Jessica Alba, Cam Newton, and the Fruits and Vegetables Marketing Machine

Jessica Alba and Cam Newton participated recently in an upbeat advertisement for healthful fruit and vegetables, sponsored by the Partnership for a Healthier America.

An AP article Feb 26 explained some of the origins, noting that the new campaign grew out of a broccoli advertisement mockup that Michael Moss of the New York Times organized in late 2013.

A key principle in the economics of food advertising is that there is plenty of incentive to advertise branded food products, which tend to be comparatively less healthful, because the producing firm can claim a large fraction of the increased sales provoked by the campaign. Furthermore, there is plenty of federal government-supported checkoff program advertising money for beef, pork, milk, and cheese commodities, but not fruit and vegetables.

The new campaign makes us wonder, how much better might American diets be if both the federal government and the food industry invested their marketing funds in healthier foods?

Check out the video and ask yourself: is it possible to market fruits and vegetables with the same pizzazz that we market less healthful foods?

FNV, PREPARE TO BE MARKETED TO from Team FNV on Vimeo.

USDA's new Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive (FINI) for affordable fruits and vegetables

Friedman School graduate student Cailin Kowalewski reports today in the student publication Sprout on USDA's new financial incentive program:

The USDA this week announced a new grant program that will help participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) afford fruits and vegetables. The Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive (FINI) program will offer $31.5 million in competitive grants to organizations from across the food system. These organizations will be able to use FINI funding to support projects that increase SNAP participant access to fruits and vegetables through incentive programs at the point of sale.

The Sprout article provides a history and overview of the new program, and it notes divergent views on implementation questions, such as whether the focus should be on farmers' markets or whether it should encompass larger-scale retail channels as well.

USDA's Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) finds significant positive impact on fruit and vegetable intake

USDA's Food and Nutrition Service yesterday released final results showing that the Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) had a significant positive impact on fruit and vegetable intake for low-income participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

In the pilot, which was conducted in Hampden County, Massachusetts, HIP participants received a 30% incentive added back to their benefit card when they purchased targeted fruits and vegetables in participating retailers. A randomly assigned control group received SNAP benefits as usual with no incentive.

On average HIP participant adults on SNAP consumed 0.23 cup-equivalents more in daily targeted fruits and vegetables -- a 25% increase -- compared to the non-HIP adults on SNAP.

HIP Participants Consumed 0.23 Cup-Equivalent 

More Fruits and Vegetables per Day

The HIP Evaluation Study was led by Abt Associates, Inc., with participation from Westat and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Susan Bartlett from Abt was the project director. On behalf of the Friedman School, I was director of design for the evaluation study and a co-author of the final report.

The pilot represents the most ambitious effort so far to deliver a healthy eating incentive to SNAP participants right through the SNAP card (as opposed to a separate coupon) and in a full range of participating retailers (as opposed to farmers' markets alone). The results complement new work being done by Wholesome Wave and others to explore the potential of financial incentives.

The primary results were based on two post-implementation rounds of surveys of SNAP participants. Preliminary results, based just on the first post-implementation survey round, were published recently in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (may be gated). The new full report released today has more information about a wide variety of food spending, shopping behavior, and food intake outcomes, and it analyzes the likely cost of extending such a healthy incentives program nationwide.

30% price incentive has positive impact on fruit and vegetable intake for SNAP participants

USDA's Food and Nutrition Service today released the Interim Report from the Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP), a major study of price incentives for fruit and vegetable intake for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants.

This study may help to inform the national discussion about the economic environment and its influence on food choices.  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today said, "The results of the Healthy Incentives Pilot demonstrate the clear impact that promoting nutritious food choices can have on improving the healthfulness of SNAP purchases."

Here is the punchline:

Our interim results indicate that HIP participants (adults aged 16 and older) consumed one-fifth of a cup-equivalent more fruits and vegetables per day than did non-participants (ES.1). This represents a difference of 25 percent in consumption over control group members. Approximately 60 percent of the observed difference was due to a difference in consumption of vegetables and 40 percent due to a difference in consumption of fruit.

These impact estimates are statistically significant, and they are big in percentage terms, but the baseline intake for the control group is quite low, so the impact seems fairly small in terms of cup-equivalents.  There is evidence that some retailers and participants in the pilot were still in the process of learning how the incentive worked.

