Food was front and center in the news this week. Flooding, salmonella outbreaks, and soaring oil prices topped headlines, and while wheat prices fell, the general mood on any possible relief for raising food costs was somber.
At the beginning of the week tomatoes were pulled off of grocery store shelves and restaurant menus after the FDA issued a Salmonella warning for raw red tomatoes. So far over 200 people have become ill, and the FDA is still trying to determine the source of the outbreak.
In the Pacific Northwest, grocery stores and farmers were quick to respond to the warning. The News-Review Today reported that places like Sherm’s Thunderbird pulled its tomatoes until learning their source was safe, while the Dairy Queen in Roseburg joined chains like Mc Donalds and Chipotle, stating they would keep tomatoes from their hamburgers at least through the weekend.
While Oregon's Caruso Produce was cleared by the FDA, other farmers were not having as easy of a time. Michael Stuart, president of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, spoke to NPR about the effect the warning was having on the growers:
They're extremely frustrated in that business has basically ground to a halt at this point in time. We're anxiously awaiting a determination by the Food and Drug Administration as to what the specific source of this problem is. And until that happens, quite frankly, we're dead in the water.
You can read the entire NPR piece here.
As the nation threw out tons of possibly contaminated tomatoes, commodity watchers kept an eye on corn as prices rose all week to end at $7.357 per bushel; a new record. Major flooding throughout the Midwest destroyed thousands of acres of crops, and with forecasts predicting more rain, analysts are predicting prices could surge above $8.00 per bushel.MarketWatch reported Monday on the already decreased 2009 corn crop, and as the week went on analysts told reporters that the flooding would have major consequences. Chad Hart, an agriculture economist at Iowa State University told the Chicago Tribune that:
Given the flooding we see today, we're likely to see prices go significantly higher based on the weather....This is a significant event. We were already having production issues before this occurred, all across the Midwest. This can have gigantic implications.
Conversely, the National Corn Growing Association's president Ron Litterer released a hopeful statement about the crop:
In Iowa in 1993, record rainfall reached well into the summer months and severely affected the crop that year. That is not the long-term forecast for 2008, and there’s still a lot of the growing season left, so we are hopeful the final results will not be as devastating as it was 15 years ago. While the U.S. Department of Agriculture has recently projected our third-largest crop ever at more than 11.7 billion bushels, we know that the final number depends on how the weather holds.Thanks to a large surplus of beginning stocks from the record 2007 harvest, we came in with a good supply. We are watching the skies at home and tracking the updates from Washington while working hard doing what we do best – growing corn to help feed and fuel the world.
The long-term effects of the tomato and corn issues are still to be seen, but many experts are warning that we have not seen the peak of rising prices.
- The New York Times on commodity prices climbing
- The Associated Press on the surge in corn prices
- Reuters on the FDA's slow moving progress on food safety
