If you can't tell from the headline, I'm in Japan for a couple of weeks. I'll be posting more on this in a bit, maybe one night at 2 a.m. as the body continues to adjust to an 11-hour time difference.
Visiting relatives, we had some scrumptious greens along with several other dishes. Turned out to be broccoli rape.
Wheat prices have surged 34 percent so far this year to a record $12 a bushel, with supplies at a 60-year low. Expect more posts soon on food prices, but already artisan bakers are feeling the pinch. Here's a few snippets from one baker's discussion board:
Ouch! I guess we'll see the price of a good loaf going up rather soon.
Update: Bakers are marching on Washington next month to "let our government officials know that there is a crisis happening to bakers of every type and size," according to a press release from the American Bakes Association.
Image source: Baguettes by your's truly, Fromartz.
- Samuel Fromartz
Ted Mininni, a blogging brand consultant, adds a bit more context to the Honest Tea deal with Coke and the thinking of the beverage giant. "There isn’t any doubt that ready-to-drink teas are experiencing meteoric sales, much like energy drinks did a short time ago."
Thanks for pointing that out, Rob. His Murketing blog also offers insights on Goldman's interview with ChewsWise, and we look forward to his upcoming book, BUYING IN: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are.
By Samuel Fromartz
Though I took a critical look at Honest Tea's deal with Coke last week, company co-founder and CEO, Seth Goldman, agreed to chew it over with me in an interview.
I've admired Honest Tea for awhile and profiled the company here. It sources from organic and fair trade tea estates, has looked hard at packaging and shipping, and has been open and transparent in its practices - as this interview attests. These are all key practices in sustainability.
Their "less-sweet" drinks offer a tasty alternative to sugar-laden calorie-busting sodas - yes, just the kind Coke sells. The formula drove Honest Tea sales up 70 percent to $23 million last year.
But I worried Coke's deal to buy a 40 percent stake would throw Seth and his team off track, or worse. There's more than a few examples of companies that stagnated or died a slow death after a giant took them over.
Seth countered that Coke will actually give him a major push in the market -- starting with two new products he's launching this year. Here's the edited interview:
(Photo: Seth Goldman via Honest Tea)
For another view of Honest Tea and its deal with Coke - and details about Coke's current sustainability initiatives - check Marc Gunther's blog. Maybe Seth can ride the giant to where he wants to go?
Honest Tea announced today that it sold a 40-percent stake to Coca-Cola Co. I've written in the past about this great company, which for 10 years has been plugging away making a tasty, all organic, less sweet bottled tea product and growing like crazy. But when the email announcing the deal landed in my in-box, I had to do a double-take.
A double-take, even though I've seen nearly every major success story in the organic world gobbled up by a mainstream player. Even though, this deal makes so much sense I want to slap myself silly. Even though, Honest Tea was immediately de-cokifying itself on the founder's blog:
While Coke is now our largest shareholder, the agreement was negotiated to ensure that Honest Tea will not be managed or controlled by Coke. We will continue to operate as an independent business with the same leadership and mission. (my emphasis).
Continue reading "Seth, Why'd You Sell Honest Tea to Freakin' Coke?" »
Today's Times had a piece on pesto that got me hungry, so I decided to make some myself. (Click the image for a slide show of the process, which begins in the garden).
Contrary to the article, I think the key to good pesto is a mortar and pestle. Why? Because a solid pounding releases moisture in the basil leaves, which means you use less olive oil. And I hate greasy noodles. It also takes less time than a food processor, since you don't have to clean up the machine. But this advice works best for a small batch, which is all I ever make these days since the stuff you make and put in the freezer doesn't compare.
I kept a loose eye on my watch during the process and found it takes about three minutes to pound basil into pesto. The key is to pound it with salt, garlic and pine nuts, which help the leaves break down. While the pasta was boiling, I made and ate a salad.
It was an extremely pleasant repast and took all of 35 minutes.
What fuels a global food system? Packaging. Philip Nelson of Purdue University just won $250,000 World Food Prize for his work, which was announced Monday at the State Department. The Des Moines Register reports:
His achievements include perfecting heat sterilization and cooling methods for preserving many vegetable and fruit products without refrigeration, designing valves to keep micro-organisms out of storage containers and developing tanker ships for transporting orange juice around the globe.
The Wall Street Journal, in a wide-ranging round-up, has a page one story (subscription required) on the growing tensions between demand for food and fuel:
Soaring prices for farm goods, driven in part by demand for crop-based fuels, are pushing up the price of food world-wide and unleashing a new source of inflationary pressure.
The rise in food prices is already causing distress among consumers in some parts of the world -- especially relatively poor nations like India and China.
The article points out that biofuels are altering food economics, since ethanol and biodiesel can be made from corn, palm oil, sugar and other crops. Food inflation in Hungary is running 13 percent a year, in China, 6 percent, triple the rate of a year ago. China has only about 2-3 months of surplus food, meaning a bad crop could be disastrous.
Some economists say China will have to take more aggressive steps to prevent future food problems. These changes could include allowing the proliferation of large -- but more efficient -- corporate farms similar to the ones that drove many small growers out of business in the U.S. in recent decades. Such a push would be extremely difficult for China because it needs to preserve jobs for the tens of millions of people who live in rural areas.
It's interesting though not surprising that large-scale farms are viewed as the unquestionable answer to this issue rather than the small-scale farms which are far more productive per acre of output. (Grains in large-scale farms go to produce other foods or animal feed rather than being eaten directly by people -- not a terribly efficient food chain or use of an abundant labor pool).
Meanwhile in the U.S.,
... consumers are likely to see higher prices at the supermarket for everything from milk to cereal to soda pop, since corn is used to feed livestock and make high-fructose corn syrup, a key ingredient in many soft drinks. A spokesman for the National Chicken Council, a poultry-industry group, recently testified to a congressional subcommittee that Americans should expect higher chicken prices because of what the group described as "the ethanol crisis."
The somewhat silver lining to the trend is that the higher prices "could help boost incomes for the rural poor in developing nations, who have been bypassed by gains in the manufacturing and service sectors." But I wonder if that's the way it will shake out -- whether the benefits will, indeed, trickle down, or whether the farmers will be bypassed on the upswing as they have been when prices tank.
- Samuel Fromartz
This publicity stunt was so good you could taste it.
Author Steve Ettlinger held a book launch party in New York City Thursday night to celebrate publication of Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats.
During the party at McNally Robinson bookstore in Soho, various Twinkies were offered up for taste tests. There was a "gourmet" Twinkie from Nancy Olson of New York's Gramercy Tavern, an organic-vegan Twinkie by celebrated vegan dessert chef Fran Costigan, and commercial varieties including the Hostess originals, Little Debbie’s Golden Cremes, and Lady Linda Original Crème Fingers.
So which rated the most stars?
Organic vegan Twinkie, photo by Linda Long
Carl Safina: Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas
Charles Clover: The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat
Daniel Charles: Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food
Joan Dye Gussow: This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader
Michael Pollan: Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
