Not how I think about our food supply, but what do I know?

Agri-Food Thoughts
by Ned W. Schmidt

Living in Florida, as this author does, often comes with minor problems. As one of the biggest batches of cold, snowy winter storms ravages North America, records of all kinds are being broken. Dallas, as an example, had a white Christmas for the first time in 80 years. But, the UK also has problems. Winter weather there may have damaged the Brussels sprouts crop. Is that not real suffering? Relative to all that, what is our problem in Florida? Cannot remember where we put that pair of socks last year.

We can soon place global warming on the List of Never Happened Forecasts. That list was officially started the day after the Millennium. Also on it is a perennial favorite, going around again, of the imminent collapse of the Chinese economy. U.S. Congress is considering a law that is claimed will reduce the U.S. deficit. On the Never Happen List that goes. And a real favorite on that list is that equities never have a ten-year loss. Perhaps best of a year ago was that commodity investing was dead.



As the year is drawing to a close, our fist chart above seems appropriate. For 2009, the S&P 500 price return will likely be better than that for Agri-Food commodity prices. However, the difference is not much. That said, longer term superiority of the return provided by Agri-Food commodity prices is readily evident in that chart.

Our second chart, below, looks at the price change of the more important Agri-Food prices over the past almost three years. All of them show a percentage change better than the S&P 500. In fact a box of oats in the pantry outperformed the stock market over that period of time. Not bad for an investment theme declared dead on numerous occasions by investment gurus.



Many reasons might explain why Agri-Food prices have risen more than the value of equities. However, the principal reason is that Agri-Foods are bought to be consumed. Stocks are bought to be sold. The supply of Agri-Food is finite, while the supply of equities is infinite.

If one buys a share of IBM, that stock is moved from one investor's portfolio to the buyer's portfolio. It might reside there for years. It does not disappear. However, if one buys a pound of rice, the intentions of the buyer are very clear. The buyer intends to eat it. That rice will disappear, be consumed, never again to be seen. Prices for Agri-Foods are real economic transactions, not financial transactions like that purchase of IBM stock.

A further difference is that the transaction in IBM stock does not change the total supply of IBM stock in existence. A purchase of corn will be consumed, and therefore reduce the total supply of corn in existence. Agri-Food transactions reduce the available supply.

Transactions in IBM stock can continue to occur even if no new IBM stock is created. If no soybeans are produced by farmers growing it in the dirt, no future transactions in soybeans can occur. Soybeans are not produced in a factory, and neither are corn, oats, canola, etc.

The future supply of Agri-Food is influenced by today's prices. If the price of IBM stock declines, the future supply of IBM stock will be unaffected. If the price of wheat declines today, the future supply of wheat will decline. The farmer may wish to produce wheat in the future. However, if a price sufficient to cover the costs of future planting, feeding, and harvesting of wheat is not received, ultimately the farmer will be unable to produce wheat.

Higher Agri-Food prices and larger volumes translate into revenue growth for the producers of Agri-Foods. They will spend those revenues with those vendors that provide them with everything from seed to fertilizer to machinery. Those buying from the farmers will also have higher revenues.



As our final chart above shows, the shares of those companies active in the Agri-Food revenue stream have performed quite well to date. The next year will not likely repeat the excellent results of 2009, but that may be true of all equities. That acknowledgment made, the economic prospects for these companies in the coming decade seem good.

Few opportunities exist for global investors to participate in the positive investment consequences of economic growth in China and India. Agri-Food is a sector that benefits from the higher consumer incomes and spending that flow from that economic growth. Imagine 2.4 billion consumers striving to buy the products produced and delivered by Agri-Food companies. Where else can you find such strong fundamentals? To start building your knowledge of Agri-Food use this link: http://home.att.net/~nwschmidt/Order_AgriValueRECENT.html

The exceptional response to the 3rd Annual U.S. Agricultural Land As An Investment Portfolio Consideration, 2009 has exceeded expectations. This work is the definitive annual study of the role of U.S. agricultural land in an investment portfolio. It is a rigorous statistical analysis suitable for the sophisticated investor. The 60 page PDF file is delivered via email, and is available at the following link: http://home.att.net/~nwschmidt/OrderAgriLand2009.html

AGRI-FOOD THOUGHTS is from Ned W. Schmidt,CFA,CEBS, publisher of The Agri-Food Value View, a monthly exploration of the Agri-Food grand cycle being created by China, India, and Eco-energy. To receive this publication, use this link: http://home.att.net/~nwschmidt/Order_AgriValue.html.

