Congress Gets Busy Again & Changes for Crop Report

Congress Gets Busy Again & Changes for Crop Report plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Congress was due back in session yesterday after the August break and the one thing everyone wants to know is can they get everything done including a farm bill that is set to expire in 20 days or will both the House and the Senate go back to finger pointing while the clock ticks. Obviously the problem in Syria has taken precedent and then there are the budget issues and immigration tossed in there for good measure. I guess we keep our fingers crossed. USDA is expected to have a new crop report out on Thursday and according to Lance Honig with USDA's Statistics Service, the plan is to increase the number of field plots being measured and tested from last month. HONIG: NASS has two different surveys that we conduct getting ready for the report. The first we call our ag yield survey. It's a farmer reported survey. We actually contact about 11,500 farmers across the country asking them to report to us what you expect your yields to be. But in addition to that survey we also have our field survey or objective yield survey. We conducted that for corn, soybeans and cotton this month. We do it in the major states. For corn it's just over 19-hundred samples in 10 states. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. My husband recently met with an old friend to chew over what has been going on in each others lives over the last several months; as work schedules, family matters, and life in general often makes it so they don't see each other for long stretches of time. Strangely enough, one of the things they discussed over a breakfast of bacon and eggs was GMO foods. My hubby's friend wanted to know what all the uproar was really about over genetically modified organisms and admitted that he really knew nothing about the subject. My husband is no expert on the subject himself, but having worked in and around the ag industry for nearly a decade has given him a little more insight than the average consumer, so he tried to answer his friend's questions as best he could. Thankfully there is somewhere consumers can go to get answers from honest to goodness experts about GMO foods. The Council for Biotechnology Information, along with its supporting partners, has funded the GMO Answers initiative and created a website where consumers can ask the tough questions about GMOs and get honest, informative, and easy to understand answers. So if you want answers to questions about biotechnology in food and agriculture, go to gmoanswers.com. Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.