Markets - General

Growth of U.S. organic marketplace accelerated in 2024

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 18:49:28 GMT

U.S. sales of certified organic products accelerated in 2024 with an annual growth rate of 5.2%, more than double that of the overall marketplace, which grew at 2.5% in the same period. Dollar sales for organic also reached a new high of $71.6 billion in 2024, according to the 2025 Organic Market Report released April 23 by the Organic Trade Association.

After two years of managing high inflationary pressure and significant supply chain recalibration coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the organic marketplace hit a new growth stride in 2024 with organic food sales totaling $65.4 billion and sales of organic non-food products totaling $6.2 billion, according to the association.

“When we look at the last two years, this is very good news that we are on the right trajectory with organic growing more than twice as fast as the total market,” Tom Chapman, Co-CEO of the Organic Trade Association, said in a news release. “While we have significant opportunities to drive organic’s share of the total market, we are seeing increased consumer adoption of organic and a positive return to industry growth, which are very good signs.”

A key trend influencing the growth of organic sales continues to be an increased desire for cleaner ingredients as consumers prioritize health and wellness for themselves and their families, the association said. This encompasses looking for “free-from” foods and products, such as free from chemicals, toxins and pesticides, hormones and antibiotics, dyes and unnecessary additives, as well as seeking out the USDA Organic seal.

In 2024, shoppers found that the gap between conventional and organic prices across categories including grocery and dairy had shrunk, making them more open to considering and purchasing organic. This includes an increase in organic purchases at mainstream grocery retailers where shoppers tend to be more price sensitive.

Organic produce continues its reign

At $21.5 billion, organic produce held its top spot as the standout category, continuing to be the primary entry point for consumers into the organic market, according to the association.

In 2024, the category accounted for 30.1% of total organic sales with a growth rate of 5.2% for the year. Berries remain the star of the organic produce category, with sales rising another 10.3% in 2024. Bananas also had a particularly strong year, with sales climbing 15.5%. New apple varieties and tropical fruits, such as mangoes, kiwi and pineapples, continued to gain momentum.

Not all produce categories performed as well, however. Organic packaged salad sales declined 4.5%, and lettuce and other greens also showed little momentum with a modest sales increase of only 0.8%.

Groceries overall still see strong organic growth

The second biggest selling organic food category was the grocery category, posting sales of $15 billion in 2024, achieving 4% overall growth. Bakery and fresh breads, the largest category, grew by 2.8%, driven by interest in artisanal products like sourdough.

Dry breakfast goods, the third-largest category, rose by 8.1% as consumers sought better-for-you options that align with family dietary goals. Baby food and formula is the second largest organic grocery segment at $1.6 billion and experienced a 3.8% sales increase in 2024 but was limited by supply and capacity constraints.

Consumers continued to show interest in cooking restaurant-quality meals at home. This trend, coupled with the perception of food as medicine, has driven demand for high-quality organic grocery ingredients. Younger consumers, particularly millennials and Gen Z, are also helping shape grocery sales trends by balancing health-conscious choices with quality and indulgence.

As the third largest segment, beverages are often cited as the organic category with the most innovation, and 2024 was no exception. Sales in the organic beverage market grew 5.2% to $9.5 billion, with new formulations following consumer trends in wellness and rising interest in low-sugar formulations with functional and sustainable ingredients. With ingredients like ashwagandha and mushrooms, low-sugar drinks, kombuchas, sports drinks, non-alcoholic offerings and protein-enriched smoothies all on the shelf, this category is expected to cross the $10 billion mark in 2025.

Beverage segments with the highest growth encompassed dairy alternatives (13.5%), tea (10.5%), and spirits, liquor and cocktails (10%). Although dairy alternatives recorded the highest growth rate (13.5%) across beverage categories, with just $850 million in sales, it remains far behind organic milk’s $3.9 billion watermark.

In the fourth category, organic dairy and egg sales rose by an impressive 7.7% to $8.5 billion in 2024. Organic yogurt, the second largest category in this segment, grew 10.5%, the second highest growth rate in the category in more than 15 years, while organic egg sales rose 16.1%. This growth is in part due to the avian influenza that has hit egg producers across the country, causing all egg prices to surge while leaving bare grocery shelves.

The growth in organic dairy and eggs reflects a strong consumer desire for clean ingredients and nutrient-dense products. Organic dairy and eggs align with the health-conscious trend, providing high-quality, clean protein options that resonate with shoppers, even when priced at a premium.

Organic certification holds strong consumer trust

While the number of claims and labels continued to expand in the retail aisles in 2024, including growth of regenerative, the USDA Organic seal remained a constant source of trust and confidence with consumers.

The research shows younger generations have an increased interest in transparency and sustainability-minded brands and consider the impact of production on both planet and people. Yet, research also shows that while consumers value all the attributes in organic, more education and visibility on organic attributes would help new consumers make the connection to all that USDA organic certification stands for.

“The key takeaway is that organic has high consumer recognition and the highest level of trust in a certification,” says Matthew Dillon, co-CEO of Organic Trade Association.

“To help increase adoption of organic, we need to enhance our consumer education that could be strengthened by adding product attributes to the USDA organic logo, such as an organic dairy company being able to call out ‘no growth hormones’ or ‘no antibiotics’ as part of the organic seal on their packaging,” Dillon said.

This type of attribute-focused marketing, Dillon noted, is the next step in growing consumer awareness and expanding the organic market overall and is a priority for OTA’s advocacy efforts on behalf of its members and the industry at large.

United States Eases Port Fees On China-Built Ships After Industry Backlash

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 16:04:09 GMT

The Trump administration shielded on Thursday domestic exporters and vessel owners servicing the Great Lakes, the Caribbean and U.S. territories from port fees to be levied on China-built vessels, aiming to revive U.S. shipbuilding .

The Federal Register notice posted by the U.S. Trade Representative was watered down from a February proposal for fees on China-built ship s of up to $1.5 million per port call that sent a chill through the global shipping industry.

Ocean shipping transports about 80% of global trade — from food and furniture to cement and coal. Industry executives feared virtually every cargo carrier could face steep, stacking fees that would make U.S. export prices unattractive and foist annual import costs of $30 billion on American consumers.

“Ships and shipping are vital to American economic security and the free flow of commerce,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement. “The Trump administration’s actions will begin to reverse Chinese dominance, address threats to the U.S. supply chain, and send a demand signal for U.S.-built ships.”

Still, the fees on Chinese-built ships add another irritant to swiftly rising trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies as President Donald Trump seeks to draw China into talks on his new tariffs of 145% on many of its goods.

The revisions tackle major concerns voiced in a tsunami of opposition from the global maritime industry, including domestic port and vessel operators as well as U.S. shippers of everything from coal and corn to bananas and cement.

They grant some requested carve-outs, while phasing in fees that reflect the fact U.S. shipbuilders, which turn out about five vessels annually, will need years to compete with China’s output of more than 1,700 a year.

The USTR exempted ships that ferry goods between domestic ports as well as from those ports to Caribbean islands and U.S. territories. Both American and Canadian vessels that call at Great Lakes ports have also won a reprieve.

As a result, companies such as U.S.-based carriers Matson and Seaboard Marine would dodge the fees. Also exempt are empty ships arriving at U.S. ports to load up with exports such as wheat and soybeans.

Foreign roll-on/roll-off auto carriers, known as ro-ros, are eligible for refunds of fees if they order or take delivery of a U.S.-built vessel of equivalent capacity in the next three years.

The USTR set a long timeline for liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers. They are required to move 1% of U.S. LNG exports on U.S.-built, operated and flagged vessels within four years. That percentage would rise to 4% by 2035 and to 15% by 2047.

The agency, which will implement the levies in 180 days, also declined to impose fees based on the percentage of Chinese-built ships in a fleet or on prospective orders of Chinese ships, as originally proposed.

The fees will be applied once each voyage on affected ships a maximum of six times a year.

Executives of global container ship operators, such as MSC and Maersk MAERSKb.CO, which visit multiple ports during each sailing to the United States, had warned the fees would quickly pile up.

Instead of a flat individual fee on large vessels, the USTR instead opted to levy fees based on net tonnage or each container unloaded, as was called for by operators of small ships and transporters of heavy commodities such as iron ore.

From October 14, Chinese-built and owned ships will be charged $50 a net ton, a rate that will increase by $30 a year over the next three years.

That will apply if the fee is higher than an alternative calculation method that charges $120 for each container discharged, rising to $250 after three years.

Chinese-built ships owned by non-Chinese firms will be charged $18 a net ton, with annual fee increases of $5 over the same period.

It was not immediately clear how high the maximum fees would run for large container vessels, but the new rules give non-Chinese shipping companies a clear edge over operators such as China’s COSCO 600428.SS.

The notice comes on the one-year anniversary of the launch of the USTR’s investigation into China’s maritime activities.

In January, the agency concluded that China uses unfair policies and practices to dominate global shipping.

The actions by both the Biden and Trump administrations reflect rare bipartisan consensus on the need to revive U.S. shipbuilding and strengthen naval readiness.

Leaders of the United Steelworkers and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, two of five unions that called for the investigation that led to Thursday’s announcement, applauded the plan and said they were ready to work with the USTR and Congress to reinvigorate domestic shipbuilding and create high-quality jobs.

The American Apparel & Footwear Association reiterated its opposition, saying port fees and proposed tariffs equipment will reduce trade and lead to higher prices for shoppers.

At a May 19 hearing, the USTR will discuss proposed tariffs on ship-to-shore cranes, chassis that carry containers and chassis parts. China dominates the manufacture of port cranes, which the USTR plans to hit with a tariff of 100%.

The Federal Register did not say if the funds raised by the fees and proposed crane and container tariffs would be dedicated to fund a revival of U.S. shipbuilding.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, David Lawder and Andrea Shalal in Washington and Jonathan Saul in London; Editing by Jamie Freed, Clarence Fernandez and Gerry Doyle)

The Reasons Fewer Farmers Are Now Responding to USDA's NASS Surveys — And the Impact of Waning Participation

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 15:17:49 GMT

U.S. taxpayer-funded government reports on the economy and agriculture have generated comments from stakeholders and others, especially since the Internet has made it easier for anyone to comment.

We decided to check in on response rates for USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) reports after a new study by the American Statistical Association warned the reliability of U.S. economic data is at risk due to shrinking budgets, declining survey response rates and potential political interference (this is not the case with NASS reports). Currently, government statistics remain dependable, but the study, authored by statisticians from various institutions including George Mason University and the Urban Institute, likens the statistical system to infrastructure that is often neglected until a crisis occurs. (The New York Times addressed the matter in this article .)

Note: We contacted several current and former USDA officials and asked them to comment about the numbers and some of the responses in this special report. These individuals include Lance Honig, Director of Methodology Division, Chair, Agricultural Statistics Board, USDA-National Agricultural Statistics Service; current top USDA economist Dr. Seth Meyer; and Dr. Joe Glauber, former top USDA economist.

Here’s a breakdown of response rates for USDA’s NASS reports:

Response rates have been declining over time:

• In the early 1990s, response rates for NASS crop surveys were 80% to 85%.

• By the late 2010s, response rates had fallen below 60% in some cases.

Recent response rates for specific NASS surveys:

• The 2022 Census of Agriculture had a response rate of 61%.

• The 2017 Census of Agriculture had a response rate of 71.5%.

• For monthly NASS surveys, response rates are around 75%.

• For quarterly or annual NASS surveys, response rates are around 50% to 60%.

Factors affecting response rates:

• Increasing difficulty in accessing households due to new telephone technologies.

• Rising refusal rates from respondents — “It’s mostly inability to reach people that’s increasing. Actual refusals are fairly steady,” Honig says.

• Concerns about data privacy and time constraints from farmers.

• Increased number of people requesting information from farmers.

Impact of declining response rates:

• Reduced statistical precision of estimates, especially at the county level.

• Fewer counties for which estimates can be published.

• Potential introduction of bias if non-respondents differ from respondents.

USDA NASS efforts to address declining response rates:

• Offering online response options.

• Developing shorter questionnaires.

• Adjusting sampling and weighting procedures.

• Increasing follow-up efforts through multiple contact methods.

• Increased outreach efforts to build relationships/trust and increase transparency (i.e. #StatChat, Data Users’ Meetings, Visitors to Lockup, etc.)

Importance of response rates:

• High response rates are crucial for maintaining data quality and reliability.

• Lower response rates can lead to increased costs for data collection.

• Accurate data is essential for policymaking, research and agricultural planning.

Bottom line: NASS continues to monitor response rates and implement strategies to improve participation in their surveys, recognizing the critical importance of high-quality agricultural data.

Ag industry chimes in about the relevance of NASS reports and the response rates:

• “Accurate data primarily allows transparency in the marketplace, otherwise you get misinformation on social media and conspiracy theories due to what analyst one listens to. It does not create a level playing field for all.”

• “While people complain in the U.S. that big companies have all the information, USDA’s NASS allows one point of solid information that everyone can trade off of.”

• “While there are shortcomings, NASS provides the best source of agriculture data anywhere in the world. It has allowed U.S. agriculture to thrive. Going forward, policymakers need to understand they need to fund the service to help farmers, agribusinesses and consumers.”

• “This is a topic every year on the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour because it’s a debate on how accurate NASS is with their crop estimates. Farmers want to complain NASS isn’t that accurate, but they don’t want to give NASS any insights, either (the trust issue).”

Note: NASS publishes a report each year that shows the accuracy of its estimates.

• Several growers said they don’t trust the government and they aren’t giving out their data. One said: “You just wonder with all the technology on planters and combines today, as well as all the satellite info, when NASS will have to change their approach.”

Honig response: “NASS is exploring the potential of using precision ag data, but significant hurdles currently exist, primarily around ownership/availability of the data. Satellite data are currently utilized to augment the survey and administrative data.”

• “I think the response rate is way below 50%. Some of these guys are big farmers and do not want to share data. Plus, they all think NASS’ quality has declined so why give data to a failing entity?”

• “Grain stocks on farm has been a big topic amongst the elderly grain traders I keep in touch with. Most think the basis is a much better indicator than NASS. For example: Why is the cash corn basis so strong in the WCB this year, yet ECB stocks are reported by NASS to be huge. Meanwhile, Cn/Cu is trading an inverse during delivery and the delivery points are in the ECB.”

Honig response: “NASS stocks estimates represent quantities stored by location, but do not indicate whether or not those quantities are all still available to be marketed (i.e. some/all may already be contracted/committed).”

