Year 2000 and the Food Supply

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From the USDA web site:

Year 2000 and the Food Supply

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), August 28, 1999

Answers

This GartnerGroup report on the FOOD SUPPLY - refers to a "small" enterprise, as one with fewer than 10,000 employees. Unbelievable. Small Enterprise = 1-10,000

This report, prepared for U.S. Department of Agriculture is terrifying. The worst thing I've seen so far. And, it's recent. It's dated JULY 2, 1999.

So many terrible things in this report about FOOD SUPPLY!!

"Most of the companies have completed over 90% of remediation and testing of their corporate MIS applications. But they have completed only 25 percent work on embedded systems and are in different stages of contingency planning." ...

.. the larger corporations are better prepared for the Year 2000 than the smaller organizations. Among food service industry leaders, the small enterprises ([with] less than 10,000 employees) have shown comparatively less preparedness for Y2K.

This is a cause for greater concern in the industries where the industry leaders account for only a very small percentage of the market ... small enterprises ... might face disruptions in their day-day-operations.

GartnerGroup research indicates Y2K system failures will occur in highest volumes from 3Q99 through 1Q01 [1st Qtr 2001], with highest volume peaks during 4Q99 and 1Q00 through 3Q00, so the companies that are not headed toward the operational sustainability level on the COMPARE scale must direct their efforts toward contingency planning [...]

So many bad things in this report. Here's one:

INFANT FOOD: No noticeable improvement during the past three months, but the companies are well under way with their remediation processes. The critical issues (supply chain, embedded systems, contingency planning) are not being addressed by all the major producers. These issues need much greater emphasis [...]

"Some industries such as Bread, Fluid Milk and Fresh Vegetables lie in the high severity and high probability quadrant, which highlights the fact that these industries need to put in more efforts than others to achieve operational sustainability. [...]

INTERPRETATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS starts out kind of optimistic, but then:

"On the darker side, the research shows that the contingency plans developed by the companies shows limited understanding of when IT and supply chain failures will occur. Y2K failures will increase in 3Q99 and continue to increase through year-end 2000. Companies must make contingency plans for the possible failures in 1999 and 2000 [...]

Since Y2K system failures will become more common from 3Q99 onward, little or not time remains to conduct risk assesments and develop contingency stragegies [...]

http://www.usda.gov/aphis/FSWG/ SELECT: Attachment to the FSWG's Third Quarterly Report: Gartner Group Assessment of the Year 2000 Remediation Status within the Nation's Food Supply (July 2, 1999)

SUGGEST YOU PRINT OUT THE ENTIRE REPORT.

Compare the GartnerGroup report to what the government put out. It's found on the same link. Totally different tone. I imagine Gartner later had their entire report included as a "CYA".

This is the ONLY part of the GartnerGroup's conclusion that the govt included in their report: ============================================================

In its July, 1999 report to the FSWG, Gartner Group concludes:

The overall picture of the food supply industry looks encouraging; there has been considerable improvement in Y2K compliance status of the industries. The awareness of the critical issues like contingency planning and mbedded systems compliance has improved. The number of industries with an average "COMPARE" level 3.0 (plan complete and resources committed) or higher has increased remarkably.

This increases the confidence that by the fourth quarter of 1999 more than 65 percent [my emphasis] of industries will achieve a "COMPARE" level of 4.0 (key systems are 100 percent compliant and certified, interfaces have been corrected or fire-walled, and key partners have been assessed and certified compliant)."

