In the California capital, dead autumn leaves lay heavy on the damp, manicured lawns of Sacramento City College as students learn that through death, something else will eat.
City Farm, Sacramento City College’s organic urban farm, concluded its first semester cultivating students into stewards of the land outside of Lillard Hall on Dec. 2 with an experiential learning experience—naturally recycling organic waste to create healthy, valuable, nutrient-rich compost for the next growing season.
City Farm hosts ‘How to build a compost pile’ educational workshop at Sacramento City College Dec. 2, 2011 (Image by: Matthew Blackburn)
“It’s also called ecologically intelligent design,” says Robyn Waxman, City Farm faculty coordinator and graphic communication instructor. “Instead of taking, making and wasting, we are creating new and useful materials.”
According to a 2009 study by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. landfills account for 20 percent of the methane emission in the world—a potent green house gas 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Over 34 million tons of food waste goes to U.S. landfills annually—more than any other kind of waste. Only 2 percent is composted.
“The human waste problem is a reality we will have to face in our future,” says guest lecturer Derek Downey, co-founder of the Davis Farmers’ Market Zero Waste Program.
Downey grabs a piece of soil from one of the City Farm plots and looks at it closely as he breaks it apart with his fingers—it is dry, sandy and does not contain any life.
City Farm did not flourish as Waxman had hoped—swiss chard, brocolli and other leafy greens appear dwarfed.
Swiss chard, broccoli and sweet peas grow in the City Farm plots at Sacramento City College Dec. 2, 2011. (Image by: Matthew Blackburn)
“Even plants have better immune systems with compost,” says Downey, a UC Davis biological systems engineering graduate. Compost is nature’s way to rejuvenate soil by decomposing organic matter (food waste and yard trimmings) into living soil providing colorful, delicious, micronutrient-rich food.
Waxman and Downey developed and distributed a seven-step pictorial guide to composting to over 20 City Farmers.
“Dead things equal food,” says Downey as he demonstrates layering branches and leaves to form the base of the pile—allowing air to circulate.
Waxman brought a container filled with compostable kitchen waste from her home to demonstrate suitable compost—egg shells, coffee grounds and vegetables.
A few students enquire on where to get worms to start a worm bin for at-home composting.
“I’ve got worms!” says Ryan Thalken, City Farm President, biology major and gardener.
According to Downey, worm poop produces more microbes and pasteurizes the soil. Worms love coffee grounds—a perfect ingredient for compost piles and gardens where worms reside. Downey recommends asking neighborhood cafes for their coffee grounds.
“It’s one way of taking responsibility for your community’s waste,” says Downey.
Waxman explains that classes would like to work together for a common goal or shared learning experience.
Guest lecturer Derek Downey, co-founder of the Davis Farmers’ Market Zero Waste Program, discusses soil health Dec. 2, 2011 (Image by: Matthew Blackburn)
“While City Farm does have a club who act as the stewards of the space, City Farm is primarily a place for classes to experiment and test theory learned in the classroom,” says Waxman. “It’s a multi-disciplinary, academic garden.”
The Science Math and Engineering Club are sharing the plant biology plot for a water-saving hydroponics experiment. Next semester, the art and chemistry class hopes to include a African history class studying the European indigo plantations to demonstrate making indigo dye for fabrics.
“People crave reconnecting with things that are real,” Waxman says.
Students shovel a thin layer of soil over the pile to prevent flies and odors before covering the pile with a tarp to retain heat and moisture.
With over 10 other classes and clubs waitlisted to use one of the four plots, Waxman feels very positively about City Farm’s potential growth with participatory learning and taking personal responsibility of our futures.
Several other lecture opportunities contributed to City Farm’s success. Secretary of Sustainability and plant biology major Michael Viscuso facilitated workshops on amending soil with natural fertilizers. California Food Literacy Center co-founder and ‘Awake at the Wisk’ blogger Amber Stott discussed natural pest control—more than 60 people attended.
