I am amazed at how quickly it is forgotten that this is
supposed to be an international mailing list.
All beekeeping is local, except on the internet, where
all beekeeping is international.

I am more amazed at how little in-depth understanding of
the honey business (and international trade in general)
is evinced by those who presume that "Chinese dumping"
only impacts the price of honey in the USA.

To start with, what do you think happens to the bulk of
the honey produced in Canada?  What happens to the price
offered to a Canadian producer when US prices are depressed
by a flood of imported honey from somewhere south of the Equator?

For that matter, does Canadian honey itself offered to US
packers tend to reduce the price paid to US producers, and
perhaps even the retail price paid to a small beekeeper that
sells at the farmer's markets?  Yes, and bears really DO do
that in the woods, having nowhere else to do that sort of thing.

Below are various points made by various people, in no
particular order.

> how many of us BEEKEEPERS are using foreign made
> equipment to work our honey operation? I am referring
> to the clothing we wear,

Well, if you are talking about veils and bee suits,
I spend a little more to buy from the actual inventor
of a concept, rather than the knock-off artists.  So,
my veils are made in Britain by Brian Sherriff, rather
than here in the US.  I don't see much ethical difference
between selling Ultra-filtered substances of an alleged
sweetening nature that bears a passing resemblance to
honey, and selling bee wear that bears a striking resemblance
to the Sherriff veils, bee jackets, and bee suits circa 1968.
If anyone can explain the difference, I'd sure like to hear it.

> ...trucks,...

Hmmm, motor vehicles. Well, let's see... Jaguar is now Ford,
Land Rover is also now Ford, Volvo is, ummmm... also Ford.
So much for MY garage, how 'bout yours?  Hondas sold in the
USA are made south of Wright-Patterson Air Force base in Ohio.
Mercedes is now Chrysler. (Or is Chrysler actually more Mercedes
than Mercedes is Chrysler?)  GM owns 67% of Daewoo.  The Mini
Cooper is now made by BMW, but Volkswagen Jettas are made in Mexico.
Shall I go on?  I thought not.

Here's the problem. The planet is one big transparent market
for "fungible commodities" like honey.  (And if you sell
your honey as a "fungible commodity", whose fault is that?)

Buyers and packers of honey are ready, willing, and able to
source their honey from anywhere on the planet, so any honey
for sale in bulk anywhere tends to impact the price paid for
honey everywhere else. The net effect of the Chinese honey
being offered for sale anywhere is to tend to depress prices
everywhere.  The net effect of ANY large supply of honey being
offered for sale anywhere is to tend to depress prices everywhere.

The result is classic comedy reminiscent of a Marx Bothers film,
where honey produced in Argentina is bought by an Australian packer,
blended with Australian honey, and sold through a conglomerate based
in the USA to Canadian stores, and hence, Canadian consumers.
The punch line is that the Argentine honey was contaminated, and
very well may have been known to have been contaminated when it was
shipped to Canada.  (Think of all the shipping involved as the honey
in question was shipped not only around only the entire circumference
of the planet, but also from the southern hemisphere to the northern on
its journey from producer to consumer, and please explain to me how
anyone involved made any profit from any of this.)

The problem is that buyers and packers have more information than
producers, and many producers don't even try to share information
on what offers they have received.  Producers and producer
co-ops are being fools in thinking that they gain anything by
keeping bids secret rather than leveraging the unavoidable
transparency of the market to their own advantage.

The net result is that the lowest price that any large producer
or co-op will accept suddenly becomes the highest price
offered to anyone else.  If one thinks about that for longer than
a millisecond, it should become blindingly obvious to even the
casual observer that it would be in the best interest of producers
to not only know what others are being offered for their honey, but
also to quickly inform everyone else of what bids they have received.

But everyone thinks that they are somehow smarter than absolutely
everyone else, plays their cards close to their chests, and ends
up having to bend over and grab their ankles when dealing with
buyers and packers.  (Note that when grabbing one's ankles, one
is forced to drop all one's cards on the floor anyway.)

> First step, in my opinion, is to stop labeling honey
> produced overseas as "USDA Grade A"

The USDA "grading" of food is supposed to be something that
both protects and informs consumers, so the USDA cannot
refuse to grade imported honey or blends containing imported
honey.  Country Of Origin Labeling (COOL) is something that
consumers want, and will become US law at some point.  Bribes
in the form of campaign contributions will only slow its adoption.
Nothing can stop the trend.

> The ASCA also states they feel the U.K & the U.S. unfairly
> barred their honey tainted with chloramphenicol. The ASCA
> said the amount was so low the health risk was small.

And the ASCA is 100% correct that the amount was very low,
and that the health risk was very small.  The risk was also
vanishingly small for the Nitrofurans-contaminated honey.
But that's not the point.  The point is that these substances
are not allowed in food at all in multiple countries.  These
"contamination scandals" were not the result of some sort of
conspiracy to force Chinese or Argentine honey off the market,
in fact, honey was viewed as a minor detail as compared to the
seafood (shrimp, prawns, crab) in the chloramphenicol case.

> I am afraid the only solution is for each of us to spread the
> word to only buy honey in stores which has product of U.S.
> (or your own country) on the label .

Consumers have shown a strong preference for local produce,
and the more local, the better.  Labeling is all that would
be required, but the bulk of the market would still be dominated
by cheap honey until consumers become as picky about honey
as they are about olive oil.  This means marketing your honey as
something more than mere generic honey.  This means working hard
to insure that YOUR honey is not part of that great mass of
"fungible commodity" honey.  I think I compared olive oil to
honey before on BEE-L...

http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0202C&L=bee-l&P=R195&D=0&F=P

There it is.

> China & Argentina beekeepers can not supply the hives needed in the U.S.
> for pollination

The oft-told fable of honey prices supporting pollination is laughable when
compared to the actions of US beekeepers when honey prices are high.  The
rational choice of some beekeepers was to keep their colonies out of
pollination, since pollination both does not produce honey, and tends to
stress the colonies so that they produce less honey than they would if they
were not used for pollination.

What is needed to support pollination is a decent pollination fee per hive.
Muddying the waters with talk of honey prices only serves to insure that
pollination fees will remain low, and beekeepers will continue to try to
both pollinate and produce a honey crop, doing neither as well as either
could be done alone, and suffering the higher costs inherent in trying to
do both.


              jim (Never offend people with style when
                   you can offend them with substance)

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