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" I heard it
through the
AgLine"
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September 1, 2011
·
Americans give farming high image marks
·
US farm income on a record pace -- USDA
·
California
farm income a record in 2010
·
Lawsuit puts
food safety cops on edge
·
A sampler of the weirdest food festivals
Americans give farming high image marks
PRINCETON,
NJ -- Americans view the computer
industry the most positively and the federal government the least positively
when asked to rate 25 business and industry sectors. All five of the top-rated
sectors this year are related to either computers or food and agriculture.
Farming and agriculture was the fourth industry with the
most positive image.
Gallup
has asked Americans each August since 2001 to indicate whether they have
positive or negative views of a list of business and industry sectors. The 2011
update is from Gallup's
Aug. 11-14 survey.
The results range from a +62 net positive rating for the
computer industry to a -46 net positive rating for the federal government.
The sectors Americans view most negatively have all had
well-publicized problems in recent years. The federal government has been near
the bottom of the list in previous years, but is at the absolute bottom this
year for the first time, displacing the oil and gas industry. Seventeen percent
of Americans have a positive view of the federal government -- the lowest of
any sector tested this year -- while 63% have a negative image. Only one
sector, oil and gas, has a higher negative percentage, 64%. Other poorly ranked
sectors include real estate, healthcare, banking, and the legal field.
Federal Government's Image at All-Time Low
The positive and the negative ratings for the federal
government this year are the worst since Gallup
began measuring its image in 2003.
The deterioration in Americans' views of the federal
government began in 2004 -- correlated with a downturn in President George W.
Bush's job approval rating and rising concerns about the Iraq war and the economy. Views
turned slightly more positive in 2009 during Barack Obama's first year as
president, but dropped back down last year and again this year, likely
reflecting rising concerns over the economy as well as the increase in
government spending and power.
Other Gallup data from August
of this year show that Congress has the lowest approval rating in Gallup history, and that
satisfaction with the way things are going in this country is near its all-time
low.
Images of Federal Gov't, Real Estate Industry Drop the Most Over the Past Decade
Americans' views of a number of sectors have worsened
dramatically between 2001 and 2011, or, in the case of the federal government,
between 2003 -- the first year Gallup
asked about it -- and 2011.
The images of the federal government and the real estate
industry have dropped the most over the past decade. The percentage of
Americans rating the government positively has declined 24 points since 2003,
and the real estate industry's positive ratings have fallen 23 points since
2001. Other sectors with double-digit drops include the banking sector,
education, accounting, and healthcare.
Americans view four industries more positively now than they
did in August 2001: the Internet industry, electric and gas utilities, and the
computer and movie industries. The current 72% positive rating for the computer
industry is the highest such rating of any industry since Gallup began tracking business sectors in
2001.
Implications
The continuing high ratings for the computer and Internet
industries likely reflect the global success of such American companies as
Google, Apple, and Facebook, the technology
industry's apparent success even in this time of economic uncertainty, and the
increasingly major role that technology plays in Americans' lives. It is less
clear why food-related sectors such as the restaurant industry, farming and
agriculture, and the grocery industry do so well in the eyes of Americans, but
it could reflect the United
States' relatively noncontroversial and
efficient food supply system.
At the other end of the spectrum, poorly rated sectors have
been associated with various well-publicized political or economic problems in
recent years. Americans' frustration with politicians and Washington --
exacerbated by the contentious debt ceiling negotiations -- comes through in
the federal government's all-time low image rating. The oil and gas industry
has never done well in these image assessments, which is likely tied to swings
in gas prices and the overall high price of gas.
The bad image of the real estate industry most likely
reflects the housing crisis that has beset the country in recent years, and the
poor image of the healthcare industry may reflect the rising cost of healthcare
and uncertainly about access issues. Americans continue to view banks poorly,
which clearly reflects lingering concerns from the 2008 financial crisis and
subsequent failure of many banks around the country. Lawyers and the legal
field have never had positive images.
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US farm income on a record pace -- USDA
(Bloomberg)
-- U.S.
farm income will jump 31 percent this year to a record $103.6 billion because
of higher crop and livestock prices, the government said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture boosted its forecast from
$97.3 billion forecast in February. Income last year totaled $79.1 billion.
Receipts from sales of farm commodities will jump 18 percent from last year,
with values for crops including corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton surging to
$33.6 billion and livestock sales climbing to $22.4 billion, the department
said today in a report on its website.
Rising farm incomes, which increase land values and spur
purchases of Monsanto Co. seeds, Agrium Inc. fertilizer and Deere & Co.
tractors, have been driven by greater demand for exports and biofuels. The U.S.
may ship a record $137 billion of farm goods overseas, the USDA said in May.
That figure will be updated tomorrow. Ethanol will consume a record 5.1 billion
bushels, or 39 percent, of this year's projected corn crop, the department said
on Aug. 11.
"The variability of yields has made a huge difference
for individual farmers," Daryll Ray, the director
of the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center at the University of Tennessee in
Knoxville, said in an interview before the report was released.
