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Michigan Organic Listserve August 1-7, 2007 What's Happening? News events 1. Who owns organic? 2. Opportunity for a Detroit Spice Business-and why not make it organic Michigan grown spices?? 3. Monitoring your crops-Using degree days to target your scouting 4. Be on the look out for Downy Mildew on Pumpkins and Cucumbers Who owns organic? 5. Blossom End Rot-How is it caused and how to reduce incidence 6. Corn Ear Worm Control 7. APHIDS INCREASE 8. Questionnaire that seeks your opinions and views on the topic of pollinators in agriculture 9. Help MIMFA plan their sessions for the Great Lake Fruit and Vegetable Expo 10. STATE RACES TO BUILD NEW ETHANOL TECHNOLOGY 11. Regarding the Organic Certification Cost Share Program 12. Farm Bill Update 13. South Side Community Farmers Market 14. Farmers needed at Buchan Farmers Market (Berrien County) Opportunities and Events 15. SIGN UP NOW for the last GROWING MATTERS GARDEN class of the season! 16. COMMUNITY KITCHEN UPDATE Upcoming events centered around food 17. THREE RIVERS SUSTAINABLE FOOD GROUP 18. Sustainable Table - a non profit program that create Meatrix 19. High Tunnel Tour, Aug 15th 6 pm in Benton Harbor 20. Governor Granholm proclaims August 6-12, 2007 to be "Farmers' Market Week" 21. Greetings from The Garden Project 22. Soil Building Workshop Aug 29-30th at Sears MI at Morgan Compost Have a great week!-Hey it rained here- finally :-) (Lansing, MI) http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/thestew/2007/07/who-owns-organi.h tml#more <http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/thestew/2007/07/who-owns-organi. html#more> "The Stew" TheChicagoTribune.com Posted by Robin Mather Jenkins at 9 a.m. CDT I've been hearing a lot of muttering about "big organics" -- that's usually code for Wal-Mart -- and "Chinese organics" -- usually used as a short-form expression to mean the opposite of locally grown organics. What I've not been hearing much about is the corporate ownership of many familiar American organic brands. So I was fascinated to see Michigan State University Assistant Professor Phil Howard's chart of organics ownership. Howard is in the department of community, agriculture, recreation and resource studies. Until 2005, Heinz appears to have had the most holdings. The 24th largest food processor, Heinz has a stake in Hain Celestial Group, the 85th largest food processor. Hain Celestial, in turn, owns the following brands: Millina's Finest, Fruitti di Bosca, Walnut Acres, Mountain Sun, ShariAnn's, Tofu Town, Westbrae, Bearitos, Westsoy, Little Bear, Celestial Seasonings, Imagine/Rice Dream/Soy Dream, Breadshop, Casbah, Health Valley, Arrowhead Mills, DeBole's, Garden of Eatin', Spectrum Organics, Nile Spice and Earth's Best. According to research by Paul Glover and Carole Resnick of the Greenstar Food Co-op in Ithaca, N.Y., Hain's largest investors include Philip Morris, Monsanto, Citigroup, Exxon-Mobil, Wal-Mart and Lockheed Martin. Here are the owners of the other brands Howard studied: The number in parentheses is the company's rank in North American food sales. Kraft (No. 2): Boca Foods, Back to Nature. Kraft is owned by Phillip Morris. Pepsi (No. 3): Naked Juice Dean Foods (No. 6): Alta Dena, Horizon, The Organic Cow of Vermont. Glover and Resnick say that Dean Foods main investors include Microsoft, General Electric, Citigroup, Pfizer, Philip Morris, Exxon-Mobil, Coca Cola, Wal-Mart, PepsiCo and Home Depot General Mills (No. 7): Cascadian Farm, Muir Glen. Glover and Resnick report that General Mills' stockholders include Philip Morris, Exxon-Mobil, General Electric, Chevron, Nike, McDonald's, Monsanto, Dupont, Dow Chemical and Pepsico ConAgra (No. 9): Lightlife Kellogg (No. 14): Kashi, Morningstar Farms/Natural Touch Coca-Cola (No. 15): Odwalla Cargill (No. 19): French Meadow M & M Mars (No. 21): Seeds of Change Hershey Foods (No. 23): Dagoba There are a couple of companies on that list whose business practices I don't support philosophically, and knowing the ownership of the brands helps me make better-informed buying decisions. Now you can too. 2. Opportunity for a Detroit Spice Business-and why not make it organic Michigan grown spices?? Michigan-based business opportunity for sale!! The New Product Center has been approached by the Detroit Spice Co. The owner of the company is looking to sell the business to an interested party/individual that has the energy and drive to take the company to the next level. This business, currently based in Detroit has established retail outlets in the area, a local distributor and web based sales generating a gross income of $15,000 / year. With the owner currently devoting much of his time to other ventures, the client would like to offer this ready made business to an aspired entrepreneur looking to start a new venture or add an enterprise to his or her portfolio to increase income and