Cold snap ruins fruit harvest

Post #281,293 by admin 4/10/07 6:57:00 PM 4/10/07 6:57:24 PM Reply	Cold snap ruins fruit harvest [link\|http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0411/p02s01-usec.html\|http://www.csmonitor.../p02s01-usec.html] Usually it's hurricanes and ice storms, drought and floods, that do harm to the nation's breadbasket. This time, it was an Easter cold snap that rolled over the South and Midwest with a vengeance. Peach and apple crops have been wiped out. Strawberry, blueberry, and blackberry growers struggled with limited success to save their fruits. Wheat, corn, and alfalfa crops also took a heavy whack. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..." Edited by admin April 10, 2007, 06:57:24 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #281,410 by lincoln 4/11/07 3:34:14 PM Reply	At least they didn't blame violence in the Middle East yet ... lincoln "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem. I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a *Citizen* of the United States. [link\|mailto:golf_lover44@yahoo.com\|contact me]
Post #281,416 by Andrew Grygus 4/11/07 4:09:37 PM Reply	Note also "wheat, corn and alfalfa". Due to the popular "Ethanol for SUVs" program corn prices are already extremely high. You can bet that with the corn crop now down that portion designated for ethanol will not be cut, which means animal feed costs will soar even higher. With corn so high growers have already started using more wheat, but that crop has been hit as well. Herd reduction, already underway, is accelerating and animals are being sent to slaughter at lower weight. The obvious result is shortages at the meat counter. Demand will need to be reduced, and you do that by raising prices. Earlier this year agricultural prognosticators were predicting the ethanol program would increase the cost of beef, pork and chicken on the American table by at least 50%. With crops damaged as well I think it's going to be more like double. I've heard, but not yet confirmed, that it takes 1.1 calories of energy to produce 1.0 calories worth of ethanol, and most of that energy will come from petroleum products. If that's anything like correct "Food into Fuel" will raise your fuel prices too. Looks like I should start putting up bean recipes on the Clovegarden site. Diverting food to fuel SUVs is one of the stupidest ideas the honorable idiots in Washington have come up with yet - but with Cargill and ADM lining their pockets it probably doesn't look so stupid to them. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #281,420 by CRConrad 4/11/07 4:39:05 PM Reply	Shortages coming-but a chance to fill up your freezer first? Da Gryge prognosticates: Herd reduction, already underway, is accelerating and animals are being sent to slaughter at lower weight. The obvious result is shortages at the meat counter. If they're sending a bunch of animals that normally wouldn't have been slaughtered yet, together with the ones they were going to send to slaughter anyway -- and what else would they do with those? -- then (while there certainly will be shortages once the herds have been culled) there should actually be a glut on the market to begin with, while the herds are being culled. Demand will need to be reduced, and you do that by raising prices. Earlier this year agricultural prognosticators were predicting the ethanol program would increase the cost of beef, pork and chicken on the American table by at least 50%. With crops damaged as well I think it's going to be more like double. But maybe, if prices rise only after this (unconfirmed) initial abundance, staying at their current level to begin with -- or maybe even being lowered a little at first, to get rid of the over-supply I'm hypothesizing? -- then maybe you'll still first be able to stockpile some meat for latter, leaner, days, without ruining yourself financially. Over-Priced Weatherman Advice: If you see meat for sale cheap in the near future, stock up! [link\|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode\|Christian R. Conrad] (I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.) Ah, the Germans: Masters of Convoluted Simplification. — [link\|http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=1603\|Jehovah]
Post #281,424 by Andrew Grygus 4/11/07 5:00:26 PM Reply	So far, we haven't been seeing that. Prices have been steady to higher. The articles I've read in the Wall Street Journal indicate herd reduction is being done in a disciplined manner to avoid exactly the situation you suggest. It's not as if the growers couldn't see this coming pretty far in advance. Now if the corn and wheat kills in the Midwest are really serious we might see some dumping, but I haven't seen much to indicate they're more than moderate yet. The impact can be hard to predict. We had unseasonal freezing here in California a few months back with what the press called catastrophic damage to the citrus crop. The cost for my breakfast oranges (California navels) went up from U.S. $0.49/pound to $0.69/pound for about three weeks and then dropped back to $0.49/pound. The bins were never empty. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #281,427 by Another Scott 4/11/07 5:32:42 PM Reply	We're getting our red bell peppers from Guatamala... :-/ I don't know what's going on, but I'm seeing a lot more average produce from Central America in my local Safeway. I also got some oranges and grapefruit from some Caribbean island or other a few months ago (they were ordered from a fruit farm in Florida). It's good that we're sending business to farmers in poorer parts of the hemisphere, but it seems weird that California and Florida aren't dominating the trade the way they used to. And what on Earth is up with us getting [link\|http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/menu04_07.html\|wheat from China for pet food]??? Cheers, Scott.
Post #281,431 by folkert 4/11/07 5:45:48 PM Reply	It is the same economy that can... send full oranges frozen to China... have then squeeze/puree them and concentrate it and then send it to Thailand and package it as OJ from concentrate in GLASS bottles and send it to the US and STILL be 50% cheaper than many other OJ brands on the shelf. Ridiculous. -- [link\|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net\|greg], [link\|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry\|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ *i_wethey* Freedom is not FREE. Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars? SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0; 0 rows returned.
