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February 10, 2010
· Russia’s ag evolution seen through Golden Arches
· New research focuses on global El Nino effect
· Almond tree reveals secret pollination weapon
· Veggie munching helps lower blood pressure
· California seed distributor sending toys to Haiti
Russia
(The
New York Times)
Mr. Semenov’s assistant turned it down. One restaurant was too small an order.
“I said, ‘My friend! You see how many McDonald’s there are in the West?’ ” Mr. Semenov recalled recently. “I said, ‘Sell them lettuce at any price. It’s our new strategy.’ ”
With that, Mr. Semenov started a company that has all but
cornered the market on packaged fresh vegetables in
With a buy-one-get-one-free deal on hamburgers and a
traditional Russian accordion band, McDonald’s celebrated on Monday the 20th
anniversary of the opening of its first store in the
But the company celebrated a different milestone earlier
this year by outsourcing the last product — hamburger buns — it had made at a
proprietary factory outside
Everything — from frozen French fries to pie filling — had to be made from scratch at a sprawling factory.
McDonald’s is always a good lens through which to view the
118 or so countries where it operates. In the 20 years since McDonald’s arrived
in
Today, private businesses in
Starting with pickles, which now come from the farm of Anatoly M. Revyakin, every item has been spun off from the nine production lines at McComplex, spawning dozens of new businesses, some now among the most successful in the Russian food catering industry.
Buns and pies are still made at the McComplex site, but by an independent contractor; the building is for sale.
“Our goal is to put the business in the hands of independent suppliers,” Jim Skinner, the global chief executive of McDonald’s, said in an interview.
Mr. Revyakin, a cucumber farmer in 1990, went on to become the Pickle King of Russian processed food after taking over the marinating line from McComplex; he now sells pickles to three restaurant chains and is moving into relish for Heinz.
“We make $2 million a year selling cucumbers,” he said in a phone interview.
Mr. Semenov’s shredded lettuce business, Belaya Dacha,
already accustomed to working with Western companies from the McDonald’s
contract, exploded when Western-style supermarkets arrived in
And after his business success, Mr. Semenov has gone into politics, serving in Parliament with the ruling United Russia party.
Dairy went to Wimm-Bill-Dann, a milk and juice packager that became the first Russian food company to list on the New York Stock Exchange, in 2002.
Just last year, a Russian company, Miratorg,
took over supplying Chicken McNuggets. It could
hardly have come at a better time for McDonald’s — a trade war is threatening
to cut off the importation of chicken into
Today, frozen French fries are still imported, oddly enough, given that Russians are famous for growing potatoes. The problem, though is finding economy of scale in processing, McDonald’s executives said. Russians still buy raw potatoes at supermarkets, instead of processed frozen potatoes. Until frozen potatoes catch on, McDonald’s alone cannot provide the volumes needed to open a processing plant.
From the day it opened the gates on the $50 million factory,
McDonald’s had intended to hand out its functions to other businesses and
eventually shut it down, said Khamzat Khasbulatov,
the director of McDonald’s in
Arms-length transactions for supplies allow McDonald’s to
step back from the interaction of franchisees and food-processing companies,
sparing them a headache.
“We knew from Day 1 that our goal was to outsource all its functions,” Mr. Khasbulatov said.
Today the restaurants in
Even as it leaned on the proprietary factory in its early years,
the McDonald’s
The worldwide pushback against coffee chains, for example,
had an early test run here. McCafés opened here in
2003 and espresso-style drinks are available in many restaurants; the concept
was introduced in
For McDonald’s, bringing Russia in line with its horizontal business model is more important than ever because the country is an important market and its same-store sales are growing fast. The overseas business is generally leading both in the number of restaurant openings and growth in sales at existing restaurants.
Russian restaurants are on average twice as busy as those in
the
McDonald’s plans to invest $150 million in
And that is good news for suppliers, too; those outlets will need a lot of shredded lettuce.
New research focuses on global El Nino effect
(NOAA) - Like a stone tossed in a pond, El Niño's appearance
in the
A natural phenomenon, El Niño (Spanish for "the little boy") refers to occasional periods of sea surface temperature warming in the tropical Pacific that influence the world's weather patterns.
El Niño is known for stirring up weather across the globe:
* In the
*
However, unlike concentric rings expanding across a pond's surface, El Niño's ripples do not follow a simple pattern. They are highly complex, capable of altering atmospheric features from the surface of the ocean to miles above the Earth.
New Pieces to the Puzzle
NOAA scientists are studying El Niño's effects to better understand not only how El Niño influences our weather, but also to separate natural El Niño fluctuations from human-caused climate change. The array of variables involved — ocean temperature, air temperature, ocean currents, winds at various altitudes, air pressure, to name a few — add to the challenge.
A new study by Melissa Free and Dian Seidel, climate
scientists in NOAA's Air Resources Laboratory in
Free and Seidel's work is part of an emerging area of interest for climate and weather researchers investigating how the stratosphere — a layer of the atmosphere beginning about five miles above sea level — influences weather at ground level. The stratospheric layer of the atmosphere is located above the troposphere.
The troposphere begins at the Earth's surface and extends up to 4-12 miles (6-20 km) high. This is where we live. The stratosphere begins above the troposphere and extends up to 31 miles above the Earth's surface. This layer holds 19 percent of the atmosphere's gases but very little water vapor. Scientists are just beginning to learn how conditions in the stratosphere echo downward into the troposphere and affect weather.