Futures Rise
Before today, corn futures soared 74 percent from a year ago, soybeans were up 42 percent and wheat 13 percent while
cotton reached a record in March. The increases are offsetting lower yields for
some grains and oilseeds and a projected smaller cotton crop, pushing profits
above the USDA's February prediction.
Expenses such as diesel fuel and animal feed were projected
to rise by $32.5 billion, exceeding $300 billion for the first time, the USDA
said. Government payments will increase almost 18 percent to $10.2 billion,
according to the report.
The increase in farm income drove agricultural real-estate
prices to a record $2,350 an acre this year, the USDA said in a report earlier
this month. Deere, the world's largest farm- equipment maker, reported fiscal
third-quarter profit on Aug. 17 that topped analysts' estimates and raised its
full-year earnings forecast as global demand improved.
Today's estimates will be revised in November.
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California
farm income a record in 2010
(therecordnet.com)
– California's farmers and ranchers received a record high $37.5 billion for
their fruits, vegetables, meat and milk in 2010, up 9 percent from the year
before, federal farm officials reported Tuesday.
Those gains were led by higher prices for milk, as well as
soaring receipts for tree nuts: almonds, walnuts and pistachios.
As previously reported, San Joaquin County
dairy and nut producers shared in those gains, but they also saw value declines
in key fruit and vegetable crops, so overall, the region's farm revenues
amounted to $1.96 billion last year, down 2 percent from 2009.
California
accounted for nearly 12 percent of the nation's farm receipts in 2010,
according to the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service and Economic
Research Service.
State dairy producers received $5.93 billion for their milk
in 2010, up 31 percent from 2009 but down 14 percent from 2008. Higher prices
made the difference as farmers received an average of $14.69 per hundred pounds
of milk in 2010, compared with $11.49 in 2009.
Still, California
dairies struggled to turn a profit in 2010 as higher milk prices were often
offset by the rising cost of feed, such as hay, corn and other grains.
Farm officials said 2010 was a banner year for nut crops,
with almonds, pistachios and walnuts all setting records for estimated values.
Of 11 California
farm products exceeding $1 billion in receipts, pistachios showed the largest
value increase, up 95 percent to $1.16 billion in 2010. Walnuts soared 42
percent to total $1.06 billion, and almonds gained 24 percent in value to $2.84
billion.
In San Joaquin
County, milk and nuts
also scored big gains, according to the annual crop report released Aug. 2.
Milk revenue totaled $341 million in 2010, an increase of
nearly $83.7 million or 32 percent.
The value of the county's walnut crop jumped $46.7 million,
or 29 percent, to $207 million last year. Almonds reached $157 million, up
$22.5 million or 17 percent.
Major county crops seeing revenue declines included grapes,
which totaled $249 million in 2010, down $36 million or 13 percent from the
year before. Also, the cherry crop was down an estimated $28.2 million to $184
million and asparagus revenues were off nearly half to $27.7 million.
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Lawsuit puts food cops on edge
WASHINGTON (AP)
-- A major fruit company's lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration
could have a chilling effect on regulators' efforts to get tainted food off the
market.
Florida-based Del Monte Fresh Produce is striking back at
the FDA with a lawsuit after the agency halted imports of its Guatemalan
cantaloupes, saying they may be contaminated with salmonella. Such a lawsuit is
extremely rare, and the threat of litigation could make officials more
reluctant to tell the public about the possibility of contamination in food.
"If this case is successful from an industry
perspective, it will change the attitude of regulators," said former FDA
assistant commissioner David Acheson, now a food safety consultant. "They
will obviously be more reluctant."
Michael Doyle, the director for the Center for Food Safety
at the University
of Georgia who has
advised the FDA on food safety issues, said the lawsuit could set a dangerous
precedent.
"More often than not the public health authorities and
the epidemiologists are correct," Doyle said. "If you start putting
public health officials in the crosshairs of the lawyers it's probably going to
have a major dampening effect on whether foods are recalled in time to prevent
a substantial amount of illnesses."
The case could also become a major test for the imperfect
science of epidemiology that is used to traced out breaks and determine what is
causing a series of illnesses.
Del Monte conducted a voluntary recall of the cantaloupes,
imported from a farm in Guatemala,
in March after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FDA
determined they were linked to 12 cases of salmonella poisoning. In July, the
FDA went a step further and issued an import alert, halting imports of the
cantaloupes from Guatemala.
In a suit to get a court to lift the alert, filed Aug. 22 in
federal court in Maryland,
Del Monte said cantaloupes from the targeted Guatemalan farm represent almost a
third of the cantaloupes they import. Del Monte complained the FDA officials
based their decision on "erroneous speculative assumption, unsupported by
evidence."
The company has threatened to sue Oregon Public Health and
its senior epidemiologist, William Keene, for playing a part in gathering
evidence against the company.
