Périgord Marché

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“Les Nouveaux Vacacioners”

Amsterdam Grocery Shopping

One major reality for all people is the price and quality of the food we buy.  In Amsterdam, I picked up a few groceries at the supermarket and the open market.  A half liter of organic milk, two marinated porkchops, 250 grams of mushrooms, one liter of black currant soda added up to €5,66.  Throw in a half loaf of sliced bread for €0,85, three yellow onions and a red hydroponically-grown sweet pepper for €2,50, and six individually-stamped eggs for €0,99 and I generated a grand total of €10 just under $14.

At the Albert Cuyp open market, vendors sell produce from Holland, Spain and other countries like avocados from Peru and pineapples from Costa Rica.  My wife and I sampled a semi-hard goat cheese for use on sandwiches and bought 250 grams for €2.  We also ate a raw herring “broodje” coupled with bland onions and a sweet pickle spear for €3.  The healthy and delicious fish is sought after by both Dutch shoppers and world travellers.

The cut flowers in Holland are the best grocery purchase both for the price and quality; five sunflowers with meter long stems for €3.  The sales lady adviced me to dip the ends, trimmed on an angle, in hot water with two scoops of sugar and place them away from a drafty window.  In Holland, a quality cut flower will live up to a week in the vase.

Grocery shopping can be an enriching experience.  For me, the cost of food staples in Holland seems reasonable given quality standards  and cost of living.  Many readers of the AGROGURU blog are all over the world.  I am just curious.  How would you rank the importance of price, quality and origin when grocery shopping?  What do you buy most frequently? And how much do you spend a week on groceries?

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Hello Readers

The heat of summer is  here but, the longest day has passed.  At this time, I begin to consolidate ideas and to balance time and expected results.  Today, I want to share with you a little about how I use online social media to promote my message about agriculture.  You or your organization can do the same.  I will run down my top 7 online tools to organize a social network and make your voice heard.

#7

FeedBurner is a service from Google.  If you publish to the web, then FeedBurner will take your information, copy it to email format and deliver it to readers who subscribe to your feed.  It works best if your audience has limited online access to your source content at the workplace.

#6

Facebook has a compliment to its famous friend features with fan pages.  With similar functionality like wall and messaging features, Facebook fan pages add a new dimension to reaching a wider audience.  Every message needs a target audience to motivate enthusiasts and Facebook appears to be a solid application.

#5

In less than 10 years, cameras are now in cell phones and video is shared by everyone.  Behind the scenes, video and audio are no easy task and being in front of the camera takes a combination of skill, patience and outstanding speaking abilities.  YouTube is simple; it takes care of the broadcast, your task is to develop the content.

#4

Twitter grew over 1000% in less than a year.  The truth is the service is in its infancy.  Best features include its clever @-based usernames to target anyone on the network and private direct messages to  communicate with people who follow you.  Twitter works seamlessly with any mobile phone enabled for text messaging.  To see what is happening right now, check out twitter search.

#3

A picture does tell a thousand words.  If you develop charts, graphs and maps or practice photography, then the best way to publish them to the web is with Flickr.  Your photostream on Flickr has a build-in licensing so, you can choose to reserve all rights or just some.  With the “Share this” function, you can grab the HTML code for your image and re-publish its contents across the web.

#2

PBwiki, now called PBworks, is a hosted collabrative solution to organize a group.  You can sign up for a free workspace and keep your content private or use their platform to aggregate media and make your ideas public.  Publish keyword phrases such as “Tomato String Method” to the web and educate your audience while powering your searchability.

#1

Last but, not least is the blogging platform brought to you by WordPress.  I started a blog back in 2006 and managed to turn out one solid post.  WordPress can be you domain without complicating your life.  If you want to have a online presence and the capability to socialize on the web, then the only tool you need is WordPress.  Sign-up for a free hosted account at wordpress.com and start to tag your content, create categories, track your stats, get feedback from comments, keep up with your readers and project your voice to the world.

I hope you enjoyed my review of the top 7 online tools to organize a network and make your voice be heard.  Remember it takes just one person to spread the word.  If you want to connect with AGROGURU then, click on the logos above or use the web addresses below.

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http://agroguru.wordpress.com

http://agorg.pbwiki.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/agroguru

http://twitter.com/agroguru

http://www.youtube.com/agroguru

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/AGROGURU/46668727565?ref=ts

http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=agroguru&loc=en_US