“Most students don’t realize how much power they wield,” says Waxman.
In October, City Farm students hosted a documentary film festival for National Food Day focusing on genetically modified food, fair labor practices and sustainable food production—over 100 attended.
“City Farm allows you to take it upon yourself to learn and make with it [the farm] what you want,” says Waxman.
By Monday afternoon following Friday’s composting party, Waxman had emailed City Farm students—per administration, the compost pile must be dismantled.
While clearing the pile, students discussed other ways to increase City Farm yields with compost.
A student passing by the deconstruction of the compost pile stops to ask if the compost pile would smell badly.
“It should smell like the forest floor—like the good stuff,” Waxman says smiling.
The former President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was feted across the world for bringing millions of Brazilians out of poverty.
However, the rich also did very well under his left-wing government.
Brazil has an ever increasing number of millionaires, many of whose feet rarely touch the ground – as they fly from penthouse to office to gated community.
Paulo Cabral reports on the gap between rich and poor in Sao Paulo.
“The rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald was misquoted as telling Ernest Hemingway, “are different than you and me.”
Liz Christoffersen and her team at Reno-based Empower Consulting Group have found success as they work with a growing number of clients around the world who want to learn how to sell to those people who are different than you and me.
And the answer is entirely not the one famously provided by Hemingway: “They have more money.”
Instead, Christoffersen and her fellow principals in the firm — Pete Christoffersen and Tony and Barbara Young — tell their clients in fields such as luxury real estate that the very wealthy make their buying decisions differently than other consumers.
Decisions aren’t made over the kitchen table. Instead, they are likely to involve a web of advisors and a careful due diligence.
And the values that the very wealthy seek from their purchases — exclusivity, the possible creation of a legacy — often are different than the value sought by other consumers.
“It’s very much about the service experience,” says Christoffersen, the company’s founder and chief executive officer.
Since its founding in 2005, Empower Consulting has advised major real estate developers such as Four Seasons, Intrawest and Westin/Starwood, and the firm’s professionals are on the phone at all hours of the day and night as they work with executives around the world.
“Our customers are not struggling,” says Christoffersen. “Our customers are already successful and want to become more so.”
The firm’s counsel has been so good that it was named “Most Valued Partner” last autumn by the Who’s Who of Luxury Real Estate, a network of 120,000 real estate brokers.
But Empower Consulting is not a firm that drops in, runs a half-day seminar and jets out.
“We are not engaging with clients unless we are engaged all the way through the change process,” says Young.
And in most cases, that process includes a combination of strategic planning with leadership development and coaching — a combination that can take months to implement.
It’s also a process that doesn’t lend itself to a go-go pace.
“We’re very much focused on slow growth,” says Christoffersen.
Even at a slow pace, however, the company’s leadership team projects that Empower Consulting will grow methodically to $10 million sales within five years.
A good chunk of that growth is expected to come from Europe and other international markets. Young and his wife, Barbara, who is the company’s vice president of client engagement, have long experience in international sales and management.
A simple question from Christoffersen’s husband in 2005 — “What do you really want to do?” — led the creation of Empower Consulting Group.
She’d come to Reno to work as chief operating officer of Dickson Realty and had helped develop strategy at resort developer Intrawest before deciding to strike out on her own.
Jay Korneffel of Applegate lugged his sled full of equipment into St. John’s Marsh, at the north end of Lake St. Clair, waded into a half-frozen canal and began to set muskrat traps.
Each trap was to be set in the animal’s likely path to some cattails, a favorite muskrat treat, and marked with a tall, thin tree branch branded with a strip of bright pink tape.
Korneffel sells the muskrats he catches for their pelts in a growing fur market where muskrat pelts are in high demand by the Chinese. The lust for fur on the other side of the globe is driving the price of the “poor man’s mink” — the lowly muskrat — higher and higher.
