Reconnecting Nebraska's Farmers and Grocery Retailers

Sponsored by your Nebraska Grocery Industry Association

Message from Kathy Siefken, Nebraska Grocery Industry Association

This year, the Nebraska Grocery Industry Association is proud to help sponsor the Nebraska Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture's annual Fundraising Dinner and Auction on Dec. 8 at the Younes Conference Center in Kearney. The foundation's mission is to generate resources and partnerships to build awareness, understanding and a positive public perception of Nebraska agriculture through education and leadership. Funding priorities are focused on agriculture literacy for students, public education and understanding of agriculture, food bank donations and other research and leadership programs important to the long term viability of Nebraska agriculture. Your contribution through NGIA will help the foundation carry out that mission across Nebraska, including several important programs. Just as the Nebraska Farm Bureau's support for delivering this monthly Farmer Goes to Market newsletter to you demonstrates, the NGIA's support for Farm Bureau's efforts illustrates the fact that Nebraska grocers and farmers are natural partners in a food system that works. Click here to find out more.

Sincerely,

Kathy Siefken
Executive Director
Nebraska Grocery Industry Association

Proudly sponsored by Nebraska's corn farmers

The Nebraska Corn Board, on behalf of 23,000 corn farmers in Nebraska, invests in market development, research, promotion and education of corn and value-added products. The board aims to work closely with the farmer-to-consumer food chain, to educate everyone about the role corn has in our everyday healthy lives. The Nebraska Corn Board is proud to sponsor the Farmer Goes to Market program to help bring its mission of expanding demand and value of Nebraska corn to the consumer, through the strongest touch point in that chain: the Nebraska retail grocer.

The farm and ranch families represented by Nebraska Farm Bureau are proud sponsors of the Farmer Goes to Market program. We take great pride in supporting Nebraska's agricultural foundation. A key part of that effort is to make sure we produce safe and affordable food. This newsletter is an important part of our effort to connect the two most important parts of the food chain -- the farmer and the grocer -- with the goal of increasing consumer awareness and information about how their food is raised in Nebraska.

An educational program produced by Food-Chain Communications and delivered to members of the Nebraska Grocery Industry Association. Farmer Goes to Market was established in 2008 to help bridge the growing gulf between today's grocery retailer and today's farmer, empowering them with full-chain knowledge to carry agriculture's true message to food consumers.

Translating Food Technology: A new 'Why do Farmers do That?' on cattle feedlots

Why feedlots?

Three out of four cattle raised in this country end up in a closely confined feeding lot, often containing thousands of animals within a few acres. How did this system of "finishing" cattle come about, and why do farmers continue to handle them using this method? Here's why farmers do that.

Foresight on Food Politics:
The local foodie's political playbook
A look inside food policy

"To get the food system we want," says one high-profile advocate of local food and community food security, "we must indeed be conscientious consumers. But even more important, we must be engaged citizens." What exactly does that look like, the image of "engaged food citizen?" A new online database provides a look inside the foodie's dream policy. The bad news: You're nowhere to be found in that world.

Competitive Commodity Insight:
Holiday meats update

The outlook for holiday meats

This summer's rising tide of record-high beef prices continues to float all boats in the holiday meats category. As those staples your shoppers traditionally turn to at this time of year all experience high wholesale prices, what's the near-term outlook ahead? Here's our trend-spotting outlook in brief.

Navigating the New Food Movement:

The 'infatuation' with family meals has gone too far, according to these sociologists. True?

Now the family meal is 'oppressive'

Even as Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert was proclaiming "Family Dining Week" in that city, praising the evening meal as a solution to childhood obesity, a trio of sociological researchers were condemning the institution as romanticized, unreal, even elitist and moralistic myth-making. Planning, cooking and cleaning up after an evening meal is so stressful to working mothers, particularly poor working mothers, as to be, in the words of the headline on the Slate story reporting their work, a "tyranny." How grocers can respond.

Meet your Farmers...
Fresh Nebraska-grown trout, anyone?

Dave Claridge, founder of Blue Valley Aquaculture near Sutton, turned abanoned hog buildings into a high-tech fish farm, aimed at meeting Nebraska's growing demand for fresh steelhead trout. Take a quick tour of this unique farming operation.

Vintage recipes guaranteed to horrify On the Lighter Side:
Twenty one horrifying vintage recipes

It may no longer be Halloween, but these vintage recipes are nonetheless horrifying.

Click here for more details on today's Food Morality Movement