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October 12, 2009
· USDA’s thumb in producer-consumer pie
· Potato Board responds to risky food claims
· Judge orders Fresh Del Monte to pay workers
· Eating local morphs into buy direct movement
· Climate plan sends shivers across the Heartland
USDA’s thumb in producer-consumer pie
(JournalStar.com)
RAYMOND - Bush is out, Obama is in, and the people on the production end of the
food pipeline in
"Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" is an example of renewed efforts in the U.S. Department of Agriculture to connect consumers more directly with the people who grow what they eat.
It could also be said the government's biggest food promoter and food regulator is putting more of its money closer to where the mouths are. In one week, according to USDA officials, the funding total for "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" added up to $65 million.
Krista Dittman - whose 10 years in food production in the Lincoln area has taken her from selling a few dozen eggs to making and marketing a dozen different kinds of cheese - likes the message she's getting from a new federal initiative and from growing numbers of customers.
"There's kind of a resurgence, maybe, of people being interested in the food they eat," she said.
Kendell Keith, president of the National Grain and Feed Association, isn't quite as pleased.
"This is a significant philosophical and policy shift," Keith said in a recent association newsletter. "The emphasis now is on fostering local and regional agricultural production/processing and direct farmer-to-consumer marketing approaches."
To Dittman, this is great. To Keith, not so great. "Is the
Along with decidedly different points of view about how to spend taxpayers' money, Dittman and Keith view it from very different places.
Keith's vantage point is
Dittman's is Branched Oak Farm,
tiny by conventional farming standards, but big enough to accommodate a small
herd of
The Dittman enterprise got started with the help of two federal grants that added up to about $30,000. One was a rural development grant and the other was for sustainable agricultural research and education.
On a typical day on the farm, Dittman's thoughts about farm policy have to fit between the latest batches of hard Alpine cheeses.
Not all of her contemplations come wrapped in gratitude for the apparent adjustment in spending priorities at USDA. She senses a rising level of public consciousness about healthy eating and some skepticism about federal food standards.
"We as a people have given a lot of trust to the government, and I think the pendulum is swinging back," she said.
Consumer desire to look beyond federal food-safety labels
and to put a name and a face on what they buy could be a factor in rising sales
for Dittman and cheese-making partner Charuth Loth of
"This year I've seen a little over a double increase in sales from last year," said Dittman.
Liz Sarno, organic projects director for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said consumers' efforts to connect more directly with food production also work in the favor of the state's producers of tomatoes, black walnuts, wine and, in the case of Bill Rhynalds of Prague and sons Shad and Joel, the crucial beer ingredient hops.
The elder Rhynalds is feeling good about his first year of hops production despite the need to poke cedar poles and a wire and rope grid 18 feet into the air to support hops vines.
"There are actually six hops growers in
Microbreweries in
Brian Depew of the
Still, said
"I would suggest that USDA, under previous leadership, has invested lots of money in unlimited subsidies to the largest farms in the country. And, if anything, we welcome a rebalancing of priorities by USDA."
Potato Board responds to risky food claim
(Wire Services) – Last week’s announcement by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) naming potatoes to the list of the "Top 10 Riskiest Foods Regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration" requires some important clarification so as not to raise unnecessary alarm or confusion among consumers.
"Potatoes are inherently healthy and are not an inherently risky food and they should not be on this list at all. The issue is cross-contamination, not the potato itself," said Tim O'Connor, CEO of the U.S. Potato Board.
Potatoes rank number five on the CSPI list, which is based on federal data collected since 1990 about foods that caused the largest numbers of foodborne-illness outbreaks. Potatoes are on the list because of the risk of cross-contamination due to improper handling, either in food service settings or home kitchens. The following information provides important information about potatoes and food safety for media, consumers, retailers and food services operators:
* Potatoes are not an inherently risky food. There is no reason consumers should be concerned about continuing to enjoy potatoes in all the ways they always have. Proper handling of potatoes eliminates the majority of food safety concerns.