• “Why can’t crop insurance yield data be used to compare to NASS plot data? I would argue crop insurance yield data is probably the most accurate data currently available. Since crop insurance is a federally subsidized program, let us see the data.”

Honig response: “NASS can use these data for evaluation purposes, but timing is a big issue with these data. Data are only provided once for each season, and not available until late-spring/early-summer the year following harvest. NASS publishes yield forecasts throughout the growing season and provides final season estimates in early January for most major row crops (late-September for small grain crops).”

• “Social media (SM) has turned everyone into an analyst that feels they get ‘enough’ data from SM to determine crop size. Then they go on a drive and look for confirmation of what they expect to see and, of course, they find it. Now they are armed with 4 hours of research on ‘X’ and what they saw on a 200-mile round trip, and they think they have the U.S. crop figured out. When NASS reports something different than they expected, the first thing they do is get back to SM and tell everyone how wrong NASS is. When NASS reports something in line with their expectations, the first thing they do is get back to SM to tell everyone how right they were before NASS put out its guess.”

Honig response: “Agreed — and people commonly assume because NASS estimates don’t match what many expected that they are wrong. Expectations are often based on limited information.”

• “Distrust not just of USDA’s NASS but of anything to do with or organized by the government. Some refuse to respond while others (very few, but it happens) falsely respond and then complain (loudly) about how wrong NASS is.”

Honig response: “More data always leads to increased accuracy, so responding to surveys is the best way to make things better!”

• “Few take time to understand the process and how results are generated at different times of the year. If they had a better understanding they might be more willing to participate in a constructive way.”

Honig response: “NASS works hard to be transparent and provide details about our procedures. We make ourselves readily available to answer questions and address concerns.”

• “Of course, it’s not just the NASS estimates that create the distrust ... it’s the combination of the NASS estimate and the market reaction. So, the distrust is also toward ‘the markets.’ It’s the, ‘Let them figure it out on their own’ attitude. These are the same people that don’t want any crop estimates (private or public), will say ‘Let the market figure it out’ and then complain when the market doesn’t perform like they think it should.”

• “Conspiracy theorists are taking over ... due to social media. Media isn’t meant to be social. Keyboard warriors … everyone thinks they’re an expert. They hide behind cute screen names, but no recourse for putting out wild/false claims,” said one veteran industry analyst .

• “Going to be more important going forward! These new AI models scrape data and form conclusions. Without good data, the promise for AI may be limited, or even worse, misleading.”

Comments from Lance Honig, Director of Methodology Division and Chair, Agricultural Statistics Board of USDA’s NASS:

“As a Federal statistical agency, NASS has the unique ability to level the playing field by providing unbiased and accurate information to everyone involved in agriculture — free of charge and available to everyone at the same time. The work that we do is a partnership with farmers across the Nation. Every producer who receives a NASS survey has an opportunity to improve the accuracy of the results by completing it, which leads to better decisions, better policy, and increased market efficiency. That’s a win for everyone. Response to surveys has declined in recent years, but overall rates remain very strong at NASS relative to other organizations and entities conducting survey work — a tribute to the time farmers commit to this partnership. While surveys remain the backbone of our estimates, we incorporate additional information into our process, including administrative data from across USDA, geospatial information, and more. This helps to improve accuracy while reducing the volume of survey contacts we have to make, therefore reducing the burden placed on farmers. We continue to explore additional data sources as we look to the future, but remain committed to utilizing the most reliable information available today.”

Comments from USDA top economist Dr. Seth Meyer:

“There is talk about crop insurance and use of other data sources. For RMA data, the issue is timeliness and when producers are required to report information to AIPs. By that point it has very little additive value. (Note: USDA’s Honig also commented on this as noted above.) NASS also makes extensive use of FSA data; they can pull what they need, and NASS has moved up when it more fully utilizes the FSA data as the FSA data have both improved quality and timeliness. I expect we will see more of this, and it will support crop production estimates. They will use any bit of data they think can contribute to an improved estimate.

“Indeed, earth observation (EO) data and analysis are improving. 20 years ago, EO often overpromised what it can do, but the reality is starting to meet the hype. We use EO extensively in the WASDE report, in particular this is helpful in countries which lack a strong statistical service or where data collection are challenging. However, I’m not yet willing to trade my NASS data for it and I’m going to want a couple of decades of overlapping data before I’d agree.

“Often when I’m overseas, people I meet report that they rely on USDA data more than their own government’s data. There is a level of trust that the data are unbiased, and we need to work to maintain that trust among our direct constituents in the U.S. I think important points are raised [in this report] about how to ensure that the quality of that data is maintained.

“I always try to explain to producers why responding [to surveys] is in their best interest. They might not always like the way prices move when the report is released (at least not half the time) but these reports level the playing field every 30 days. They are at a disadvantage to large grain traders able to accumulate more information; NASS reports resolve some of this information asymmetry each month.

“There is a lot of value in NASS reports, value that isn’t as flashy as a new program or initiative but lays the foundation for a lot of decision making across the country by producers and others. I think it is always important for us at USDA to make the case, and I think it is a good case, that these reports are a benefit to the sector and not only help market function but result in better policy formation in DC and in the state capitals.”

Comments from former top USDA economist Dr. Joe Glauber:

“Earth observation data and AI technologies are becoming increasingly accurate at measuring area and predicting yields. While we still ground truth a lot of those data against NASS surveys, those methodologies will become increasingly prevalent and may ultimately become the gold standard. Earth observation technologies are already the standard for evaluating crop conditions in many countries (for example, GEOGLAM’s estimation of cropland and crop conditions in occupied areas of Ukraine). But moving beyond area, yield and production, it gets more difficult. NASS is one of the few national statistical agencies that attempts to measure grain stocks. Consumption estimates are even more difficult (There is a reason the WASDE corn balance sheet includes “Feed AND RESIDUAL.”) Lastly, NASS and ERS have provided long time series on farm sector well-being and as much as I am often critical of the farm income measure, my criticism is more about how the measure is (mis)interpreted.

“USDA’s original function was providing research and development for farmers (through seed development and distribution) and providing information on prices, production, etc. These remain public goods that I would argue are still relevant today as they were in the 1860s.”

China Can't Control Latest COVID-19 Outbreak, and It Could Now Constrict Containers at World's Busiest Port

Tue, 29 Mar 2022 18:08:30 GMT

The commodity markets came under pressure to start the week as traders tried to shed risk over shipping concerns in China. The bearish sentiment was driven by fresh COVID-19 concerns in China that caused officials to shut down transportation amid a two-pronged lockdown.

Government officials in Shanghai announced rolling lockdowns in order to conduct coronavirus testing. In the city of 26 million people, residents will be barred from leaving their homes. There’s concern any suspension of commercial activity in Shanghai will have global ripple effects.

The city is one of China’s primary centers for finance, manufacturing and trade. Shanghai has been the world’s busiest port when it comes to container volumes since 2010.

Even though Chinese state media says the port continues to operate, other reports say that trucking services in and out of the city will be severely impacted...and several warehouses are closed.

All this is coming as officials work to contain an outbreak of a highly transmissible Omincron variant. The restrictions are in place until Tuesday, April 3, 2022.

Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 13:38:18 GMT

When Ron Gollobin disappeared into snake hell and descended into the expansive tangle of a veritable cottonmouth nest on a four-month hunt, he undertook the most outrageous summer job ever performed by an American teen and unleashed one of the most hair-raising entrepreneurial efforts in pit viper history.

Working alone in remote ponds, 15-year-old Gollobin, with the prayers of a pagan and patience of a stone, caught and milked hundreds of 3’-5’ cottonmouths by hand, all in a chilling effort to obtain venom via a glory-and-riches scheme for the ages.

His cottonmouth account is an absolute jaw-dropper with few parallels—high adventure at its toe-curling best. Welcome to Gollobin’s addicting madness and a tale too insane for fiction: a cottonmouth farmer seeking a venom crop for harvest.

Taking Up Serpents

A son of Elizabeth City, N.C., a town perched on a bend of the Pasquotank River, young Gollobin spent the 1950s roaming forested wetlands at the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp —a 112,000-acre wonderland for a precocious, towheaded boy with a boat and a motor.

“It was swampy and I was a swamper,” Gollobin, 81, says, through words laced with a hearty chuckle. “I lived in town, but I had almost complete freedom. It was nonstop pursuit of frogs, lizards, turtles, and snakes—I was in my element.”

Into junior high school, Gollobin’s interest in amphibians and reptiles picked up steam with an intense fascination of snakes, under the tutelage of classmate and brother in arms, “John,” an amateur herpetologist with a research-oriented approach to all creatures cold and scaly. Under John’s influence, Gollobin crafted a snake laboratory in his attic, populated by dozens of specimens bobbing in alcohol-filled jars—essentially pickled snakes.

(Farm Journal)

Gollobin was lord of his attic realm, able to pull up the ladder and disappear into a serpentine no-go zone, an upper room off-limits to his parents by their own choosing, except for a single overarching dictum—no live snakes allowed.

Gollobin’s reptilian education jumped from small, harmless snakes to deadly pit vipers. “I clearly remember the first time John showed me how to handle a poisonous snake—a cottonmouth. I grabbed the snake behind the neck, and it instantly wrapped its body around my arm and began squeezing as if it was a constrictor. Maybe I was hooked, because even though I was scared, I started to enjoy it.”

Beyond a science-based perspective, Gollobin also viewed snakes through a lens coated in greenbacks. In the summer of 1955, catching wind of a standing offer by the Ross Allen Reptile Institute in Silver Springs, Fla., to pay $1 per foot for live snakes and 5 cents a pop for lizards, Gollobin, 14, sold his bicycle and several more personal items, hoarded paper route income, and scrounged for loose change, convinced the seed money would spur a windfall of profit in central Florida.

Recruiting a 15-year-old friend, “Richard,” (an inauspicious companion choice due to Richard’s inordinate fear of reptiles) Gollobin, 14, hatched a Huck Finn-esque expedition to hunt reptiles in the Sunshine State. With a total kitty of just over $74, the duo of wannabe Tarzans hitchhiked out of Elizabeth City, on the road to fortune.

Considering his youth, feather-like weight under 100 lb., mop of blond hair, and complete disregard for safety, Gollobin was a prime target for predators of all stripes. “I was a spring chicken in the domain of wolves and anything could have happened to a boy my age and size. We were running away from home, intending to live in the Everglades and sell reptiles to Ross Allen,” he recalls. “What could go wrong?”

The Lizard King

Catching a chain of rides through the Carolinas and Georgia, Gollobin and Richard arrived in Marion County, Florida hemorrhaging dollars from the original $74 kitty—thanks to a $20 speeding ticket contribution on the Georgia line, several steak dinners, and an entire evening of bumper cars at Daytona Beach. No matter, a goldmine was surely around the corner.

They secured a 50-cent per night room at a shanty-like boarding house in Ocala, approximately 6 miles from Silver Springs, and hitched to the Ross Allen Reptile Institute. Spread over 10 acres, the facility was a mixture of entertainment and science, with activities ranging from alligator wresting to snake handling to invaluable anti-venin research. (Allen’s work was instrumental in providing venom protection for G.I.’s in World War ll.)

(Farm Journal)

However, when the North Carolina teens waltzed through the facility’s doors, Ross Allen was nowhere to be found, gone on a genuine scientific expedition. However, his son, Tom Allen, took pity on the pair of waifs and gave them several days of free run to all rattlesnake handling and alligator wrestling on site, as well as venom milking.

Despite idyllic surroundings akin to a reptile Shangri-la, Gollobin and Richard soon were skinned of cash and food. “We’d been away from home for a whole week, and had been two days without food, living on nothing but our wits, which sure weren’t very sharp,” Gollobin says. “We were still waiting for the money to come rolling in.”

Low on options, the pair hit the woods, in adherence with their raison d’être in Florida: wrangling.

Gollobin snagged a pillowcase from the dismal room at the boarding house and set off into the bush, scouring the ground for any sign of snake presence, alongside a reluctant Richard. “I don’t know where in the hell all the snakes went,” Gollobin explains. “Maybe they were hunted out of that area, but all we found were lizards.”

Weary to the bone after a day spent chasing down 100 lizards in Florida’s summer steam, the boys collapsed with a palpable sense of relief in straw beneath a stretch of piney woods, envisioning the smorgasbord of food to come once the lizards were cashed in at the Reptile Institute for $5 (100 @ 5 cents).

Minutes into the rich, but brief rest, their dream of buffet-style food disappeared during a silent jailbreak. Richard left the pillowcase untied on the forest floor—allowing every lizard and each vital nickel to flee the scene.

Dusk and panic descending in tandem, Gollobin and Richard hunted in manic fashion, only capturing four more lizards before tromping out of the woods and back to the Reptile Institute to sell their meager catch for a mere 20 cents.

Walking toward the highway back to Ocala, dry-mouthed, thirsty and hungry, the boys stopped at a roadside orange juice stand fronted by a tempting sign: “All You Can Drink: 10 cents.” Slapping four nickels on the barrelhead, Gollobin and Richard tucked in with the parched desperation of castaways, each pounding an entire pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice, much to the disgust and chagrin of the helpless business owner, hogtied by the guarantee painted on his sign.

Hydrated, but reeling from the sudden intake of sugar and fruit pulp on stomachs devoid of solid food for 48 hours, the boys staggered 20’ toward the blacktop, leaned in unison, and vomited massive, twin rivers of orange liquid painted against the golden hew of fading Florida sunlight.

Parting ways with Richard early the next morning, Gollobin abdicated the mantle of lizard king, thrust a thumb to the highway, and started the 750 mile stop-and-go journey back to Elizabeth City, accepting the inevitable draconian punishment for a “damn hellion” yet to be delivered by his father.

(Farm Journal)

Days later, recovering his pride in the solace of the snake attic, Gollobin’s entrepreneurial drive was tempered, but only for the tiniest moment. Following his inglorious return to North Carolina, he chanced upon a newspaper article containing a clarion call for a reptile-obsessed young boy with a wild streak. A tiny snippet of text mentioned the high value of snake venom to anti-venin research facilities, upwards of $400 per ounce—a princely sum to 14-year-old Gollobin.

Exit stage right, the impulsive lizard hunter. Enter stage left, the visionary cottonmouth farmer.

“I kept everything on the quiet side,” Gollobin remembers. “Nobody was aware of what I was planning for that next summer. I knew that if scientists needed snake venom, there was no one more capable than me of getting hold of it in large amounts, because who else was crazy enough to go deep into the habitat of the truly big snakes? They were offering what was big, big money to a kid, more than I ever dreamed of, and I wasn’t about to watch the chance skip by.”