-- Cheryl (Transplant@Oregon.com), August 28, 1999.


cheryl, thanks for nicely summarizing the salient points of the report. i agree. this is a ticking timebomb and i am also especially worried by the fact that only 25% of the food organizations have even addressed the chip problem. wow. when you add this report to the fact that 1) we have a lot of risk that the farmers may not be able to get in crops in the spring of 2000 due to any number of problems, 2) a usda official told me we are currently in the midst of one of the worst farming crises we have ever encountered because of the weather (the water table in the country is supposedly 18 inches low) so this current poor crop will likely have an effect, and 3) so much of our food is imported already and that may be affected. this does not bode well for 2000 and 2001.

honestly, i get the idea sometimes that maybe we are simply going to reap what we have sown. the american farmer has been royally screwed by big business and the government. we have allowed the huge corporations like monsanto, cargill, etc. to "hogtie" the farmers in many ways. we have allowed the mega farmers to put family farmers at risk. we have supported all of these imports of foods because they were "cheaper" -- driving many american farmers out of business. It seems kind of ironic to me that the very things which hurt our farmers will be magically the things that hurt the food supply.

Same thing for manufacturing--all the evil things that big business and the government have done to screw american workers--are going to come back around to bite them in the end.

Hey, you can't say, "God isn't fair?" We are just reaping what we have sown.

-- tt (cuddluppy@yahoo.com), August 29, 1999.


You could see some of this through the veil of BS the Ag Sec and his minions spread at the Y2K Food Supply hearings at the beginning of the year. If it hadn't been for Bennett and a couple of other members asking searching questions, we wouldn't have realized the seriousness of the situation. Because of that hearing, I immediately tripled my estimates of how much food we would need.

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000T5E

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), August 29, 1999.


yup- wouldn't bother me a bit if i could actually receive not just what my crops cost me to raise but actual profit on them too- don't even get production costs at this time. I compete with what the stores can pay for el cheapo stuff hauled in bulk from wherever it grows cheapest-

it would be a wonderful day IMHO, if consumers bought locally produced fresh grain, veggies, fruit, dairy products, etc- and paid the farmer what they truly deserve. would be nice for farmers to make enough money so they don't have to work a second job to support the farming job! If I didn't grow it- we wouldn't be eating it. i don't make enough money to buy what I sell! What I don't grow, I buy at surplus/dented can type stores- don't even make enough to shop the regular grocery stores. i love what I do- and I grow a good product- so I keep on doing it- but it would be nice to be paid a fair price.

-- farmer (hillsidefarm@drbs.net), August 29, 1999.


Farmer,

I'm not at all trying to tell you how to run your business, but there was an article a number of years ago in the Mother Earth News that every farmer should consider. The author was an agronomist at Tuskegee Institute, (I might not have spelled that correctly)and he explained how to farm 30 acres and make a living.

It wouldn't work for everybody, but his idea was that you farmed to sell directly to the consumer. Part of the farm would be a "pick your own" operation. Pretty labor intensive, but I believe he had made a prototype work out. I wish I could recall the author's name, but I can't (I forget my wife's name occasionally).

It seems to me that anyone who produces fresh fruits and vegetables for direct sale in my neck of the woods has a reliable base of repeat customers. Next year should create an increased demand for direct sales. I sure hope my neighbors plan to do more direct marketing.

Does the agronomist's idea seem to make any sense? I really haven't done him justice. It was a fairly extensive article.

Good luck. It looks like we might have a rough ride ahead.

Gene

-- gene (ekbaker@essex1.com), August 29, 1999.



Gene, Direct to customer is sometimes called "Community Supported Agriculture" or CSA. Usually it is fresh veggies during the growing season, sometimes it includes salad crops into the winter or eggs, small meat animals, orchard fruits... It's not the kind of thing a farmer can change to overnight. There is typically a transition time where you have to scale down equipment, and scale up on labor. Also, most "farmers" who grow wheat, beans, corn, cotton or rice, are not expert vegetable growers. Most of them have a family garden that produces well for their own needs. But growing veggies on schedule for a large number of people is a different operation. Also, may CSA customers demand organic produce, and your typical row crop farmer in the US gets most of their info from the local university system (A.K.A. mouthpiece of the chemical industry)...

Berry

-- Berry Picker (BerryPicking@yahoo.com), August 29, 1999.

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