As you head out...  

To a graduation ceremony, try not to think about these troubling trends.

First, the sad job situation.

The research, done at Rutgers University, found that of the kids who've graduated from college since 2006, only 51 percent of them have full-time employment, and eleven percent of them are not working at all. That's bad enough, but when you look at just those people who have graduated since 2009, it gets even worse. Fewer than half of them found a job within a year of graduating; whereas 73 percent of those who graduated between 2006 and 2008 found jobs in the first year. Kids who graduated after 2009 are three times more likely to not have a fulltime job than the kids who finished between 2006 and 2008. Carl Van Horn, one of the study's co-authors, says,

The resilience of this year's and recent college graduates are being tested. Students who graduated during the past several years are facing historic obstacles in achieving the foundations of the American dream.

Well, the idea that they've got to go out there and dream the impossible dream really ought to motivate everyone currently busting ass to finish up school and get out into the "real world." [More][Source study]

But wait - there's more!

The study also determined that of those post-2009 grads who did end up finding full-time employment, 43% have jobs that do not require a college degree, prompting many to agree with their mothers' advice four years ago that you probably shouldn't have wasted four credits on that "Hegelian Dialectics in Buffy the Vampire Slayer" course you took sophomore year. Employed, post-2009 graduates also have an average starting salary of $27,000, $3,000 less than the average starting salary for the classes of 2006 and 2007; experts estimate that given the fragile state of the post-2009 economy, these wages are likely to stay depressed for the next ten or fifteen years. [More]

At the same time, student debt could be the next financial debacle we have to manage.

Over the weekend, the NYT had a great, in-depth look at soaring student debt figures, and the picture is not pretty: over the last decade, tuition and fees at state schools have increased 72%, and public funding per pupil has dropped 24%.
Student loans are now a generational rite of passage – 94% of students borrow to earn a bachelor’s degree, up from 43% in 1993. The total value of student loan debt has passed $1 trillion, up from $852 billion halfway through 2011. As the Federal Reserve shows, it’s not just the young who bear the burden: a third of the value of outstanding student loans is owed by those older than 40.
Congress, for its part, is currently wrangling over a bill that would prevent federally subsidized student loan rates from doubling to 6.8% beginning July 1. Looking at that debate, Will Wilkinson makes the point that interest rate subsidies are just another form of spending that could be better directed at scholarships for students of modest means. And Conor Friedersdorf takes that argument one step further, calling indebted college graduates a “privileged class” on whom spending money “in a country with impoverished immigrants and struggling high school dropouts and hard-pressed single mothers” is pandering at its worst.
While lower interest rates would help, Mark Kantrowitz and Mark Schneider point to students’ bleak income prospects: “Debt is a problem only if students don’t graduate or if graduates can’t get jobs that pay enough to allow them to repay their loans. Taking on $25,000 in student loans to earn an additional $25,000 per year is a good investment; borrowing $100,000 to earn an additional $5,000 per year is not.” Josh Barro also notes that loans are just one way to fund higher education – direct state funding of public universities is the most obvious alternative. [More]

As hard as it is to imagine, perhaps the basic impossibility of these two trends co-existing means college costs may soon have to become subject to ordinary supply-demand economics. One possible outcome would be new rankings from US News and World Report, et al, based on placement - Is our children working? - so to speak.

It is no small coincidence that young people are lined up ten deep waiting to get into farming. Notice how there are precious few articles in the ag media about getting kids back to the farm, just laments about how hard it is to get them started.

It also increases my skepticism that not allowing them to do dangerous work as an employee for another farmer is necessary to lure them back. I can't believe we sold ourselves that whopper to justify our wretched child safety record.

Since "summer" is here...  

We've opened our pool (three weeks earlier than ever) due to nasties growing in the warming water. Danged if it might not be briskly tolerable by Easter! (We don't heat it).

So this timely PSA:

Drowning, it turns out, does not look like drowning. It often looks like nothing at all. From your point of view at the pool side, in the cabana, at the beach, or on the boat, drowning simply looks like this: The person simply isn't there any more because they quietly slipped to the bottom of the water after quietly struggling mostly out of your sight.

The new captain jumped from the deck, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the couple swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. "I think he thinks you're drowning," the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. "We're fine, what is he doing?" she asked, a little annoyed. "We're fine!" the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. "Move!" he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not ten feet away, their nine-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, "Daddy!" How did this captain know - from fifty feet away - what the father couldn't recognize from just ten?...

