Price of milk. DO NOT OVERPAY!

http://thepacker.com/Frank-Gasperini--National-Council-of-Agricultural-Employers/Article.aspx?articleid=962698&authorid=117&feedid=219

10:40 a.m. Frank: What we expected to be a routine DHS symposium turned out to be much higher profile than we expected. Along with Secretary (Janet) Napolitano reinforcing that DHS priorities continue to focus on employer enforcement, promoting their image and "I E-Verify" programs, late in the day DHS announced that they were issuing 1,000 notices of audit to employers around the country, similar to the 654 issued earlier this year. Within 30 minutes I learned through a reporter that agricultural employers have been included this round.

10:41 a.m. Tom: So we have heard about dairy farmers among those. Any word about specialty crop or fruit and vegetable growers at this point?

10:42 a.m. Frank: Implications for agricultural employers include the fact that DHS doesn't recognize the difficulties we face due to our seasonal and transient workforce, and that there is no special consideration for our issues.


Quick question: who does TalkIrvine think milks those happy cows? Here's a hint - it ain't second generation Americans. I'm not condoning illegal immigration. I'm pointing out if they are successful locking down the border, you'll be looking at $6 a gallon for milk.
 
Don't we have machines for that?!

We don't need no stinkin' jobs (legal or otherwise) if we have robots!
 
There are machines to milk. Somebody has to move cows in and out of the barn, connect the machine, feed cows, clean up cow poop - and it's a 24/7/365 job.
 
We don't need no stinkin' jobs! or laborers! or obreros

Let's just outsource the design of the robots to India, and their manufacture to China.

We'll pay for the robots with BernankeBucks
 
"Sun Maid Girl Makeover Sparks Controversy"

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/art....ily-love_m oney

In the annals of advertising imagery, few brand symbols are more iconic and recognizable than the Sun-Maid raisin girl.

Nevertheless, Sun-Maid recently decided to join Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth's in giving the female face of their product a substantial makeover from a young, early 20th-century girl into a buxom, modern young woman, leading some to say that the newly made-over raisin girl looks like a Barbie Doll in Amish attire

Before:

28.jpg


After:

30.jpg


Real:

grapes1.jpg
 
It's never good to click on the LA Times and see a town you grew up near as the headline. Kettleman City was previously famous for the In N Out off I-5 (before Vegas opened, the busiest in the chain) and a passive being mentioned at the end of Erin Brokovich (they have a superfund site that used to be a PG and E Nat Gas booster turbine).

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/20....in-valley .html

Infant deaths, cleft palates raise concern about toxic landfill in San Joaquin Valley

A mystery has settled on Kettleman City, a small San Joaquin Valley migrant farming community off Interstate 5 that's halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Approximately 20 babies were born in the town during a 14-month period beginning in September 2007. Three of them died; each had been born with a cleft palate and had other health problems. Two others born during that period who survived also have the birth defect.

Some of the community's 1,500 mostly Spanish-speaking residents are blaming the problem on a nearby hazardous waste facility -- the largest landfill of its kind west of Louisiana. They also want the Kings County Board of Supervisors to halt the proposed expansion of Waste Management's landfill pending an investigation into the cleft palate cluster by state and federal regulatory agencies.

WM used to be my customer. Most of what gets sent to WM is drug seizures. All the materials they are talking about are carefully deposited in 1/8" thick vinyl tubs, and then have a lid plastic welded on them. They are carefully stacked on top of each other, and deposited in a area that has 1 foot of clay and two layers of plastic between each layer of tubs. There are inspection wells everywhere. My opinion is the landfill is not the problem.

I have another idea why Kettleman City has problems with birth defects...

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFFacts?_event=Search&geo_id=&_geoContext=&_street=&_county=kettleman+city&_cityTown=kettleman+city&_state=04000US06&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&pctxt=fph&pgsl=010&show_2003_tab=&redirect=Y
 
Whoops, I don't have the routine down for quoting and adding to a previous post. But I shall overcome!

Vas -- My first guess would be exposure to an agricultural pesticide of some type. But the hazardous waste facility makes an easy target. As a former mayor of Houston was once quoted, "Everybody want us to pick up their garbage, but nobody want us to put it back down."
 
[quote author="goillini"]Whoops, I don't have the routine down for quoting and adding to a previous post. But I shall overcome!

Vas -- My first guess would be exposure to an agricultural pesticide of some type. But the hazardous waste facility makes an easy target. As a former mayor of Houston was once quoted, "Everybody want us to pick up their garbage, but nobody want us to put it back down."[/quote]

I was thinking about the $20K/yr per household income and the total lack of medical services (prenatal or otherwise).

My dad was a crop duster. If anyone should have a pool of defective children it's crop dusters. And I know of zero defects in that pool. They also made more money and had better access to health care but I digress.

