Food Prices Climbing

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 22, 2008 in Agriculture and Business. 66 Comments

Lori writes:

Last night, we were up at Christian’s on Pantops. The signs were all gone and they had little hand written signs announcing that the individual slice prices were going up by a quarter and $1.00 for a pie. I know that there was an article in Sunday’s Progress about Bodo’s raising their prices slightly (and still losing money on it). One of my friends thinks that the farmers are going to be making money, money, money but they don’t seem to remember (or know) how much gasoline is used.

(I’m suddenly remembering reading about the days of the Weimar Republic where people walked around with wheelbarrows full of money so they could buy a loaf of bread.)

It’s not just Christian’s, of course — prices are going up everywhere. Seth Rosen wrote about this in a pair of articles [1, 2] in the Progress this weekend. Bodo’s is taking the cost their bagels up $0.10/apiece, since the price of flour has tripled — it’s not enough to even things out for them, but it’s an improvement. Local schools are having a tough time providing food for the kids. The food bank has seen demand climb, and food stamp cases are up 10%. My wife and I went to buy a bag of grain for our horse at Southern States last week, and the price had doubled (and the quality reduced).

Remember that your standard factory-farm fertilizer is petroleum-based — your food is literally bathed in oil, and at $118/barrel, that fertilizer is getting expensive. The price of diesel has doubled, so our food economy — premised on the notion of cheap, fast transportation from California, Mexico, Chile, or New Zealand — is getting pricy along with it.

Council Delays Meadowcreek Interchange Decision

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 22, 2008 in Development, Taxes and Transportation. 14 Comments

It’s been a rough week for the Meadowcreek Parkway. First the school board deferred a decision on giving up some of their land to build the road, Barney Breen-Portnoy wrote in the Progress on Saturday. And now city council has declined to endorse any of the interchange options, Seth Rosen writes today. Now, the school board signing off is really just a formality — and they’re quite likely to do so, anyhow — but the interchange is a bigger problem. Sen. John Warner secured $25M in federal funding for the road almost three years ago, but then the interchange committee went and recommended a design $5M+ over budget.

Councilor Julian Taliaferro thinks that interchange, at seven acres, is just too big. And Mayor Dave Norris just doesn’t see how the city is going to pay for it. Council will hold a work session in a month or two to figure out what to do.

The school board is willing to give up the required 8.5 acres, but they’ve got some conditions. They want a 25mph speed limit near school property (thus reducing the benefit of this dedicated route), a pedestrian bridge, a prohibition on trucks, a guarantee that the fifty replacement acres of parkland would forever be parkland*, and for CHS teams to get first dibs on the promised replacement sports field in McIntire Park.

* The same promise that the city made in order to accept the money from Paul Goodeloe McIntire to establish the park in the first place. Clearly, promises are no obstacle for the city.

Turning Morven Into a Working Farm?

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 21, 2008 in Agriculture and UVa. 5 Comments

In the current (soon-to-be prior) issue of C-Ville Weekly, Jayson Whitehead writes about a pretty cool idea: turning Morven into a farm to grow food for UVa. John Kluge donated the 7,400 acres to UVa in 2001, and the university has been trying to figure out what to do with the land that they haven’t sold off. Urban & Environmental Planning graduate student Anne Bedarf has pitched her idea to the UVA Foundation (which owns all of UVa’s land), and they’ve been receptive.

I considered attending Asheville college Warren Wilson after high school and was pleased to find, when I visited, that they had their own farm for just this purpose. Yale does the same thing.

Plan 9, Satellite Ballroom Closing Next Month

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 21, 2008 in Business. Closed

Plan 9 and the Satellite Ballroom will close at the end of May, David Moltz writes in today’s Cavalier Daily. Plan 9 is going to allow their lease to expire, seeing their possible forced closing as a sign that perhaps it’s best that they consolidate their two C’ville locations. Their subtenants — Higher Grounds, Just Curry, and Satellite Ballroom — will likewise be out come midnight, May 31. Plan 9 owner Jim Bland intends to make a formal announcement today.

1:20pm Update: C-Ville Weekly provides more details. CVS sounds like all but a sure thing, and Satellite Ballroom is looking hard for a new location, rather than simply giving up.

It’s Spring

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 17, 2008 in Weather. 5 Comments
barnscape

©2008 Bill Detmer. All rights reserved.

OK, I’m calling it — winter is over, spring is here. Monday’s threat of sleet was winter’s last gasp. I was convinced of that when I saw this photo by Bill Detmer appear in the Charlottesville Flickr group this morning. The daffodils have come and gone, the flowering trees behind my office have lost their flowers, and The Dogwood Festival is underway.

A barely related memory. A decade ago, when Robert Van Winkle was still at NBC 29. It’s early December. The weather has turned cold because, hey, winter’s coming. Robert has just finished providing the forecast. A bubbly anchor without a brain in her head turns to him and asks earnestly: “oh, Robert, when will this cold snap end?”

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