The pilot was implemented in Hampden County, MA.  The study used a random assignment research design.  The Interim Report is based on a pre-implementation survey and an early post-implementation survey.  A Final Report in several months will use an additional later second post-implementation survey.

The authors of the Interim Report are Susan Bartlett, Jacob Klerman, Parke Wilde, Lauren Olsho, Michelle Blocklin, Christopher Logan, and Ayesha Enver.  As one of the co-authors, I worked on this study as part of a team led by Abt Associates, with funding from USDA's Food and Nutrition Service.  I will be presenting some results from this report on August 5 in Washington, DC, at the annual meeting of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA).  For me, personally, the project is the most terrifically ambitious research effort to which I have ever contributed.

This pilot initiative is related to other efforts to enhance incentives for purchasing fruits and vegetables, in farmers' markets and other outlets.  Some municipalities, including Boston, have Bounty Bucks programs, and Wholesome Wave has a series of related efforts.  One cool thing about the HIP study is that it worked through the SNAP participants' Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card in all sorts of participating retailers.

Agreement with Mexico about tomato imports

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Feb. 2 announced a new agreement with Mexico, under which Mexico's tomato exports must satisfy a minimum price.

In adopting a moderately protectionist policy by mutual agreement, the two countries avoid a trade conflict that could have harmed their commerce more seriously.

"I applaud the good work of Undersecretary Sánchez and the Commerce Department to forge this important agreement to allow our domestic tomato industry to compete on a level playing field. The draft agreement meets the requirements of U.S. antidumping law and provides an effective remedy for our domestic tomato producers, further bolstering agriculture as a bright spot in our nation's economy. Ultimately, the Obama Administration forged an agreement that will restore stability and confidence to the U.S. tomato market and ensure fair trade in fresh tomatoes through increased reference prices, coverage and strengthened enforcement. The United States is one of the world's leading producers of tasty, high-quality tomatoes. Our U.S. fresh and processed tomatoes account for more than $2 billion in cash receipts and support thousands of American jobs in our food industry, shipping, processing and more."

Undersecretary Francisco J. Sánchez

The U.S. Food Policy blog recently discussed how agricultural labor markets in Mexico and the United States are interconnected.  If it is true that agricultural wages in Mexico are rising, it becomes easier for Mexico to agree to a price floor for Mexican tomato exports, addressing multiple problems simultaneously.  In a 2010 article for the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (may be gated), Friedman School graduate student Wendy Johnecheck, Julie Caswell, and I studied the possible impact of hypothetical country-of-origin labeling (COOL) regulations on the U.S.-Mexican trade in tomatoes.

In my class on U.S. food policy, we explore (a) some occasions when import-competing businesses (such as U.S. tomato growers) have convinced the government to put up protective barriers and (b) other occasions when such barriers have been resisted by advocacy coalitions led by import buyers (such as major retail chains) and other U.S. agricultural industries that rely on exports (such as wheat producers).  These U.S. advocacy coalitions are politically important, because, of course, Mexican producer groups have no direct representation in the U.S. Congress.

A former student from this class today pointed out yesterday's New York Times coverage of the new tomato deal, which echoes these points.  In the article, Stephanie Strom explains the advocacy coalitions that make the new policy politically feasible:

The Mexicans enlisted roughly 370 American businesses, including Wal-Mart Stores and meat and vegetable producers, to argue their cause. Those businesses feared a bitter trade war like the one the Mexicans waged over trucking, which imposed stiff tariffs on American goods headed south. 

Choices Magazine: An evaluation of food deserts in America

A Choices Magazine theme issue released today explores the economics of food deserts.

Guest editors Dave D. Weatherspoon, Shelly Ver Ploeg, and Paula Dutko provide the theme overview and links to four more articles.  Weatherspoon and colleagues use data from a natural experiment, when a new retailer set up shop in a low-income neighborhood of Detroit.  Tatiana Andreyeva suggests that WIC's new fruit and vegetable vouchers may have improved the healthfulness of local food retail in Connecticut.  Dutko reviews the economic disadvantages observed in food deserts.  And Alessandro Bonanno's article stands out for its attention to the economics of food retail supply as well as consumer needs.  Attention to both need and supply is essential for people who want to think sharply about the food retail improvements that are truly feasible, not merely wishful thinking.