Gollobin pounced on a chance to corner a $400 per ounce market.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Venom Candy

The economics and logistics of Gollobin’s venom harvest venture demanded a poisonous snake available in relatively high volume, i.e., a cottonmouth, the mainstay viper of the swampy southeastern United States, often dubbed a water moccasin, snap jaw, gaper, swamp lion, or a host of similar monikers.

Known for frequently holding its ground when disturbed, head up and mouth agape revealing white tissue within, a broad-headed mature cottonmouth is semiaquatic, typically black-gray in color with a mottled belly, a thick, muscular midsection, remarkably blunt tale, and length ranging up to 5’, but often reaching 6’ and slightly beyond. In short, the snake is an absolute hoss, and merited or not, in most unexpected, close encounters with humans a cottonmouth elicits the fear of God, or at a bare minimum—a punctuated stream of primal invective and cursing.

(Farm Journal)

Gollobin’s cottonmouth honey hole was hidden roughly 50 miles east of Elizabeth City, tucked in a series of freshwater ponds on the Outer Banks—a chain of islands hugging the Carolina coast. Considering the fetid and wooly habitat around the water holes, freshwater ponds might be considered a misnomer—slough or bayou could also be accurate. The ponds were a hot zone for mosquitos, and Gollobin describes the small bodies of water as, “about 50’-60’ across, surrounded by vines, briars, poison ivy, spiders, lizards, chiggers, ticks, all filled with sticks and leafy debris.”

As the calendar rolled into the first weekend of June 1956, Gollobin suited up in jeans, a t-shirt, and army boots, and launched a cottonmouth harvesting enterprise. He walked out of his house in early morning sunlight and building heat, presumed by his parents to be en route to standard haunts within the Great Dismal Swamp or on the Pasquotank River.

Instead, in total secrecy, he carved a travel pattern repeated every single weekend day of the 1956 summer, weather permitting, June to early September. Carrying a sawed-off broomstick, and strapped with a backpack containing extra jeans, a burlap sack, venom collection paraphernalia, and a highly ineffectual snakebite kit providing a placebo of assurance, Gollobin darted down a few sleepy Elizabeth City side streets and emerged on the highway, thumb up, bound for a cottonmouth grand central station located 50 miles east.

(Farm Journal)

“The ponds were just outside the town of Nag’s Head. It’s an area within the Intercoastal Waterway, full of sand dunes, and very near Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers first flew,” Gollobin describes. “I hitchhiked the whole way there, walked for a mile to the beach, and walked another mile through brush and woods to the ponds. Just me. Not another soul in the world knew what was going on, because I didn’t want to get in trouble, and I didn’t want anyone else to get the $400. No cell phone, no way to signal anyone, and nobody around. I was wiry, but I was still probably not much over 100 lb., and I was very much aware that if I got bit, the chances of me getting to a hospital alive were not good.”

Gollobin’s hunting technique began with entry into an algae-covered pond, wading approximately 5’-10’ off the bank into water reaching his upper thighs. Turning around, Gollobin skirted the base of the pond, easing along the perimeter, eyes out for cottonmouths coiled on the bank waiting for prey.

The physical act of snagging a cottonmouth was contingent on the mastery of broomstick handling and a heavy dose of touch-and-go madness. Gollobin’s self-fashioned broomstick featured a large clothesline hook on one end and a nylon-line slipknot at the opposing end. Gollobin’s No. 1 option to catch a cottonmouth, depending on terrain and bank foliage, was the slipknot, essentially a snare.

“I’d reach the broomstick out, drop the loop just past the head and yank up. Then I’d pin him down, remove the knot, and slip him in my burlap bag. If the snare couldn’t get him, I’d go in with the hook to pin him down.”

The typical size of cottonmouth candidates plucked from the banks ranged from 3’-4’, but Gollobin frequently encountered specimens upwards of 5’-6’. “There were always some thick, fat ones that you had to see to believe. Whenever I saw more than one at the same spot on the bank, I always picked the biggest to catch—whichever had the largest venom sacs.”

Snakes have an extremely poor sense of hearing, but an extraordinary ability to detect vibration, a characteristic that wreaked havoc with Gollobin’s nerves. “A cottonmouth will let you ease the nylon loop over its neck, but if you touch any surrounding stick or branch in the process, even under your feet in the water, they’ll explode off the bank and seek cover in the water,” Gollobin details.

“When I was standing in the pond and made a mistake, the cottonmouths wanted the safety of the water, and didn’t want to exit onto the land,” he continues. “When they would rocket off the bank and hit the water feet in front of me, I held my breath because they’d glide by and sometimes bump into my legs—a terrible feeling that scared the living hell out of me.”

At each pond, Gollobin operated with business-like efficiency, methodically moving down the banks until the burlap sack grew heavy, cognizant that subsequent venom milking required additional time and caution—heavyweight factors for a 15-year-old boy required to be home before dark.

Each day’s haul varied in precise number, but Gollobin normally stopped at 10-12 snakes, either because of time or the difficulty in wielding a bulging bag of cottonmouths. Once a hunting session was complete, he toted the bag to nearby dunes, and began milking venom.

“I took the snakes to the sand dunes, away from the water, so there was no splashing by one snake to scare the others. I estimate each snake took 5 to 10 minutes to milk, but it was really a matter of getting the gear ready. I was so cautious when handling the cottonmouths and never careless. I’d been bitten by countless water snakes, but never by a venomous snake. I was adolescent and bulletproof, but I knew there was no room for error. There was no competition, no crowd, not anyone but me, and the danger was titillating, but I knew just one miscalculation meant I wasn’t going home. Same risk every weekend.”

(Farm Journal)

“I had my milking kit ready,” he adds. “In the kit, I had a tumbler, and I’d hold the snake just behind the head, and put his fangs over the tumbler, squeezing the venom sacs. The venom ran down into the glass. I’d stopper the sterile vial and move onto to the next snake. Then I’d let the snakes all go after milking and there is no doubt I caught and got venom from some of the same repeats that summer.”

Week after week of summer, as the milking numbers went from dozens to scores to hundreds, what did Gollobin do with the vials?

Back to the snake attic and a bit of alchemy with a razor blade, glass sheeting, and mason jar. Time to make venom candy.

Curing the Crop

Fifty cents bought Gollobin one plate of foot-square glass. Every weekend, after his return home before dark from Nag’s Head, he ascended into the attic, opened the vials, and poured the venomous hemotoxin over the glass plate—evenly spread in the manner of pancake batter. Glistening with a pale sheen, it appeared as if Gollobin poured a thin layer of yellow varnish atop the clear glass.

After air-drying for roughly seven days, Gollobin used a single-edge razor blade to scrape the hardened liquid into a tiny pile of crystallized residue. Even during the scraping process, he was on edge, aware his friend and budding herpetologist, John, had been poisoned during a similar process. A year earlier, while scraping dried and crystalized venom slivers with a razor blade, John’s thumb was pierced by a tiny shard of residue, resulting in hospitalization due to snakebite by proxy.

Intent on avoiding a repeat of John’s freak injury, Gollobin gingerly deposited each load of golden residue into a 16 oz. mason jar, sterilized by alcohol and boiling water. “I never weighed it, but I had a jar of what the research scientists wanted. I had purified venom,” Gollobin says, “at least from the vantage point of a 15-year-old.”

The cottonmouth season was over; it was time to sell a crop.

Teardrops in the Rain

September progressing, summer dying, and a heart bursting with expectation, Gollobin spun the circular disk of a rotary phone and dialed for the Ross Allen Reptile Institute.

After excruciating minutes of waiting, passed from one low-level handler to the next, Gollobin was finally patched through to the Reptile Institute’s research facility and a staff official in command of the anti-venin project.

(Farm Journal)

Brimming with confidence, Gollobin blurted out his bottom line—an offer painstakingly crafted over four, death-defying months: “Sir, I have a mason jar of crystalized water moccasin venom and I’d like to sell it to you.”

The scientist responded with a single question, “Son, is it purified?”

“Yes sir, it’s purified,” Gollobin replied. “I milked the snakes. I put the venom in a sterilized vial. I air-dried the venom. I scraped it into a sterilized jar. What else would I need to purify it?

The phone line went silent with a pregnant pause. In a sense, Gollobin’s question answered itself. “You’d need a roomful of machines and people with advanced degrees to run those machines,” the scientist concluded. “I’m sorry, but the venom must be purified before it is dried.”

With those words of rejection, the crash of the cottonmouth harvesting scheme was complete. The venom was worthless—teardrops in the rain.

The Great Lumber Hustle

Sixty-six years later, Gollobin is heartened by his audacity and teenage nerve. “I was always a risk-taker, always riding the edge, and catching cottonmouths taught me to remain calm in the rigidity of tense situations and was a good background for life in general.”

Gollobin was a middle-class kid with a foot on both sides of the tracks—a rare individual comfortable running with rednecks or the refined. “I was always a guy hovering between two worlds, and it served me well later in life.”

(Farm Journal)

Indeed. Gollobin became an investigative reporter and a master in his field, receiving two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize, five Emmy Award wins, and 30 years tracking the mafia and corruption.

Six-plus decades past the 1956 summer of cottonmouth farming, does the lizard king and pit viper wrangler still reflect on his time in the dark ponds, thigh-deep in muck, wielding a slipknot and hook?

“I think about those days more and more,” Gollobin concludes. “It was a crazy time in a young boy’s life that I can only compare to Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. I had a charmed life in many senses, and it was a lucky way to grow up.”

At 15, after the collapse of his cottonmouth venom proprietorship, was his maverick streak curbed?

“Hell no,” Gollobin adds. “Let me tell you about The Great Lumber Hustle.”

(Gollobin lives in a Boston suburb, working on a book of short stories and memoirs to be called, “Fraught and Frivolous.” For more detail on the escapades of Ron Gollobin in the 1950s, see narratively.com and The Teenage Prank That’s Lasted 60 Years , and The Great Cottonmouth-Catching-Get-Rich-Quick Scheme of 1956 .)

To read more stories from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com — 662-592-1106), see:

Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.

Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man

How a Texas Farmer Killed Agriculture’s Debt Dragon

While America Slept, China Stole the Farm

Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years

The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland

Where’s the Beef: Con Artist Turns Texas Cattle Industry Into $100M Playground

Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam

Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History

US Farming Loses the King of Combines

Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy

Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs

Misfit Tractors a Money Saver for Arkansas Farmer

Government Cameras Hidden on Private Property? Welcome to Open Fields

Farmland Detective Finds Youngest Civil War Soldier’s Grave?

Descent Into Hell: Farmer Escapes Corn Tomb Death

Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam

Grizzly Hell: USDA Worker Survives Epic Bear Attack

Farmer Refuses to Roll, Rips Lid Off IRS Behavior

Killing Hogzilla: Hunting a Monster Wild Pig

Shattered Taboo: Death of a Farm and Resurrection of a Farmer

Frozen Dinosaur: Farmer Finds Huge Alligator Snapping Turtle Under Ice

Breaking Bad: Chasing the Wildest Con Artist in Farming History

In the Blood: Hunting Deer Antlers with a Legendary Shed Whisperer

Corn Maverick: Cracking the Mystery of 60-Inch Rows

Against All Odds: Farmer Survives Epic Ordeal

Agriculture’s Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

4 Keys to Building Land Lease Relationships that Last

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 18:29:01 GMT

With farmland sale prices reaching $30,000 in some parts of the Midwest, the prospect of leasing land—as the owner or producer—has become increasingly more favorable.

If you’re renting farmland to or from others, you have many things to consider – from managing long-term lease agreements and land improvements to zeroing in on the right farm insurance and liability protection.

Max Wenck, who farms and leases land in both South Dakota and Wisconsin, tells Andrew McCrea he’s learned a thing or two from being on both sides of the lease fence. Here are his tips:

1. Find Your Equilibrium

Trust is the mold to a lasting farmland lease relationship, in Wenck’s view.

“It’s hard to build trust when one party doesn’t feel that they’re being treated fairly,” he says. “If something isn’t working for you, it’s your job to explore that and figure out how you can make that right.”

With trust as the mold, Wenck says fairness is the mortar that needs to be reapplied each season.

“A lot of people have different approaches to price negotiations. My approach has always been to have some basis for why I believe the transaction is worth whatever it is. This helps to come to an agreement that is fair, meets each person’s needs and based on fact, rather than something I’ve heard or feel.”

In order to build on trust and fairness, Wenck expects a steady stream of communication.

2. Bring Data to the Negotiation Table

According to Wenck, high commodity prices are a catalyst for a lot of conversation in his neck of the woods, and he’s concerned for those leasing and leasing out.

However, if either side of the fence proposes a change in rental prices, Wenck says both sides can prepare by having data at the ready.

“You want to make it fair. But as a tenant, you need to prove what’s fair,” he says. “If you can provide some information to back up the cost of inputs and what it takes to raise your crop, you might be able to take a significant rent increase off the table.”

Along with data, Wenck says it’s also important to have insurance knowledge on hand.

3. Ask the Difficult Insurance Questions

If you don’t know what to ask, ask what to ask. That’s the insurance advice Wenck imparted on McCrea in the episode of Farming the Countryside.

In Wenck’s experience, there are a few heavy hitters that often get overlooked:
• Mutual understanding of the liability insurance.
• Items covered in the farm’s buildings—structure and its contents.
• FSA payment entitlement

“In the past, when I was farming leased land, I wasn’t proactive in communicating to the landowner some aspects of a farm program we were enrolled in. The landlord felt entitled to an FSA payment and had to go to the local agency to get an answer. But that was a big miss on my part as the tenant,” he says.

And he adds the scenario taught him to be more upfront with landlords about all aspects of FSA programs, while also working to communicate he cares about the land and the landowner.

4. A Time to Share

According to Wenck, there are three “great” opportunities to communicate as a landowner.

“With most of our leases, there’s a spring and fall payment. These are opportunities to write a little note about how the season has played out on their land in particular,” he says. “If I have a moment, I’ll snap a picture of their farm and the newly planted or harvested field and send it in a text.”

Over time, Wenck says these small acts will amount to a stronger relationship that might “surprise” both parties. He says the tenant will understand this surprise once he sends the note and text.

“Sometimes it has nothing to do with price and everything to do with the extra things you’re willing to put forth, to know, and to care about your land or someone else’s,” he says.

Want to Know More?

McCrea’s conversation on insurance will continue in coming weeks as he will moderate farmland lease panels on Nov. 29 and Dec. 9.

To register for the panels, visit AgWeb .

