Food service rebounding, but uncertainty continues
schools and quick-service restaurants. “The hotel association thinks it will take four years to return to 2019 levels,” said Lauren Scott, Produce Marketing Association chief strategy and market- ing officer. The Produce Marketing Association is a trade organization representing com- panies in every segment of the global fresh produce and floral supply chain, fromgrower-shippers to corporate retail- ers to restaurants. One of the challenges facing the in-
dustry is elevating the importance of produce in consumers’ minds as—even now— many are still just returning to dining out. “Wehavea lower percent of peoplewho think about fruits and vegetables when they order food away from home than consumers in other countries, like Brazil, the UK and China,” Scott said. “They’re thinking about themeat in Brazil, too, but they’re also thinking about the produce.” Theproduce industry combined forces
ByBob Johnson Food-service markets for produce are on the way back after a year and a half of suffering effects of the pandemic. But the climb back up the economic hill will be uneven, and no one knows with certainty what the newnormal will look like. Many fruit and vegetable farmers and Energy metering tariff faces review Focusing on impacts to agricultural utility customers, California FarmBureau has collaborated with the Agricultural EnergyConsumers Association to submit testimony as part of a California Public UtilitiesCommissionproceeding focused on the next iteration of the net energy metering tariff, commonly referred to as NEM 3.0. Agricultural customers use net me- tering in conjunction with wind, hydro- electric and solar facilities. Net energy metering aggregation, or NEMA, allows a single customer withmanymeters on the same property to aggregate load to all of its eligible accounts. Through NEM and NEMA, agricultural customers can offset a portion of their electricity bill. As part of the proceeding, inves- tor-owned ut i l i t ies recommended changes to net energy metering. The agricultural parties stated in testimony that the investor-owned utilities’ pro- posal would undermine the legislative intent behind the authorization of the NEMA tariff. TheNEMA tariff was establishedby the Legislature to allowcustomers withmul- tiple contiguous parcels tomimic oppor- tunities available to industrial and com- mercial customers who can aggregate all of their loads behind a single meter. The ability to aggregate load particularly benefits agricultural customers, who of- tenhave pumping loads dispersed across neighboring parcels. “Our focus is on the impact of pro- posals on agricultural customers,” said Karen Norene Mills, California Farm Bureau director of legal services and public utilities director. “The commis- sion’s ‘Lookback Study’ evaluating the impacts of NEM 2.0 found nonresiden- tial customers pay more than their cost of service and do not shift cost in the way residential customers do.” Some parties, such as The Utility Reform Network, made proposals that seemed to implicate existing NEM 1.0 and 2.0 customers. The agricultural par- ties’ testimony and briefs urged that the terms in the tariffs for existing nonresi- dential NEM1.0 andNEM2.0 customers remain unchanged. Kevin Johnston, Cal i fornia Farm Bureau associate counsel, added that the agricultural parties are focused on See ENERGY, Page 10
grower-shippers endured shocks to their businessmodels as schools shutteredand restaurantswent out of businessor sharply downsized operations, serving only take- out or delivery customers. The return of fruit and vegetable markets to 2019 levels is coming, but the pace of the recovery will be uneven as hotels figure to be far slower than
See FOOD, Page 14
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September 22, 2021 Ag Alert 3
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