President Obama is pushing for the biggest free-trade deal in history with the EU. But the EU is concerned, especially about American industrial agriculture. Says Reuters, Washington has long been frustrated by EU restrictions on U.S. farm produce, such as foodstuffs made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), poultry treated with chlorine washes and meat from [...]
Posts Tagged ‘economics’
Photos of the Canada Tar Sands Suggest a Failed Economic Model
At Jackrabbit Ranch, we feel strongly about operating a sustainable company. We pre-heat our water with solar, heat it to temperature with wood, and compost our manure for use in the garden. This is just common sense to us: in the conservative place where I grew up, “waste not, want not” was a way of [...]
Climate change is costing you money
Flooding in the Midwest, followed by a heat wave… severe drought across the south into Texas… these are the largest of a series of unusual weather that is hurting the farmers that grow our food. The USDA warns that crop yields will be sharply lower than it had previously predicted. This is not an isolated [...]
Local Food Fallout
(In finger2006 photo.) An 11th generation NH farm, founded in 1632, gets ready to sell, and lists the local food movement as one of the reasons. The reason: as more people grow and sell local vegetables, there’s more competition for market space. Apparently NH is hitting the saturation point where supply has caught up with [...]
Buying Local Hay
With the unusually cold spring, there’s still not enough vegetation in our fields for the goats to browse on, so we supplement their diet with hay. Last fall, we bought four tons for the winter, but that’s now mostly gone. Fortunately, we made it through until summer. In the past, we’ve had to drive south [...]
Buying Milk Isn’t Easy
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 [...]
There Can Be Only One
(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’ [...]
Who Decides What Potatoes You Eat?
(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, [...]
Ken Meter – Part 2
Ken Meter discusses the dilemma of high land prices preventing new farnmers from entering the industry.
Farm Economics Statistics
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. [...]