Christmas dinner

I'll post recipes for roast beef sirloin, mashed potatoes and gravy and Yorkshire pudding if anybody wants me to.

Where is Jack LaLanne when you really need him?

This post has been a niggling thought in the back of my head since I saw a piece on "Squeezing the Truths out of Juice Myths" on CBS The Early Show last week. The story bothered me when I saw it, but I ignored it and it's been festering like a splinter ever since.

This is a line from the story as posted on the Early Show website:

"Dr. Jennifer Ashton debunked myths about the health benefits of juice. In some cases, juices have more calories than soda."

I need to add a Dave Barry-like disclaimer here: I'm not making this up.

Say what? Since when is number of calories the determining factor in terms of whether or not a food is good for you?

Am I the only one who thinks it is dangerous for a "doctor" to be telling parents that soda is better for their children than juice because it has fewer calories?

Here's an excerpt from the show transcript:

A cup of apple juice, she said, can contain 117 calories while a cup of cola contains just 91 calories and is also less caloric than orange juice (105 calories). A cup of grape juice has 154 calories. There's also more than 37 grams of sugar in a glass of grape juice, compared with cola's 22 grams. "If you just go by calorie to calorie and put them head to head...you could be getting a lot more bang for the buck in terms of calories, obviously sugar, in the juice versus the soda," Ashton said.

Maybe there is some validity to the problem of parents giving their children too much of a good thing, but why not just tell them to try and get their kids to drink more water instead of making it look like - in a comparison between soda and juice - soda might be a better choice?

I'm pretty sure this is the same woman who tried to tell us a month or so ago that Fruit Loops contain an arsenal of antioxidants. http://cookingoutloud.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-there-some-conspiracy-to-keep-us.html

Stories like these make me wonder who is paying for these "studies."

Scenes from the Southside

My mother fixed chicken many ways - roasted, fricasseed, chicken and dumplings - but frying was never part of her repertoire.

Before I met William, my idea of fried chicken was the stuff that the Colonel sells by the bucket.

Every summer we would drive from New Jersey to visit my grandmother in Florida.
Some of my fondest memories are of blistering August afternoons sitting on the beach in Dunedin turning various shades of red and eating volumes of original recipe and extra crispy. Wet naps were optional, sand was not.


The first time we visited William's hometown in North Carolina after we were married, my concept of fried chicken changed forever.

From my first bite of Parker's fried chicken in Greenville I knew I would never eat chicken from a bucket ever again unless I was desperate. And then there were the corn sticks and the hush puppies!



Since it was my first time meeting my husband's extended family, half the population of the state dropped in to visit every day we were there (I started to feel as if I was being vet-checked and wouldn't have been surprised if someone had asked if they could take a look at my teeth). But the good news was, everybody that came to see us, brought food.

I was in hog heaven. Not only did I experience chicken enlightenment, I had my first East Carolina pulled pork barbecue sandwich and decided that Farmville had to be close to Nirvana. How could it not be with Jack Cobb's at one end of town and Contentnea Creek BBQ on the other?

I may never be able to replicate Aunt Ann's marvelous turkey gravy with pieces of hardboiled eggs, but, after much trial and error, I can fry a mean piece of chicken.

Buttermilk fried chicken

Ingredients:

1 3-4 pound fryer

1 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons Creole seasonings

(Tony Chachere’s or Zatarain’s)

1 teaspoon black pepper

2 cups unbleached all purpose white flour

Directions:

Cut the chicken into 8 pieces, removing the backbone.

Put the buttermilk, seasoning and pepper into a gallon-sized Ziploc bag and mix well.

Add the chicken, close the bag and turn it over a few times to coat the chicken with the mixture then put the bag of chicken in the refrigerator to marinate for at least two hours or overnight.