* Good food safety practices and procedures - both at home and in restaurant kitchens or other food service settings - are important to the safe consumption of the vegetable that is a staple of so many American's diets. By following the tips below, consumers can feel confident about the safety of the potatoes they purchase, consume and serve:
o Store potatoes in a cool and dark place out of direct sunlight.
o Wash potatoes thoroughly prior to cooking and remove any discolored portion. Be sure to wash hands after handling raw potatoes.
o Be sure to chop or handle potatoes on a clean cutting board to avoid cross contamination with other foods.
o Cross contamination can also occur from ingredients combined with potatoes in recipes such as potato salad, so be sure to use proper safety techniques with all ingredients.
o Cook thoroughly. Potatoes should reach an internal temperature of at least 140 degrees; for boiled potatoes water temp should reach 212 degrees
o Refrigerate any leftovers soon after cooking. Do not allow to stand at room temp for longer than 20 minutes.
* Finally, more
than 41 billion pounds of potatoes are enjoyed each year by
"Potatoes have long-served as an important part of American's diets, and there is no reason why anyone should feel concerned about consuming potatoes now or ever," said Kathleen Triou, VP of Domestic Marketing for the U.S. Potato Board. "That said, proper kitchen practices must rule the day when it comes to keeping potatoes - and all other foods - safe, wholesome and naturally good to eat."
Judge orders Fresh Del Monte to pay workers
(OregonLive.com)
– A Multnomah County jury has ruled that Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. must
compensate for the unpaid wages of 1,200 workers employed at its
This is the second lawsuit with a verdict against Fresh Del Monte based on the same violations. A third lawsuit alleging like practices was filed in July.
The current verdict resolves a class-action lawsuit against Fresh Del Monte filed in September 2007 by former and current employees, which alleged wage and hour violations, failure to compensate for time spent putting on and removing protective clothing, failure to pay overtime and requiring workers to buy their own protective clothing.
Judges ruled that the dressing and undressing were done
prior to punching in on the clock. The jury also found that dressing and undressing
used up time in the workers' unpaid 30-minute lunch breaks.
Jurors rejected the claim that the company should have paid for the protective clothing.
By requiring workers to dress and undress off the clock,
Fresh Del Monte failed to pay minimum wage and, in some cases, overtime, said
the workers' attorney, Jim McCandlish.
The jury held that Fresh Del Monte broke an agreement reached in response to the first workers' lawsuit against the food processor to ensure that the same violations would not reoccur.
Regular overtime or pay abuses at Fresh Del Monte also were
alleged in the federal affidavit filed by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement before the raid at the
The third lawsuit alleging pay violations, which has no trial date yet, covers workers employed at Fresh Del Monte from 2007 until today.
Eating local morphs into buy direct movement
(The
Oregonian)
Call it shopping off the grid, where urbanites do business directly with producers, set a time and a place to receive the goods, then fill their fridge and freezer with all kinds of edibles.
The buy-direct habit often starts with a community supported agriculture agreement, where a household gets a weekly share of a farm's vegetable harvest. What's different now is that you can get a lot more from the source than just fresh produce.
Some let you add bread and berries; others let you skip the vegetables altogether and sign up for separate shares of eggs, chicken, beef or farmstead cheeses. And a few Northwest farms, taking their cue from other parts of the country, are establishing urban buying clubs, where city folks pool their orders and arrange for delivery to a spot near their homes.
If you'd rather not cook, there's something for you, too: Community Supported Kitchens, or CSKs, that sell prepared food made from local products.
But the roots of this off-the-grid shopping spree go back to the farm, specifically small CSA farms with lists of loyal customers.
"It's sort of a big play date," says Summer Steenbargen of Dee Creek Farm in southwest
Members fill bags and coolers with what they've ordered, bring cash or checks and buy extra if it's available. "Somebody called it a co-op recently. And it wasn't a plan, but it's sort of turned into one," Steenbargen says.
Whether they call them "co-ops" or not,
cooperative CSAs are a new direction for small farms
wanting to appeal to more customers and cut out the middle man. In recent
years, Troutdale organic vegetable grower Shari Sirkin
teamed with Scio ranchers Harmony J.A.C.K. to offer pastured eggs and grass-fed
beef. Now, members of Dancing Roots Farm - Sirkin's
CSA - also can preorder Alaskan sockeye salmon from
Carley Shaut,
31, of
The fish, packed in coolers on dry ice, showed up in August
at the farm's
advertising
"It tastes really, really fresh and really flavorful, not fishy. They're very careful with their practices and that's something we care about."