Read that here.
Drowning is the second most common cause of accidental death among children. Between 500 and 1000 Americans under the age of 15 will drown this year, about half of them within 25 feet of an adult who does not see it happening, and in about one in ten cases the parent will be watching as it happens, watching the kid drown, not realizing what they are seeing. [More]

****

On a hilarious note you'll all enjoy, seconds after I hit the "submit" button for my taxes, I noticed Jan's 1099 for Social Security I had failed to include. Since it was her first year, TurboxTax didn't prompt me to add it. Well, it probably did, but I forget how really, really old she is. 

Filing an amended return is a hassle, BTW.

****

Missed another rain. Planters are stopped.

I'm calling it the "Dozen Drought*". 

*(2012 - get it? I kill me!)

Maybe I will get one...  

I have been critical of "frequent shopper" cards at grocery stores as simple data-mining tools for Big Food.  Jan uses hers religiously and proudly points to "savings" I still struggle to believe.

But the experience of one shopper during the recent turkey recall is forcing a re-think.

I just got a phone call from Kroger, one of my local grocery stores indicating that I may have purchased some of this turkey and should return it with receipt to the store for a full refund. (If only I hadn't eaten it all already).
I have to assume the "Kroger Plus card" I use to save a few bucks on toothpaste and other instore specials kept track of who bought what products, and they were able to alert me that I had purchased some potentially contaminated turkey.
I'm pretty happy that I cooked what I ate thoroughly, as I always do, and have so far avoided illness, but it is pretty neat that my little savings card can be used to help customers avoid illness. Finally I see the value in having one and having it attached to my contact information. [Comment on this post about recall]

[There is a side bonus of not being asked EVERY (rare) time I shop for groceries if I want to get the dang card.]

Another point that may have been undersold on this event is this strain is resistant to multiple antibiotics.

PS: Use a meat thermometer, people!

Sobering sentence of the day...

Via Andrew Sullivan:

While traffic fatalities remain a top U.S. killer, the historical decrease is impressive and heartening. Did you know that there are now fewer traffic deaths each year in the U.S. than suicides? [More]

Yay?

New farm visual technology...

No kidding - this is the hottest new tool on our farm this fall:

Safety Sunglasses with lower lens magnification

Functional safety sunglasses are now fashionable and comfortable with a sleek wraparound design. Not only do they look cool (less laughs from fellow co-workers or the kids at home), the wrap-around design completely covers the eyes for greater protection. Lower lens provides magnification for those of us with well-used eyes (available in four diopters – the higher the number, the greater the magnification). Distortion-free, polycarbonate lenses are hard-coated to protect against scratches. Tinted gray, these safety glasses sunglasses block 99.9% of UVA rays and 82% of UVB rays. Transparent gray frame is made of durable polycarbonate. Soft polymer nosepiece keeps glasses in place.

 [More]

I am a big believer in safety glasses, and now I can read my Kindle between loads on the grain cart without fumbling with reading glasses.  I bought two pair, and Jan immediately grabbed the second set.

Take care of your eyes - it's a beautiful world out there.

Self-promotion and self-regulation...

In an curious coincidence, the same conclusion is being reached in disparate corners of our economy.

First, in an round-robin of regret, some of my favorite econo-bloggers are admitting past mistakes and/or advice.

2)  I believed in the "Great Moderation".  That is, I believed that the Fed and prudent fiscal policy had, to a large extent, tamed the business cycle.  I did not believe that there was even a small risk of another Great Depression; I believed that the Fed could and would prevent the contagion from spreading.  Arguably they (and the Treasury) did, but I did not imagine anything close to that level of intervention being necessary.

3)  I believed regulators were smarter than they were.  In 2004, when the SEC decided to let the investment banks lever up to 30-to-1 instead of 12-to-1, because after all, the SEC had the tools to quickly identify and stop any contagion, I would have said they were probably right.  (I'm not sure I was aware of it).