Put the flour in a plastic bag or large bowl. Remove the chicken pieces one at a time and shake in the bag or dredge in the flour in the bowl to coat.


Place on a baking sheet and let the coated chicken sit in the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes. If the coating is wet, shake or dredge in the flour for a second time (makes a crispier coating).


Gently shake off the excess flour and deep fry four pieces at a time for 20 minutes, starting with the legs and thighs. Place the first four pieces on a baking sheet in a warm oven while the second batch is frying.

Carolina On My Mind...

carolina on my mind songs music videos lyrics

Tourte reform

When I die and go to heaven, I'm going to have a Sub-Zero refrigerator and a Viking gas stove.

I have a confession to make. I hate my kitchen.

Under no circumstances will I ever buy another smooth surface electric range. The front right burner has two settings that work - el scorcho and not hot enough. The white porcelain has darkened over the burners and, no matter how hard I try, they never look clean any more.

The oven is fickle and runs sometimes too hot, and sometimes not, which makes baking somewhat of an adventure.

My refrigerator never seems to have enough room.

The sinkhole is making the kitchen floors wavy and my cabinet doors gape annoyingly open.

I try to look at things from the perspective of the lyrics of a Sheryl Crow song:

"It isn't having what you want, it's wanting what you've got."

But I can dream.

What does any of this have to do with the recipe?

Well, not much.

I've been watching cooking shows on TV for a very long time and I'm starting to become a little disappointed in the offerings on the Food Network.

In my opinion, the shows seem to be less about food and more about personalities and selling cookware or knicknacks - like Semi-Homemade - or create dishes using equipment and ingredients no home cook realistically has access to - like Iron Chef. (When was the last time you saw squab or sea urchin at the grocery store?)

The other day we were flipping through the channels and came across an old Julia Child series on PBS.

Julia was all about the food and never seemed to rely on fancy gagets or equipment. She created her masterpeices with quality ingredients, a serviceable stove, a few good pots, pans and knives and a copper bowl and a whisk.

Tourte Milanese adapted from the PBS series In the Kitchen with Julia - Episode: Puff pastry with Michel Richard

Ingredients:

1 pound puff pastry
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 pound fresh spinach (blanched, chopped, and drained very well)
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
salt and ground black pepper, to taste
2 large roasted red bell peppers
8 extra large eggs
2 teaspoons chopped chives
2 teaspoons chopped flat leaf parsley
1 teaspoon chopped fresh tarragon
salt, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
½ pound thinly sliced Swiss cheese
½ pound thinly sliced ham
soft butter to grease pan
1 beaten egg for egg wash

Directions:

Grease an 8-inch spring form pan with soft butter. Roll out ¾ of the puff pastry ¼ inch thick and line bottom and sides of pan leaving a 1-inch overhang. Roll out the remaining pastry into ¼ inch thick and cut out 8-inch circle. Transfer into a plate. Keep both pastries refrigerated while preparing the filling.


To roast peppers: If you have a gas stove, turn one burner on low to medium and place pepper directly on the flame to char the outside skin and soften the pepper. Keep turning the pepper until all sides are charred. Put the peppers in a paper or plastic bag to steam then peel the charred skin from the pepper and remove the stem and seeds.
The peppers can be roasted the same way on an outdoor gas or charcoal grill or in an electric oven set to broil.

Heat oil and butter in a large skillet. Add spinach and garlic and saute for 2 minutes. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Remove from heat, set aside.

To make the omelets, whisk four eggs in a bowl then add half of the herbs and salt to taste. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in an 8-inch skillet over medium heat, coating the bottom of skillet evenly. Pour the egg mixture and stir briefly. As eggs start to set, lift edges
so liquid can run under. When eggs are completely set but still moist, transfer omelet onto a plate. Repeat with the remaining eggs and herbs.
Remove the lined pan from the refrigerator.

Layer ingredients in following order: 1 omelet, half of the spinach, half of cheese, half of ham, all of the red bell peppers. Repeat layering in reverse order using the remaining ingredients.

