An Iowa State professor set out to discover what it would take for the Midwest to grow the fruits and vegetables its residents consume. If Midwestern farms set aside 270,025 acres of cropland — about what's found in one of Iowa's 99 counties — the region could produce enough fruits and vegetables to meet the partial year demand in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The study was conducted by Dave Swenson, an Iowa State economist.
The study included apricots, asparagus, mustard greens, bell peppers, onions, broccoli, peaches, cabbage, pears, cantaloupe, plums, carrots, raspberries, cauliflower, snap beans, collard greens, spinach, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, strawberries, garlic, sweet potatoes, kale, tomatoes, watermelon and lettuce — both leaf and head, according to an Associated Press story. The study didn't include pumpkins, apples or cherries, since the region already grows enough of those crops to meet local demand. Growing local would create $882 million in sales and add 9,300 jobs in the Midwest. (Jobs and sales would decline in other regions, of course.)
Swenson doesn't expect Midwestern farmers to switch their crops any time soon. He said the best chance for growers came with demand for local foods from city buyers. "The people that supply that demand will organize close to those markets," Swenson said. "If locally grown foods are going to take off and be a viable component of the economy, it's going to happen there."
One of the most emailed stories from the New York Times Sunday was about corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup has become something of a nutritional demon over the last several years, as consumers plead with manufacturers to replace HFCS with plain old sugar. Hunt's is now shipping ketchup that brags on the label, "No high fructose corn syrup." Most scientists have concluded that HFCS is not nutritionally different from sugar, according to reporter Melanie Warner. Both will make you gain weight if you consume enough.
But no matter. Consumers have become convinced that HFCS is bad — and sugar is "natural" — and so they aren't buying. Sales of HFCS were down 9 percent in 2009 from 2007 in the U.S. Warner tells how the Corn Refiners Association has begun a campaign to try to give back HFCS' good name. They've spent $30 million in the last two years. Sales are still down. And people are buying a more "natural" Mountain Dew with sugar.
Meanwhile, manufacturers have found a place to sell their HFCS — Mexico. They are replacing sugar in Mexican sodas with HFCS. Consumption of HFCS south of the U.S. border is expected to be up 50 percent.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard the first case involving genetically engineered crops Tuesday. The case involved a three-year-old ban on Monsanto's genetically modified alfalfa. Sale of the Roundup Ready alfalfa was blocked by a court order in California after opponents claimed that Monsanto's seed contaminated their crops and cripple export sales to countries that ban GMO products. The judge ordered an environmental impact study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Earlier, the USDA had okayed the Monsanto product; the USDA is expected to complete the environmental study of the alfalfa next year.
The justices spent little time dwelling on the debate about the safety or environmental effects of biotech crops," wrote the Des Moines Register's Philip Brasher. "But Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that the threat to conventional or organic growers was minor and manageable. 'It makes it more difficult for them to have a field of 100 percent non-genetically engineered (alfalfa), but that’s not the end of the world,' Scalia said."
The Supreme Court's decision is due in June. Opponents say they may take the case back to court. Brasher interviewed one alfalfa producer who said that if the Court ends the band, the threat of cross-polination from GMS crops will push the production of non-biotech alfalfa to Canada.
Ag and Trade | Environment | Food | Politics and Government
The Humane Society has taken on confined animal farming in a way that has started a war in rural America, making it more difficult for family farmers to open markets and raise livestock ethically.
The Department of Justice has continued the public side of its investigation into possible antitrust violations in the agriculture business. In early March, the DOJ went to Iowa, where the agency's lawyers heard about seed monopolies and contract hog raising. This week, Christine A. Varney, the Assistant U.S. Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division (above) listened to dairy farmers in New York State as they described the lack of competition in milk markets, according to a story in the Buffalo News written by Phil Fairbanks.
"We want and need to be able to control our family farm's destiny," Jeremy Verratti, a dairy farmer in Gasport, said during a meeting at Genesee Community College. "We want to stay dairy farmers and we want to stay in Gasport." New York Sen. Charles Schumer noted that farmers "are getting paid less and consumers are paying more...Someone is walking away with all the money."
Varney and DOJ attorneys plan to visit other milk producing states, such as Vermont and Wisconsin. They will hear other farmers who contend that a lack of competition for milk is driving prices down. At one point, Varney acknowledged the crisis in dairy country, according to Fairbanks. "We will not let you down," she said. "We know the problem you're facing."
Americans are preoccupied with what they put in their gut — and some are willing to pay high dollar to get just the right caviar or cheese. But what if the "sheep's milk" cheese comes from a cow? Or if the jar of "Sturgeon caviar" comes from some kind of fish in a Mississippi pond? The Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton writes today about "food fraud" and how the Food and Drug Administration is under pressure (from honest producers more than anybody else) to crack down on cheats.
Layton quotes an academic who figures that up to 7% of the nation's food is sold under false pretenses. "It's growing very rapidly, and there's more of it than you might think," said James Morehouse, a senior partner at A.T. Kearney Inc., which is studying the issue for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the food and beverage industry. The stories are amazing: Gallo selling millions of bottles of Pinot Noir wine that really came from a mishmash of other kinds of grapes. The National Seafood Inspection Laboratory has sampled seafood, finding that a third of the fish sold between '88 and '97 was mislabled. The folks at the University of North Carolina figure that 77 percent of the snapper sold in the U.S. isn't snapper at all (above).
The FDA now has DNA tests it can use to identify foods, but it only inspects 2 percent of the fish imported to the U.S. The agency is having a hard enough time finding spoiled food, much less Russian caviar than really comes from Dixie.
We just liked Jim Etter's story about Ruben Hopper today. Hopper is 106 years old and he still gardens in Pawnee County, with the help of his 79-year-old son Bob. His motto: "Always work hard, and raise plenty of vegetables to eat."
Well, there's more to it than that. First, there's poker. Ruben plays -- small stakes only and none of that casino gambling. And, "I never did smoke,” he said, "but I did drink a lot of that moonshine.” He didn't visit a doctor until he was 94. Now he takes "two dizzy pills and two aspirins a day." And eats lots of vegetable -- potatoes, squash, okra, melons.
The Department of Agriculture will begin testing to make sure that foods labeled "organic" are actually free from pesticides, the New York Times reports. The decision comes after a report from the inspector general for USDA found "numerous shortcomings at the agriculture department’s National Organic Program, which regulates the industry, including poor oversight of some organic operations overseas and a lack of urgency in cracking down on marketers of bogus organic products."
Spot testing of organic products was required by a law passed in 1990, but those tests weren't carried out. (The report issued by the inspector general didn't name any producers who might be spraying crops and then marketing them as organic.) Tests of organic produce are to begin in September.
The USDA's organic program's budget is to be increased from $3.9 million to $6.9 million. Sales of "organic" produce reached $26 billion last year.
Under pressure from the U.S., the Canadian government has agreed to increase the frequency of inspections at meat processing plants. The union representing food inspectors in Canada said their members were inspecting plants every 16 hours of operation. U.S. safety standards call for 12-hour intervals. Canada has been paying overtime since November to comply with the U.S. standard.
There have been several problems with tainted meat recently coming from Canadian plants. (U.S. facilities have had their problems, too.) The new inspection plan will comply with U.S. regulations. The additional inspections “will allow us to better meet the USDA’s technical requirements for products exported to the U.S.,” according to a Canadian official.