product line. The business is ready to run and includes all current inventory, recipes, equipment, domain name & web site. The business could easily be run out of your home. The product line has been very well received at festivals, farmers markets and events in the past. If you're looking for a ready-made business with great brand recognition and existing sales, this could be the opportunity you have been looking for. For further information Contact Randal Fogelman [log in to unmask] www.detroitspiceco.com 3. Monitoring your crops-Using degree days to target your scouting By Vicki Morrone [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> Ask any organic farmer how often they visit their field, regardless if it is a single row or multiple rows of the crop and you will wonder how they ever manage to get anything else done. It is critical to look at the plants; looking for nutrient stress, disease indicators, insect feeding, how nice or not that variety is performing under this year's and your soil's conditions and even the presence or absence of beneficial insects. The first step of being an effective and efficient organic farmer is that you must be familiar with all of these critters so you know what to keep an eye out for. Identification of all the critters is the first step; insects, disease symptoms and even weed identification. Then once you identify them you need to know what they do, for good or bad. If you have determined that the critter is a bad one then you need to determine just how bad it is. Can you sit back and wait for it to get worse or managed by a beneficial organism (from insect parasites to beneficial bacteria such as BTs) or react immediately? If you need to react to get the critter under some control then you need to decide how to manage it such as with a spray deterrent, pesticide, or removing the plant that is being fed upon (that's your best bet if it carries a virus as it will serve as a vector for other susceptible plants). Of course, keeping up on all of these pests and "beneficials" requires time and knowledge but your scouting can be targeted so that you are looking for a pest when it is possible for it to be present. When an insect is present depends on the total accumulated temperature or degree days. Insect development varies from year to year depending on the temperature variability. Insects depend on accumulated heat units to develop and part of their development includes feeding on your crop. So if you understand how this works you can keep an eye on accumulated degree days to predict when an insect will first start to emerge or feed or whatever stage of development that concerns you. If you do not understand how degree days work I try to share a simplified definition: For an insect to develop it requires a certain amount of days with an average temperature over 50 F (add the max and min temperature for the day together, divide by two and subtract 50). A positive value is added to the accumulated degree days. Negative values are ignored since an insect does not develop in reverse but pauses in development when there is no degree day accumulation. . So for example a European Corn Borer requires approximately 1500 degree days for the 2nd generation of the 1st instar to occur. So the average temperature per day is calculated and then 50 is subtracted and then any positive number contributes to the number of degree days. These numbers are added up and then the development of the insect in question is associated with the number of degree days it requires for development or egg laying. This knowledge helps you to scout for insects at the right time. 4. Be on the look out for Downy Mildew on Pumpkins and Cucumbers (excerpt from Univ of Illinois IPM newsletter July 24, 2007 http://www.ipm.uiuc.edu/ifvn/volume13/frveg1310.pdf <http://www.ipm.uiuc.edu/ifvn/volume13/frveg1310.pdf> Downy mildew only affects leaves. Symptoms of downy mildew vary with the host and environmental conditions. The first symptom is usually the appearance of indistinct, pale green areas on the upper leaf surface. The pale green areas soon become yellow in color and angular to irregular in shape, bounded by the leaf veins. As the disease progress the lesions may remain yellow or become brown 105 and necrotic. During moist weather the corresponding lower leaf surface is covered with a downy, pale gray to purple mildew. Often an upward leaf curling will occur. The symptoms in the pumpkin field were very obvious (see the pictures), and heavy sporulation of the pathogen was observed by microscopic examination. At this time, all cucurbit fields need to be scouted carefully and sprayed before or at the first sign of the disease. Fungicide sprays should be applied at 7-day intervals. If you would like to access previous postings to the Mich-Organic listserv you can copy and paste the following URL into your browser address bar http://list.msu.edu/archives/mich-organic.html