More on farmland :

$30,000 Per Acre? Yep, The Details on the Latest Record-Breaking Farmland Sale
High Exposure: Understand How Record Farmland Prices Impact Your Estate Plan
Foreign Farmland Ownership to be Addressed in New Study

Chip Flory : Stay Calm and Market On

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 11:49:00 GMT

Anxiety and stress associated with marketing decisions can be managed, but you must take an active approach.

The reason for anxiety in marketing decisions are well-documented, but the most common is the fear of missing out – FOMO.

Many consider selling before a market reaches a price peak the ultimate risk-management mistake. Some even consider selling at any time other than at the price highs a mistake.

If that describes you, it’s time to rethink what you’re trying to accomplish with a risk-management plan.

KEEP A JOURNAL

Ignoring decisions that need to be made or throwing in the towel on a marketing year add to anxiety. Keeping a marketing journal, and having the discipline to make a daily entry, helps you do a better job of risk management, and it removes much of the anxiety associated with making a decision.

A key rule in my market analysis is to not get more bullish as prices rise or to get more bearish as prices fall. There are exceptions, especially early in a new price trend, but in mature markets, don’t let either happen.

Use the journal to document why you’ve decided to not sell – or why today was the day to make an aggressive sale. Review previous entries to give you the confidence you’ve done your homework to make an informed decision each day.

When you make a sale, note the reasons why. In the weeks ahead, look back at your notes. If prices are higher or lower than when the sale was made, your emotions should remain in check because there was a reason the decision was made.

This process also puts the responsibility for the decision squarely on your shoulders — and that’s where you want it. Leaving important decisions such as grain sales to someone else will leave you wondering if they’re doing the job. If you own the risk management, you will know the job is being done.

STAY FLEXIBLE

Price floors are a solid base for your marketing mental health. Put options, minimum price contracts and other strategies that limit downside price risk but leave upside price potential open are wonderful tools that prevent a catastrophic pricing performance.

They also give you the opportunity to end a crop’s marketing on your terms rather than throwing in the towel.

SET EXPECTATIONS

It is difficult to construct a perfect marketing plan. So, don’t demand perfection. Demand discipline to do the best job possible, but be willing to accept a misstep as long as you understand what caused the misstep. Learn from it.

In markets with elevated prices and periods of extreme volatility (sound familiar?), focus on profit. Decide when enough is enough and be willing to remove downside price risk when that level is reached. After that, day-to-day price action and marketing decisions move to next year’s crops.

Listen to AgriTalk PM:

IMF Anticipates Global Inflation Will Peak in Late 2022

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 18:10:47 GMT

The International Monetary Fund forecasts a slowdown in global growth from 6.0% in 2021 to 3.2% in 2022 and 2.7% in 2023.

The global slowdown in 2022 is as projected in the July 2022 World Economic Outlook (WEO) update, while the forecast for 2023 is lower than projected by 0.2 percentage point. In the revised forecasts , 93% of countries received downgrades to their growth outlook.

More to Come

Aside from the global financial crisis and the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, this is “the weakest growth profile since 2001,” the IMF said in its WEO published Tuesday morning.

“The worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,” the report said, echoing warnings from the United Nations, the World Bank and many global CEOs.

Cause for Shift

The IMF noted three major events currently hindering growth: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis and China’s economic slowdown. Together, they create a “volatile” period economically, geopolitically and ecologically.

More than a third of the global economy will see two consecutive quarters of negative growth, while the three largest economies — the United States, the European Union and China — will continue to slow, the report said.

Inflation Timeline

The IMF anticipates global inflation will peak in late 2022, increasing from 4.7% in 2021 to 8.8%, and that it will “remain elevated for longer than previously expected.”

Global inflation will likely decrease to 6.5% in 2023 and to 4.1% by 2024, according to the IMF forecast. The agency noted the tightening of monetary policy across the world to combat inflation and the “powerful appreciation” of the U.S. dollar against other currencies.

Red Flags

The IMF also highlighted that the risk of monetary, fiscal, or financial policy “miscalibration” had “risen sharply,” while the world economy “remains historically fragile” and financial markets are “showing signs of stress.”

In an interview with the Financial Times , Pierre Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist, said there was as much as a 15% chance global growth could fall below 1% eventually. This level would likely meet the threshold of a recession and would be “very, very painful for a lot of people.”

“We are not in a crisis yet, but things are really not looking good,” he said, adding that 2023 would be the “darkest hour” for the global economy.

The energy crisis is also weighing heavily on the world’s economies, particularly in Europe, and it “is not a transitory shock,” according to IMF’s report. “The geopolitical re-alignment of energy supplies in the wake of Russia’s war against Ukraine is broad and permanent,” the report added. “Winter 2022 will be challenging for Europe, but winter 2023 will likely be worse,” the IMF said.

The U.S. economy is expected to stagnate over the four quarters of 2022 and then maintain a sluggish 1% growth rate in 2023.

More on inflation:

Could Food Prices Ease in 2023? USDA’s New Consumer Food Price Forecast Has a Bit of Good News
Is Out-of-Control Inflation on the Horizon? Watch These Two Indicators
John Phipps: The Inflation We Expect

American Gothic: Farm Couple Nailed in Massive $9M Crop Insurance Fraud

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 14:09:35 GMT

Sex and power are primal, but greed is the father of farm crime. Welcome to a $9 million orgy of fraud steered by an unassuming husband and wife: American Gothic gone bad.

From the basement of a modest farmhouse, Robert and Viki Warren ran a crop insurance chop-shop: liquid eraser bottles, copy machines, telltale PVC pipes, and tens of thousands of forged documents. Across a six-year run, the couple’s purported crop losses were near-biblical, reaching critical mass when their stick-wielding farmhands destroyed a tomato field and tossed ice cubes and mothballs around the stalks—spurring the Warrens to brazenly claim yield loss due to a freak hailstorm.

As USDA investigators and a bulldog prosecutor closed in on the scam, the Warrens hid a significant portion of their nouveau wealth, presumably burying caches of twenty-dollar bills stuffed inside plastic tubes. After serving a six-year sentence for crop insurance theft, Robert Warren began depositing peculiar stacks of moldy, pungent cash into a bulging bank account, all while assuring tellers, “Things are finally looking up.”

In reality, the curtain was crashing on the final act of an agriculture fraud for the ages.

Dark Art

In 1996, prior to becoming either the unluckiest farmers on the planet or serial liars, Robert Warren, 49, and Viki Warren, 43, were Buncombe County-based producers at R&V Warren Farms outside Candler, in western North Carolina.

The Warrens lived in a brick, ranch-style home fronted by a pickup truck in the driveway. No Cadillacs. No swimming pool. No shine. Modesty by appearance.

Their operation earned a reputation among buyers for crop quality and strong yields. They were among the most successful producer-packer tomato businesses in the eastern U.S., operating 10 farms in two states: North Carolina and South Carolina (later 26 farms in three states). Simply, the couple was very good at growing and selling tomatoes.

(Farm Journal)

In 1997, the Warrens noted the frailties of crop insurance oversight. A mix of federal and private layers, crop insurance is difficult to parse for those outside the agriculture industry: Private companies, subsidized by federal dollars and USDA, sell insurance policies to U.S. farmers.

The Warrens understood the winding back alleys of crop insurance. However, they didn’t understand, or failed to recognize, federal investigators cold-nosing their paper trail, steered by lead prosecutor Richard Edwards.

Despite a career colored by criminals of every stripe—narcotics conspiracy, public office corruption, construction failure coverups, video poker kickbacks, and even an Army veteran pretending to be blind who took in disability payments while coaching archery—the Warren case stays fresh in Edward’s memory.

“Crop insurance fraud cases often involve farmers that are failures from the start, but not so with the Warrens,” he explains. “They had an excellent product in their fields. They just loved money.”

From 1997 to 2003, with help from several drive-by insurance adjusters, Robert and Viki raked in $9,280,000 million in fake claims (and filed for far more) and sold the hidden tomato yields out the back door. They mastered the dark art of the double-dip.

Good Times, Great Money

They cheated going in; they cheated going out. According to an indictment delivered by a grand jury in 2003, the Warrens began cooking the books after purchasing crop insurance in 1997. They lied about average yield history, inflated acreage, moved production numbers between insured farms, and grossly underreported total output.

(Farm Journal)

From the get-go, they faked yield data and manipulated planting dates. In 1997, Robert Warren planted his Spartanburg, S.C. farm on April 15, the first day allowed by his policy—or so he told the E.L. Ross insurance company. In truth, he planted on April 4-12. He subsequently claimed cold weather damage for April-May and collected $157,712 in crop insurance.

Further, the Warrens reported remarkably minimal yields on several farms. On the Spartanburg farm, they claimed a harvest of 9,862 boxes of fresh tomatoes. The actual harvest was 78,670 boxes. They pocketed nearly $150,000.

Across all 10 farms in 1997, the Warrens claimed losses on five. Their numbers were fantasy: On their North Carolina farms alone, they professed a total harvest of 293,077 boxes, while really growing roughly 500,000 boxes.

All said, the Warrens received $644,467 in crop insurance or premium credits for their scheme in 1997, not even factoring in gravy from the double-dip.

At first blush, it was easy money. They ran the same scheme in 1998, dramatically lowered overall harvest numbers, fudged figures between fields, and pocketed a smooth $1,277,216.

Good times. Great money. But why not go big?

Mother of All Crop Fraud

Cast lots with us, we will all share the loot. My son, do not go along with them, do not set foot on their paths.—Proverbs 1:14-15

“The Warren Farms investigation is literally the mother of all crop fraud investigations,” said Gretchen Shappert, U.S. attorney for the western district of North Carolina, in a 2005 NPR interview. “It was a result of a perfect storm of individuals who were involved in fraud.”

(Farm Journal)

Enter George Kiser, Demetrio Jaimes, Harold Dean Cole, and Thomas Marsh.

George Kiser owned Kiser & Kiser Agency in Lebanon, Va. He sold the Warrens crop policies from Rain & Hail and E.L. Ross, and showed them the ropes of insurance fraud, advising the couple on how to receive payments for fictitious losses.

Demetrio Jaimes was a farm manager and supervisor who signed false documents and staged weather disasters. Harold Dean Cole forged spray records for the Warrens as a farm employee in charge of chemical applications. Thomas Marsh was a crop insurance claims adjuster who worked for Rain & Hail and E.L. Ross, and certified false acreage, damage claims, and false production figures.

“They were submitting reports to insurance companies from farms that would go in and out of existence by the year,” Edwards notes. “They fudged the serial numbers and kept it all unclear.”

(Farm Journal)

By 1999, the Warrens had 20 farms. They churned out a blitz of forged documents: bills of lading, chemical receipts, sales figures, surveyor letters, acreage reports, planting dates, payroll records, invoices, manifests, and more. They claimed losses on 18 of the farms, with an abysmal overall average of 71 boxes per acre. Conversely, they reported a 3,386 box per acre average on the two successful farms. All told, they claimed 512,106 boxes in 1999, but their actual production number surpassed 1 million boxes. Their 1999 haul was $3.8 million off the backs of fellow farmers and U.S. taxpayers.

In 2000, steering a high of 26 farms, they doubled down with tomato and strawberry fraud, and conveniently suffered losses on 14 of 26 farms. Total insurance payout in 2000? $2,254,883.

Yet, the insurance lucre wasn’t enough. The Warrens wanted more. Specifically, they wanted $600,000 from a neighboring farm for alleged herbicide drift. Their greed was the beginning of the end.

A Haunting Detail

On Sept. 8, 2000, the Warrens sued Patten Seed. They accused an employee of Super Sod (an arm of Patten Seed) of spraying 2,4-D on a neighboring field with a highboy and causing drift damage on their tomatoes. Additionally, per their complaint, the Warrens alleged a sprayer hose broke on the highboy and leaked substantial amounts of 2,4-D on an adjoining backroad for three-quarters of a mile. In total, the Warrens pinpointed $600,000 in damages purportedly attributable to Patten Seed/Super Sod action.

(Farm Journal)

During the exchange of information between the opposing legal teams, Warren Farms turned over sales and production data. Notably, the yield numbers were different from what the Warrens reported to E.L. Ross in 1999 crop losses. The figures given to Patten Seed listed overall 1999 North Carolina tomato yields at 865,997 boxes, yet the E.L. Ross 1999 North Carolina tomato yields were drastically lower—316,799 boxes. The discrepancy would haunt the Warrens.

Jumping the Shark

On Independence Day of 2001, the Warrens conducted one of the most outlandish dupes in the history of U.S. agriculture.

Covering their tracks, they switched insurance companies to Fireman’s Fund and added a new farm in Cocke County, Tennessee. Par for the course, the Warrens faked production records for the western Tennessee property, pretending to have grown tomatoes on the ground back to 1991—paving a full decade of forged documents with notarized lease agreements, false testimony from a realtor, fantasy planting dates, fantasy spraying records, bogus harvest records, false diagrams detailing a fantasy irrigation system, and hundreds of fake invoices.

(Farm Journal)

Insurance acquired, the Warrens planted 252.2 acres of tomatoes on the Cocke County farm—so they reported. The real number? Roughly five planted acres.

On July 4, 2001, a devastating hailstorm materialized from a painted blue sky and released its fury exclusively within the bounds of the Warren’s tomato rows. Their farm employees used disposable cameras to record the catastrophe and submitted the hailstone photos as proof to bolster an insurance claim.

However, rather than a freakshow of nature, the hailstorm was a freakshow from the aisles of Piggly Wiggly or Walmart. Their farm employees purchased bags of ice and mothballs, flung the loads around the tomato plants, and snapped photos of the “hailstones” falling from the sky. A farmhand then walked the rows and obliterated the crop with a stick, with additional photos taken of the aftermath.

Bobby Chambers, farm manager at the Warren’s Tennessee operation, described the scene to NPR: “The way we did it, we was down taking pictures, out this row, and then we just stood behind it and throwed the ice over the top. To me, it looked like a hailstorm.”

“They had one Mexican who did all the beating, he beat every 16,000 of them,” Chambers added. “He’d just go through there and knock the leaves off of them. It made it look like where the hail had beat it up.”

Over 20 years past the event, and after a career witnessing every shade of crime, prosecutor Richard Edwards is still jolted by the Warren’s moxie: “The plants were about 1’ high and completely destroyed. In the submission photos, sure enough, there was ice on top of black plastic and pitiful plants everywhere, torn apart.”

