Here is your wake-up call! Breakfast items are breaking the bank even as incoming President Trump vows to lower grocery costs. Consider the increase in market price for these popular staples on your kitchen table. Info from Trading Economics.
Coffee prices …. ………….. up 76% from a year ago Orange Juice prices………. up 537% year over year Egg prices………………….. up 193% year over year Milk prices……………………..up 35% from a year ago Butter prices…………………..up 31% from a year ago
Before complaining about being gouged, know that coffee, OJ and egg production are all being impacted by weather extremes and infectious viruses. A tropical virus coupled with intense heat-juiced hurricanes has reduced the Florida orange crop in the past 20 years from 240 million boxes to 12m/boxes in 2025, pretty much a wipe-out.
Meanwhile the bird flu has killed 70% of the egg-laying hens in California in the past few months. As for your cup of Joe, heavy rain in Vietnam and not enough rain in Brazil has reduced the world coffee crop, spiking prices.
If the cost of these breakfast items is not enough, try the most popular ready-to-eat cold cereals on for-size, courtesy the Post Company. Each comes with the only cheap breakfast food ingredient – sugar. You pay later – at the dentist.
The Tulare County Board of Supervisors was scheduled to hear a presentation on January 28th given by Vistra Energy regarding its planned 50-megawatt solar project and 50-megawatt battery energy storage system facility near the town of Terra Bella. However the presentation was postponed, says county official Mike Washam. There is to be no public hearing of the project nor any expected action by the supervisors.A previous account of the meeting was incorrect.
The original project was approved by the board on Sept. 24, 2019, for up to 70-megawatts of solar and battery storage on a 378-acre site northeast of Terra Bella in the southern part of the county.
An initial study and mitigated negative declaration was prepared in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and state CEQA Guidelines. Additionally, a mitigation monitoring and reporting program (MMRP) was adopted to monitor and enforce the implementation of environmental mitigation measures.
The presentation would have come only days after a well-publicized fire at Moss Landing on the Central Coast, where Vistra has a 300-megawatt battery storage facility. The fire earlier this month destroyed the battery storage plant and sent toxic fumes into the air, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of local residents.
Washam expects the presentation agenda item will come back to the supervisors but no date has been set.
The airing of the Tulare County project comes only days after a well publicized fire at Moss Landing on the Central Coast, where Vistra has a 300-megawatt battery storage facility. The fire earlier this month destroyed the battery storage plant and sent toxic fumes into the air, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of local residents.
Vistra has promised this technology was safe but the destructive fire that couldn’t be put out with water seemed to question that and has led to proposals for new tougher state legisaltion.No exact cause for fire has been released.
Press reports say the Moss Landing storage facility is a part of a natural gas-powered electricity plant operated by Vistra Energy, a Texas company. The facility also has a battery storage station owned by PG&E. The Moss Landing battery project was first launched in 2018. “Evacuation orders for approximately 1,200 residents near the plant were lifted last Friday night, although some road closures remain in place.”
Regards the technology, storage advocates say the Moss Landing facility was an older design (although described as the world’s largest) and that newer technology and safeguards should make proposed projects more safe.
Reports say that in this older plant,Vistra used batteries manufactured by Korea’s LG -not Tesla batteries. The LG batteries used the nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) chemistry, developed for electric vehicles because it packs a lot of power. Critics say these batteries can heat up and can enter a thermal runaway out of control and are no longer used in recent years as more energy storage is put in place.
Location issue
A planned Vistra 600-MW battery storage project in Morro Bay has come under widespread criticism before and after the Jan 16 Moss Landing fire and that project seems to be on life support due to the uproar over the self induced fire. This project is relatively near the city commercial district and local high school.Both Moss Landing and Morro Bay are next to older power plants with the Morro Bay plant mothballed but with extensive substation connection lines nearby.
One industry source not connected with Vistra says ” a justifiably wary public can rest assured that this particular facility has little in common with the rest of the United States’ rapidly growing grid battery fleet.”
Despite questions,battery storage is credited with helping to keep the lights on in California due to the increasing amount of solar energy being produced in the daylight hours, but the need to store those megawatts around the state when the sun does not shine.
The California Energy Commission says from 2018 to 2024, battery storage capacity in California increased from 500 megawatts (MW) to more than 13,300 MW, with an additional 3,000 MW planned to come online by the end of 2024. The state projects 52,000 MW of battery storage will be needed by 2045.
Many of the Valley battery plants are located away from population centers in ag regions like farmland west of Terra Bella.
