Schools that get turkey from the Agriculture Department are having to turn elsewhere this year for Thanksgiving lunches for students. There’s not enough for the lunch program that feeds 29 million kids.

The problem is not a shortage of birds. They’re just too skinny, because an unusually hot summer resulted in smaller turkeys. That means supplies are tight, which means prices are a bit higher.

[Read](http://fredericksburg.com//News/FLS/2006/112006/11172006/237193 “Read the Story”) (Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star)

Just as consumers are growing hungry for untainted food that also nourishes their social conscience, it is getting harder and harder to find organic ingredients. There simply aren’t enough organic cows in the U.S., never mind the organic grain to feed them, to go around. Nor are there sufficient organic strawberries, sugar, or apple pulp.

As food companies scramble to find enough organically grown ingredients, they are inevitably forsaking the pastoral ethos that has defined the organic lifestyle. For some companies, it means keeping thousands of organic cows on industrial-scale feedlots. For others, the scarcity of organic ingredients means looking as far afield as China, Sierra Leone, and Brazil — places where standards may be hard to enforce, workers’ wages and living conditions are a worry, and, say critics, increased farmland sometimes comes at a cost to the environment.

[Read](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_42/b4005001.htm?campaign_id=nws_insdr_oct6&link_position=link1 “Read the Story”) (BusinessWeek)

Halloween lovers hoping to create the perfect jack-o-lantern might want to shop carefully this year because of a pumpkin fungus that has put a dent in some harvests.

Two types of fungus or rot have affected crops from the Midwest to New England, causing pumpkins to develop mold in some spots and then begin decomposing. It appears that the pumpkin rots from the inside out, and it eventually rots until the shell falls apart.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15138843/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)

Farmers of all types of specialty crops, from almonds to roses, have seen the immigrant labor supply they depend on dry up over the past year, because increased border security and competition from other industries are driving migrant laborers out of the fields.

The problem is now reaching crisis proportions, food growers say.

* As much as 30 % of the year’s pear crop was lost in Northern California.
* More than 33% of Florida’s Valencia orange crop went unharvested.
* In New York, apples are rotting on the trees, because workers who once picked the fruit have fled frequent raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents

[Read](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/03/AR2006100301254.html (“Read the Story”) (Washington Post)

I guess this means we’ll see higher prices and more imports from China. 🙁

For in the last several years, boosting milk productivity has become a key tactic for Virginia dairy farmers who are struggling to keep their businesses afloat amid sagging milk prices and rising fuel costs. The increases in milk production have caused an excess of supply and flattening milk prices, which have eroded farmers’ profits. Milk cows are becoming more efficient and dairy producers are relying on fewer of them to keep production steady.

“Years ago you were doing pretty well if your cows averaged about 40 pounds [of milk] a day,” said Turner, 56, a second-generation farmer whose family founded the dairy in the 1940s. “Nowadays you can’t survive on a 40-pound-a-day average.”

[Read](http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/80830 “Read the Story”) (Roanoke Times)

Volunteer Farm
in Woodstock, VA, which grows food on 15 of 165 available acres, opened
in 2004 as a place to raise produce for the hungry in the state’s Blue
Ridge Mountains region. The farm’s output goes to the Blue Ridge Food
Bank, an agency that distributes food to hungry families in 25 counties
and nine cities in the Shenandoah Valley and parts of Central Virginia.
Last year the Volunteer Farm produced 56,000 pounds of vegetables.

So far this year, the farm has harvested 2 tons of food. But The
farm is struggling to find people to help collect its plentiful harvest
this year, and it hopes that most of the more than 1,000 volunteers
listed on its rolls will return this summer to help with an unusually
large harvest.

Read (Harrisonburg Daily News Record)

Beef tongues, a popular export item to Japan, tumbled from $5 a pound wholesale in the United States to about $1 when Tokyo banned all U.S. beef about two and a half years ago. On a per head of cattle basis, you are looking at $13 to $15 difference per head.

[Read](http://today.reuters.com/news/articlebusiness.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nN07183563&from=business “Read the Story”) (Reuters)

Does that mean that a cow’s tongue weighs about 3.5 pounds?

The Minneapolis-St.Paul Star Tribune says that the [cow tongue is delicious](http://www.startribune.com/106/story/500302.html “Read the article”) at [Pastrami Jack’s](http://www.pastramijacks.com “Pastarami Jack’s Website”). They recommend ordering it hot on rye with coleslaw and horseradish. A Tongue sandwich at Pastrami Jack’s [costs $8.95](http://www.pastramijacks.com “Pastrami Jack’s Lunch Menu (pdf)”).

In today’s global marketplace, food can travel thousands of miles from farm to table, and that has many consumers looking for local sources and shopping at their local farmers’ markets.

The U. S. Department of Agriculture reports there are more than 3,700 farmers’ markets operating in the United States, including 11 in Fairfax County, VA.

[Read](http://www.vafb.com/news/2006/june/060806_3.htm) (Virginia Farm Bureau)