And that’s a bonanza for Michigan trappers, some of whom, like Korneffel, trap along Lake St. Clair and in the rural regions of Wayne, Macomb and Oakland counties.
Muskrats, rodents that can grow up to 2 feet long including their tails, live in territories they mark with little piles of leaves scented by body fluids. They are tremendous swimmers, staying underwater for up to 10 minutes, and live in marshes or along lakes, rivers, streams, ponds and even ditches.
They’re trapped primarily for their pelts, although the meat is occasionally featured in wild game dinners. The Chinese are the world’s biggest fur market these days, both for consumption in China and for the fur garments they make for sale abroad.
In fact, the demand for muskrat is increasing faster than the demand for other furs, said Brian MacMillan, vice president of U.S. operations for the North American Fur Auction, which is the former Hudson Bay Co.
“Muskrats were worth about $2, $3 until about four years ago,” said Willard Prey, who owns Prey’s Raw Furs in Attica, near Imlay City. Now, muskrat pelts sell for $9 or $10, perhaps even $12 a pelt.
Last year, 4,100 people trapped muskrat in Michigan, up 12% since 2009, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. They caught more than 170,000 muskrats, a 6% increase over 2009.
North American Fur Auction will sell about 750,000 muskrat pelts a year. That’s not a lot compared with other furs — sales of ranch mink pelts are to reach about 6 million. But demand is driving the cost of all fur pelts up, and short-haired fur such as muskrat, mink and beaver are in style. As the price of furs goes up, the popularity of muskrat rises for people looking for a less expensive option.
“Muskrat’s a little longer hair than a mink, but it does resemble mink in a garment,” MacMillan said.
But the growing trend for muskrat fur hasn’t come to metro Detroit yet, said Michael Ceresnie, owner of Ceresnie and Offen Furs in Birmingham.
“Ten, 15 years ago it was a lot more popular than it is today,” Ceresnie said. He’s seeing an increase in interest in less expensive furs, but not muskrat.
“There’s different types of mink that are less expensive that we sell a lot of, and we sell a lot of beaver, too,” Ceresnie said.
The DNR regulates muskrat trapping — trappers must purchase a license and the season is almost over, lasting Nov. 10-Tuesday in this area. Most trappers do it as an extension of the hunting and fishing trappers enjoy, rather than a profession.
“I do it in my spare time, predominantly for income, but it’s a nice way to get outdoors for the hunting, trapping, fishing lifestyle,” said John DeBoyer of Clay Township.
Korneffel agreed. His father was a trapper, and he began trapping with his father when he was 6 years old.
“I don’t know of any trapper that ever got rich and famous,” Korneffel said. “If you don’t love it, you’re not going to do it.”
Contact Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki: 586-826-7278 or mmwalsh@freepress.com
William G. Gisel Jr. joined Rich Products Corp. 30 years ago. He has ascended the leadership ranks as the Buffalo-based family-owned business has blossomed into a $2.9 billion food products company.
Gisel, 59, named Rich’s chief executive officer in 2006, has just implemented a new global organizational structure, with five regional business units, that reflects Rich’s reach. Gisel talked about Rich’s international expansion and its sales outlook:
Q:How has Rich grown into thecompany it has become?
A: I think our strategy can really be looked at in two different dimensions. One is a really strong belief that emanates from [chairman] Bob Rich Jr. that we need to be a diversified company. He is a fundamental believer in the value of diversification.
That manifests itself in terms of our product line. We have a very broad range of product categories that we’re involved in. Most people in Buffalo really don’t have a full appreciation for how many different things we’re involved in from a food standpoint. We’re the largest shrimp processor in the country. We’re the largest meatball processor in the country. Other meat products, value-added bakery, desserts, appetizers, and so forth.
