Upcoming Events - Cooking Up a Food Business in the Home Kitchen

Do you have a great recipe or product you love to make? Do you wish you could turn that into a home-based business? As a result of a recently passed law by the Indiana General Assembly allowing certain foods to be produced in the home kitchen and sold at farmers’ markets and roadside stands, this is now an option. Purdue Extension of Spencer County is hosting a three-part webinar series, “Cooking up a Food Business in the Home Kitchen”, that will address the opportunities and limitations of a home-based food business as well as safe food handling and preparation practices for the home kitchen. 

The sessions will be held on consecutive Tuesday mornings from March 20 to April 3 at the Spencer County 4-H Fairgrounds in Chrisney from 9:00 – 10:30 AM. The cost of the program is $20 per person for the three-session series or $8 per person per individual session. Early bird registration deadline is March 16. After the deadline, registration cost is increased by $10 per person. In addition to live, on-site viewing, participants have the option of viewing live or recorded sessions from home via a high-speed internet connection. The registration cost and deadline remain the same for at-home viewing. 

Registration brochures are available by contacting Purdue Extension-Spencer County at (812) 649-6022 or nheld@purdue.edu. They are also available online.          

 

Will Consumers Come Back to Pork? Yes!

Per capita pork consumption in the U.S. has declined sharply in the past several years due primarily to strong pork export growth. Per capita pork consumption in the U.S. averaged 50.1 pounds in 2006 and 2007 when $2 per bushel corn was still the rule. That dropped to a low of 45.8 pounds by 2011, a nine percent decrease.

Surprisingly, as U.S. per capita consumption was dropping sharply, total U.S. pork production grew by eight percent from 2006/2007 to 2012. How could total pork production grow while domestic per capita consumption was falling sharply? The answer is that U.S. pork exports expanded and now U.S. consumers have new competition from foreign buyers for limited pork supplies. There is a saying, “China is going to eat your lunch,” and that statement has some limited truth. China was the 6th largest buyer of pork from the U.S. in 2006, representing five percent of U.S. exports, but moved to the third largest buyer by 2011 representing 15 percent of U.S. exports. <Read More>