However, during later execution of search warrants, investigators gained access to all the photos on the camera roll—including the outtake pictures not turned in as part of the Warren’s claim. “There were two different sets of photos,” Edwards details. “In one set, in closeup photos the Warrens didn’t turn in, the hailstones were curiously cylindrical in shape, with odd dimples on both ends. Also, the path of the hailstones had miraculously fallen with heavy concentrations trailing from the bed of a pickup parked on the turnrow. It was a dry, dusty day, and no doubt the bag leaked and left a trail of ice cubes from truck to tomatoes.”

“In the second set of photos, the hailstones looked amazingly like mothballs—because they were mothballs,” Edwards continues. “Then they beat down the plants to shreds and took pictures from the front angle to make it appear as if the entire farm was damaged, but they’d only planted 6 acres of tomatoes and left the rest empty. We used satellite imagery with different color filters to prove they were lying. Yet, two adjusters, Don Farrow and George Kiser, both approved the claim.”

In the replant of the 252.5 acres, the Warrens pocketed $98,490. (They also declared freeze damage on five farms in the Carolinas for a tidy cleanup of $63,761.25.) All told in 2001, over 17 farms, they received $1,097,718 from Fireman’s Fund, and claimed they were owed an additional $3,805,610. The Warrens had jumped the shark: USDA investigators were closing.

Foot of the Cross

Staying on the move, the Warrens attempted to shift insurance companies again in 2002, seeking a switch from Fireman’s Fund to IGF. They used virgin farmer names—front producers—as window dressing to obtain lower coverage rates.

But on March 12, 2002, their plans went sideways when federal agents with search warrants descended on their home and two packing houses. Investigators found a trove of evidence in the basement of the Warren’s house—a veritable document production facility where paperwork had been manufactured for the duration of the crop fraud.

(Farm Journal)

“We were able to see exactly how Robert and Viki created documents,” Edwards says. “They took bills of lading, chemical receipts, sales receipts, and much more, and did cut-and-paste jobs. Then they photocopied the new document and turned it in as proof of low yield or high yield or whatever they needed. Their basement that had been turned into a facility for cutting and pasting with old fashioned Wite-Out and Xerox machines.”

Due to the motherlode of falsified and forged paperwork, the Warren’s fraud became one of the most fact-intensive cases of Edward’s career. “We’re talking about nearly 1 million damning documents, as well as multiple farms and multiple submissions,” he says. “I was fortunate to have a group of four USDA agents and one IRS agent working on the case and they were fantastic.”

How convincing were the forgeries? “You could take the xeroxed documents the Warrens submitted and match them against the pink or yellow originals and spot the changes in figures,” Edwards notes. “You could hold the documents up to the light and see the Wite-Out or places where tape had been stuck on paper to hide changes in figures.”

Beyond the reams of paperwork, the Warren’s basement held a curious assortment of PVC pipes. Some of the pipes contained stacks of twenty-dollar bills wrapped in aluminum foil, then placed in cloth bags, and finally stuffed into the plastic tubes—impossible to locate via metal detector.

“We strongly suspected they were burying cash on their land, but there was no way to find it,” Edwards says.

Despite a mountain of evidence screaming out crop insurance fraud across a six-year shuffle, the Warrens denied all wrongdoing and professed complete innocence: They were victims.

“The Warrens were extremely defiant,” Edwards recalls. “They never came to the foot of the Cross until a gallows conversion. They finally pled guilty.”

Saddam Hussein of Crop Insurance

A year-and-a-half after the search warrants were executed, the grand jury dropped a stinging indictment in October 2003, layered with details of the con. According to DOJ, “The indictment charged the Warrens, as well as two of their employees, an insurance agent, and an insurance adjuster, with participating in an extensive scheme to defraud the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) and several private insurance companies of more than $9 million between 1997 and 2001, and attempting to obtain an additional $2.8 million in 2001 through 2003.”

Year by year, claim by claim, and lie by lie, the investigation exposed the Warren’s fraud, connecting the dots to George Kiser, Demetrio Jaimes, Harold Dean Cole, and Thomas Marsh. The evidence was overwhelming:

—Filing fraudulent applications for crop insurance and then filing false loss claims;

—Submitting falsified production records, planting dates, and harvesting dates;

—Creating thousands of false, altered, and forged documents to support fraudulent insurance claims;

—Staging false weather disasters to substantiate false crop damage claims;

—Using false records to file a fraudulent civil suit against a neighboring farm;

—Attempting to create false farming entities that would appear to be run independently of Warren Farms, as well as creating false reports and forged documents in support of these attempts.

Significantly, the government used the Warrens’ herbicide drift lawsuit against Patten Seed/Super Sod to bolster its case. In May 2002, on the heels of undergoing federal search warrants of their properties, the Warrens curiously dismissed their suit against Patten Seed. Nonetheless, the raw yield numbers were inescapable, and Edwards pointed out an impossibility: “To make their court case look good against Super Sod, they submitted huge past tomato yield numbers, but on the same farms, they had submitted dreadful shortfalls to USDA for crop insurance claims. Therefore, it was time to pick a felony because they both couldn’t be true.”

(Farm Journal)

Overwhelmed by a flood of evidence, the Warrens took a deal. Robert Warren pled guilty to conspiracy to defraud the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Viki Warren pled guilty to conspiracy to defraud the FCIC and one count of mail fraud. The Warrens agreed to the forfeiture of $7.3 million, and $9.15 million in restitution to USDA.

Speaking to NPR, Robert Warren’s attorney, Sean Devereaux, deflected blame from his client: “It’s fine for the government to issue sentencing memoranda and make Robert Warren appear to be the Saddam Hussein of crop insurance, but he’s not. He basically was approached by people selling insurance and told, ‘This is an easy thing to do. Don’t worry, this is the government’s money, it’s not the insurance company’s money.’”

Almost the entire Warren crew confessed. Crop insurance agent George Kiser pled guilty and received a 27-month sentence and an $8.15 million penalty in restitution to USDA. Thomas Marsh, the loss adjuster, admitted guilt and was sentenced to 14 months and $767,000 in restitution. Harold Dean Cole refused to plead and went to trial. Cole was found guilty at trial of forging agricultural spray records on the Warren’s Tennessee farmland; his falsified records, ranging from 1991 to 2000, enabled the Warrens to triple guaranteed yield and increase the indemnity by $2 million. He was sentenced to 46 months and $2.18 million in restitution. Farm manager Demetrio Jaimes escaped with probation.

Viki Warren was sentenced to 66 months; Robert Warren was sentenced to 76 months. Roughly six years later, after he was released from prison on Nov. 29, 2010, Robert Warren quickstepped back to Buncombe County. Time to dig for PVC pipes?

Stale and Musty

On Feb. 22, 2011, while on probation at a halfway house in Asheville, N.C., Robert Warren opened an account at RBC Bank in Candler in the name of Beaverdam Valley Farms. Between April 13, 2011, and August 17, 2011, he deposited $208,463.40 into the Beaverdam account—in small bites never climbing above $9,000, ensuring no Currency Transaction Reports would catch the government’s eye. However, Warren was exposed by the odd physical condition of the money he deposited. Literally, the smell and feel of the bills set off alarm bells.

As reported by Eric Veater, IRS special agent: “The branch manager recalled that on two or three occasions she witnessed Robert Warren making the deposit of older twenty-dollar bills, specifically those without the security features added on the latest twenty-dollar bills, which were rubber-banded, wrapped in aluminum foil and ‘freezing cold.’ The branch manager recalled that Warren made comments such as ‘things are looking up’ and ‘things are getting better’ when he made the deposits. A teller at the RBC Bank Candler Branch said sometimes the cash that Robert Warren deposited at the bank smelled ‘stale and musty.’ The teller also said sometimes the rubber bands on the cash broke because they had lost their elasticity.”

Stale, musty, freezing cold, and aluminum-wrapped wads of money? “The currency that Robert Warren deposited fit with our speculation during the crop insurance case,” Edwards says. “We suspected that he dug that money up or retrieved it from somewhere, or both.”

Busted for bank fraud and probation violations, Robert Warren once again went back to the pen. Nine years after pleading guilty to crop insurance fraud, he was sentenced to 29 more months in prison.

What were the Warren’s plans had they not been caught? What drove their steadily rising and riskier levels of theft?

(Farm Journal)

“They were buying property every year,” Edwards says. They were buying more farms. It’s purely conjecture on my part, and they didn’t have children, so I don’t know if they intended to sell the land as property values exploded. It seems to have all been tied back to generating more and more money.”

The Warren case is as old as time, Edwards concludes. “Love of money is the root of all evil. Maybe it’s just that simple. It appears the Warrens stole to steal.”

For more from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

While America Slept, China Stole the Farm

Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic

Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market

Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.

Young Farmer uses YouTube and Video Games to Buy $1.8M Land

Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years

Oversupply hitting some organic production

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 05:11:54 GMT

Organic produce marketers generally agree that demand typically outpaces supply in the category, but they also note that overproduction does occur on occasion.

“Because demand continues to grow substantially within the organic segment, very few organic items today can be categorized as supply-exceeds-demand,” said Michael Castagnetto, vice president of global sourcing with Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Robinson Fresh.

However, there are a few seasonal and/or regional items where the industry is beginning to see supply exceeding demand, including potatoes and winter squash, Castagnetto said.

“More growers have planted these crops, and because they store well and can be held for a longer period of time, we tend to see higher levels of supply,” he said.

There’s a seasonal component to oversupply of some organic items, said Chris Ford, organic category director with the Vancouver, British Columbia-based Oppenheimer Group.

“That’s tended to happen on row-crop vegetable items, where there are relatively short crop-cycle crops, planted in multiple geographies,” he said.

How frequently oversupply occurs depends on the item or time of year or how long those windows last, where organic is cheaper than conventional, Ford said.

“I just find the wet vegetable category it tends to happen more frequently,” he said.

As growers continue to increase their organic acreage, other commodities could swing to the oversupply side, Castagnetto said.

That should come as no surprise, said Dick Spezzano, a retail consultant based in Monrovia, Calif.

“I think at certain times of the year that happens,” he said.

When that happens, excess product might be channeled into the conventional market, Spezzano said.

“I’m sure when Grimmway or Bolthouse are long on organic, they’ll package it as conventional,” he said.

Oversupply in some organic items is generally a rarity, marketers say.

“We don’t have any items now where supply exceeds demand,” said Chuck Sinks, president of sales and marketing with Yakima, Wash.-based Sage Fruit Co.

On the other hand, some organic apple varieties have less pull than others, said Andy Tudor, business development director with Selah, Wash.-based Rainier Fruit Co.

“There’s really not tremendous demand for what we call the ‘declining varieties’ — goldens, reds, braeburns and jonathans — in the organic category,” he said. “Growth continues in mainlines, grannies, fujis, galas and all the rising stars — Jazz, Pink Lady, Honeycrisp, Lady Alice and Ambrosia.”

Berries may be headed in the direction of overproduction on the organic side, said Stephen Paul, category director for stone fruit, fall fruit and grapes with Porterville, Calif.-based Homegrown Organic Farms.

“There’s an awful lot of berries planted,” he said.

Supply shortages are more common among organic items, and not for reasons one might suspect, Robinson Fresh’s Castagnetto said.

Shortages “tend to be the result of the challenges of growing the commodity itself rather than it being organic,” he said. “For example, there is a shortage in organic lemons because very few growers are able to supply a year-round program. The same holds true for conventional lemons.”

Northeast shippers expect strong first quarter

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:27:49 GMT

With the holidays winding down, produce distributors in the Northeast are looking forward to a solid first quarter as the new year approaches.

January is typically a strong sales month for L G S Specialty Sales Ltd. , in New Rochelle, N.Y., said President Luke Sears.

It’s common for retailers to conduct promotions for the company’s citrus offerings as consumers forgo their sugary holiday treats and “get back to some of the basics,” he said.

Sears said he expects retailers to take advantage of the healthy-eating trend to try to boost movement in January.

Locally grown products give way to imports during the winter at Vineland, N.J.-based The Freshwave Fruit & Produce , said Chelsea Consalo, executive vice president.

Blueberries are the family-owned company’s biggest item, but the firm also ships products such as wet vegetables, herbs, hard squash and citrus fruits.

The Freshwave ships all items year-round, but during the winter, origins change from the U.S. to Mexico for vegetables and to Morocco for citrus fruits.

Leeks and spinach grown in New Jersey will be the last of the local items for a while, Consalo said. The local program will resume in April. But business has been strong for the holidays, she said.

“We saw a big uptick for Thanksgiving,” Consalo said in mid-December, “and we definitely see an uptick in clementine gift boxes for Christmastime.”

Retailers often request special packaging for grapes for the holidays, such as 2- and 3-pound clamshell packages rather than bags.

“We have the ability to customize sizing and bagging and pack to whatever specs the retailer wants,” Consalo said.

Winter is also the peak sales period for Fave Produce , in Middletown, N.J., said Laurie Siderio, sales manager.

Movement starts heading upward in December, and sales continue strong into the new year on the wave of health-focused New Year’s resolutions that cause many consumers to start eating healthier and adjust their grocery lists accordingly.

The company specializes in ginger and garlic, and is expecting a new crop of ginger in late December, which could be up 10% over last year.

“The quality is looking good, too,” Siderio said.

Moderate weather allowed Vineland-based Flaim Farms Inc. to extend its New Jersey growing season into December this year, said President Ryan Flaim.

Around Thanksgiving, the company usually transitions to Florida, where it grows specialty herbs such as basil, cilantro, dill, mint and parsley during the winter.

Sales typically rise during the holidays, when consumers do more cooking and bring out their traditional family recipes, Flaim said.
After the first of the year, however, sales revert back to a “steady normal,” he said.

Although holiday sales have been good, Sears of L G S Specialties said he hasn’t seen as big an uptick for citruses as he did before they became available year-round.

“By having citrus year-round, it takes a little of the luster off the holiday business,” he said.

Some ethnic groups give citrus fruits as holiday gifts, so there’s still a slight bump, he said. “But it’s not the increases for the holidays that we’ve seen in the past years. Ten or 20 years ago, it was a big deal.”

Still, as anxiety and fear surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be abating, things have started to normalize in the produce industry, said Tom Beaver, director of sales and marketing for Sunny Valley International Inc. , in Glassboro, N.J.

But he said it will be interesting to see how consumer fresh produce purchasing preferences may change going forward. For example, there was a move toward grab-and-go convenience packaging before the pandemic, he said, and the trend has only accelerated over the past two years.

“We will be eager to see whether and to what extent these shifts are permanent,” Beaver said.

Not all the industry news is good news this winter, however.

“There is definitely a struggle with labor,” said Consalo of The Freshwave.