4)  I believed bankers were smarter than they were.  Or rather, I believed the system was smarter than it was.  Individual bankers making idiotic mistakes?  Absolutely.  The occasional bank being brought low?  Sure--it happens pretty regularly, in fact.  But the whole banking system taking its entire balance sheet to the roulette table and laying it all down on a single bet? Ridiculous.  [More]

Here in agriculture we are looking a a small train wreck in the egg industry, and seeing one of the same failures in the system that we saw in banking: the reluctance to enforce professional standards of conduct within a profession.

Chris Clayton nails it.

These groups established by various producer organizations and allied industries to defend agriculture don't want to talk about how ag should respond to the recall and the large business at the center of the federal health probe and possible criminal investigation.

The recall focuses on two farm operations in Iowa, one of which is owned by Austin "Jack" DeCoster, 75, who has a long history of environmental and labor violations not just in Iowa, but in Maine and Ohio as well.

State and federal health officials have reported roughly 1,470 cases of salmonella illness since the spring. That suggests potentially 55,800 salmonella cases nationally because FDA officials told industry representatives in public hearings on the egg-quality rule last year that each reported salmonella case can have a multiplied factor of 38 unreported cases.

FDA officials cited earlier this week that the farms implicated in the recall, DeCoster's Wright County Farms and another farm, Hillandale Farms, showed "significant deviations" from how those farms should be operating and were clearly violating the egg-quality rule implemented by FDA in July. FDA officials cited large piles of manure and infestations of flies, maggots and rodents.

The report from the FDA on DeCoster's operation "speaks for itself," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a farmer as well, said Tuesday to reporters in a weekly call.

Grassley said the recall and reports about the conditions have been difficult for Iowans to accept, "particularly for people who live in Wright County." Grassley said he was at a Farmers Union meeting where producers expressed their worries about the problems.

"When consumers don't have confidence in their food supply, even if that lack of confidence comes from one product, in this case eggs, it still has an impact on all of agriculture and if consumers don't have confidence it's going to hurt the income of farm families," he said. 

While lawmakers such as Grassley are becoming more vocal, the groups created within agriculture to address perceptions about agriculture are shying away from talking about the DeCoster fiasco.[More]

(Sen. Grassley's concern for consumers who actually ate the cotmainated eggs is remarkably muted, while his pity for other producers obviously keeps him up at night. That alone says volumes about how ag and its outspoken proponents prioritize.)

Although he beat me to it, Chris admirably points out that ag cheerleaders are seem to be little more than spinmeisters trying to use distraction to avoid tackling the hard problems.

This is the "safest" food in the world we're always bragging about?  DeCoster has been a bad actor for years and our industry was OK with it, until they really screwed up. One wonders what it would take for some to admit industrial ag could use some improvement.

To be fair (or try) mistake admission is now a signal for piling on. And lawsuits.  But without the willingness to own up and redress errors - and call them out in our professional community - we are hardly more than tribes with the same occupation.

Correcting that won't happen from within.  Since the Industrial Revolution, it has been shown that banks, egg-farms, unions, lawyers, medicine, etc. just can't seem to overcome solidarity to enforce discipline.  That's why we reluctantly end up with enforcement from outside.

Ideally, I would like to see this regulation via an industry-financed independent third party (oxymoron alert), such as licensing boards or auditors.  But having learned from Enron that even those setups are susceptible to influence if not outright subversion, the task almost always fall to government. 

Plus it gives another reason to hate the bureaucracies we build. 

My guess is ag organizations' likely strategy is to depend on the news cycle to bury this and help the public move on.  It's not like Fox News will be running constant stories on it, after all.  This one is really, really hard to link to Obama - although given enough time...

Talking the talk about how great we in ag are should require some effort to make sure we are great or aspire to greatness.  That includes taking responsibility for the mistakes we make collectively.  So far in this sad story, we are professionally AWOL.

The other census...

The Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) just came out, so you can stop holding your breath.

The high(?)lights:

−    Fatal work injuries in the private construction sector in 2008 declined by 20 percent from the updated 2007 total, twice the all-worker decline of 10 percent.
−    Fatal workplace falls, which had risen to a series high in 2007, also declined by 20 percent in 2008.
−    Workplace suicides were up 28 percent to a series high of 251 cases in 2008, but workplace homicides declined 18 percent in 2008.
−    The number and rate of fatal work injuries among 16 to 17 year-old workers were higher in 2008. −    Fatal occupational injuries involving Hispanic or Latino workers in 2008 were 17 percent lower
than in 2007. Fatalities among non-Hispanic Black or African American workers were down 16
percent. 