Bankrupt fabric retailer Joann Stores has announced they will close their West Coast distribution center in Visalia in late March and 209 people who work at the plant will be laid off permanently. The word comes from a state WARN notice that requires a 60 day notice for workers published January 29.
Closure of the big distribution center is expected to be followed by the closure of most or all of the retail stores it supplies including the retail outlet on S. Mooney Blvd although no notice has been filed for retail outlets, as of yet.
One of the long time anchors of the Visalia Industrial Park, JOANN Stores has declared bankruptcy in March and now a second time in January 2025 that dims the future of both the entire 880 store chain and the local Visalia retail store, and now the seals the fate of its landmark distribution center on Plaza Drive – a fixture here since 2001.
The 635,000 square-foot facility employs around 200 year-round and more during the holiday season. The company says the Visalia distribution center handles all the stores west of the Mississippi, about a third of the Ohio company stores nationwide. The company leases the building in Visalia from a Texas real estate investment trust. As of March 2020, Joann has 865 stores in 49 states. Joann was privately owned by Leonard Green & Partners before going public in 2021. It is privately held now.
The company is currently in bankruptcy for the second time in a year, filing on January 15, 2025.
In 1943, German immigrants Hilda and Berthold Reich, Sigmund and Mathilda Rohrbach, and Justin and Alma Zimmerman opened the Cleveland Fabric Shop in Cleveland, Ohio. After further expansion, in 1963, the name was changed to Jo-Ann Fabrics. The store’s name was created by combining the names of the daughters from both families: Joan and Jacqueline Ann, says Wikipedia.
JOANN is an 81-year-old fabric and craft retailer that has suffered in the past few years as customers cut back on discretionary spending. The company says it is the nation’s category leader in sewing and fabrics with one of the largest arts and crafts offerings,They announced that is continuing their voluntary Chapter 11 proceedings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (the “Court”) to facilitate a sale process to maximize the value of its business.
Through the bankruptcy proceedings there’s always a possibility that a buyer will emerge for the chain, but the filing of this notice by the company is not good news for JoAnn or for Visalia. Many of the workers at this Plaza Drive plant have worked there for decades.
There latest GFS forecast map shows some rain possible around January 26 and the 27th although not a big amount. The constant high pressure off the California coast has kept storms at bay for all of January, typically when there is the best chance for rain.These weather models can change in a heartbeat so pay close attention over the next few days. The storm is expected to be cold and may add to our snowpack.
Here is the 6 day forecast from NOAA.Light blue show upward to one half inch
Publicly-traded Kohl’s Department Store has announced the closure of ten “underperforming” California locations by the end of March 2025. The stores include locations in San Luis Obispo, Sacramento, San Diego, Westchester, Fremont,Encinitas , Mountain View, Pleasanton,Napa and San Rafael. Each store employs around 60.
In San Luis Obispo, Kohl’s is virtually the only department store in town and will leave a big hole in the Madonna Shopping Center. The store building is 62,500sf.
Besides the retail closures in the state, the company plans to shut down its big Southern California distribution center in May eliminating 690 jobs according to a state WARN notice filed January 8.
Kohl’s has more than 1,100 stores in 49 states.
In addition to the 10 stores in California the Wisconsin based company announced it will close 17 more stores in other states across the nation.
The retailer has suffered financial setbacks in the past year and its CEO Tom Kingsbury is stepping down as of January 15. The company stock has declined from around $29 a share in April 2024 to around $13.50 today.
A company statement said their San Bernardino, Calif. facility has been in operation for Kohl’s since 2010. It is one of 15 Distribution Centers in Kohl’s supply chain network across the country. In recent years, Kohl’s has increased efficiencies with new technology capabilities at newer facilities and has expanded the company’s ability to fulfill customer orders from store locations, allowing the company to maintain its ability to fulfill orders without the San Bernardino facility.
” While Kohl’s continues to believe in the health and strength of its profitable store base, these specific locations were underperforming stores.”
The statement continues “All associates have been informed, and offered a competitive severance package or the ability to apply to other open roles at Kohl’s. Kohl’s thanks our associates for their work and is working to support our associates during this transition.”
“We always take these decisions very seriously,” said Tom Kingsbury, Kohl’s chief executive officer. “As we continue to build on our long-term growth strategy, it is important that we also take difficult but necessary actions to support the health and future of our business for our customers and our teams.”
Kohl’s had been rumored to weighing store closures back in November at a news conference after” Kingsbury owned up to the fact that many of Kohl’s turnaround tactics have failed and that the retailer is now walking them back. In January, Michaels CEO Ashley Buchanan will replace Kingsbury as CEO” in a press account.