Post #281,437 by Andrew Grygus 4/11/07 6:34:07 PM Reply	Not actually ridiculous. High speed communications and transportation combined with eased trade restrictions is producing an economy without borders. The Internet and containerized cargo, both sea and air have changed the world dramatically. Eventually this will equalize prosperity around the world, but for the time being transportation is so fast and cheap and communication so easy it makes sense to get stuff done where the cost is lowest. The big zinger in here is, of course, pollution. One of the major differences in costs is pollution controls. Once those get more equalized, and it will, you'll see less long distance transportation of goods. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #281,440 by folkert 4/11/07 6:44:19 PM Reply	I guess, I should restate the "Ridiculous". Ridiculous in the fact that that the Major OJ Brands, that taste worse than the marathong OJ, are still costing this much. It stays here, things are done the same way put in less costly "plastic" or waxed cardboard and STILL cost more. Yes, but let me ask you this: Why are we not putting the "pollution" restrictions on the cost on things coming in from over _there_? It would be the great equalizer. If they put the pollution controls on, the restrictions get reduced. Same things for other product imports. When your product has the same "OSHA" and "CARB" requirements our similar products do... then you will get the roll-down of the penalties. So, I guess this is all just nonsense. Big Oil, ADM, [RI\|MP]AA, Microsoft... etc have us all above a burning fire. -- [link\|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net\|greg], [link\|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry\|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ *i_wethey* Freedom is not FREE. Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars? SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0; 0 rows returned.
Post #281,446 by Andrew Grygus 4/11/07 7:29:12 PM Reply	There are plenty of weird anomolies. Worse than your orange juice, how come bottled sparkling water in glass from half way around the world costs no more, often less, than local sparkling water in plastic? Do American springs work at union scale or something? Realistically, with fizzy water you're really selling packaging and transportation not water. So how come I'm buying Gerolsteiner for $0.89/liter in glass bottles all they way from Krautland where the wages are high, with an unfavorable exchange rate and transportation half way around the world - and local water in plastic bottles costs as much? Of course I'm buying that from a small chain, not the big supers. With their "economies of scale" they're selling it for nearly a dollar a bottle more. So how come a bottle of Heinz apple cider vinegar (the real one) costs $3 at the supermarkets and $2 at a one store multi-ethnic grocery? It's been that way for years. Just about everything is way cheaper in the single stores and small chains. I think that with today's communication and transportation systems "economies of scale" are strongly negative in many areas of commerce. All "economies of scale" gets you is a huge amount of expensive infrastructure, overhead and an inefficient distribution systems. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #281,451 by tonytib 4/11/07 8:01:32 PM Reply	Union wages and inefficiencies for one, in most big supers plus maybe an old "Sears" mentality (sales all the time, the non-sale products don't move as much) versus a "Walmart" mentality (low prices all the time, keep the product moving) for the smaller grocery stores. BTW, Walmart's food prices in general aren't that great. And I can get 12 liters (24x0.5) of Crystal Geyser locally bottled water for $4 or less, which is about $0.33/liter. Maybe carbonated water is more, but I don't buy it; Germans do seem to love it, based on my experience. Around here, who has the lowest prices seems to depend on the item. For example, I find Asian markets best for seafood, Indian markets best for olive oil (cheaper than Costco), etc. --Tony
Post #281,572 by lincoln 4/12/07 4:22:51 PM Reply	Might be like the auto industry in the 1980s So how come I'm buying Gerolsteiner for $0.89/liter in glass bottles all they way from Krautland where the wages are high, with an unfavorable exchange rate and transportation half way around the world - and local water in plastic bottles costs as much? Remember the "self-imposed" quotas of Japanese cars back then? Since they were limited on how many cars they could send to USA annually, they loaded up everything with as many options as possible to maximize profit, and sent mostly their top of the line models. Detroit had demanded the quotas so that they "could compete fairly". So what happened? When Detroit saw the sticker prices of the cars coming from Japan, they jacked up *THEIR* prices to be "just a hair below" what the Japanese prices were to maximize their profits. I'd bet that your local water bottle firms are doing the same. lincoln "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem. I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a *Citizen* of the United States. [link\|mailto:golf_lover44@yahoo.com\|contact me]
Post #281,435 by Andrew Grygus 4/11/07 5:58:24 PM Reply	We see plenty from South and Central America . . . . . here in California too, and even from New Zealand. It's very seasonal. For instance we've been seeing Mexican asparagus for a few weeks, then it'll be California asparagus for a while, then the Washington crop. A couple months after that we'll be seeing it from Chili again. I think part of this is consumer demand for better tasting produce and increasing energy costs making out-of-season growing less attractive. With high speed transportation, better packaging methods and eased trade restrictions it's just cheaper and better to get it from where it's in season. Also easing this situation is the effort being made in Latin America, Vietnam and elsewhere to bring production, processing methods and facilities into compliance with U.S. regulations. Meanwhile, I haven't heard that California agriculture is hurting any, though there is a steady drift to higher dollar/acre crops. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #281,464 by boxley 4/11/07 9:57:03 PM Reply	the fresh food belt in florida is getting paved west palm used to be the tomato capital of america, damn few farms left. thanx, bill Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep reach me at [link\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
Post #281,465 by Another Scott 4/11/07 9:57:52 PM Reply	Ah. Makes sense. Thanks.
Post #281,463 by boxley 4/11/07 9:55:44 PM Reply	well if you are willing to do your own butchering horseflesh seems to be going pretty cheap. You would have to be a tad quiet about it. thanx, bill Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep reach me at [link\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
Post #281,473 by Andrew Grygus 4/11/07 10:51:35 PM Reply	Horse requires special recipes though. It has a sweet flavor that doesn't fit well with beef recipes, or so I hear. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #281,478 by boxley 4/11/07 11:47:08 PM Reply	not really, although only having one stomache most lamb, sheep, goat and camel recipes should be okay maybe a 1 lb goat can be substituded by 1 lb horse. thanx, bill Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep reach me at [link\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]

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