−    The number of fatal workplace injuries in farming, fishing, and forestry occupations rose 6
percent in 2008 after declining in 2007. 

−    Transportation incidents, which accounted for approximately two-fifths of all the workplace
fatalities in 2008, fell 13 percent from the previous series low of 2,351 cases reported in 2007. [More, pdf] [My emphasis]

Before we go blaming the fisherpersons and loggers, consider these graphs:

Hardly good news, but something to which we are so accustomed as to be invisible as a problem.  I still think we are gradually moving to a time in our industry when safety and reduced injuries will be so economically advantageous as to be a prime focus for leading competitors.

It may take a legion of lawyers and hard-nosed insurance companies to make this happen, but as the number of family-only operations slides and those with employees (and their concomitant legal exposure) increase, I suspect these numbers will begin to drop rapidly.

Meanwhile, we're padding them up to ride a bike...

I have noticed in farm safety stats this obvious blind spot.  As deaths from farm ponds (at one time the leader) decrease we've added a new, even worse threat.

Larry Foreman describes himself as "a libertarian at heart," but not when it comes to kids. A veteran emergency-room physician—he works at the Arroyo Grande Community Hospital, near the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area in San Luis Obispo County, California—he's seen an endless queue of injured riders of all-terrain vehicles, including children as young as 4. After a particularly busy Sunday in 2004, Foreman decided to do some research. He was stunned to find that in a recent 22-month period, the small rural hospital had treated 210 children with ATV-related injuries.
Foreman began meeting with officials and went on radio to talk up tougher regulations—quickly drawing fire from some off-roaders, including at least two who appealed to hospital officials to fire him. "I was just kind of on this Don Quixote quest, and the windmills were beating the heck out of me," Foreman recalled.
He persisted, however, and eventually the California Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians decided to make the issue a legislative priority. In the spring of 2008, it drafted a safety bill incorporating key elements of a model law drawn up by the ATV industry, such as expanded training and the ban on kids riding adult machines. The legislation was introduced in the California Senate by State Sen. Abel Maldonado, Foreman's senator, but a coalition of off-road groups quickly mustered to fight it, and the legislation died later that year.
Four-wheelers look disarming, almost like overgrown toys. Yet the powerful vehicles, also known as "quads," can reach highway speeds, and unlike cars and trucks, they offer no protection in rollovers. More than 10,000 people have been killed in ATV crashes since federal authorities began keeping track in the 1980s; more than 2,500 deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries have involved kids under 16. [More]

If these deaths occurred off the farm, rural America would be howling, but one of the peculiar things about risk assessment is our tolerance of familiar threats.  It's why many of us think pit bull owners are insane.

I'll take farm safety organizations more seriously when they stop chanting slogans and start taking on the real causes of child deaths.  Consider the reluctance to take a firm stand by Farm Safety Just 4 Kids.

The following suggested practices will help assure safety.
    •    Drivers should receive sufficient training and supervision.
    •    Restrict the use of ATVs by children.
    •    Always wear personal protective equipment when operating an ATV.
    •    Maintain correct body position and weight distribution during ATV operation.
    •    Refrain from taking unnecessary risks such as performing stunts, using alcohol or drugs, excessive speeding, and accepting riders.
    •    ATVs are not to be driven on paved roads.
    •    Do not operate the ATV under adverse conditions such as inclement weather, insufficient light, hazardous terrain, or an ATV in need of repair.
All-terrain vehicles can be hazardous. These vehicles are used for work and recreation, and are capable of achieving high speeds. Chance of injuries is greater among inexperienced ATV drivers than those who have received training. If young people are using ATVs they must have proper instruction and be able to fully comprehend the machine they are operating. No matter what function the ATV performs, remember that it is only as capable as the operator.  [More] [My emphasis]

The word they are avoiding is "prohibit".  Anything less grants approval of sorts to parents who think it is cute, or their children are exceptional.  It also will incur serious pushback from ATV manufacturers.  Frankly, like farm equipment, the time has come for state-licensing for operation of ATV's.

Yeah - I know, more government intrusion.  But it is actually a sign of parental failure, IMHO.

Another domino was Home Ec...