The other part of it is the geographic diversification. And [Bob Rich Jr.] really was the primary impetus back in the ’80s for us to push hard to develop our international business. And that was at a time when the U. S. markets were growing very rapidly and a lot of other food companies were figuring, “This is good, we’ll just ride the wave here.”…And I think now we’re in a wonderful position because we’re very well entrenched in many of these emerging markets, whereas many other
U. S. food companies have not taken step one.
Q:How do you make inroads in a newcountry?
A:There are no shortcuts. Our strategy as a company is around customer intimacy. We talk about this global structure or a global company —it’s really a misnomer, because the real strength of our strategy and our business is being really good at the local level. And that doesn’t mean we bring Buffalo-envisioned products to a bakery in Mumbai or Monterrey or Singapore. It means we have to understand the specific requirements they have in Mumbai, Monterrey or Singapore and have the capabilities to meet those specific requirements. . . . The other thing that we think is a really important element of our model is, that we believe very strongly in foreign nationals playing large roles in our business in these places. We do not have a big [expatriate] population in the company. Most of the top tier and second tier and third tier leaders and managers in these companies are local nationals who have grown up and developed in our business.
Q: Where do the Buffalo offices fit in?
A:Buffalo is our global headquarters and it is the epicenter. All of the major functional groups have a corporate functional presence here in Buffalo. So whether it’s research and development, finance, human resources, information technology, operations, et cetera, what their role is in this model is one, to set standards and define what best practices look like in any functional area. And then provide support out to any of these regions, whether it’s a U. S. region or across the world.
The third thing, and perhaps the most important new role they play is, to facilitate more collaboration across the regions. Because really the essence of this structure is to be able to help the local organizations do a better job supporting their local customers. If we don’t do that, then this global stuff is just nice cocktail party talk.
Q: Will you add more jobs at the headquarters?
A:We can see almost categorically that as we grow as a company, and as these regions and other countries grow, that we attract more professionals to Buffalo to help fulfill this role of support and facilitation and development. So we’ve had several hundred new positions over the last number of years coming into these corporate functional areas to help us to support the global growth of the business.
Q:What is your outlook on sales?
A:We talk about the advantages of this multinational footprint that we have. But two-thirds of our business is still in the United States and Canada, and still a critical marketplace for us is between the U. S. and Canada. We are seeing signs of resurgence in some of the key markets that we operate in in the U. S. and Canada, which is encouraging. It’s fragile and it’s not huge, but it feels a little bit like, OK, we’ve reached bottom we’re starting to see a little comeback, whether it be in the restaurants and the food service segment or in some of these other areas.
Europe is a big variable. If Europe has a major calamity, that’s going to have an implication directly on the U. S. marketplace, it’s going to affect our economy and therefore our business here. But it’s also going to have an impact on Asia, because markets like China rely pretty heavily on Europe as a destination for their products, so it will affect growth there, too.
Q: Rich sells products in 100 countries.How does the company manage its presencein so many places?
A:Really the question comes down to, how do we maintain this consistent competitiveness across such a broad basis? It really comes down to three factors.
The first one, which is largely underappreciated in many parts of industry, is the family ownership. It allows us to maintain a longer-term perspective on the business, which is really critical, because we’re not in a position where we’re twisting the business to achieve certain quarterly results. We’re looking at the flow of the business, along with the [Rich family] shareholders, over a longer period of time, with an eye toward maintaining consistent growth and vitality and strength.
The second is a consistent clear strategy that is all about being really close to local customers. . . . And so we know that that trumps everything else, that local response and support.
That [third] part of this is, we have a belief that organizational excellence is the only sustainable competitive advantage. We can develop interesting new products all day long, and we do, we can come up with new ideas and technologies. But over time those things can be matched, copied, what have you. No one can really match our organizational capabilities.
Gone are the days when wine tasting was only meant for the elite. Thanks to wine tasting events and cheaper, affordable wines, the drink has become popular among middle class India.
Nikhil Agarwal, who conducts wine tasting events regularly, attributes to the affordability of wines.