Free and Seidel decided to look specifically at El Niño's ability to influence weather at the ground level by first triggering changes several miles up.
A Need to Learn More
In recent years, scientists have found a connection between
another atmospheric feature, swirling upper-level winds called the Arctic
vortex, and colder than average winters in
Scientists have long known about El Niño's effect on temperatures in the lowest part of the atmosphere, but its effects on the stratosphere have only recently become clearer through studies like this one.
Industries affected by severe weather, droughts or floods — agriculture, cargo shipping and transportation — pay close attention to El Niño. With further study, scientists are confident that we will improve our understanding of El Niño and, ultimately, our ability to prepare for its effects.
Almond tree reveals secret pollination weapon
(Science Daily) – Has the almond tree developed a unique way of drawing potential pollinators? A group of researchers at the Department of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Science Education at the University of Haifa-Oranim speculate that the toxin called amygdalin that is found in almond tree nectar is in fact an evolutionary development intended to give that tree an advantage over others in its surroundings.
Previous studies have already shown that amygdalin can be found in almond nectar at a concentration of 4-10 milligrams per liter. It also known that the almond tree is the only plant to have this toxin in its flowers' nectar; in fact, the tree's subgenus classification is Amygdalus, after the toxin it produces. For small mammals this is a deadly substance and as it is highly concentrated in the seeds of unripe wild bitter almonds, these almonds are also dangerous for human consumption.
A group of researchers, headed by Prof. Ido Izhaki along with Prof. Gidi Ne'eman, Prof. Moshe Inbar and Dr. Natarajan Singaravelan, investigated why it is that this plant produces such a potent toxin -- a by-product of which is cyanide -- in its nectar. They explain that the presence of amygdalin in the nectar is seemingly incompatible with the nectar's purpose of attracting insects to the flower to extract food and pollinate it and thereby contribute to the plant's reproduction.
The researchers exposed honey bees to plates of nectar that had varying concentrations of the toxin and a plate of nectar without the toxin. The team first monitored four different amygdalin concentrations, resembling the natural levels of the toxin in almond tree nectar: 2.5-10 milligrams per liter. A second experiment monitored levels much higher than those found in the natural form: 5-50 milligrams per liter. In both cases and for each of the compositions, the bees preferred nectar containing amygdalin over the amygdalin-free option.
"It is difficult -- and sometimes impossible -- to determine the workings of evolution, but it is likely that amygdalin is produced in the almond nectar so as to give the almond tree an advantage in reproduction. Based on our observations, we can make a guess at which mechanisms come into play for amygdalin to provide this advantage," Prof. Izhaki explains.
For example, even though amygdalin is poisonous for mammals, it is not poisonous for insects, such as the honey bee, and it even produces a stimulant that attracts such insects. Therefore, it is possible that the plant produces it so as to attract potential pollinators.
Another possibility is that the almond tree has developed this substance in its nectar as a form of filter: it repulses "non-expert" pollinators, but gives access to the "experts" that have built up resistance to the toxin while providing efficient pollination services for the plant.
The research team, in collaboration with Dr. Malka Halpern, Dr. Yoram Gerchman and research students Svetlana Friedman and Yana Gerstein, are presently examining the possibility of there being an additional mechanism in play: that the nectar toxin prevents inhabitation of bacteria that could spoil the nectar's quality and harm its appeal for potential pollinators, thereby impeding the tree's chances of pollination.
"Pollinating insects have always been lacking, so
plants have had to develop ways to take the lead in attracting those that are
available, in competition with other plants. Otherwise, they will not be able
to reproduce. This is more than just a hypothesis: it is a very practical
theory. For reasons that are not fully clear, there is a significant shortage
of bees in the world. The worldwide scarcity of available pollinators severely
harms agriculture and threatens supplies of produce for the human population.
In
Veggie munching helps lower blood pressure
(Personal Liberty Digest) – It is widely known that consumption of vegetables has numerous health benefits, and a new study has found a link that may explain why they also appear to contribute to lower blood pressure.
Scientists from the Feinberg School of Medicine at
The research team reviewed data from the International Study
on Macro/Micronutrients and Blood Pressure involving 4,680 participants aged between 40-59 and living in rural and urban areas of
Their results suggested that boosting the consumption of protein-rich vegetables by 4.72 percent resulted in a 1.5 to 3 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) decrease in systolic blood pressure and a 1 to 1.6 mm Hg reduction in diastolic pressure.
Dr. Jeremiah Stamler, professor
emeritus of the Department of Preventive Medicine in the
For people suffering from high blood pressure there is also a range of nutritional supplements they can add to their diet to boost their cardiovascular health.
California
seed distributor sending toys to Haiti
(News10)
Seeds to the World, started by retired farmer Ray Baglietto, packed up thousands of toys for orphanages in
"We've been getting more and more toys all the time. This will represent 10,000 toys that are going there," said Baglietto, 85.
Bagliletto said charities usually pick up the cost of shipping his seeds around the world. For the toys, sponsors and a group called Universal Aid were assumed the shipping charges. Baglietto's expertise at shipping is how his agency got involved.
The toys were to be driven by truck to
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