“It’s been a challenge,” she said, at all of the company’s facilities, including its farm and warehouse locations.

She said she has seen some improvement recently, but “it’s something that we still need to work on as an industry.”

Logistical challenges are also an issue that produce firms must deal with, said Siderio of Fave Produce.

Trucks can be hard to find, but she still expects on-time or just slightly short deliveries.

Fortunately, Fave Produce has facilities in the East and the West and brings in product through Canada, so most deliveries have been pretty much on schedule, she said.

“But it takes proper planning and strategy to get it here on time.”

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Shippers work through pandemic

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:27:49 GMT

Produce shippers in the Northeast had to tweak their operations a bit over the past couple of years to cope with COVID-19, but most have gotten through the pandemic in fairly good shape.

Operations continued pretty much as usual during COVID-19 at Vineland, N.J.,-based The Freshwave Fruit & Produce and its growing operation, Consalo Family Farms, said Chelsea Consalo, executive vice president.

“Because we’re also a grower, we never stopped during COVID,” she said.

“We had to continue our operations in order to grow, pack and ship, and get all of our produce out to retailers.”

No one at The Freshwave got to work from home during the pandemic, she said. “We just had to adapt to new procedures.”

Nearby, in Glassboro, N.J., Sunny Valley International Inc. also continued operations without interruption, said Tom Beaver, director of sales and marketing.

“Our primary customer base are grocery retailers, so we did not experience the same consequences as shippers working primarily with foodservice customers,” he said.

Employees worked remotely for a month or two, Beaver said, “but our domestic South Carolina and New Jersey fruit programs are such that we needed to be on-site pretty much right away.”

The company put COVID-19 protections in place that ranged from making personal protective equipment readily available to all employees to retrofitting office space to minimize the risk of transmission, Beaver said.

The biggest burden during the past couple of years for Philadelphia-based Ryeco LLC was caused by government policies, not the pandemic, said Filindo Colace, vice president of operations.

The government instituted unemployment benefit extensions and then threw in an extra $300, which was a disincentive for some people to work, he said.

“As a result, we didn’t see people walking in looking for jobs.”

The workforce is still about 10 million short of what it was pre-COVID-19, he said. “That’s hurting.”

Also, a lot of people now want to work from home.

“That hurts our ability to transport product across the country, as well as getting people in here physically to work,” Colace said.

Tracie Levin, controller for Philadelphia-based M. Levin and Co ., saw a stark difference between 2020 and 2021.

“Retailers were coming out of the woodwork (in 2020), buying everything they could find,” she said.

“You couldn’t get (product) to supermarkets fast enough to keep them stocked.”

This year, business has slowed down, she said, and supermarkets are able to keep their shelves stocked with fresh produce, though some other items remain in short supply.

“It’s been a really strange couple of years businesswise,” she said.

The Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market reduced its hours during the height of the pandemic and implemented safety protocols, she said.

She is not aware of any deaths or serious complications from COVID-19 on the market.

“It makes me think we were doing something right.”

Ryan Flaim, president of Vineland-based Flaim Farms Inc. , saw firsthand how devastating COVID-19 can be.

His uncle suffered some serious effects from the virus and had to be placed on a ventilator.

“We know the reality of how bad it can hit you,” Flaim said.

Everyone wore masks at Flaim Farms, and the company offered, but did not demand, COVID-19 vaccinations.

Joel Fierman, president of Joseph Fierman and Sons Inc. in New York, considers his company fortunate.

“We had very few occurrences (of COVID-19),” he said. “We didn’t lay anybody off during the height of the pandemic. We kept people working.”

Up to 40% of the firm’s business is in foodservice, and with restaurants, museums and hotels shut down or on reduced hours, the company felt some impact.

Some restaurants didn’t pay outstanding balances after they closed their doors, he said.

Citrus sales spiked during the summer of 2020 at L G S Specialty Sales Ltd. , in New Rochelle, N.Y., said President Luke Sears.

Clementines always sell well in the summer, Sears said. However, he also saw a big uptick in navel orders in the summer of 2020 as consumers clamored for a dose of vitamin C to try to ward off COVID-19, he said.

Sales were down slightly in the summer of 2021, but not to 2019 numbers.

“We sustained some of those gains that we had gotten in 2020,” Sears said.

He also saw a shift in avocado business from foodservice to retail during the pandemic, when restaurant sales were down.

“Retailers were probably making up a lot of that foodservice business on avocados,” he said.

During the first part of the pandemic, retailers asked for different items, or more or less of certain products, said Consalo of The Freshwave.

“That only lasted for six months, then everything went back to normal.”

Since 97% of The Freshwave’s business is with retailers, the company did not suffer a loss in sales when restaurants and foodservice operations shut down or reduced their hours, Consalo said.

A number of retailers were struggling because of government food box programs that provided consumers with free food with no proof that they were actually needy, Fierman said.

“I think everybody that’s hungry should eat, but I don’t think (that programs for the needy) should be taken advantage of,” Fierman said.

At Flaim Farms, sales results were positive during the pandemic, Flaim said.

“We were lucky enough to see an increase overall,” he said.

Foodservice business was down, but retail sales doubled.

As of mid-December, foodservice business was back to about 80% of normal, he said.

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Northeast business updates

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:27:49 GMT

Fave aims to boost U.S. business

Middletown, N.J.-based Fave Produce has been a major supplier to Canada for 10 years, including Loblaw Cos. supermarkets, said Laurie Siderio, sales manager.

But now, the company is working to expand its U.S. business.

Besides offices in New Jersey, the company has warehouses in Vancouver, British Columbia, and California. Ginger and garlic are its main commodities, but the company also offers a variety of Asian vegetables, such as eggplant, bok choy and others, Siderio said.

Freshwave opens new facility

Vineland, N.J.-based The Freshwave Fruit & Produce has opened a new cold storage, packing and distribution facility and plans to add even more cold

storage space in the future, said Chelsea Consalo, executive vice president.

The addition can handle 1,000 pallets a day. “It was definitely needed because we’re continuing to grow,” she said. The family business, which started in 1927 as Consalo Family Farms , also brought back Nick Giordano as senior vice president of sales. Giordano worked at The Freshwave from 2006 to 2011 and most recently was with Frank Donio Inc., Hammonton, N.J. The Freshwave sales operation opened in 2003. The company is a produce grower, packer, shipper, importer and distributor. “We pretty much do it all,” Consalo said. It also has facilities in Hammington and Egg Harbor Township, N.J. In late December, the company will honor warehouse manager Sidney Johnson, a 35-year veteran of the firm. “We’re proud to have him,” Consalo said. “He’s a real asset to the business.”

Business steady at L G S

Business has been “pretty steady as she goes” this fall and winter at L G S Specialty Sales Ltd. , New Rochelle, N.Y., said President Luke Sears.

The transition from Southern Hemisphere to Northern Hemisphere citruses went well, he said. “Chile went a little longer than normal, which was good,” Sears said.

That meant the Morocco deal started a little later than normal, so the program kicked off with better fruit. The company was importing easy-peel clementines from Morocco in December, which were a good Christmas item, he said.

Avocados and grapes are other winter items L G S handles.

Vitrano Co. moving forward

It’s been “a challenging year and a half,” but Tony Vitrano Co. , on the Maryland Wholesale Produce Market in Jessup, Md., continues to move forward, said President Tony Vitrano. The firm, which “sells just about everything,” saw vegetable sales jump this fall as consumers began to do more home cooking. Sales likely will slow a bit after the first of the year until regional and local produce becomes available once again in the spring, he said.

Ryeco remains in expansion mode

Ryeco LLC on the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market is continuing to expand its business, said Filindo Colace, vice president of operations.

The company has about 20 trucks that can make deliveries and pick up product from the pier, and Ryeco

is using state-of-the-art warehouse management software for traceability.“Food safety is big for us,” Colace said. Ryeco is also working to improve its import program. “We have a lot more permits now, and we’re importing a lot of our own products,” he said. The company also has its own off-site warehouse to store product and is building its own repacking program. “We’re looking to expand that in 2022,” Colace said.

Ryeco is planning a 30,000-square-foot addition that will accommodate 2,000 more pallets. With all of its storage space and expansion of its truck fleet, “we’ll be able to help some of those larger importers pick up their product, store their product and deliver their product,” he said. “We look forward to that in the first quarter of next year.” Ryeco is a full-service company that stocks about 600 items, including potatoes, onions, pineapples, eastern and western vegetables, squash, peppers, cucumbers, celery, lettuce, spinach, romaine and broccoli crowns, Colace said.

Sunny Valley having good season

Sunny Valley International Inc. , Glassboro, N.J., has had “an excellent fall and early winter season,” Tom Beaver, director of sales and marketing, said in mid-December. “We significantly expanded our Peruvian blueberry program and saw brisk sales for our local fresh cranberry program with Whalen Farms in New Jersey,” he said. “Now, we’re starting to look ahead to the Chilean blueberry (season), which should start at the outset of the new year and ramp up as we get into January.” Sunny Valley International will have excellent supplies of high-quality Chilean blueberries from early January through March, he said. The company is dealing with the same logistical challenges as other importers, he said, “but we’ve built anticipated shipping delays into our planning process, which has allowed us to continue supporting our customers relatively seamlessly so far.” The firm is seeing increasing demand for blueberries packed using top-seal technology, which reduces the use of plastics and allows the company to ship in punnets that are fully recyclable, Beaver said.

New York food hub ‘topped off’

The final beam of a 60,000-square-foot, $40 million cold-storage facility was put in place Dec. 10 during a topping-off ceremony for the New York State Regional Food Hub in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx, according to a news release.

The food hub is a joint state and city project that will strengthen the local food economy, support New York farmers and improve access to healthful and affordable foods for low-income communities, the release said.

Freight Rates Skyrocket

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:27:49 GMT

Transportation woes continue to haunt Northeast shippers as trucks remain hard to come by and freight rates skyrocket because of rising fuel costs and a scarcity of drivers.

“Trucks are at a premium right now,” said Tracie Levin, controller at M. Levin and Co. , in Philadelphia.

“It’s a major hindrance for our industry and anyone else that uses trucking, which is basically every industry out there,” she said.

Shippers can’t even buy trucks.

“We’ve been on wait lists to get more trucks, trailer and tractors,” she said. “You just cannot get those things these days.”

But Levin is optimistic that things will turn around. She said some relief is already in evidence.

“We’re slowly able to get things again in a semi timely manner,” she said.

East Coast shippers have been dealing with transportation issues, but there are trucks available, said Tom Beaver, director of sales and marketing for Sunny Valley International Inc. , in Glassboro, N.J.

“Obviously, the cost of brokering a truck, especially for our (less-than-load) business, has increased considerably, but the same is true for all of our competitors,” he said. “We’re adjusting to this ‘new normal,’ but the important thing is that we can get fruit loaded and out to our customers on time and in full.”

Transportation challenges are more prevalent during the winter than they are during the spring and summer for Vineland, N.J.-based The Freshwave Fruit & Produce and its growing operation, Consalo Family Farms , said Chelsea Consalo, executive vice president.

That’s because the company has more local deals during the warmer months.

During the winter, the firm must bring in products from outside growing areas, such as Mexico, and transport fruits and vegetables imported from offshore growing regions, such as Chile, from U.S. ports.

“We have more trucks on the road (in winter),” she said.

Transportation costs are a major concern.

“We’re managing to get the trucks,” Consalo said. “It is just more expensive.”

The Freshwave has added Nick Crisafulli, who recently completed an internship at Americold Logistics LLC, to its logistics staff to help arrange transportation.

Vineland-based Flaim Farms Inc . has its own fleet of trucks for local deliveries, said president Ryan Flaim.

But trying to find trucks for destinations that are farther out is challenging.

The company has good relationships with trucking firms, but rates are much higher than they have been in the past, Flaim said.

Finding transportation isn’t a problem, as long as you’re willing to pay exorbitant fees, said Joel Fierman, president of New York-based Joseph Fierman and Sons Inc .

“It’s really a pity when your cost for transportation pretty much is as high as your cost for goods,” he said.

He blamed the price spike on high fuel costs and a scarcity of drivers.

“It’s a terrible, terrible thing that this country is experiencing right now,” he said.

An added problem during the Christmas season was that many trucks were sidetracked delivering Christmas trees.

“It’s fast, easy money,” he said.

Filindo Colace, vice president of operations for Philadelphia-based Ryeco LLC , attributes the skyrocketing inflation rate the industry has experienced to high freight costs.

“Freight has been a premium for quite some time,” he said.

While seed prices and other costs have also gone up, he said high freight rates are 90% of the cause of inflation.

“Nothing in the industry has gone up at the same rate as freight has,” Colace said.

But he remains optimistic.

“We think the country is moving on,” he said. “We’re going to be as back-to-business as usual as possible in the first quarter of next year.”

He expected buying patterns to return to where they were in 2019.

“We hope the workforce returns to those levels, as well,” he said.

“If that’s the case, it will be our expectation that freight rates will start to lower because there are more truck drivers coming back into the workforce.”

Related articles:

Rising freight rates pose challenge

Distributors cope with rising freight costs

Southeastern satsumas ripening two weeks ahead of last season

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 20:15:20 GMT

A heavy crop of satsuma mandarins from the Sweet Valley Citrus region — a tri-state zone throughout north Florida, south Alabama and south Georgia, sharing unique soil and climate — are maturing and will begin shipping about two weeks ahead of the 2021 season.

The Sweet Valley Citrus brand was created by the Cold Hardy Citrus Association. Members include growers, handlers, shippers and allied businesses.

“The 2022 crop looks great,” Kim Jones, current president of Cold Hardy Citrus Association, said in a news release. “Color break has been early, brix is already testing as high as 11 which indicates exceptionally sweet, flavorful fruit, and we predict the volume to be higher than anticipated.”

Related news: After two rough seasons, Texas citrus is coming back strong

Satsumas are a seedless, medium- to large-size mandarin variety. While not always uniform in shape and color — some green tinge is normal — the fruit is typically easy to peel and flavorful.

The Sweet Valley Citrus Region represents a resurgence of Southern citrus groves and was not affected by recent storms, including Hurricane Ian, which had more of an impact on groves in southwestern Florida.

All Sweet Valley Citrus brand satsumas are grown on local family farms, tree-ripened, and shipped daily from farmer-owned packing facilities. Satsuma labels grown in the area include grower brands such as Southern Sassies, Southern Juicys and Cherokee Jewel.

“Satsumas are an early winter delight and consumer favorite for the holiday season,” Mark Clikas, vice president of the Cold Hardy Citrus Association, said in the release. “We started shipping in early November, with full production available through December and possibly into January.”