Barry Estabrook's Tomatoland

Barry Estabrook's new book Tomatoland is getting great coverage.  The NYT review is by Dwight Garner, who grew up not far from the heart of the Florida tomato industry.  Here also is an NPR interview on Fresh Air.

From the publisher's site:

Estabrook traces the supermarket tomato from its birthplace in the deserts of Peru to the impoverished town of Immokalee, Florida, a.k.a. the tomato capital of the United States. He visits the laboratories of seedsmen trying to develop varieties that can withstand the rigors of agribusiness and still taste like a garden tomato, and then moves on to commercial growers who operate on tens of thousands of acres, and eventually to a hillside field in Pennsylvania, where he meets an obsessed farmer who produces delectable tomatoes for the nation’s top restaurants.

I described my visit to Immokalee in this blog in 2009.

Farmers market season is back

Thank goodness. I don't know if it's me, but produce in the grocery store seems scary. This is likely attributed to the information I receive in my classes. Is ignorance truly bliss? Nay. Regardless, there is something endearing of purchasing vibrant colored produce at an outdoor market in the community. Getting to meet farmers, neighbors and artisans is a perk. Fresh produce that was picked fairly close by is the prize. Can't wait to pull out my Moosewood Cookbooks and start eating more seasonal foods from my favorite food group: VEGGIES!I love the Moosewood collection. Very simple instructions and ingredients and mostly vegetarian.

Here is the press release for the Massachusetts farmers market season kick-off:

Winter is over and Farmers Markets are back!

We know you’ve missed us, but don’t despair, the wait is over! The Federation of Mass Farmers Markets is pleased to announce the opening of our local farmers markets. In just a few days – on Tuesday, May 19th – the Copley Square market in Boston will open for the season. The Copley Square market is one of our largest and runs from 11:00am to 6:00pm every Tuesday and Friday from May 19th through November 24th. Buy your fresh veggies, local meats, artisan breads, jams, delicious sandwiches, and fruits of all kinds here. It’s so much more vibrant than the produce aisle at the supermarket.

If you don’t live near Back Bay you still have plenty of other options. Other markets run by Mass Farmers Markets include:

* City Hall market in Boston, which begins May 27th and runs on Mondays and Wednesdays
* Davis Square farmers market in Somerville, which begins May 27th and runs on Wednesdays
* Central Square market in Cambridge, which begins June 1st and runs on Mondays
* Framingham Village Green market, which begins June 11th and runs on Thursdays.

Visit www.massfarmersmarkets.org for a complete list of the 180-plus farmers markets opening across the state over the next few months.

Once the markets are open you can look forward to fresh produce local to your area. Great finds in May include arugula, mesclun mix, and chard. You’ll also see tender asparagus, tangy garlic scapes, fava beans, and maybe fiddleheads if you’re lucky. Radishes, rhubarb, strawberries, and peas will follow as May blends into June. And don’t forget: cheese, baked goods, preserves, locally raised meat, and other goodies are always available and locally made by our vendors.

So, stop by the market closest to you. You'll help support local farmers, learn about your community, and get a fantastic meal in the process.

About Mass Farmers Markets

Mass Farmers Markets is a non-profit organization that harnesses the power of farmers markets to create healthy communities across the state. MFM is the only organization working state-wide to facilitate relationships between farmers and consumers of all income levels in order to improve the livelihood of farmers and increase access to fresh, local food. For more information, visit www.massfarmersmarkets.org.

Cross-posted from Epicurean Ideal.

The VeggieTrader

Thanks to Marisol Pierce-Quinonez for bringing this one to my attention. VeggieTrader is the new Craigslist for the sustainable-foodie-locavore. Tagged as "your place to trade, buy or sell local homegrown produces" VeggieTrader is the latest attempt to connect fresh, homegrown garden produce with the community.

How it works:

1. Join the Community (it is free!)
2. Browse or post listings
3. Close the deal

Of course, it's not that easy. As always there are legal issues buying and selling produce. Questions about licenses, taxes, crossing state lines, and pesticides are answered via the informative website. It is notable that posting meat, eggs, dairy products, or any illegal items is prohibited and a violation of the Terms of Use.