"Responsible government agencies must be careful to
protect public confidence and not inflame public fears by making statements
about the safety of a particular food product or producer without sufficient
evidence or without conducting a reliable investigation," said Dennis Christou, a vice president at Del Monte.
The FDA, which relies on the CDC and state health
departments to do much of the investigation in foodborne
illness outbreaks, declined to comment because of the pending litigation. Keene also declined to
comment.
Led by CDC scientists, the government conducts foodborne illness investigations by interviewing victims
who are confirmed to have a similar strain of illness and attempt to connect
the dots. CDC has also started using shopper card information to pinpoint
exactly what the victims purchased and consumed, a method that was used in the cantaloupe
investigation.
The CDC said on March 29 that 11 of the people who fell ill
had eaten cantaloupes purchased at eight different locations of an unnamed
national warehouse club, and information from membership card records helped
determine those sickened all purchased cantaloupes sourced from a single farm
in Guatemala.
As this epidemiology has developed and been perfected, there
is less of a need for a "smoking gun" or direct evidence that a
pathogen exists in food, like a sample of the salmonella itself. That is often
hard to find in fresh produce, where the evidence may be long gone. Government
scientists have to determine when they have enough evidence to urge a company
to recall its food and warn the public.
Former officials say it is often a hard call for the
regulators who make those decisions.
"That is the difficulty FDA is dealing with -- when do
you warn, when do you not warn, when do you urge a recall," says Fred Degnan, a former FDA lawyer who now specializes in food law
in private practice. "This is a brave new world for FDA and for
industry."
Acheson said the lawsuit sends "the appropriate message
to everybody that if you are going to make these decisions and put pressure on
companies to recall, you ought to be right."
Public health officials have occasionally stumbled in their
efforts to identify the source of an outbreak quickly. In 2008, FDA and CDC
investigators struggled for weeks to identify the cause of a salmonella
outbreak initially blamed on tomatoes. No contaminated tomatoes were found, and
the outbreak strain eventually was discovered in hot peppers from Mexico.
The Agriculture Department was criticized in August for
taking months to identify the source of a salmonella outbreak in ground turkey.
Though illnesses began in March, the CDC and USDA did not positively identify
the source of the outbreak as Cargill ground turkey until they found a positive
sample in late July. The recall came in early August, after one person had
died.
In the end, tracking down the source of an illness is a
difficult, complicated business and those making the calls say they are aware
of the risks. Kirk Smith, a senior epidemiologist for the Minnesota Department
of Health, said lawsuits won't affect his work.
"We always make sure our evidence is rock-solid before
we go public with information that might trigger a recall or impact a
company," he said.
Return to Top
A sampler of the world’s weirdest food festivals
(MSNBC.com)
– From launching tomatoes to heaving tunas, people love to throw food, and some
of the most spirited annual events offer an excuse to do so.
Rumored to have originated as a local brawl (possibly an
attack on city council members by disgruntled townspeople), La Tomatina in Buñol, Spain,
is the world's largest food fight. In late August, the event attracts some
45,000 people who throw more than 250,000 pounds of overripe tomatoes at one
another. “Participants have a wonderful time throwing tomatoes at anything that
moves,” according to the Tourist Office of Spain.
A horn signals the start of the event, but only after an
agile attendee manages to climb a greased pole and reach a dangling leg of jamón. The free-for-all continues for an hour and ends when
another horn is sounded. There are few guidelines, but participants do squash
tomatoes before throwing them (it hurts less), and many wear masks (tomatoes
can make eyes itch).
Click here to check out
photos of the great splatter.
Not to be outdone, America’s
Biggest Little City hosts La Tomatina en Reno this weekend. “It’s
just bedlam,” is how one organizer describes the festivities. The ammo for the
event is trucked over the Sierra Nevada from California’s
Central Valley and left to cure in the afternoon sun at the City Hall Plaza.
That way, they are guaranteed to be good and mushy when the
first pitch is tossed out around 6 p.m.
Another bizarre food activity takes place at the Tunarama Festival in Port Lincoln, Australia. Going on its
50th year, the festival’s main attraction is the World Champion Tuna Toss
Competition, where contestants sling 20-pound tunas. The record of
approximately 40 yards was set in 1998 by a pro: former Olympic hammer thrower
Sean Carlin.
Instead of throwing food, visitors to the Cheese Curd
Festival in Ellsworth, Wis., prefer to admire it. In celebration of
the century-old Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery, the self-proclaimed
"Cheese Curd Capital" hosts an annual cheese-curd-eating contest and
cheese-carving competition. One recent sculpture depicted a lion eating ice
cream.
The food is unusual at BugFest,
held by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. Visitors not only cheer on bugs at
the Roach Race 5000, but they also dare each other to eat insect dishes
prepared by local chefs. BugFest’s snacks include
cricket cornbread with cricket jalapeño butter, a “critter fritter” served with
toasted cricket and chile mole sauce and a Thai herb salad with roasted giant
mealworms. For dessert: frozen chocolate-covered crickets.
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End Transmission