“It was a pre-conceived notion that wines were meant only for the rich, since they travelled all over the world and knew about different cultures. But with the times changing, wine tasting events are prevalent and no longer just cater to the rich. Moreover, there are wines available in different price ranges as per your budget,” says Nikhil.
The added attraction with wine tasting and wine festivals — like good music and shopping stalls — is also a huge draw.
HR professional Mitika Vohra, says, “Wine festivals these days offer a lot of other activities like performances by bands, grape stomping, food stalls, hopping stalls etc. Since it takes place outside city limits, it makes for a perfect weekend activity/getaway,” she says.
“The York festival proved that wine tasting goes beyond the wines. And there have been many other events where people can enjoy a wholesome experience of food and wine. But this is just the beginning as we have a long way to go,” adds Nikhil.
How much wine to pour in a glass
Unlike hard liquor or beer, wine glasses don’t have a standardised measure. While the quantity varies from person to person, you ideally need to fill the glass to less than the halfway point, leaving enough space for the aromas to move around, and also giving you the chance to swirl it about and not spill.
There were also reminders at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting of political and business power players which Supachai is attending: Protesters from the Occupy movement are camped in igloos in Davos to call for more help for the needy and on Saturday three topless Ukrainian women protesters were detained trying to break into the gathering to call attention to the needs of the world’s poor.
Supachai, the head of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, known as UNCTAD, said in an interview with The Associated Press that it’s past time to promote economic growth that eradicates inequality.
He expressed frustration that the forum’s annual meeting has been dominated by the financial crisis in Europe over the euro, which he said European politicians must resolve.
Whatever the leaders may be doing to find financial solutions, Supachai said “I think financial solutions are not lasting solutions.”
The more important problem is tackling inequality and disparity — an issue he said he has been pushing since he first came to the forum in this Swiss ski resort in 1987.
“I kept telling people … I predict in the next decade inequality will worsen and there will be no way that humankind can tackle the issue, because I don’t know if we have the means or the wherewithal,” Supachai said. “I’m going to say again now that it’s going to worsen again because … people are distracted by the European issue, the financial crisis.”
While the world may be able to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line, the inequality gap will grow with more rich people, more poor people, and no middle class, he said.
“Today we do everything to please the financial markets and you can see the financial market going and going, but they don’t serve the real economy,” Supachai said. “They serve themselves. They make themselves rich.”
“This is non-inclusive growth,” he said.
What UNCTAD advocates is inclusive economic growth that embraces all people — especially the poor, unemployed and marginalized — and eradicates inequality, he said.
Supachai said governments must put jobs into every project they do and promote equality for women, inclusive development and sustainable economic growth. He said there should also be a simple, traditional banking system that can finance trade, help people save and get loans, and do short-term financing.
Supachai said the issue of inequality will be at the center of UNCTAD’s next conference in Doha, Qatar, from April 21-26 on the theme moving away from finance-led globalization to development-centered globalization.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Farmers, groups of farmers and farmers co-operatives in the state will get rights to grow, sell and export and process at least 11 horticultural products so far registered under geographical Indication (GI).
The horticulture department has delegated the registry user’s powers to the farmers of the local areas, enabling them to commercially cultivate the produce.
The department, which had the GI registry powers vested under its wings, has been empowered by the biotechnology centre at Hulimavu on the outskirts of Bangalore to delegate the powers to the farmers to develop the crops further.
“The biotechnology centre at Hulimavu has already protected 11 different horticultural crops under Geographical Indication certification. As primary transfer of rights we had earlier delegated powers to the horticulture department to with explicit instructions to transfer powers under the GI to the farmers,” Krishnamurthy, deputy director of the centre, said.
This process has started recently; the Biotechnology Centre Hulimavu was planning to directly transfer the benefits of certification to the farmers and groups of farmers to develop the crops” he added.