As part of the last generation to remember schools preparing women to be primarily mothers and housewives, it now seems there was more than a little logic to it.  People who know the basics of kitchen sanitation are the best defense against food-borne pathogens.

"We're paying Martha Stewart to teach us the home ec stuff that's been taken out of the schools. Parenting, fashion, food. That's all home ec. The reality TV shows are merely picking up on that and making money from it."

She offers more evidence of the popularity of human ecology in noting the knitting club at Western, the farmers' market held Tuesdays at Brescia and the fact the Bernardin Canning Company can't offer enough courses in canning to meet demand. "They're backed up for months and months."

And she discusses the need now, and more than ever, for the skills taught in this field.

There is the obesity crisis in North America, with 26% of young people aged two to 17 deemed to be overweight.

The necessity of ensuring safe food and water for all is another example, and a local one, with lead water pipes back in the news. [More]

Say what you will about fried chicken, but hot grease kills pathogens pretty effectively.  But as we placed less emphasis on things like cooking and kitchen basics, the health responsibility for food passed up the line, especially hitting the meat industry.  Demands for food safety led to intense regulation which led to this:

What struck me as a high fastball directed at my head was a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that the number of slaughterhouses nationwide declined from 1,211 to 809 between 1992 and 2008 while the number of small farmers of livestock increased by 108,000 in the last five years.
At first blush, I considered this uptick in farmers naive and committing economic suicide if they can’t get their product processed in a timely fashion to sell at their markets starving for locally produced meats. It is akin to crates of lettuce rotting on my dad’s packing platform because the truck transporting the goods to the produce market broke down.
That is precisely the scene described by the Times for many livestock farmers in Vermont and upstate New York. By the time they travel long distances or wait for an opening at a slaughterhouse, the animals are stressed and unfit for butchering. Some farmers make reservations for the slaughterhouses before their cows, pigs or sheep are even born.
The decline of slaughterhouses is both economical and environmental. Animal rights activists such as People For The Preservation of Animals (PETA) play a small role. Even in farming communities, no one wants them in their back yards.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a Times interview “It’s pretty clear there needs to be attention paid to this. Particularly in the Northeast, where there is indeed a backlog and lengthy wait for slaughter facilities.”
The increase of small, independent livestock farmers is part of a movement for America’s local-food movement, championed by so-called locavores. But, it is what my dad would say was “putting the cart before the horse” if the supply chain is interrupted.
“There are a lot of people out there who raise great animals for us to use, and they don’t have the opportunity to get them to us because the slaughterhouses are going away,” said Bill Telepan, chef and owner of Telepan, a high-end restaurant in New York.
The newspaper quotes Randy Quenneville, program chief for the Vermont meat inspection service,. that small, family-owned slaughterhouses started closing when strict federal rules regarding health control went into effect in 1999.
The result was large corporations such as Cargill began to take over much of the nation’s meat market. [More]

I agree with the author that the greater threat will not be HSUS and PETA, but a broken value chain for agrarian production. Perhaps market demand will encourage new small slaughterhouses, but I am skeptical.

It could be the trend to industrial food production is irreversible within the current risk-tolerance of our culture. I'm not sure this can't be changed, however. But of all the threat to meat consumption they are on the horizon, I think food safety in the home is where we should be focusing.

Don't ask what you can do...

Do what you can do.  Here is how heroes step forward in a crisis.

Stan Thiergartner of Milford Corner Center, OH is one of many of us Eastern Corn Belt farmers coping with grain that is in poor shape and won't flow out.  He is also deeply concerned about farmers getting killed in their frustration to get the grain out.   He called me today after hearing my similar worries on USFR last week.  [And followed up with pictures.]

He began finding a solution.  This is an agitator/lump-prodder works for him. [Update: he calls it a "corn borer"]

Important notes:

• It doesn't show well, but he has an adapter to blast compressed air through the pipe (hence the holes at the tip)
• Stan uses the ridges on his bin roof to line up when pushing it in.
• He's been able to angle down slightly toward the center sump and restore flow in a 48' bin.
• Don't know where the auger point came from, but shop-modified cross augers from combines look like a source.

Many of you may already be modifying this idea in your head.  One thing I wonder if a fitting for a 1" impact wrench wouldn't work to minimize the hand cranking.  You've already got an air compressor there.  Speaking of which - how about a jack-hammer-sized a/c and larger pipe/more holes?

