• C&K Market’s Ray’s Food Place Stores and organic foods supplier Organic Valley have created a new shopper rewards program that gives customers EcoUnit credits that can be redeemed to support local stewardship projects like tree planting, river restoration, removal of invasive species and watershed cleanup.
• Net income at Kellogg Co. in the third quarter ending Oct. 3, 2009 was $360MM, up 6% from $341MM in the same quarter of last year. Net sales were $3.277bn, unchanged from $3.288bn. The company attributed the improvement to “media deflation” and reinvestment in better efficiencies.
• More than most people want to know, but we live this stuff: last year’s wheat harvest of 2,220,156,000 bushels is the result of 50,058,000 acres being harvested with an average yield per harvested acre of 44.4 bushels. Harvested acreage is down 10% from last year, reflecting abandonment of 9,075,000 acres. This year’s abandonment is one of the largest in recent years, but occurred in two states (Oklahoma and Texas). Planted acreage not harvested there was 6,150,000 acres (2/3 the national lost acreage). Severe drought in the hard winter belt cut yields to 22 bushels in Oklahoma (½ the national average) and 25 in Texas. These were offset by gains in Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska (matching its record mark of 48 bushels). Overall, hard red winter wheat production is down the same 11% as the national aggregate.
• Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods launched on November 3rd (the first day of Beaujolais Nouveau wine) the vintage of Georges DuBœuf bearing its own label, as well as a line of Persillé du Beaujolais, a soft blue cow’s milk cheese meant to be eaten with the wine.
• And finally, though it has nothing to do with food or food licensing, we’re reporting that Walmart has begun selling coffins and funeral urns online. Costco had already launched a similar initiative, in part due to the high cost of dying in the U.S. Funeral operators beware: Walmart rarely stumbles once it enters a new business.
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