Which is just what Eike and Reid Ten Kley of Iliamna
Fish Co., whose families have fished
"Our goal is to get quality salmon to people at a decent price," Eike says. "The fish is so delicious and good for you, we think it's ridiculous that the average middle-income family can't afford it."
By eliminating the middle man, they get a decent return on
the sockeye or "red" salmon and pay their fishing partners a sustainable
wage, Eike says. And it allows the couple, who now
make their home in
Bulk-buying opportunities for seafood are still relatively
few, but for meat and other livestock products, buying clubs are the next wave.
Tyler and Alicia Jones of Afton Field Farm in
Members place orders individually on the farm's Web site, choosing one of several established drop sites at people's homes. With about 10 households, you can establish a new group, says Tyler Jones, as long as the order exceeds the farm's minimum of $1,000 and a member offers his or her home as a drop site.
Other farms leave the delivery arrangements to customers.
Annie Adams found eight families in her
"None of us (in the buying group) are wealthy; we're pretty middle income. It's just important enough for us to want to eat this way."
Besides meat and eggs, Adams stays off the shopping grid for most everything in her kitchen: She gets cream and butter delivered every two weeks from Noris Dairy, and buys bulk beans, grains and other natural products from Azure Standard in Dufur, a company that pools online orders and delivers to drop points around the city.
But what if you like the idea of eating food from local sustainable growers more than the act of cooking it?
If you're willing to shell out a bit of cash, you can take your appetite to a Community Supported Kitchen. Not quite a catering company, restaurant or a personal chef, a CSK lets you buy prepared food made from the greens, pork, eggs and cheese grown by local farmers.
On a more intimate scale is Alton Garcia's CSA Canning Club,
a fun side project for the former chef at
So for $40 a month, members receive six jars of fruit, jams, tomato sauce, pickles, condiments and/or other canned treats.
"It's not a profit-making thing," Garcia says. "It's a bunch of people we know, and we're all sharing the cost of things." They hope to keep the club going year-round.
"At first I thought, 'Well there's all this fresh food that's available right now,'" says Heather Barta, who owns a graphic design and marketing business and is one of the club's 20 members. "But it's nice to have something stored away for winter. I'm someone who doesn't have time to can, so it's nice that somebody else does."
So far she's received onion marmalade - a fond memory from
Garcia's days at
In the winter there won't be as much, Garcia says, but he's eager to make sauerkraut, Moroccan preserved lemons and other salt-preserved citrus, and dried corn for when fresh corn is gone. (Creamed corn made with reconstituted dried corn is a revelation, Garcia says).
Barta, who last month scored jars
of pear mustard and green tomato pickles from McCrae's
"Everything that he touches is delicious."
Climate plan sends shivers across the Heartland
(AP via Yahoo! News) SUGARCREEK, Ohio – Nestled in Ohio's Amish country, Bill Belden's 124-year-old family owned brick company has thrived on the region's rich red clay and shale, and cheap energy from abundant coal.
Which he's convinced that a climate bill being considered in Congress will end.
A cap-and-trade system forcing businesses away from fossil fuels, especially coal, will mean higher electricity and natural gas costs, he says. And layoffs at the Belden Brick Co.
"We're already under severe economic strain," said Belden, standing beside towering stacks of fresh bricks outside one of the six plants that ring Sugarcreek.
The town, about 80 miles south of
It's brick, however, that's Sugarcreek's economic foundation.
A lifelong Republican, Belden said his criticism of the Democratic-run Congress over global warming isn't about politics, but economics. "We've got to compete in the world and to do so we need low cost energy," he argues.
Bills before the House and Senate would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent to 20 percent over the next decade and by more than 80 percent by midcentury. The government would cap emissions from power plants and industrial plants, forcing polluters to shift from fossil fuels or buy emission credits. Either way, energy prices will jump, though by how much is the subject of much dispute.