At any rate, this idea could save a few over-anxious farmers, I think.  My thanks to Stan and God bless the Internet for getting an idea out so quickly.  Please pass the link on to others (right click on the "posted" time below for the link location and click "copy", then "paste" in an e-mail).  Or just copy the photos.

Stan:  Thanks for your ingenuity and sense of responsibility.  Guys like you help build our community and lift our profession.

Please post additional questions and comments - as well as your design improvements - in the "Comments".

I'll be monitoring them and will try to get more info as well.

[Updates: Stan called me tonight. Some further information.]

• He used 3/4" pipe.  The auger point was from an old earth anchor (he thinks).  I think one of those guy wire anchors would work well.
• He did use an industrial air compressor.
• He left the agitator in the bin until it was down to the sweep work.
• The young man is his son Lucas.

 [One final remark: Note the instructions on the bin door.  Stan is preparing well for his upcoming fading memory.  I could use notes like that.]

Sign of the Week...

I'll bet this one actually works.

[via boingboing]

It's not the hands...

It's the talking.

(1) Cell phone use damages driving performance almost to the DUI level.
(2) Laws against using cell phones while driving are effective and reduce cell phone use a lot.
(3) Where this happens, there’s no reduction in accidents!
Toward the end of the story we get what I think is the key to the puzzle: hands-free cell phone gadgets, which are legal (but shouldn’t be) everywhere, because talking on the phone with a hands-free device is just as bad as holding the phone to your ear.  The problem with a cell phone in the car is not dialing and fumbling, which after all take only a small fraction of the time required for a phone conversation (and you can do that at a time of your choice), but mental distraction of a particular kind.   This is surprising because listening to the radio, or chatting with a passenger, are not dangerous; why should chatting with someone on the phone be so risky?
To understand why, consider a couple of other things that are dangerous in cars: very young children and loose pets, which both (i) require your attention unpredictably (ii) with no sense of what’s happening on the road ahead that might be more important, and (iii) you know they might do this at any time.  The radio, in contrast, doesn’t have that psychological grip; you might miss a pearl on All Things Considered if you stop listening for a minute, but you know the radio will not be insulted, nor raise its voice insistently.

The party on the other end of the phone conversation is an adult to whom you psychologically owe attention, but unlike the adult passenger, has no idea of what you are seeing through the windshield.  A passenger will subconsciously stop talking if something untoward or just complicated is unfolding on the road ahead, and will expect you to suspend the conversation similarly, so she causes no important distraction at the critical moments when you need to be driving on all neurons, and you are aware of all this. In contrast, the person on the phone can’t do either of these things, and you are aware of that as well.  When you need to navigate a tricky bit of road, there’s no time to ask someone to be quiet, and telling a peer to shut up for a minute, in any terms, is so rude that it absolutely requires an excuse that makes it take even longer (“can you hold on for a minute? one of the kids is playing with my blunderbuss and I think it’s loaded”). [More]

I wonder if farmers are more likely to engage in this behavior due to 1) low-traffic rural roads and 2) auto-steer acclimation. Regardless, it looks like a really bad habit, and one reason some companies like Pioneer (that I know of) strictly prohibit it.

[Update: Great additional info from a commenter below]

I dunno, it could happen...


How to escape from a submerging car.



Hey, it could be another really wet spring according to Mike.

[via presurfer]

The food that didn't bark in the night...

I have long felt the issues surrounding the claims of organic food superiority would erode as time failed to provide any real evidence of superior safety or nutrition, or at least differences so minor as to warrant very little premium.

Like too many other business models, organic production is being hit hard by customers with less to spend.

“Organics continue to grow and outpace many categories,” the Nielsen Company concluded in an October report. “However, recent weeks are showing slower growths, possibly a start of an organics growth plateau.”

If the slowdown continues, it could have broad implications beyond the organic industry, whose success spawned a growing number of products with values-based marketing claims, from fair trade coffee to hormone-free beef to humanely raised chickens. Nearly all of them command a premium price.

While a group of core customers considers organic or locally produced products a top priority, the growth of recent years was driven by a far larger group of less committed customers. The weak economy is prompting many of them to choose which marketing claim, if any, is really important to them.