Jan 10 Update: DOW is now down 1800 points since Trump’s win. Oil prices are now up over $76 barrel and your gasoline price at the pump is up over 5 cents a gallon even as there is Too Much supply! US gasoline inventories rose by 6.33 million barrels last week, significantly exceeding forecasts of a 1.5 million barrel build, marking the eighth consecutive weekly increase.
No relief on your grocery prices or that mortgage rate either.
The there is the rising value of the dollar vs other currencies that makes our ag products sold overseas more expensive for customers to buy. Here is the Dollar Index today.
Tulare County Association of Realtors website publishes regular monthly figures on the state of the local real estate economy.
This month’s trend is not your friend as it takes 31% longer to sell your home than just a year ago. Today it is more than 40 days using the latest November numbers.It is even worse compared to 3 years ago -up 121% from that time when homes were selling in under 20 days on average.
Sales are down 13% even though listings are up 8% for the first two weeks of December compared to a year earlier according to Trendgraphix.
If you are a seller, the good news is that the average home is selling for about 12% more than a year ago – about $426,000 this month.
The trends are the same nationally.
Redfin reports Dec 31 that over half of home listings last month sat on the market for 60 days or longer—the highest November share since 2019. That’s a major reason housing supply jumped 12%. Active listings—the total number of homes for sale—climbed to the highest level since 2020 in November on a seasonally adjusted basis, rising 0.5% month over month and 12.1% year over year.
For all the talk of America’s housing shortage, one would think that’s great news. But the story is nuanced; a major reason for the jump in supply is a pileup of unsold homes, many of which buyers have deemed undesirable because they seem overpriced.
Over half (54.5%) of home listings in November sat on the market for at least 60 days without going under contract. That’s the highest share for any November since 2019 and is up from 49.9% a year earlier. The typical home that did go under contract in November did so in 43 days, the slowest November pace since 2019.
Mortgage rates don’t help
Meanwhile 30-year mortgage rates have unexpectedly risen almost a full point since October according to Zillow,making homes less affordable
Jan 4,2025: Northern California looks to join Southern California with a persistent dry pattern through mid January, typically the launch of the California rainy season.
The upper part of California has seen an above normal rainfall pattern for the start of the water year but now the next two weeks look dry and increasingly warm.
Above is the 10-day chart for Redding California, just a few miles from the state’s largest reservoir.
Meanwhile Southern California faces high winds and a tinder dry landscape with the forecast this week suggesting ” extremely critical” conditions that may unfold this week.
The first Dept of Water Resources snowpack reading in California this season was released in the past few days suggesting “extreme shifts” in the weather so far.
“While our snowpack looks good now, we have a long way until April when our water supply picture will be more complete,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth. “Extreme shifts between dry and wet conditions are continuing this winter and if the past several years are any indication, anything could happen between now and April and we need to be prepared.”
DWR’s electronic readings from 130 stations placed throughout the Sierra Nevada indicate that the statewide snowpack’s snow water equivalent is 10.7 inches, or 108 percent of average for this date, compared to 28 percent on this date last year.
California has seen this pattern before. In both 2013 and 2022, the January snowpack was well above average thanks to December storm activity, only for dry conditions to take over the rest of the winter, quickly erasing early season snow totals and continuing existing drought conditions across the state.”
This water year the Redding area is 120 percent of normal for January 4 while Riverside, in SoCal, is 1 percent
Major reservoirs statewide are currently 121 percent of average thanks to two consecutive years of above average snowpack conditions, which occurred after the driest three-year period on record in California, says DWR.
The see-saw pattern can be seen with DWR’s electronic readings from 130 stations placed throughout the Sierra Nevada indicating that the statewide snowpack’s snow water equivalent is 10.7 inches, or 108 percent of average for this date, compared to just 28 percent on this date last year.
This water year the Redding area is 120 percent of normal for January 4 while Riverside, in SoCal, is 1 percent.
It didn’t take long for new Lemoore City Manager Marissa Trejo to realize she had her work cut out for her. Marissa has served as the City Manager for the City of Coalinga since 2015. Starting work in Lemoore this September, the fourth generation local resident faced a city budget crisis that would require residents to vote on a sales tax hike in a matter of weeks.The community of 27,000 has had a structural deficit for years as operational expenses outweighed revenues. Would the community be willing to increase taxes?