Remove the 8-inch pastry from refrigerator and place over omelet. Seal well to pastry lining by pinching together with fingers. With tip of knife, draw desired number of slices directly on the pastry. Make a small hole in the center of the pastry. Brush all over with beaten egg. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Position rack in lower third of oven, preheat to 350 degrees F.

Brush pastry one more time with beaten egg. Place pan on a baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 1 ½ hours. Cool for 30 minutes, release from pan. Slice and serve warm.


A couple of tips on using frozen puff pastry:
Don't let the pastry get too warm when you thaw it or you will have a hard time getting the packaging off and rolling it out.
If you don't let it thaw enough, it will crack when you unroll it.

End of an era

Closing the Book on Gourmet
By KIM SEVERSON The New York Times
ONE of the first things Ruth Reichl did after telling her staff on Monday that Condé Nast had closed Gourmet was to lock up the library with its landmark collection of 70 years of cookbooks and typewritten recipes.

“That’s not going to disappear,” she said, adding that she had strongly suggested to S. I. Newhouse Jr., the company’s chairman, that he donate the archives to the New York Public Library or to a university.

Then she and her staff gathered bottles of wine and liquor from the office and held a wake at her apartment. Readers are mourning in their own ways.

Killing Gourmet and keeping Bon Appétit, which had more readers and stronger ad numbers, may have made business sense for Condé Nast. But to the food elite — especially of an older generation — it felt like a gut punch.

How had the magazine that seemed more likely to stay home, broil pork chops and take care of the kids won out over its sexy, well-read, globetrotting sister? And what does a world without Gourmet portend for an age when millions prefer to share recipes online, restaurant criticism is becoming crowd-sourced and newspaper food sections are thinner and thinner?

“It has a certain doomsday quality because it’s not just a food magazine. It represents so much more,” said James Oseland, editor in chief of Saveur, a smaller, younger food magazine. “It’s an American cultural icon.”

The magazine, founded in 1941, thrived on a rush of postwar aspiration and became a touchstone for readers who wanted lives filled with dinner parties, reservations at important restaurants and exotic but comfortable travel.

Although it was easy to paint Gourmet as the food magazine for the elite, it was a chronicler of a nation’s food history, from its early fascination with the French culinary canon to its discovery of Mediterranean and Asian flavors to its recent focus on the source of food and the politics surrounding it.

In the decade since Ruth Reichl took over as editor, she underlined everything from the exploitation of tomato pickers in Florida to dishes like chicken and dumplings that could be on the stove, simmering, in 15 minutes.

But whatever the fashion of the time, Gourmet remained a place where people learned how to eat and cook — particularly for an older generation.

“Gourmet was the only resource you had other than your cookbooks,” said Judy Walker, the food editor of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.

Over the course of nearly 70 years, Gourmet has a recipe database enviable in both size and quality. The pool is so deep that Gourmet compiled a cookbook of more than 1,000 recipes in 2006, then turned around and published more than 1,000 more in “Gourmet Today,” which arrived — in one of the industry’s great moments of bad timing — in September.

“It feels like the last act of this magazine should be to support this book,” said Ms. Reichl, who is heading to the Midwest this week to promote it.

After a short rest, she plans to write a book about her years at Condé Nast.

Chefs, too, lamented the magazine’s passing. For many, their dreams of a life in the kitchen were born in its pages.

“Growing up, my parents’ copies of Gourmet were my only window into the high-end restaurant world,” said Andrew Carmellini of Locanda Verde.

Scott Peacock, the Atlanta chef who has become known for Southern cooking, made his first biscuits as boy using a recipe from Gourmet. Years later, biscuits from his own recipe would be on the cover of the magazine.

“That magazine was a big deal to me growing up in Hartford, Alabama,” he said. “It was a glimpse into another world, one that I was interested in.”

The magazine also provided a home for literate, thoughtful food writing. Its stable of contributors included James Beard, Laurie Colwin and M. F. K. Fisher. In the 1940s and ’50s, the restaurateur Lucius Beebe wrote a meandering column called Along the Boulevards.

“Gourmet was the New Yorker of food magazines back in the 1970s and ’80s,” said Jim Lahey, a Manhattan baker.