Among organic products, those marketed to children will probably continue to thrive because they appeal to parents’ concerns about health, said Laurie Demeritt, the president and chief operating officer of the Hartman Group, a market research firm for the health and wellness industry. But products that do not have as much perceived benefit, like processed foods for adults, may struggle.

The economy has “crystallized the tradeoffs that consumers are willing to make,” she said. “Fair trade is nice, but fair trade may fall off the shopping list where organic milk may not.”

Thomas J. Blischok, president of consulting and innovation for Information Resources, a market-research firm, said shoppers were not moving entirely away from categories like organic products in the grocery store. But they are becoming more selective, buying four or five products instead of seven or eight, he said. [More]

Another factor impacting organic sales has been the recent (and seemingly unending) peanut contamination issue and the revelations concerning organic certification.

The national outbreak of salmonella in products with peanuts has been particularly unsettling for shoppers like her who think organic food is safer.
The plants in Texas and Georgia that were sending out contaminated peanut butter and ground peanut products had something else besides rodent infestation, mold and bird droppings. They also had federal organic certification.
“Why is organic peanut butter better than Jif?” said Ms. Devlin-Sample, a nurse practitioner from Pelham, N.Y. “I have no idea. If we’re getting salmonella from peanut butter, all bets are off.”
Although the rules governing organic food require health inspections and pest-management plans, organic certification technically has nothing to do with food safety.
“Because there are some increased health benefits with organics, people extrapolate that it’s safer in terms of pathogens,” said Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist and policy analyst with Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. “I wouldn’t necessarily assume it is safer.”[More]

Most difficult for organic proponents to counter are claims organic inspectors looked past safety problems because that wasn't their job, or submitted reports way too late to prevent the contmination from spreading. There is an apparent conflict of interest between organic inspectors and the food companies who pay them.  Bad reports could close plants and end inspector's fees.

But the problem now is when organic shoppers for whatever reason switch back to conventional food supplies...and can't tell any difference.  Since the benefits have always been vague and subjective to begin with, the economic thrill of saving money may make the needed organic premium harder to sustain in the marketplace.

Investors are taking note as well, as organic merchants like Whole Foods suffer stock price declines.  While it has bounced off lows, it is still a mirror image of cheap food purveyors like Aldi.

Some hope for the organic sector strangely enough can be found in two developments.  By moving customers away from a now dubious "organic" label to virtually undefinable labels like "natural" and "local", they are reaching shoppers looking for some social aspect to their food buys without ever having to prove much.

The second is the appointment of Kathleen Merrigan as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture.  Her extensive background includes particpation in the organic foods certification process.  But this is double-edged sword.  More rigorous and consumer-pleasing certification of would likely increase costs for an industry already showing inelastic demand.

With the economy heading the wrong way, and many organic customers in the path of possible job losses (i.e. upper middle class) organic could be hit even harder as safety and economics clobber sales.

There will be temptations for gloating in the conventional food industry, I fear.  This would be a mistake.  If we have confidence what we grow and sell is safe and a good buy, we need only let the marketplace inexorably unravel the questionable claims of organic products.

Which is what we are watching right now.  This is a time to not bark in the night.

At least we're dropping in  the ranks...

Farming (by one metric*, anyway) is now the 5th most dangerous occupation. Note the explanation though:

Farming may sound tame, but working with heavy machinery and harmful chemicals makes this job risky. 

Really?  Are we dying from chemicals?  Another strange thing is the calculated rate for farmers implies there are 742,000 of us.  Where did that number come from?

(I'll look into this when I have some time.)

*Fatalities per 100,000 workers.

[Update: Link repaired - Thanks, Bill]

If only China had COOL...

(Maybe it does, but I'm not sure). Considering how it seems anything faintly edible in China contains melamine, I sure hope our ag products exporters are working up a furious campaign featuring how little (as in zero) melamine we feed over here.

Chinese regulators are widening their investigation into contaminated food amid growing signs that the toxic industrial chemical melamine has leached into the nation's animal feed supplies, posing health risks to consumers.

The announcement came after food safety tests earlier this week found that eggs produced in three different provinces in China were contaminated with melamine, which is blamed for causing kidney stones and renal failure in infants. The tests have led to recalls of eggs and consumer warnings.

The reports are another serious blow to China's agriculture industry, which is already struggling to cope with its worst food safety scandal in decades after melamine-tainted milk supplies sickened over 50,000 children, caused at least four deaths and led to global recalls of goods produced with Chinese dairy products earlier this fall.

