www.JackrabbitCheese.com
As part of our expansion, we want to buy milk from a local dairy farm. That’s not as easy as it sounds. Almost all the farmers in this area contract with the local dairy co-op, and their contract says they can’t sell to anyone else. So even though they’re losing money because the wholesale milk [...]
(Wal-Mart photo.)
Time Magazine reports that Wal-Mart has a plan: to put as many of its remaining competitors out of business as it can. And financial writer Jeff Hwang at Motley Fool notes that Wal-Mart already exerts an emormous amount of leverage over its suppliers:
“Wal-Mart accounts for 28% of Dial’s sales, 24% of Del Monte Foods’ sales, and [...]
(Svadilfari photo.)
Who gets to decide what food you eat? In the case of potatoes, it’s McDonalds. Says AP:
Because McDonald’s buys more than 3.4 billion pounds of U.S. potatoes annually, it has the power to dictate whether a variety sprouts or winds up in the less-lucrative supermarket freezer’s crinklecut bin — or worse yet, banished to [...]
Ken Meter discusses the dilemma of high land prices preventing new farnmers from entering the industry.
According to one source, in 2003 Americans bought $450 billion in retail food. Of this, $40 billion (less than 9%) went to the farmers that grew the food. Compare that with the portion that Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club (the two largest food retailers) got: $80 billion.
The average retail sales per retail employee was $127,000. The [...]
“In my mind, what a food system ought to do and what a strong one would accomplish is to really give us very healthy food that we know the source of. And it should help us build wealth in our communities. It should also help us connect with each other, as people who learn what [...]
(Euclid Van der Kroew photo: Farm equipment burried by the dust bowl, c. 1935.)
“Unless Americans radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste. Sustainable food has an élitist reputation, but each of us depends on the [...]
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As we begin our careers as licensed cheesemakers, we’re squarely confronted by an ethical dilemma: We believe in local food. We buy it whenever possible, and we want to sell it as well.
There are people in cities a thousand miles away who would love to buy our cheese. They’ll pay more per pound for it [...]