What a great revolution for home growers, new food markets and community endeavors. Unfortunately there were no postings in the Boston area. The site started in San Francisco. Hopefully it catches on, since I don't have space for a home garden. Happy trading!


Cross-posted from Epicurean Ideal.

Evidence on declining fruit and vegetable nutrient composition

Research by Donald R. Davis who retired from Biochemical Institute at The University of Texas (in my hometown of Austin) and in conjunction with the Bio-Communications Research Institute in Wichita Kansas, has summarized three kinds of evidence that points towards the decline in the nutrient value of fruits and vegetables in the US and UK over the last 50 to 100 years.

The report, published in February 2009 Journal of HortScience, reviews a highly cited research study titled "The dilution effect in plant nutrition studies" published in 1981 by Jarrell and Beverly in Advances in Agronomy. Jarrell and Beverly found that fertilized plants contained larger absolute amounts of minerals than the unfertilized plants, but these amounts were sufficiently diluted by the increased dry matter that all mineral concentrations declined, except for phosphorus, which is the common fertilizer.

Next, Davis looked at historical food composition data derived from three quantitative reports. While these studies are limited by their ability to be compared due to variation in methods, they found:

apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in some minerals in groups of vegetables and perhaps fruits; one study also evaluated vitamins and protein with similar results.

Finally, Davis evaluated studies of collections of cultivars of a single food that was grown side by side for purposes of comparing their nutrient content. The foods were broccoli, wheat and maize. The side by side allows the elimination of using historical data in the form of averages (as was done in the previous section), which allows all environmental conditions (soil, fertilization, irrigation, pest control, climate, harvest, sampling, and analytical methods) to be held constant. He found:

plantings of low- and high-yield cultivars of broccoli and grains found consistently negative correlations between yield and concentrations of minerals and protein, a newly recognized genetic dilution effect.

In conclusion,

Further studies are needed to assess the generality of dilution effects among foods and to greatly expand the numbers of nutrients and phytochemicals considered. Side-by-side comparisons of multiple cultivars in multiple environments can provide rigorous answers to the many remaining uncertainties. They are also well suited for testing proposed environmental and genetic methods to overcome dilution effects. Specifically, we would like to find ways to decrease the inverse correlation coefficients between yield and nutrient concentration or to decrease the negative slopes in plots of nutrient concentration vs. yield.

Over three billion of the world’s population is malnourished in nutrient elements and vitamin,including in developed countries. Vegetables and fruits are among the richest sources of many nutrients. Thus, declining nutrient concentrations in horticultural products are most unwelcome. Past and ongoing efforts to increase yields, combined with apparent broad tradeoffs between yield and the concentrations of perhaps half of all essential nutrients, work against recent efforts to increase one or a few micronutrients in individual foods.

Greens of Wrath

A student points out Barry Estabrook's new article in Gourmet. It argues that new food safety measures for vegetables -- designed to prevent outbreaks like the recent troubles for spinach, tomatoes, and peppers -- may have unintended consequences.

But good intentions have gone badly awry. In the name of food safety, farmers have reshaped the landscape in ways that, according to critics, have reversed two decades’ worth of environmental conservation. If the new policies are adopted by the federal government—and some say that it is only a matter of time—they will have profound ramifications for small, sustainable growers in postage-stamp fields thousands of miles from California. And there is scant evidence that the standards have actually addressed the real problem.

The article argues that misplaced efforts to prevent cross-contamination from animals have motivated destruction of ponds and woodlands near agricultural land. An accompanying photograph shows a lonely tree in an expansive crop field, all that remains of a windbreak in Salinas County, California.

Salamonie Farm

My two children and I enjoyed a number of evenings recently with Salamonie Farm, by Noah Hershberger, as our bedtime reading. It is a fictionalized account of a year in the life of a six-year-old boy and his Amish family in Ohio the 1950s.

The book carries its Amish themes with a perfect understatement. It had never occurred to me that, when one lives without electricity, ice cream must be a winter treat. By the time the boy visits a non-Amish neighbor couple in their kitchen, the reader shares the boy's interest in the refrigerator.

