Perishable Thoughts — Building
The Future Of Our Industry
Tim York, President of the Markon Cooperative, Salinas, California, is really quite an exceptional industry leader. He not only rose to become Chairman of the Produce Marketing Association but, after that chairmanship, has remained an important contributor to the industry, seizing opportunities to establish the buyer-led food safety initiative, for which he was awarded a […]
Perishable Thoughts –
Produce Industry On Trial
One of the ongoing sagas that we have chronicled here at the Pundit is the story of produce companies punished without any clear wrongdoing on their part. Such was the case in the Spinach Crisis, the Honduran cantaloupe situation, growers of tomatoes, chili peppers, cilantro and other produce during the recent Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak and, […]
Pan-European School Fruit Scheme
Marc DeNaeyer, Managing Partner of TROFI in The Netherlands, has often contributed valuable information to both the Pundit and sister publication, PRODUCE BUSINESS, including pieces such as these: Pundit’s Mailbag — Pesticides And Cancer Why Don’t American Retailers Just Standardize On EurepGAP? Pesticides Keep Pestering Us Pundit Mailbag — Global Warming’s Shameful Marketing Attempts E.U […]
Oil Price Decline
Dampens Alternative-Energy Fervor
The world has become so complex that it is hard to figure out what is good and what is bad. With the news being that Oil Falls Near $70 a Barrel, 16-Month Low, Alarming OPEC — meaning that oil is down over 50% from its $145.29 high in July — one would think we have […]
Welcome To The Age
Of Preposterous Reasoning:
Defending The Dignity Of Plants
One of the reasons the world is in such terrible shape is that we have lost the capacity as a civilization to make distinctions. We owe a hat tip to Lorri Koster, Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, Vice President, Marketing at Mann Packing, for passing on this incredible piece from The Wall Street Journal: SWITZERLAND’S GREEN […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — Learning
The Law Like Lincoln
In our October 1, 2008, Perishable Thoughts piece, we featured a quote from Abraham Lincoln that Scott Danner, Chief Operating Officer of Liberty Fruit Co., Kansas City, Kansas, sent on. The quote came from a letter that Lincoln had written in response to a young man hoping to study law with Lincoln. In our comments […]
Bolstered By ‘Too-Big-to-Fail’ Theory,
GM/Chrysler-Merger Plan Is To Make
Two Losers Into A Winner
Wonder why General Motors and Chrysler may merge? On the surface it really makes little sense — and perhaps the GM board will still pull back. After all, it would be an enormously distracting and difficult task to integrate the organizations at precisely a moment in time when the executives need to be focused. Both […]
Perishable Thoughts–
Reacting To Adversity
Whether one is sold out by his stock broker because he was on margin, loses one’s house because he couldn’t make the interest rate reset or comes out on the wrong side of a produce speculation, one question worth pondering is how one ought to react to adversity. Robert Falcon Scott, CVO, was a officer […]
Lost Incentives For Home Buying
We have written a great deal about the financial crisis and it is possible that this particular crisis has been solved. Basically by flooding the world with liquidity, putting money into the banks and guaranteeing a lot of things, the financial system can begin to function again. So why is The New York Times running […]
Irradiation And Consumer Acceptance
We have dealt a great deal with irradiation, including an extensive review of the state of the art which we entitled, Irradiation Kickstart. This piece followed up on the heels of FDA’s Irradiation Ruling Puts FDA On The Spot, which announced FDA’s approval of irradiation for use with iceberg lettuce and spinach. Although there are […]