Karnataka has been awarded GI tag for 10 crops including NanjanguduRasabale (banana), oranges of Kodagu, betel leaves of Mysore, Mysore jasmine, Udupi jasmine, Hadagali jasmine, red banana of Kamalapura, red chakota of Devanahalli, appemidi (tender mango) of Sagar and mattigulla (endemic round brinjal) of Mattu near Udupi.
The first ‘harvest’ of the produce grown under the delegation of GI powers was carried out by the horticulture department at Kukkarahalli horticulture farm on Friday.
“The department sees this development as a path breaking event. The farmers will be the absolute owners of the GI tag for Nanjangudurasabale. The demo farm has yielded the typical Nanjangudurasabale, we have tested the composition of the fruit and it has matched with the crop that the traditional farms grow in Nanjangud, it also means that the Nanjangudrasabale could be grown in Mysore too and the farmers now have a larger area for cultivating this tasty and creamy type of banana,” said a horticulture department official.
MadaeGowda, a grower of Nanjanagudu banana, said the growers have planned for expanding their marketing network and plans were afoot to penetrate the high value market like the malls in Bangalore. One of the hypermarkets in Bangalore has also agreed to give a special counter under the banana section for the famous fruit.
“We will bring more land under rasabale cultivation, a team of members have also visited parts of Tamil Nadu and studied the cultivation methods of Tanjavorerasabale to increase yield and improve the size of each fruit,” he said.
VIEWPOINT—Mary Ross and her husband, Pat, have a unique viewpoint of the local food system in Douglas County and surrounding region. They not only produce corn, soybeans, and beef on a commercial basis but also grow 35 acres of sweetcorn for local markets. Mary Ross did not agree with all of the assumptions made in the Food Policy Council’s analysis of the local food system. (Journal photo by Doug Rich.)
Local food is the latest trend for foodies across the country. Restaurants promote locally grown items on their menus, and popular chefs extol the virtues of eating local on their syndicated television shows.
Erin Barnett with LocalHarvest, a California-based website dedicated to local food sources, said the buy local food movement is the result of a number of different factors that include the emergence of Community Supported Agriculture, farmers markets, a renewed emphasis on supporting local economies, and food safety scares.
“There are a lot of different definitions that people use to describe local food,” Barnett said. “They talk about what is grown in their county or what is grown in a 100-mile radius of their home. We like to say buy as local as reasonable.”
Recently an in-depth analysis of the local food system in Douglas, Jefferson, and Leavenworth counties in Kansas was released. The study, “Building a Deep-Rooted Local Food System,” was done by the Douglas County Food Policy Council with help from researchers at Kansas State University.
“We wanted to show all of the different faces of agriculture in these counties,” Eileen Horn, Douglas County sustainability coordinator, said. “We did not want it to be a niche voice just for the foodie movement but instead try to understand the whole system. It is a complicated beast.”
Horn said they wanted to find the leverage points in the system where they could capture more of the food dollars locally.
The analysis found that agriculture is still a major contributor to the local economy in this three-county region. According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture the total market value of agricultural products in the tri-county region was $135.8 million, but only $1.2 million of this amount was direct sales to local consumers.
The report also found some gaps in the system. The tri-county region lacks the capacity for light processing needed to prepare local food for restaurants and institutions as well as the storage and transportation infrastructure. Even in an agricultural region like the tri-county area, food insecurity was found to exist. According to the analysis over 10,000 residents in the tri-county region have limited access to grocery stores and healthy food choices. Two “food deserts” were identified in the report.
“The whole point of this food system report was to serve as an educational foundation for the Food Policy Council and to help us formulate recommendations for policy,” Horn said.
The Food Policy Council made the following recommendations:
–To ensure that high-quality agricultural land is available for farming, policy tools and incentives should be developed that are economically feasible for the landowner.
–Increase and incentivize local production and consumption of fruit, vegetable, poultry, and dairy products to close gaps in the local food system.