The town my wife grew up in didn't have potable water until 2002 or so. This was thanks to the "Clean Water Act" - your big government at work. Kettleman City had similar problems - and that's without the Hexachromium 6 problem four miles down the road.
 
The poorest school districts are the ones that have the highest number of special ed kids, which includes the kids with the medical needs. A small district that is not poor does not have enough billing to justify bringing in a third party provider to help with this, but for a small low income district it's another story. The lower the income, the poorer the health.

Serving these kids is a huge drain on the limited education budget, which in turn takes even more resources away from education that is desperately needed. Basic nutrition and decent medical care costs less to provide in the long run.
 
There are no dairy cows within 20 miles of Kettleman City, I think.

http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/Brockovich-PG&E-Again.htm

"Erin Brockovich," starring Julia Roberts, focused on a $333 million settlement stemming from claims that a toxic chemical, chromium 6, leaked from PG&E facilities and contaminated groundwater in and around the San Bernardino County town of Hinkley.

Since then, more than 1,200 plaintiffs have filed a new suit alleging that they too have illnesses related to chromium contamination not just in Hinkley but also near PG&E's Kettleman Hills plant in Kings County, which pumps natural gas shipped from Texas to San Francisco.

At both Hinkley and Kettleman, chromium 6 was used by PG&E in cooling systems to prevent pipes from rusting. Runoff seeped into the ground and contaminated local water supplies.


Ah-hem. It's NOT the dump.
 
Hexavalent chrome is used on all carbon steel products in the USA for rust prevention. The thicker the better the protection. The European Union has banned all hexavalent chrome products from entering their countries. The US is looking to do a similar thing, but has not passed any laws against using it yet. In Europe, all metal must be ROHS compliant. (Restrictions on Hazardous Substances)

If you have a pool of drinking water that has any plated carbon steel inside of it, it is more than likely that the plating is hexavalent (chrome-6) and will cause problems to humans.

Hexavalent chrome products are all around you. The screws in the monitor in front of you are likely plated that way. But if you don't lick it, u'll be fine.
 
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-kroger9-2009dec09,0,5757858.story

Kroger also is dealing with the negative effects of food price deflation. The grocery industry operates on a more narrow profit margin than other businesses. For example, if it makes 5%, or 5 cents, on a $1 item, and the price drops to 90 cents, its profit drops to 4.5 cents.

"Last year at this time, we had estimated inflation of 6%. This year we estimate deflation to be negative 0.8%. Deflation was particularly acute in categories such as milk, produce and meat. We certainly sold more units -- as any associate who stocked dairy or produce departments can attest -- but at much lower retail prices," Dillon said.


Paging Awgee...
 
[quote author="zubs"]Hexavalent chrome is used on all carbon steel products in the USA for rust prevention. The thicker the better the protection. The European Union has banned all hexavalent chrome products from entering their countries. The US is looking to do a similar thing, but has not passed any laws against using it yet. In Europe, all metal must be ROHS compliant. (Restrictions on Hazardous Substances)

If you have a pool of drinking water that has any plated carbon steel inside of it, it is more than likely that the plating is hexavalent (chrome-6) and will cause problems to humans.

Hexavalent chrome products are all around you. The screws in the monitor in front of you are likely plated that way. But if you don't lick it, u'll be fine.
[/quote]

I remember these cooling towers being like six stories high. The
heated coolant was "sprayed" Billagio style into the unlined ponds to cool.

If the problems in Kettleman City are environmental I'd expect the source to be from here more than I'd expect a modern 25 year old hazardous waste landfill, but more than likely, it's a problem with non-existent prenatal health care.

I guess I'm guilty of just guessing too, eh?
 
Of local interest, these guys are in Orange on the corner of Walnut and Cypress in the former home of Villa Park Orchards. Or, I should say, were...

http://thepacker.com/Avocado-shipper-Prime-Produce-closes-doors/Article.aspx?articleid=965496&authorid=680&categoryid=122&feedid=215&src=top

California avocado shipper Prime Produce International LLC has gone out of business.

In a Dec. 8 news release, Avi Crane, president of Orange-based Prime, said the company had ceased operations after it failed to secure credit from lenders.

According to the release, a computer software error had overstated the company's 2009 profits. Once the error was discovered and the correct profit figure determined, Prime's primary lender closed the company's line of credit. Prime then tried in vain to secure credit elsewhere.

I have no inside information on what happened here, but I can tell the TI folks that it's real easy to overstate your profits in the produce/fruit business due to something called "adjustments". Say you make a deal to sell 30,000 boxes for $10 a box. At some point after they are delivered and sold, the buyer can come back and claim they weren't up to snuff and jam an adjustment down your throat with minimal effort. Sometimes they are legitimate, sometimes somebody needs to make up some margin and they take it out of the grower/packer/shipper ? but either way, you never see them coming before they run you over.
 
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