Corn was on the rise this week- taking a 12% spike throughout the week before falling to a 6% gain by Friday. The oil price based increase came despite the good news from the USDA (via the Chicago Tribune): corn has recovered from the July flooding and will have a 3.9 bushel per acre increase from last year's yield.
The report continued the trend of tempering good news with bad news; the Consumer Price Index report was released stating that prices jumped twice the expected rate in July. US News and World Report analysts attempted to see the silver lining of the report:
Goldman Sachs economists called the CPI report "horrible" but noted that the drop in crude prices should slow the advance of energy-related inflation. They write: "The energy piece of this is quite likely to moderate in coming months given the developments in crude oil and gasoline prices (though part of that is seasonal). The food should also slow, but the timetable for this is less certain."How are local restaurants surviving the downturn in consumer spending and the increase in costs? NWCN.com recently reported on the Newport Bay and Stanford's chains use of coupons to lure customers back in to the dinner hour:
In other Pacific Northwest food news, OPB ran a great article about the increasing health of Oregon farms:The coupons were sent to 450,000 homes in the Portland area. Experts said a typical return would be around 4.5 percent. So far at Stanford’s, restaurant managers said they’ve seen a 12-percent redemption.
"The response has been unbelievable," said Ideson.
We've all heard about the decline of the family farm in the U.S. and the dominance of giant corporate farms. The trouble is, in Oregon that’s just not the case. In fact, according to the latest census figures, even though farm acreage in the state has dropped slightly, there are actually more farms now than there were a decade ago.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Further reading:
KTVZ.com on Willamette Valley Farmers seeing a windfall from wheat crops this year.
Farm & Ranch Guide on the volatility in the corn market.
MSNBC on retail sales falling for the first time in 5 months.