–Work to attract food-processing businesses to the region.
–Establish economic development incentives for grocers who locate in low-access neighborhoods or grocers who improve existing stores to address food deserts in the region.
Horn said these recommendations are locally grounded and take into consideration the local soils and climate.
Mary Ross, lifelong Douglas County resident and farmer, was not sure these recommendations would work. Ross and her husband, Pat, have years of experience with the local food system. They operate a commercial grain and livestock enterprise as well as grow sweet corn for the local market.
“I didn’t like the report,” Ross said. “I just thought some of the things in the report were unattainable. It did not deal with the real world of farming, of production agriculture.”
Ross said her first reaction was to wonder why the county was spending money on a study like this one. She did not think this was where the county should be spending its limited resources.
Ross felt so strongly about the report that she wrote a letter to the editor of the Lawrence Journal World to explain her position. One of the facts Ross disagreed with was that the region only needed 909 acres of corn to meet its needs. Ross and her husband grow 3,000 acres of field corn and 35 acres of sweet corn on their farm. Part of their corn acreage is used to grow waxy corn that is used for industrial as well as food products.
“We grow most of our corn for livestock feed and fuel, but some does go to food production,” Ross said.
Eileen Horn said that particular fact was not explained very well in the report. The 909 acres of corn referred to corn consumed as a vegetable for humans and not as animal feed.
“The author of the study in several places just wanted grass-fed beef, which I have a real problem with because it is not as tasty as grain-fed beef,” Ross said.
Ross said they have a lot of owned and rented pasture that is invaluable for raising beef, but they feed grain so their animals reach market weight sooner. The Rosses buy feeder calves locally and finish them out on their farm using their own homegrown grain and distillers grains from Boulevard Brewing Co. in Kansas City. The cattle are sold to Bichelmeyer Meats in Kansas City, which then markets the beef locally.
“The U.S. exports a lot beef,” Ross said. “The world wants our grain-fed beef.”
Mary Ross and her family are well known in the area for the sweet corn they grow every summer. They started selling sweet corn at the Lawrence farmers market 29 years ago but now sell most of it right from their farm. Some of their sweet corn is sold to vendors who sell at farmers markets in Overland Park and Kansas City.
“Everybody likes sweet corn, but we never dreamed it would be so successful and that we would be at it for so long,” Ross said.
They have considered expanding their sweet corn acreage over the years but Ross said they did not think it was economically feasible. Sweet corn production requires a lot of manual labor, which is true for most small-scale fruit and vegetable production. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, farms with local food sales require more operator time than do farms without local food sales. The USDA-ERS study said the average farm with local food sales devoted 1.3 full-time equivalent jobs to the farm compared to 0.9 FTE for farms without local food sales. This was true for farms with up to $250,000 in annual sales.
Ross is all for supporting local production but said if she was struggling to feed a family she could not afford to shop at the farmers market. Ross said if we want to expand agriculture in this area we should spend more money on research for traditional row crops.
There are over 100 food policy councils across the U.S. and many of them have issued similar reports about their food systems but their conclusions vary. Each one created a slightly different definition of a local food system based on local resources and conditions.
“We tried really hard to just take a snapshot of what we have today and what we eat today just to get everyone on the same page,” Horn said.
Doug Rich can be reached by phone at 785-749-5304 or by e-mail at richhpj@aol.com.
In a cafe on the terrace of an upmarket Nairobi mall, well-heeled Kenyans sip coffee as shoppers in the car park navigate between BMW X5s, Toyota Land Cruisers and Mercedes.
Sales at this Java House outlet along the Ngong Road were up last year, says Kevin Ashley, a Californian who co-founded the chain of 14 coffee houses 13 years ago. Kenya’s rich and new middle classes have a growing taste for lattes and ice cream.
That’s just one sign that many African states such as Kenya are changing.
