore the region.

Recent Census Bureau reports are pretty gloomy, too, reporting a five-percent drop in the state’s population between 2000 and 2006 (the largest since the internal U.S. migrations post-WWII) and a loss of 300,000 residents in greater New Orleans, reducing the metro population from 1.3 million to 1 million and lowering its national ranking from 38^th to 50^th. That having been said, we see nothing but increased need for emergency food supplies, a situation most food bankers will no doubt understand better than most – the population losses are mostly a reflection of social disruption, with commercial and nonprofit food-supply networks badly shredded.

Before Katrina, we distributed approximately 14.5 million pounds of food in a year; in just the six months after Katrina and Rita, with lots of help from A2H staffers, volunteers, the network, and suppliers, we distributed more than 40 million pounds of food. Our target this year is 25 million pounds and next year its 30 million pounds, but we’re estimating a real need for 40 million pounds year throughout the Gulf Coast region. Post-Katrina, we’ve opened a second warehouse operation in Lafayette and initiated a program to help rebuild our network of partner agencies (which digressed from 350 in number before the storms to fewer than 100 and is now back up to 150 and continuing to grow).

We’re also undertaking a comprehensive food-system survey across the region – it’s not just services and resources that are lacking down here right now, its information, too.

Oddly enough, in the midst of all this difficulty and even faced with a series of difficult challenges, it’s never seemed more important to do what we’re doing, and I think that feeling is shared by a lot of native and recent residents down here. There is among those who have remained are committed to living here and to sharing in the rebuilding of the region a general sense of commitment that seems more palpable than residents’ commitments to where they live in many other places, where conditions are not so challenging.

You could say it’s the best of times and the worst of times, but most of all it seems like an exciting time to be food banking at a time and in a place where it’s so badly needed.

RB: I asked Roger what was needed there at the food bank. He offered: “Absolutely food of any kind, especially fresh produce!” Interested parties may contact Ken Gravener, Procurement Manager at 504-729-2847 or email to kgravener@secondharvest.org naturally, financial donations are always needed and welcome. Please contact Terry Utterback at 504-729-2821 or email tutterback@secondharvest.org to make a donation of funds. You may contact Roger Hahn via email at RHahn@secondharvest.org or visit the food bank website at: http://www.no-hunger.org Rick Bella may be contacted at the National office at rbella@secondharvest.org or direct line: 312-641-6507.