Higher Food Prices & Bumble Bee Decreases

Higher Food Prices & Bumble Bee Decreases plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

I hate to say this but it looks like food prices are going to go up again this year. Is anyone surprised? Several factors are coming together that will bring higher food price inflation this year. Economist Ricky Volpe explains that this increase is not coming from the farm side but rather from the wholesale side where grocery stores get their products.

VOLPE: We're looking at 2.5 to 3.5% increases over what we saw in 2013. Which would mean that if retailers want to maintain their profit expectations, their going to have no choice but to increase their prices in tandem.

Wild bumblebee populations around the globe are declining. According to a study authored by Mark Brown of the University of London - a major source of the decline is the spillover of parasites and pathogens and disease from managed honeybee hives. He says the ailments causing the decline of commercialized honeybees are hurting bumblebees even more. Co-Author Matthias Furst notes the research doesn't prove the diseases go from honeybees to bumblebees - but the evidence points heavily in that direction. He says bumblebees likely pick up the diseases when they go to flowers after infected honeybees or when they invade honeybee hives and steal nectar. The study did not look at colony collapse disorder.

Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray.

Once again the HSUS gets it wrong, but doesn't care, because what they are spouting sounds so much worse than what it really is. I'm talking about the most recent PED virus prevention method being used by pork producers in an effort to stop the devastating losses of of their herds. The method is called "feedback" and involves taking fecal or intestinal material out of baby pigs that were sick and died of the disease; straining it, purifying it, and giving it back to the sows orally. The sows then become immune and the pigs stop dying. Fact is, 100% of baby pigs will die until immunity becomes involved. Feedback is a tried and true proven method of dealing with these types of viruses. There are no vaccines that work for PED virus. While it sounds gross to humans, feedback is just a faster method of incorporating what happens naturally on a farm. The HSUS would like people to believe that pork producers are feeding baby pigs back to the mothers and creating cannibal pigs. The truth is far from it. But the truth isn't what HSUS is about.

Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.