Gourmet magazine was an early influence on Alice Waters, who recalls building files of recipes and photographs of dishes that she and Lindsey Shere, the first pastry chef of Chez Panisse, wanted to make. And, she said, for some restaurateurs, a review in Gourmet used to mean everything.

“Yes, you could be in The New York Times, but that was sort of fleeting. Gourmet was just a bigger cultural picture,” she said.

The magazine had its detractors, too, and they are doing plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking: Gourmet was out of step with the times, both in content and design, they say.

“The magazine has been casting about and remade itself too many times,” said Nach Waxman, the owner of the Kitchen Arts and Letters bookstore in Manhattan.

“Gourmet got away from the things that are going on in people’s homes, and seemed to be for an elite that got smaller and smaller,” said Judith Jones, the Knopf editor, who believes food magazines in general have become too focused on fashion and style.

Still, there are believers. Kylie Sachs, a venture capitalist and subscriber for 15 years, took to Twitter on Monday and started a campaign to save Gourmet. In 24 hours, she had almost 200 followers.

Ms. Sachs, 37, thinks readers could rise up to save what she says is a tested brand whose reliability is even more important in a digital age.

And if she fails, she will still head into Thanksgiving — the first she is cooking for her family in her Brooklyn home — with Gourmet’s November issue, its last, at her side.

“I’ll have a good, trusted friend guiding me,” she said.

Julia Moskin and Florence Fabricant contributed reporting

Got Milk? Maybe not for long.

Florida’s Milk Industry Soured by Bad Economy


News Service of Florida - Oct 3rd, 2009

First there was the housing implosion. Then banks melted down.

Now, Florida’s milk industry is souring.

The state’s already shrinking dairy industry is getting pummeled by the recession, with a Senate report released Thursday showing each farmer will lose an average $709,000 this year.

“Milk prices have come way down but our costs remain very high,” said Joe Wright, who runs a 1,400-head dairy farm in Avon Park. “It’s a double whammy that’s really hurting the industry.”

There are 140 dairy farms in Florida, fewer than half the number that existed as recently as 1992. Milk sales account for 90 percent of the revenue collected at Florida dairy farms, but prices have plunged 50-cents-a-gallon over the past year, costing farms an expected $99 million this year, according to the study by the Senate Agriculture Committee.

The findings are scheduled to be reviewed by the committee next week. Wright, who also serves as a vice-president with Dairy Farmers Inc., in Orlando, said Floridians’ milk consumption has slowed with the recession – falling 5 percent some months last year.

Florida’s population, which declined last year for the first time in 60 years, also contributed to the state’s milk malaise. Consumption, however, has picked up again in recent months, spurred by a price-war among Florida retail stores, industry analysts say.

But feed costs remain high, rising sharply in part because of the federal ethanol program which now absorbs roughly one-third of the corn that otherwise would be available to go to cattle, according to the industry.

“Corn prices were three times their 10-year average last year,” Wright said. “They’ve since come down a bit. But you can’t stay in business with those kinds of increases.”

The Legislature is being asked to consider taking steps to bolster the industry in coming months – although no big bail-out is proposed.

Instead, possible moves range from the heavy-handed — a proposed requirement that government institutions in Florida buy a certain percentage of milk from the state’s dairy industry – to more traditional tax incentives and other proposals easing state environmental regulations for farms.

Another approach encourages the state to provide tax credits to encourage more development of bio-fuel from Florida dairy farms – what the industry calls anaerobic digestion technology.

Even taking modest steps in converting Florida cow manure and its accompanying methane gas to electricity could power as many as 2,000 homes in each Florida county, Senate analysts said.

The new report also points out that the state’s dairy industry is concentrated in the Lake Okeechobee area and Suwannee River basin in North Florida. Since those regions also are home to most of Florida’s prisons, those facilities could be pushed to convert waste management systems to those using bio-fuel from nearby dairies, the study suggested.

“If you can make bio-fuel economically worthwhile, farmers would give it a try,” Wright said.

Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee whose district includes a belt of dairy farms near Lake Okeechobee, said he was uncertain what steps are needed for the industry’s survival. “But we can’t let agriculture go by the wayside, and dairy is a big part of it,” Aronberg said.