The answer came in early November as Measure S, a one-percent sales tax hike, won big with 67% approval of voters.The measure is expected to bring in an additional $3,850,000 annually to the city’s general fund. Sales tax monies are not just paid by residents of the community, but tourists, visitors and nearby residents who shop in town such as the thousands who live at the naval air base. Although Lemoore will have to wait until April 2025 for the new sales revenue to make a difference, Marissa Trejo was able to juggle the budget enough to soon open the community recreation center seven days a week not only for sports activity but the indoor walking track that is so popular in town.Currently, the center is open Monday through Thursday.
Then there is some good news on the ice cream front. While landmark Foster Freeze closed in town earlier this year, Lemoore now sports a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor that opened recently. But the big news in town is the long-vacant Kmart building is in escrow with developer California Gold Corp who will purchase the 87,000 square-foot building, install a new Tractor Supply store along with other retailers.The building has been vacant for 6 years. California Gold has rejuvenated multiple shopping centers around the Valley including construction of a new center in North Visalia that also includes a Tractor Supply.
Leprino shocker Trejo and the whole community were shocked to hear in mid-November that the long standing cheese plant called Leprino East was announced to be closed in late 2025 with the loss of about 250 jobs. “Like everyone else, I first learned about it on Facebook when employees started posting the news.” Later a company executive visited city hall and explained to Trejo the schedule to close the dairy plant.”I feel so bad for the families who are affected”, says Marissa.A Leprino official explained that the closure of the block-long Leprino East plant would not affect the operation of the much larger Leprino West plant that employs about 1000 workers. He explained that there were four main reasons why they were closing the Leprino East facility1. TheLeprino East facility dates from 1910 and is small and aging by modern standards.2. California’s business climate leads to higher costs.3 California milk production is down about 4% while other states are up 11%. Milk production is moving east, she was told.4 Leprino is building a sprawling new production facility in Lubbock Texas making the same mozzarella product as they do here and opening in January 2026.The Lubbock Economic Development Alliance announced Leprino Foods, a global leader in mozzarella, whey protein and other dairy ingredients, will invest $1 billion to build a state of the art manufacturing plant located on 258 acres. Marissa says she was disappointed that the company did not offer a transfer option for the employees to work at another Leprino facility. Lastly, Trejo noted Leprino was putting the property on the market and was told the company was optimistic that it would sell, meaning another manufacturer would likely take over the operation of the facility in the future and bring some jobs back to the community.
As we approach the end of 2024, new vehicle sales in December are expected to show steady growth compared to last year, according to the latest forecast from Cox Automotive. The seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) for December is projected to reach 16.5 million units, matching the sales pace of November and significantly increasing from 15.9 million units in December 2023. The total sales volume for December is estimated to be 1.47 million units, reflecting a 7.7% increase from November, although it remains relatively flat compared to the same month last year.
Looking ahead to 2025, Cox Automotive forecasts a 3% increase in new vehicle sales
Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive, attributes this increase in sales to several key factors, particularly the decreasing uncertainty following the U.S. election season.
Many consumers who were initially hesitant to make large purchases are now moving forward with their vehicle purchases in anticipation of policy changes that could impact pricing. “Buyers holding out for the best deal realize that now is the time to act,” Chesbrough notes. Numerous vehicle buyers are taking advantage of EV discounts that may decrease under the new administration. In contrast, others are concerned about potential tariffs that could further raise vehicle prices. This combined sense of urgency, along with an improving economic outlook, has created positive momentum.
New vehicle sales in 2024 have remained steady throughout the year, buoyed by improved inventory and rising incentives. However, the sales pace has picked up since October, and the fourth quarter is expected to close with a SAAR of 16.4 million units. This strong finish has pushed total sales for 2024 to a projected 15.85 million units, marking a 2.3% increase from 2023 and slightly surpassing Cox Automotive’s initial forecast of 15.7 million units. The improvement in sales can be attributed to various factors, including lower interest rates, a more stable economic environment, and less consumer uncertainty. These conditions are expected to continue driving sales growth into 2025.
In terms of individual manufacturers, General Motors is set to retain its position as the top-selling automaker in the U.S. for 2024, with 2.7 million units projected, up 4.2% from 2023. However, Honda is the big winner in market share gains, with the brand increasing its share by half a point. Honda’s strong sales performance, particularly from its reasonably priced HR-V and Civic models, has propelled the company ahead of Stellantis, with Honda now ranking fifth on the sales chart.
Looking ahead to 2025, Cox Automotive forecasts a 3% increase in new vehicle sales. Several factors, including rising consumer confidence, improving inventory levels, and favorable financing conditions, are expected to support this growth. Additionally, advancements in EV adoption, inventory replenishment, and evolving consumer preferences will likely continue to shape the market.
