Supercharged Veggies
Coming soon to a grocery store near your; super broccoli. AP’s Ed Dohahue reports:
"A team of British scientists injected extra nutrients into broccoli with no genetic modification. It has two to three times the normal amount of a nutrient believed to ward off heart disease. The lead researcher says vegetables are a medicine cabinet already, and when you eat this broccoli you get a reduction of cholesterol in your blood stream. It is sold as "Super Broccoli" and it's already on shelves in some stores in California and Texas and will go nation-wide later this fall. It's part of the line of vegetables that include mushrooms with extra vitamin D and tomotoes and potatoes with extra selinium."
NC State was awarded a grant earlier this year in conjunction with several research groups up and down the east coast to research growing broccoli from Maine to South Carolina.
A Change to the Food Price Forecast
After months of keeping his retail food price forecast the same, USDA Food Price Economist Ricky Volpe is making an adjustment.
Since February, Volpe has forecast that grocery store prices would rise 3.5 to 4.5 percent. He’s bumped that up by half-a-percent this month, with grocery store prices now expected to top last year by as much as 5 percent - considered a high rate of inflation when it comes to food:
"We are seeing a sharp increase in food prices."
Volpe says food shoppers will get a break in 2012. Prices will continue to increase but Volpe doesn’t expect the increase to continue at the same rate as this year:
"In 2012, right now we're looking forward to a decrease in price inflation. Sort of for prices to start moving more how they have in the last twenty years, at a more historically normal rate. The all food index is apt to increase 2.5 to 3.5 percent over 2011 levels and the food at home, 3 to 4 percent."
Volpe does caution it’s very difficult to accurately predict food prices this far in advance. Over the next 14 months, he says weather and economic factors could change things quite a bit.
Big 3 Lives Up to Commitment on FFVS
America’s Big Three - General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Chrysler - have met their pledge to produce 50 percent of their new vehicles as flexible fuel vehicles by 2012. Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen says ethanol-ready vehicles are essential if Americans are to reduce dependence on imported oil.
Beef Supplies Likely to Decline Further
The long-term trend toward smaller U.S. beef herds, exacerbated by this year’s devastating drought, will continue for at least another year before numbers stabilize and perhaps shift toward expansion, says Cattle-fax senior analyst Kevin Good.
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