A study by the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, has pointed to the potential of the continent’s more than 1 billion people, millions of whom have moved out of subsistence agriculture and into urban jobs over the past decade.
Such promise has helped fuel foreign investment. Kenya alone has had a capital influx of billions of dollars in recent years: the latest official figures show around $800 million came in 2008.
But the wealth on show at the mall has a flip side. The consumption boom has been fuelled by fast-growing credit. In Kenya and elsewhere that has sucked in imports – cars, shoes, clothes, wines and whiskies – and swelled the current account deficit.
Inflation in Kenya is now nearing 20 per cent.
Java House employs 700 workers and plans to open new outlets soon, but its co-owner worries about price rises.
A volatile currency has fed into coffee prices, which are paid in dollars.
A sack of green coffee costs close to $500, up from $150-200 per sack three years ago, (with a dollar exchanging at about Sh87).
The risk is that Africa’s consumers are harvesting their gains before their economies can bear it, economic analysts say.
“Minimum wage-earners in urban centres in East Africa are encountering a an unprecedented squeeze,” said Aly Khan Satchu, an independent trader and analyst, and himself solidly middle class. Inflation is a major concern, he said.
“It creates a sort of reverse Robin Hood effect where the poor carry the main burden.”
Western investors have become accustomed to Africa as a boom story in recent years. Since the financial crisis, investors have ventured into Africa in search of higher returns.
In Kenya, firms have been hiring and property prices have risen exponentially, creating a feel-good factor for home owners, especially in towns and cities. That, in turn, has fed the appetite for consumer goods.
“Africa is about consumers,” Stephen Murphy, managing director at private equity firm Citadel Capital, told a conference in Nairobi in December.
“It is about high-impact infrastructure investing and it is certainly about value-added exports and not just commodity exports.”
Razia Khan, head of Africa research at Standard Chartered in London, says the problem is an Africa-wide one.
“More rapid growth was accompanied almost everywhere by a surge in imports, especially capital goods imports related to infrastructure development.”Like other African countries, Kenya has yet to make good use of the capital pouring into the country and encourage manufacturing.
“It is good if people think Kenya is a good place to park their money but what Kenya needs most is long-term investments that go into productive industries,” said Wolfgang Fengler, the lead economist at the World Bank office for Kenya.
Unlike countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, or Zambia, Kenya doesn’t have significant mineral or oil resources. But its economy has been lifted by infrastructure investment – including a high-speed internet connection.
That should help spread the wealth, and is already attracting home thousands of skilled, educated Kenyans, many of whom work in the booming financial sector.
Satchu, a trader and analyst, is one of them. He returned five years ago after working with various banks in London all his adult life, at one point managing a balance sheet in excess of $17 billion for Sumitomo Bank.
When he first returned, Satchu headed straight to his hometown, Mombasa. In the back garden of his home, he erected a 52-metre tower to get a decent connection to the internet and access the New York Mercantile Exchange.
In 2009, though, a high-speed undersea cable plugged Kenya into the global grid. Encouraged by new tech-friendly policies, Kenya has pulled in investments from firms like Britain’s Vodafone, France Telecom and India’s Essar Telecoms. Mobile commerce is growing.
Now Satchu has moved to Nairobi and follows the global markets through 3G technology.
“I have a strong conviction that the African convergence with the rest of the world has begun, therefore I needed to place myself not on the beach, but in the thick of things.”
Satchu has a well-honed urge to consume. He likes to wear pricey Canali suits and Hermes ties, and drives a Nissan Patrol, a behemoth four-wheel-drive.
“I prefer to drive a Maserati or a fast car but it is just not practicable on our roads,” he said, pointing to one of Kenya’s persistent shortcomings.
Eventually, improved infrastructure might allow him to drive that Maserati. For now, analysts fret about whether Kenya’s exporting capacity can keep pace with its imports.
“In most frontier markets … we haven’t seen sufficient evidence of this,” Khan said.
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