The special growing conditions in the Sweet Valley region are suitable for other varieties of citrus. Sweet Valley Cara oranges, along with Tango, Kishu and Shiranui mandarins, will be shipping November to mid-January as well.

Some Growers Plow Under Fields As Fruit, Vegetable Demand Disappears

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 19:22:06 GMT

From fresh produce being plowed under to unharvested crops sitting untouched in fields, fruit and vegetable growers are the latest agriculture sector facing fallout from COVID-19 .

“The losses due to the shutdown of first the food service sector and now the slowdown in retail have just been swift, staggering and devastating,” says Lisa Lochridge, of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, during an interview with The Packer’s Tom Karst.

Lochridge says produce growers are grappling with fresh produce left without a home. As costs aren’t budging and demand dwindles, it’s now so dire that some are forced to destroy their crops in the field.

“There’s nowhere for the product to go, and so some growers are having to make very difficult decisions to plow their crops under, others are doing direct to consumer sales, just anything they can do to find an outlet for their crops,” she says.

The Difficult Decision

Growers say while they can walk away from some fields, a lot of the produce is already picked, meaning the cost of labor is already there, leaving fewer choices of what to do when demand disappears.

“We’re in that situation with asparagus right now,” Shay Myers of Oregon-based Owyhee Produce told The Packer. “We just started picking late last week, but we started packing today, and that’s one of those crops that if we don’t have a market, we can kind of walk away from that field. The difference between onions and potatoes and storage crops is they’re already harvested. Those were harvested months ago and put in storage. The investment was already completely made. So, the only option at that point is to pack it or dump it. You can’t just walk away from that field. It’s a little bit different.”

Disappearing Demand

Wish Farms grows berries in both Florida and California. They berry grower says the oller-coaster ride in demand started in March.

“Particularly on strawberries, we were towards the end of our strawberry season, but we saw a massive surge in volume in mid-March when there was a lot of panic buying going on, followed by a complete dropping off the cliff of any demand at all,” explains Gary Wishnatzki, president of Wish Farms .

As a result, harvest at some of Wish’s farms was shut down, as they were losing more and more orders.

“The berry sector has been impacted overall in a negative way, and that’s because, in my view, it’s a little bit of an impulse item for shoppers,” he says.

Plea for Help

Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association says while some growers are setting up roadside stands and doing whatever it takes to get nutritious crops to consumers, the Association is making a plea to USDA for help.

“We as an association have joined other associations across the country in asking USDA to use its Section 32 purchasing power to buy this produce and distribute it through its feeding programs,” says Lochridge. “But as we know, that takes some time and the clock is ticking.”

USDA did unveil a coronavirus aid package for agriculture, which includes $2.7 billion targeted to the fruit and vegetable industry . But as demand for fresh produce wanes and the unemployment rate grows A merican Farm Bureau Federation teamed up with Feeding America . The two groups asked USDA to help get the orphaned produce into the hands of those who need it most.

“We called Feeding America and asked them to join us on a letter that we sent to Secretary Perdue and USDA suggesting that they create some type of voucher program that might help a farmer be able to cover the cost of harvesting that crop and packaging it, that then might be able to be used at Food Banks and given to the people in need across our country,” says Zippy Duvall, President of American Farm Bureau Federation.

While fruit and vegetable growers search for a solution to the overflowing produce, some say one fix would be to stop produce from coming in.

“It’s going to be a bloodbath,” says Sam Accursio, a farmer in Homestead, Fl. “We need to have consumers demand Florida produce. And then as it moves up the chain, they have to demand American produce from Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, all the way up to the Northeast. Right now, we are still dumping squash in the field and our competitors from south of the border and Mexico are continuing to ship across the border. I think it needs to stop immediately and protect our food source.”

Greenhouse Growers Forced to Close

It’s not just fresh produce left in fields proving to be a challenge for growers, but fresh plants that can be sold.

“It’s just devastating on a fact of uncertainty,” say Chad Christians of Christians Farms. “We have no idea what’s going to happen and in May, that’s 70% of our business, maybe 80% even. So, it’s quite catastrophic.”

The Christians family owns and operates Christians Greenhouse , a family business with roots in Michigan that started in 1972. They say there’s only a short window to sell flowers and plants. That’s because after June, demand for their products drops by 90%.

“We’re different than a lot of retailers because we’re not just losing four weeks or six weeks of income, or whatever they’re doing the stimulus based on; we’re losing a whole year potentially,” says Jeremy Christians. “The repercussions of this could be catastrophic.”

The Christians hope to open up in May, but with the Executive Order in place by the Michigan Governor, the state’s garden centers and plant nurseries are not deemed essential.

Michigan Farm Bureau and other ag groups have an ongoing action request, asking the Governor to allow garden cents to open back up, saying the economic benefit of those businesses is huge.

“It’s estimated that this industry, the retail value of it is 580 to $700 million in Michigan and employs over 9000 people,” says Audrey Sebolt, horticulture specialist with Michigan Farm Bureau.

From greenhouses growing plants, to growers raising fresh produce, it’s a plea for help; help they say is needed now.

“We know that they’ve heard us and we’re just hoping that the money starts coming sooner rather than later,” says Lochridge. “There’s a lot of need out there, not just from the produce sector, but all sectors of agriculture. So, it’s going to be a matter of figuring out how to allocate those funds. And we’ve certainly made our requests known as to what we feel like we need just in the short term to cover some of the losses and this is going to go on for quite some time.”

Helping recover some for the financial loss is an immediate need to help recover demand that continues to disappear.

“It would certainly help some, but truly, we just need people to start eating more fruits and vegetables and get those things back on their menus,” says Wishnatzki.

Carbon Markets: Farmers Want More to Hang Their Hat On

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 19:20:44 GMT

The carbon market will grow over the next three years
Farm Journal’s August 2021 Carbon Survey found that 3.32% of respondents were participating in an non-governmental carbon market, up from an Ag Barometer last spring where only 1% of farmers had entered into a contract. And 55% of survey respondents said that they plan on joining the market in the next three years.

(Farm Journal)

Money in the dirt?
While the carbon market is poised for growth, there are some lingering issues. Almost half of the respondents to Farm Journal’s Carbon Survey said they would need a return on investment of more than $20,000 to participate in carbon markets.

Many respondents said that the available programs were only paying on newly adopted practices and not pre-existing practices. Others thought their operation was too small to count or that the expenses required to adopt new practices would not be offset by the return on investment. A few viewed the carbon markets as a means for others to make money and said they didn’t see how it benefited them.

(Farm Journal)

It’s time for carbon markets to roll up their sleeves. There’s work to do.
Farmers also struggle to trust the motives behind the carbon market. Respondents to Farm Journal’s Carbon Survey cited fears that markets could lead to regulations that unfairly penalize them or create circumstances where they lose control over their operation.

Many of farmers said they don’t have enough information to adequately understand the opportunity, find programs in their area or find information on how to apply. The good news: they’re looking for reputable sources for more information.

(Farm Journal)

How to increase farmers’ trust
Some trust issues can be overcome by having university extensions verify compliance with carbon market program requirements, according to Farm Journal’s Carbon Survey. Farmers expressed a preference for a third party that would not directly benefit from the outcome of their findings or create penalties.

(Farm Journal)

So what about the things that farmers are already doing?
Another way to build trust may be to answer a key objection raised by farmers and give them credit for practices they already have in place. Many farmers report they’re already engaging in conservation practices, with conservation tillage practices topping the list. See the chart below.

For more updates and information on carbon market programs, visit Farm Journal’s Carbon Innovation Center .

(Farm Journal)

Related Links:
Clarity in Carbon Marketplace Needed, say Iowa State and EDF Reports
Iowa Farmer Shares Firsthand Experience with Carbon Markets
Farmer Shares Top 10 Considerations With Carbon Markets
5 Tools to Unravel Carbon Market

Hurricane Ida Shutters Ag Exports with No Clear Timeline on How Long Shipping Delays Could Last

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 22:05:38 GMT

Hurricane Ida packed a punch of 150 mph winds this weekend, leaving more than 1 million people in New Orleans without power. In the process, the monster storm crippled some grain shipping facilities in a key export area along the lower Mississippi River, creating concerns over how long export activity could be shuttered.

The shipping issues caused by Hurricane Ida could have a major impact on the overall export picture. The Port of South Louisiana is a major shipping hub, as it’s the largest grain port in the United States. Grain elevators within the Port handle more than 50% of all U.S. grain exports annually.

“You have a system that’s overall under stress and then you insert a weather event like this, and it kind of just adds insult to injury,” says Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soybean Transportation Coalition (STC) .

Markets Tumble Over Export Uncertainty

The initial reaction was part of the spark that sent commodity prices tumbling Sunday night into Monday. ProFarmer’s Brian Grete says while technical selling spurred a sell-off, the fundamental concerns over Hurricane Ida and the impact on a key shipping area also fueled the price pressure.

“In the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Ida really did have an impact there,” says Grete. “But it’s going to take some time, and markets don’t like uncertainty. We know that at a minimum (the) export situation will be slowed for a little bit. It could be slowed significantly, depending on what kind of damage there is to those loading rigs and those types of things. So, it’s kind of a wait and see.”

Corn, Soybean Shipments at Risk

Fears surfaced in the markets Monday as questions started to circulate over just how long the supply chains and river facilities will be disrupted in the lower Mississippi River area.

As of Saturday night, the U.S. Coast Guard ordered no vessel movement on the lower Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico to river mile 303. To put that into perspective, Steenhoek says Baton Rouge is at river mile 232 and New Orleans is at river mile 100.

According to STC, the lower Mississippi River is by far the largest export region for soybeans (61%) and corn (58%). Therefore, he says any lengthy disruption to export activity in this key region warrants industry attention and concern.

“They know that hurricanes are a frequent, unwanted guest in the area, so they build those facilities with resilience in mind to be able to absorb a punch, but 150 mile an hour sustained wind is quite a punch,” he says. “And you can’t really experience that kind of sustained wind, that severity of it, without having some degree of damage. And so that’s something that we’re going to certainly be monitoring, because that can be more long-lasting and have a real detrimental impact on our export program moving forward, particularly as the fall season starts to arrive.”

STC notes that while August isn’t a key time for soybean exports, there’s still a healthy amount of corn typically loaded onto barges this time of year. During the week ending August 19, STC notes 464,138 metric tons (18.3 million bushels) of corn, 141,859 metric tons (5.2 million bushels) of soybeans, and 71,696 metric tons (2.6 million bushels) of wheat were exported from the terminals along the lower Mississippi River. In total, 487 barges of grain were unloaded in the area that week alone.

Shipping Delays Add “Insult to Injury”

As shippers enter September, the concern for soybeans is over further delays, as any backup could impact soybean exports that start to pick up in September and typically run strong through February.

“The good news is we’ve got what looks to be a pretty healthy supply that can accommodate that demand. But as we all know, if you can’t connect supply with demand the transaction never occurs, and farmers will never be profitable. And so that’s something that is a real concern for us moving forward,” says Steenhoek. “When you put it within the broader context of an overly subscribed supply chain that is under stress, not only for like containerized shipping, but for bulk vessels as well, then all of a sudden, you insert a significant weather event like Hurricane Ida, and it can essentially add insult to injury.”

Reuters reported Monday that Hurricane Ida damaged a Louisiana grain export elevator owned by Cargill Inc., with reports the elevator “sustained significant damage.”

Flashbacks to Hurricane Katrina

From power outages to barges and ships placed on the sidelines while the area tries to recover, Steenhoek says the longer the system is disrupted, the more impact it could have on U.S. farmers.

“This is something that if the repercussions of this become more long-lasting, you’ll see farmer profitability suffer,” says Steenhoek. “We saw this with Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago, where farmers all of a sudden saw the price that they were offered 900 miles from the affected area in New Orleans, their price declined not because the demand fundamental had changed, not because the quality of the crop was compromised, but just simply because the supply chain wasn’t operating. And certainly, we don’t want to see something like that repeat itself,” he says.

Runaway Barges

As individuals in the impacted areas assess the total damage from Hurricane Ida, Steenhoek says the course of this week will provide clarity on the extent of shipping issues. But he says it’s more than just power outages that could influence the recovery timeline.

“When you think about these facilities, you know, you have the storage facilities, you have the loading apparatus that connects the storage to the actual vessels. We’ve heard reports of barges and other maritime vessels becoming unmoored and getting pushed along the river. And that’s never a welcomed development. And if it runs into a bridge, that could have an impact on that,” he says.

On Monday, that fear became a reality as officials reported 22 barges on the loose with one hitting a bridge in Laffite, La. Leaders believe the bridge is now structurally unsound, but no word on how that could impact barge traffic moving forward.

USDA Introduces First Market News Mobile App Providing Instant Access to Market Information

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 19:50:41 GMT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1, 2022 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced a new USDA Market News Mobile Application, providing producers and everyone else in the supply chain with instant access to current and historical market information. The initial version of the free app includes nearly 800 livestock, poultry, and grain market reports, with additional commodities added throughout the coming year.

“USDA is focused on building more resilient and transparent markets and is taking steps to promote competition and fairer prices from farmers to consumers,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “This new Market News app helps create a more level playing field for small and medium producers by delivering critical market information to them where they are, when they need it.”

Producers and other users can search for markets based on their location, by state, or by commodity. They also can add market reports to their favorites for easier access, share reports via text or email, subscribe to reports, and receive real-time notifications when a new report is published. For additional data analysis, the app lets you share the source data behind the reports via email as well.

“One of the best features of the app is its simplicity,” Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt said. “The USDA Market News app was designed with small producers in mind. Regardless of whether you market livestock throughout the year or once a year, you can navigate through this easy-to-use tool and access the information you need on your mobile phone. Built-in tutorials help first-time users get the most out of their experience.”

There are both iOS and Android versions available to download through the Apple and Google Play stores. The iOS version is available now (download here) and the Android version will be available later this week. Search for “USDA Market News Mobile Application” to download the app and begin exploring its potential. USDA will continue to expand the features of the app, including adding market information for all other commodities in the future.

USDA Market News continues to expand its tools and resources to ensure producers benefit from the vast amount of market information available and understand how this information can provide actionable insight to inform marketing decisions at the farm and other points in the supply chain. This mobile app allows producers to access market data and reports, regardless of where they are, more effectively, efficiently, and on demand.