In Ohio, and across much of the heartland from Michigan and Indiana to the Dakotas, and in Missouri and Arkansas, where agriculture and manufacturing are the business engines, the government's effort to curb climate-changing pollution is viewed widely through an economic prism: Will it increase energy costs and drive businesses and jobs overseas to countries such as China that may not commit to similar controls on fossil energy?
President Barack Obama and congressional leaders need centrist Democrats from those states to overcome solid Republican opposition to climate legislation passed by the House and awaiting Senate action.
Nowhere is the predicament more apparent than in
"The climate change bill is all about jobs," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.
With strong support from both environmentalists and labor
unions, he's in the precarious position of trying to reconcile the urgent need
to address climate change while assuring people in
Brown's answers: push for more clean energy jobs _ think
wind turbines and solar panels _ and make sure any bill helps offset energy
price spikes and doesn't cause a plant to shut down, open shop in
"I see it as an opportunity to make this bill work for manufacturing," he said in an interview.
___
It's a 30-minute drive up Interstate 77 from Belden's plants
to the United Steelworkers Union office just outside
Like Brown, Holcomb and union members see the climate bill
debate in
If energy prices jump, Holcomb says he'll put up a windmill and generate his own power.
But he's not exactly a tree-hugging environmentalist. He
recalls the push decades ago to clean up
His warning to those in
"If we're just going to put a bill in and say we're going to clean the air ... but not create jobs, we've already seen that happen. We've got to do it in a way that's going to bring jobs into this country and not let them go out of here."
Many of the union's members work across town, producing
specialty steel at a mill owned by the Timken Co., a $5.6 billion global
manufacturer of high-grade precision bearings for everything from cars and
locomotives to jetliners and giant wind turbines. Of its 25,000 employees
worldwide, about 5,000 are in
It's electricity bill for the steel
mill and five other
Ward "Tim" Timken Jr., company's chairman, said
the
"This whole notion that the
Timken, a member of one of
"These guys have to wake up and realize that their jobs are stake," he said.
If the bill became law, "there would be some very
difficult decisions to be made, quite frankly. I've got a global footprint. A
quarter of my work force is in
___
Across the Rust Belt, people on both sides of the climate issue couch their messages in terms of jobs.
A rally in downtown
Speakers _ a mix of environmentalists and labor leaders _
talked of the "transition to a cleaner energy" and "retooling
the manufacturing economy" and reducing
Donald Opatka, a regional director of the Utility Workers of America, speak of the need to "transition to a cleaner energy transmission system" that will produce new jobs and save old ones.
Later, in an interview, Opatka noted the irony of his participation. Many of his union's members work at coal-burning power plants that are the climate bill's target.
"It's a real conflict for us," he said. But in the long run, climate legislation "is going to happen and we can either put our heads in the sand ... or get our oars in the water" and position workers for clean energy jobs.
At a far different rally the next day in
On a Friday morning, more than 700 people have streamed into
a conference room at the civic center. One-third were
bused in from a Marathon Oil Co. facility in nearby
The crowd is a mix of oil workers, anti-government "tea party" protesters, global warming skeptics, and people just worried the legislation will send energy bills up, more jobs overseas and factories to their end. Few believe a green jobs revolution will make up for jobs that could be lost.
"It forces too many things on people," said grocery store worker Francis German, who acknowledges not knowing its details.
One of the speakers, Andy Johnson, brought a copy of the
morning paper that has a picture of people lining up at a food bank the day
before at one of the two
___
Larry Ward Jr., a chef at the Holiday Inn, had no interest
in the rally. He says what people in
But asked about what he thinks about Congress dealing with climate change, Ward calls it "a crock" and is skeptical about wind and solar energy replacing fossil fuels. But Robin Martin, a hotel cashier, sees climate change as worrisome and alternative energy as the future.
Mike Knisley, business manager for Local 776 of the United Association of Plumbers, Pipefitters and Service Technicians, describes the area as a blue-collar and farm community with a mix of industrial plants.
"For the most part people are looking for a commonsense approach, a balance" on climate change.
About eight in 10 of Knisley's union members work in heavy industries, including those at the Husky Oil refinery just outside of town. "If the refinery out there closes due to cap and trade we're out of business," he said.
About the climate change legislation, he said: "If we were in better economic times it would be a little bit easier pill to swallow. The timing is just bad."
End Transmission