Somewhat from the same literature as the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Salamonie Farm gently teaches about life on a farm and in a pious religious community, but also more roughly teaches about sibling rivalry, fear of strangers, bullying, and the hard economics of manual labor, including child labor.

I promised earlier to tell you about my five-year-old daughter's questions about vegetarianism. She has been hitting us with a patient steady inquisition for weeks now. In one chapter of Salamonie Farm, the family cooperates with neighbors to slaughter a hog and a cow. My kids were especially interested, because they had recently seen for themselves how sausages were made. The moral of the chapter was supposed to be that the wise father's respectful but practical attitude towards the slaughter compares favorably to that of a couple of neighbor boys, who mistreat animals. But my daughter wasn't buying it. Didn't the Dad laugh, she asked, when one of the workers pinned the pig's tail on another. It didn't seem to my daughter to meet the Dad's own standards of respectfulness.

In just partly related news, our family is giving up meat for lent. We will eat eggs and dairy products, and I think my son will still eat meat with his school lunch. I'll let you know how it goes. Today is Ash Wednesday in several Christian traditions.

NYC Proposes "Green Carts"

The same week that residents of the Lower East Side and Chinatown gathered to protest the closing of a Pathmark store in their neighborhood, Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn proposed legislation to issue permits for "green carts" - which would offer fresh and processed fruits and vegetables from mobile food carts in designated neighborhoods with low fruit and vegetable consumption. With the goal of increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in these neigborhoods, the legislation would issue 500 permits each to the Bronx and Brooklyn, 250 to Queens and Manhattan and 50 to Staten Island- for the neighborhoods. More information about the green carts is available on the NYC DOHMH website.

While some have praised the green cart initiative,
a resident of Fort Greene told City Limits “We need a store where it has a variety of foods like canned goods and bread – a cart won't do. It’s a nice gesture,” said McDaniel-McCadney of the carts, but “it just wouldn't be sufficient for the community."

Perhaps to promote this more systemic change in access -- a $175,000 grant from the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman Foundation-- the very Friedmans for whom the Tufts Friedman School is named-- to the Food Trust to work with the Food Bank for NYC and the grocery industry to improve access to fruits and vegetables in low-income neighborhoods with inadequate access. The Food Trust has a strong track record of strengthening development and renovation of supermarkets in Philadelphia in the past four years.

Canada joins Brazil in challenging U.S. farm programs

Although the United States recently claimed that our farm subsidy programs meet existing trade commitments, Canada yesterday joined Brazil in claiming that U.S. farm programs violate those commitments. From the press release:

“Canada believes that the United States has breached its international obligations by providing agricultural subsidies that exceed the levels allowed by the WTO,” said Minister Emerson. “This panel request complements our efforts in the Doha negotiations to further discipline and reduce trade-distorting agricultural subsidies.”

“The government expects the United States to live up to its WTO commitments,” said Minister Ritz. “By requesting this panel, we are trying to level the playing field for Canadian farmers who have to compete against the large distorting agricultural subsidies provided by the U.S.”

It is Canada’s view that when trade-distorting domestic support is properly accounted for under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, the United States exceeded its WTO commitment in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2005.

Canada’s concerns are shared by Brazil. Brazil is also announcing today that it is requesting a WTO dispute settlement panel on U.S. agricultural subsidies. Canada and Brazil have been working together to coordinate their challenges. Given the similarities, it is expected that their cases will be heard by a single panel.

The United States has agreed to report to the WTO the amount of its farm subsidies that is "trade-distorting." For example, a trade-distorting subsidy encourages farmers here to produce more than they otherwise would produce, which can lower the world price for a commodity and harm the interests of farmers in other countries. The United States has traditionally excluded some farm programs from these reports to the WTO. For example, our "direct payments" are several billion dollars worth of government checks to farmers who produced a crop at some previous point in history, regardless of whether they currently produce that crop.

Brazil and Canada have pointed out that these "direct payments" are still trade-distorting, because U.S. rules prevent our farmers from growing fruits and vegetables if they receive these direct payments. One upshot of the new Canadian complaint may be to increase pressure on the United States to stop restricting fruit and vegetable production. An end to these restrictions could save the United States grief in trade negotiations and at the same time make fruits and vegetables more affordable, especially for low-income Americans.

Here is the AP report about Canada's announcement. I first read the news at FarmPolicy.