Railroad Strike Days Away? Here’s What it Means for Agriculture

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 02:56:19 GMT

Nearly 60,000 union rail workers could go on strike starting Friday. The looming strike is despite the majority of unions reaching tentative agreement with the rail companies, but the unions not on board are essential to the operation of the nation’s rail system.

The impending rail strike has been a possibility for months and would be the first in nearly three decades. Despite the Presidential Executive Board (PEB) releasing recommendations as part of the ongoing collective bargaining process, the cooling off period will end Friday, opening the door for a strike to take place.

“As we’re sitting here, nine unions and the railroads have come to agreement on terms. A ninth one is tentative, but it looks like it’s very promising,” says Ken Erikson with S&P Global Commodity Insights. “That leaves us with three unions that need to finish negotiations with the railroads. And those three are the largest ones, representing roughly 50 to 60,000 employees. So, three outstanding, where the clock is ticking very fast. And there’s a lot of concern about you know, what are the final details is going to be the pays understood and a few other things. But it’s a matter about requirements of working on the job and such like that.”

As first reported on Monday , rail companies were already preparing for a possible strike and putting a halt to grain shipments as early as today, according to National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA).

“The railroads don’t want to have the cars and equipment out in areas of the country where they can’t protect them very well,” says Max Fisher, NGFA chief economist. “So, they’re taking steps to mitigate damages. For our members, they’re looking at essentially not receiving their grain on time and not being able to then ship out the finished products such as ethanol, flour, things of that nature.”

The rhetoric between unions and the railroads is also heating up ahead of Friday’s deadline. While the remaining unions say the negotiating process is still ongoing and they are committed to reaching a deal, rail companies say the some are creating false narratives about pay raises and paid time off. One group even accused the nation’s largest railroads of trying to further abuse shippers and gridlock the supply chain in order to extort a contract settlement from rail unions.

“Our Unions remain at the bargaining table and have given the rail carriers a proposal that we would be willing to submit to our members for ratification, but it is the rail carriers that refuse to reach an acceptable agreement,” Jeremy Ferguson, president of SMART Transportation Division and Dennis Pierce, president of Brotherhood Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said in joint statement. In fact, it was abundantly clear from our negotiations over the past few days that the railroads show no intentions of reaching an agreement with our Unions, but they cannot legally lock out our members until the end of the cooling-off period. Instead, they are locking out their customers beginning on Monday and further harming the supply chain in an effort to provoke congressional action.”

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) claims coverage of the strike in recent days has included false information, specifically that laborers get no sick days or paid time off.

“Moreover, the matters at hand were dealt with summarily by the Biden administration’s hand-picked arbitrators through the ‘Presidential Emergency Board.’ A reminder that the White House has stood by those recommendations, which have served as the basis for nine tentative agreements with labor unions and endorsed by broad swaths of the U.S. economy. The majority of these industry groups have called on Congress to enact the framework by law should parties fail to reach agreements by midnight Thursday,” AAR said in a statement.

What’s the likelihood a strike happens? There are a lot of moving parts, but Erikson says a last-minute deal is still possible.

“I can see where you may get one, maybe two unions that can come together on terms and I think he could get to a point where you have a high percentage over 50%, maybe closer to 60%, if not more, where this is an opportunity to make it known just how important labor is to the railroads, how important labor is to the country, and that there are important things that the unions want to demonstrate that they have as having proper wages, proper respect and proper benefits,” says Erikson. “It’s just maybe an attention getter to make a point.”

The Biden administration on Monday urged railroads and unions to reach a deal to avoid a shutdown of the rail system, saying it would pose “an unacceptable outcome” to the U.S. economy.

Tuesday’s release of inflation data showed core inflation was up not down and CPI did not go down as much as analysts predicted. Erikson points out even if a strike lasts one or two days, it will have a severe economic impact, but rising wages will also be passed on to those not at the negotiating table.

“Today’s inflation numbers are terrible,” says Erikson. “And this would be making the point that look, we got to preserve these wages somehow. And that could be backfire, because if you get higher wages, and someone’s going to pay that freight, and that’s the consumer for farmers, its basis, it’s just weaken basis for the consumer and retail goods, it’s higher prices somewhere along the line. And that may be the adverse effect to this is that Be careful what you read what you request, it may come back to hurt everybody and that’s the risk that’s being run here.”

Agricultural Impact of Railroad Strike

NGFA says some processors will be forced to temporarily shut down, no matter how long a rail strike lasts, and Erikson says it will be weeks to get the system back up and running, a system already facing severe backlogs. .

Farm Journal Washington Correspondent Jim Wiesemeyer is also looking into the impact it could have on farmers. In his daily report, Wiesemeyer focused on the possible rail strike, breaking down the impact by commodity:

Cotton: “There is a lot of old crop that needs to ship via rail,” said Jordan Lea, senior trader at Deca Global LLC, a textile supplier and former president of the American Cotton Shippers Association. “The whole logistical system is still too fragile from backlogs and Covid. We do not need this hiccup right now.”

Livestock and poultry: “A shutdown would quickly cause additional problems and force producers to make difficult decisions regarding the viability of their animals,” said NGFA.

Biofuels: “Processing and biofuels plants may have to scale back production due to an inability to both move in commodities for processing and move out finished products for consumption,” the NGFA noted.

Food industry: “Failure to finalize an agreement before the Sept. 16 deadline will hurt U.S. consumers and imperil the availability, affordability and accessibility of everyday essential products,” the Consumer Brands Association, which represents manufacturers of food, beverage, household and personal care products, said in a letter (link) to President Biden last week.

Congress Can Step In

While Congress can intervene, NGFA says that is a last resort, as that could become complicated. Yet, NGFA was on Capitol Hill this week talking to legislators about the importance of stepping in if a strike does take place.

“This is a political football, you know, and I’m sure that Congress really doesn’t want to be in the middle of this, no doubt, they want the two parties to come to an agreement,” says Fisher. “we’re trying to convince the rail carriers and the rail labor for the last two unions to come to an agreement, we don’t want to have to depend on Congress to solve this. That’s kind of our, our last, last line of defense, so to speak.”

Are Farmers Losing Yield? The High Heat's Potential Impact on Midwest's Crops

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 14:12:04 GMT

It’s no secret this week’s heat is gripping the Midwest. Forecasts started fueling commodity prices last week as crops in portions of the Midwest were forecast to see the most challenging weather yet this year . Now that the heat is here and expected to remain through the weekend, analysts say crop conditions are expected to dip in USDA’s report on Monday.

“The heat and forecasts impacted corn, soybeans, and spring wheat prices, it was across the board,” says Dan Basse of AgResource Company. “It was that hot of Montana all the way up until Nebraska and stretching over to Illinois.”

Temperatures are forecast to top 100 degrees and rains remain spotty. Earlier this summer, condition ratings seemed to be in a free fall, but July’s rains and cooler temperatures caused conditions rebound, but the heat to close out July means crop conditions could be set to take another dip.

“We believe crop conditions will be done 2% to 3% on Monday for corn, soybeans and spring wheat, we’ll see how it all plays out,” he says. “But it’s the weather during August that will be the big determinant and especially for the soybean crop.”

USDA’s Crop Progress on Monday showed the U.S. corn crop is rated 57% good to excellent, steady from the previous week. Soybeans dropped 1 point with 54% rated good to excellent. The notable declines were to the crop in Tennessee, Minnesota and Missouri.

Forecasting Yield

With the mix of rains and continued drought, AgResource Company is has revised its yield forecast.

“As we look at it, we’re sitting today at about a 173 bu. per acre corn yield. We’re looking at soybeans around 50 and a half, we’ll see how Mother Nature treats us going forward,” says Basse. “That’s down from USDA. It’s not a disaster, but it’s truly not the kind of crop we could have had.”

Alan Brugler of Brugler Marketing says he’s been impressed with crop conditions, especially in the eastern Corn Belt. His travels took him from Ohio to Nebraska this week.

“Along the interstates, at least, the crop looks better than I anticipated would,” he says. “It was more consistent to corn. Corn is almost uniformly pollinating, although there is an area in Indiana, this is clearly behind.”

He says the soybean crop seems to be shorter in height, but still showing good canopy.

“I only saw a couple of fields when it was 95 degrees on Wednesday that were showing some stress,” says Brugler. “Now, having said that, I know there’s areas off the interstate that are worse.”

He says some producers he works with have talked about concerns with the smoke cover and the impact on sunlight to soybeans. However, others seem to think the cloud cover is cushioning the crop from the heat.

“It’s a mixed bag, but I would say, we’re in the 174 bu. pre acre to 175 bu. per acre yield range on corn based on current conditions,” says Brugler. “And the standard deviation was still allow 179 or 180 bu. per acre if we have a good finish to the corn crop.”

He says his current estimate for soybeans is a little over 50 bu. per acre, but not 52 bu. per acre that USDA currently has penciled in. He adds Brugler Marketing’s virtual crop tour, which surveys clients, will happen the first week of August.

US--Election 2020-Rural Democrats

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:22:37 GMT

2020 Democrats try to make inroads in rural America 2020 Democrats try to make inroads in rural America By BILL BARROWAssociated Press The Associated Press DENMARK, S.C. DENMARK, S.C. (AP) — Deanna Miller Berry doesn’t often see presidential candidates. So when New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker recently came to Bamberg County, South Carolina, she was primed to unload about a contaminated water system.

“What is your plan to fix it?” Berry asked, her eyes narrowed.

Booker, former mayor of Newark, the largest city in the most densely populated state, assured Berry he cares about the 3,000 residents of Denmark, South Carolina. “This is a time in America where too many people are feeling left out, left behind, not included,” he said, promising “a massive infrastructure investment” targeting “forgotten” places.

The exchange highlights the effort by Democratic presidential candidates to make inroads in rural America. With the first contests unfolding next year in South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire, small-town voters will play a critical role in choosing the next Democratic nominee. And the early attention could help the eventual nominee be more conversant on rural issues and compete for votes in places that gave President Donald Trump his most intense support in 2016.

“Organizing in every precinct is the key to winning both the caucus and the general election in Iowa,” Iowa Democratic Chairman Troy Price said.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders lamented rural decline during an Iowa swing this weekend.

“All over America, we have tragically seen more and more young people leave the small towns they grew up in, the small towns they love, because there are no decent-paying jobs in those towns — we intend to change that,” Sanders said, drawing cheers at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.

At the same time, California Sen. Kamala Harris was in small-town South Carolina advocating more spending on telemedicine, broadband internet and infrastructure. Booker used his two-day rural swing last month to talk health care, housing, infrastructure and criminal justice, among other issues. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was the first candidate who ventured to rural northern New Hampshire. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar has already visited a tiny town in Wisconsin, which will be a general election battleground.

Several candidates plan to attend a March 30 rural issues forum at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa — population 10,600.

The approach matters most immediately because the delegates necessary to become the nominee are awarded in part from primary and caucus results in individual congressional districts, even the most rural and Republican-leaning. But investing there also could narrow Republicans’ general election margins, by increasing turnout among Democratic-friendly constituencies like rural black and Latino voters or peeling off white voters or both.

That could flip states like Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina — even Florida — that propelled Trump to an Electoral College majority. Besides helping win the presidency, rural gains would be necessary for Democrats to have the muscle on Capitol Hill to enact the kinds of sweeping policy changes they are advocating on many fronts.

“So much of this is about the margins,” Iowa’s Price said.

Beyond the politics, candidates say rural outreach is required of anyone who wants to govern a diverse nation.

“Folks want to be seen,” Harris said. “They want their issues to be heard. ... They could care less about half the stuff that gets covered on cable news networks.”

In Wisconsin, Klobuchar said, it’s “about knowing the issues that matter to people whether they’re Democrats, Republicans and independents — and in rural areas it’s not just about the farm bill.”

The 2018 midterms demonstrated Democrats’ tough realities beyond metro areas, but still offered some bright spots.

AP VoteCast, a national survey of more than 115,000 voters, found rural and small-town residents cast 35 percent of midterm ballots; 56 percent of those voted for Republican House candidates, compared to 41 percent for Democrats. The advantage was wider among small-town and rural whites: 30 percent of the electorate, tilting 63-35 for Republicans. Correspondingly, Democrats’ net 40-seat gain in the House was driven mostly by previously GOP-leaning suburban districts, while Democratic nominees fell short in more rural areas.

There’s no consensus on whether rural success for Democrats is about policy or personality or some combination. Some winners establish a personal brand at odds with the national party — West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin defending the coal industry, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown opposing much of U.S. trade policy, Montana Sen. Jon Tester playing up his rancher credentials.

But that won’t necessarily work for a presidential candidate looking to become the face of a party with a decidedly liberal base. None of the declared candidates deviates from Democratic orthodoxy supporting abortion rights and LGBTQ civil rights and opposing Trump’s hard line on immigration — all positions that run afoul of rural and small-town voters who collectively are more culturally conservative than urban dwellers.

Sanders struggled with that balance in 2016 when Hillary Clinton hammered him for some Senate votes against gun measures that most Democrats backed. Sanders noted that many Vermonters, as in the rest of rural America, view guns differently than most big-city residents, but Clinton successfully used the issue against Sanders, particularly with black women.

Would-be Democratic presidents are left to mix economic arguments with biography.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee grew up in Seattle, but he often mentions that he spent his early adult years in central Washington. He touts his signature issue — combating climate change — as a boon for the “heartland” economy by growing the clean-energy industry.

Klobuchar, a Twin Cities-area native, points to her work on the Senate Agriculture Committee and notes she’s won every congressional district in Minnesota during her Senate career. Sanders, who still speaks with his native Brooklyn inflection, drew roars in Iowa when mentioned using antitrust law to limit corporate power.

Harris notes that California — caricatured in Middle America as a bastion of coastal liberalism — has the nation’s biggest agricultural output. And in South Carolina, she said she heard a lot about jobs and state Republicans’ refusal to expand Medicaid insurance.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren notes that long before her Harvard law career, she was a child in Norman, Oklahoma, where her family’s working-class struggles shaped her liberal approach to consumer, labor and finance law.

After hearing Booker, Kenneth Belton, a 63-year-old resident of struggling Fairfield County, South Carolina, said a president doesn’t have to come from his walk of life. Belton just wants the person in the Oval Office to understand him — and then to help.

“It just feels like they’ve been ignoring us,” he said.

Berry, the clean water activist, agreed, crediting Booker and others for what she describes as first steps.

“I’ve heard enough to be inspired,” she said, pausing before adding, “enough to want to hear more.”

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Associated Press writers Sara Burnett in Chicago, Alexandra Jaffe in Des Moines, Iowa, Meg Kinnard in North Charleston, South Carolina, and Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP.