Longtime industry veteran details 'Quest for the Perfect Strawberry'
Longtime industry veteran details 'Quest for the Perfect Strawberry'
Longtime California strawberry industry member and current retiree Herbert Baum has spent the last six years penning an analysis of that industry with regard to its marketing order - and he does not give it good marks.
"Quest for the Perfect Strawberry" is in the process of being published as Mr. Baum's doctoral dissertation as well as what he calls a book that serves as "a descriptive model for marketing order evaluation." He has been working on the book "all day and into the night" for six years, but it is really 50 years in the making.
Mr. Baum was born in Indiana in a produce industry family in 1926. After high school, he served in World War II before getting an undergraduate degree at Ohio State University. Following that, he went to the prestigious University of Chicago, where he proudly declares that he studied under the noted economist Milton Friedman. Mr. Baum earned his master's degree in economics and said that he finished his course work in the same subject for his doctorate but never wrote his dissertation.
"Now you are supposed to write it within seven years, but that wasn't the rule then," he said. "I am submitting this book as my dissertation."
In fact, for the past six years he has been working on the many drafts of the book with a doctoral committee at the University of Chicago.
At the time of this interview, copies of the book were not yet available, but his mentors at the university, as well as some industry members, had read the book and praised it. Tom Am Rhein, vice president of operations for Naturipe, where Mr. Baum worked for more than 30 years, said that the book is "an important resource for anybody involved in production and marketing of strawberries," and that it is a "needed analysis of commodity board marketing plans."
In another promotion blurb for the book, University of Chicago Professor George Tolley calls it a "wealth of heretofore unavailable information on marketing in the strawberry industry."
That "heretofore unavailable information" was gleaned from material that Mr. Baum has been collecting since he started in the produce industry in 1955.
After finishing his course work in Chicago in 1953, he went to work in Washington as an economist for the Office of Price Stabilization. Government work, however, did not match his entrepreneurial spirit, and so he soon left to find his fortune, or at least a career, in California.
Mr. Baum joined Blue Goose in 1955 and was soon selling strawberries for the Naturipe account. Naturipe eventually took the marketing in-house and he was part of its first sales team. He stayed with that company for 33 years rising to the top position, and he served for many years as a board member of the California Strawberry Commission. He also chaired that organization for four years.
Early in his career, he hatched the plan to write his dissertation on strawberry marketing, so he kept and cataloged mountains of material. In 1999, he retired from the industry with the expressed purpose of writing this book. "I have been working full time on it ever since," he said.
Mr. Baum said that his work has brought him to three main conclusions about the California strawberry industry specifically, and about marketing orders in general. His first issue concerns accountability. He believes that every activity a marketing order undertakes should be judged by its direct impact on the bottom line of growers. Typically, Mr. Baum said that staffs and boards of marketing orders do not objectively evaluate the grower money that they spend. He said that his book offers a blueprint on how marketing orders and commissions should be evaluated.
By and large, Mr. Baum believes that most orders today would fail his test. He said that the impact of most activities of these marketing orders is either impossible to gauge or it proves to have no positive impact on the bottom line. "How do you determine if a public relations campaign is working?" he asked rhetorically.
Mr. Baum said that an analysis of sales data over the years shows that the strawberry commission campaigns did not help grower returns. "The only argument they have," he says of marketing order proponents, "is that if they didn't do anything, the grower would be worse off. That is a difficult argument to make."
Mr. Baum's second contention is that the only way to help the bottom line of growers is through a massive advertising campaign. He said that his analysis of the numbers has proven that only when major advertising campaigns were undertaken did the market and the grower receive a boost. For the most part, the longtime participant and observer of marketing campaigns believes that the produce industry is unwilling to spend the money necessary to affect the bottom line. If the marketing order doesn't have enough money for a major campaign, he believes that it is better financially to conduct no campaign at all and leave the money in the grower's pocket.
But Mr. Baum does not believe that marketing orders are totally ineffective.
His third contention relates to the the areas of production and quality research, and he believes that marketing orders can accomplish much on behalf of the growers. In fact, he said that his book serves as a history of the tremendous research that has been done in the strawberry industry to help growers produce better varieties.
But while he believes public research is very important in the produce industry, Mr. Baum said that his book also points to the failings of the university research that has been conducted on behalf of the strawberry industry for the past 50 years. He said that the university varieties have not kept pace with those produced by the private breeders for private strawberry organizations.
He said that in the early years, the publicly released varieties provided a great foundation. But while the private breeders took some of this stock and developed even better varieties with longer production cycles, the university breeders stalled in their development. For many years, Mr. Baum said that advances occurred in the private varieties while the public varieties didn't keep up. He said that only recently has the publicly supported university program developed some year-round varieties to compete with the private varieties.
"Today a much greater percentage of the [California] strawberry crop is from private breeders," he said. For this reason, he believes that at least part of the money spent on research should be privatized. "Give money to three private breeders and let private enterprise take over," he said.
But Mr. Baum does not want his book to be used to attack the concept of marketing orders. He said that most of the marketing order court fights today turn on legalistic issues such as government speech. Instead, he would like to see a marketing order continued or disbanded based solely on its effectiveness as a return on investment for the grower.
Mr. Baum said that the writing of the book was a labor of love and something he did for himself as much as for anything else.
"Except for my ego and my desire to finish something I started, I really didn't need to get my doctorate," he said.
"Quest for the Perfect Strawberry" is in the process of being published as Mr. Baum's doctoral dissertation as well as what he calls a book that serves as "a descriptive model for marketing order evaluation." He has been working on the book "all day and into the night" for six years, but it is really 50 years in the making.
Mr. Baum was born in Indiana in a produce industry family in 1926. After high school, he served in World War II before getting an undergraduate degree at Ohio State University. Following that, he went to the prestigious University of Chicago, where he proudly declares that he studied under the noted economist Milton Friedman. Mr. Baum earned his master's degree in economics and said that he finished his course work in the same subject for his doctorate but never wrote his dissertation.
"Now you are supposed to write it within seven years, but that wasn't the rule then," he said. "I am submitting this book as my dissertation."
In fact, for the past six years he has been working on the many drafts of the book with a doctoral committee at the University of Chicago.
At the time of this interview, copies of the book were not yet available, but his mentors at the university, as well as some industry members, had read the book and praised it. Tom Am Rhein, vice president of operations for Naturipe, where Mr. Baum worked for more than 30 years, said that the book is "an important resource for anybody involved in production and marketing of strawberries," and that it is a "needed analysis of commodity board marketing plans."
In another promotion blurb for the book, University of Chicago Professor George Tolley calls it a "wealth of heretofore unavailable information on marketing in the strawberry industry."
That "heretofore unavailable information" was gleaned from material that Mr. Baum has been collecting since he started in the produce industry in 1955.
After finishing his course work in Chicago in 1953, he went to work in Washington as an economist for the Office of Price Stabilization. Government work, however, did not match his entrepreneurial spirit, and so he soon left to find his fortune, or at least a career, in California.
Mr. Baum joined Blue Goose in 1955 and was soon selling strawberries for the Naturipe account. Naturipe eventually took the marketing in-house and he was part of its first sales team. He stayed with that company for 33 years rising to the top position, and he served for many years as a board member of the California Strawberry Commission. He also chaired that organization for four years.
Early in his career, he hatched the plan to write his dissertation on strawberry marketing, so he kept and cataloged mountains of material. In 1999, he retired from the industry with the expressed purpose of writing this book. "I have been working full time on it ever since," he said.
Mr. Baum said that his work has brought him to three main conclusions about the California strawberry industry specifically, and about marketing orders in general. His first issue concerns accountability. He believes that every activity a marketing order undertakes should be judged by its direct impact on the bottom line of growers. Typically, Mr. Baum said that staffs and boards of marketing orders do not objectively evaluate the grower money that they spend. He said that his book offers a blueprint on how marketing orders and commissions should be evaluated.
By and large, Mr. Baum believes that most orders today would fail his test. He said that the impact of most activities of these marketing orders is either impossible to gauge or it proves to have no positive impact on the bottom line. "How do you determine if a public relations campaign is working?" he asked rhetorically.
Mr. Baum said that an analysis of sales data over the years shows that the strawberry commission campaigns did not help grower returns. "The only argument they have," he says of marketing order proponents, "is that if they didn't do anything, the grower would be worse off. That is a difficult argument to make."
Mr. Baum's second contention is that the only way to help the bottom line of growers is through a massive advertising campaign. He said that his analysis of the numbers has proven that only when major advertising campaigns were undertaken did the market and the grower receive a boost. For the most part, the longtime participant and observer of marketing campaigns believes that the produce industry is unwilling to spend the money necessary to affect the bottom line. If the marketing order doesn't have enough money for a major campaign, he believes that it is better financially to conduct no campaign at all and leave the money in the grower's pocket.
But Mr. Baum does not believe that marketing orders are totally ineffective.
His third contention relates to the the areas of production and quality research, and he believes that marketing orders can accomplish much on behalf of the growers. In fact, he said that his book serves as a history of the tremendous research that has been done in the strawberry industry to help growers produce better varieties.
But while he believes public research is very important in the produce industry, Mr. Baum said that his book also points to the failings of the university research that has been conducted on behalf of the strawberry industry for the past 50 years. He said that the university varieties have not kept pace with those produced by the private breeders for private strawberry organizations.
He said that in the early years, the publicly released varieties provided a great foundation. But while the private breeders took some of this stock and developed even better varieties with longer production cycles, the university breeders stalled in their development. For many years, Mr. Baum said that advances occurred in the private varieties while the public varieties didn't keep up. He said that only recently has the publicly supported university program developed some year-round varieties to compete with the private varieties.
"Today a much greater percentage of the [California] strawberry crop is from private breeders," he said. For this reason, he believes that at least part of the money spent on research should be privatized. "Give money to three private breeders and let private enterprise take over," he said.
But Mr. Baum does not want his book to be used to attack the concept of marketing orders. He said that most of the marketing order court fights today turn on legalistic issues such as government speech. Instead, he would like to see a marketing order continued or disbanded based solely on its effectiveness as a return on investment for the grower.
Mr. Baum said that the writing of the book was a labor of love and something he did for himself as much as for anything else.
"Except for my ego and my desire to finish something I started, I really didn't need to get my doctorate," he said.