The cases are fueling global concerns about Chinese food. In Hong Kong, food safety officials announced this week that they would begin testing a wider variety of foods for melamine, including vegetables, flour and meat products. On the mainland, Shanghai and other cities are moving aggressively to test a wide variety of food products for melamine, including fish and livestock feed, according to the state-run news media, which has in recent days carried multiple reports on melamine in animal feed. [More]

I am not implying Chinese food processors are adulterating their products - I'm stating it.  By testing not for actual protein but for N (nitrogen) Chinese officials invited their food industry to cheat.  Our FDA is trying to stay ahead.

During the recent melamine outbreak, FDA officials suspect that melamine may have been added to infant formula to inflate protein levels cheaply.

In some sectors of the food industry in China, manufacturers are paid by the amount of protein in a product. Melamine costs about $1.20 per each protein count per ton, while legitimate protein costs about $6 per protein count per ton.

Melamine, which is used in some pharmaceuticals, dyes, glues and plastics, is normally not harmful to humans, but when it commingles with cyanuric acid, it becomes insoluble and can cause kidney failure.

"The suggestion is that some clever scientist used a high-quality melamine that did not have cyanuric acid," said Dr. Lutter. "It was only later that the melamine was commingled with the cyanuric acid."

But "forecasting economic infiltration is hard," Dr. Lutter said, and food coming across U.S. borders is shipped from countries with disparate regulatory requirements. [More]

It almost makes you nostalgic for the good ol' days when all we worried about was MSG in Chinese food.

Are we safer yet?...

Job safety makes sense because of the economic costs alone. Somehow though, we forget how powerful that force is and turn instead to regulation.

Consider this analysis of the effectiveness of OSHA.

Fun facts from Kip Viscusi's article on "Job Safety" in David Henderson's encyclopedia:

Annual OSHA penalties for safety violations (2002): $149,000,000

Annual Workers Compensation Premiums (2001): $26,000,000,000

Estimated Annual Wage Premiums for Risky Activities (2004 dollars): $245,000,000,000

His point: Market incentives for worker safety dwarf legal incentives, which in turn dwarf regulatory incentives. The level of safety we see in the workplace today is about the same as the level we'd see if government just looked the other way. [More]

Of course, you'll convince few in the public or government of this phenomenon. And more than a few bureaucratic jobs with the last good benefits in America are based on not believing these numbers.

[via MR]

A sad commonality...

I have friends in Denmark, and have visited several Danish farms. The farmers there have always impressed me with their skills and professionalism, as well as being warm and hospitable. I was somewhat surprised to see they struggle with the same safety issues as the US, although they apparently had one very bad year recently.

Tragic accidents on the farm were all too common last year, claiming the lives of 19 people, according to statistics from the Danish Agricultural Advisory Service and the Agricultural Working Conditions Board.

The 2006 figure is equal to the number of deaths from 2001-2005 combined. Among the 19 deaths were three children.

‘It is often older workers that lose their lives, but the farmers’ children are also killed on occasion by the heavy machinery,’ the board’s joint secretary, Anne Marie Hagelskjær, told employee union 3F. ‘The sharp increase in the number of agricultural accidents is extremely worrying.’

The four principle causes of farm accidents are falls, unattended children, machinery and farm vehicles in traffic. [More]

One of the responses listed by the farm employees union to the report was stricter licensing for farm machinery operators. This strikes me as a good idea.

Check "Perspective" in Top Producer magazine for more soon.

In case you had wondered...

What would happen if the bucket hydraulics failed while zipping down the road.



[Thanks, Jerry]

I normally don't do these...

(I'm afraid I'll turn into my brother-in-law who is our family's official spammaster.)

But a loyal reader writes:

Good Morning John
I enjoy reading your comments. I live in northwest Iowa and the crops look great in my area. Thought I'd pass on a picture I received from my son this morning. I think it is making the rounds on the internet.
Take care
Gary Trei

and sends this:


I guess I'm getting old enough to wince before I guffaw any more. There but for the grace of God...

It doesn't take an engineer to ponder how much longer infrastructure built for WD-45's will sustain modern equipment. Maybe some of our ethanol profits should go to upgrade stuff we've taken for granted.