04/28/08 Emergency Ag Relief & Sea Lion Repreive

Emergency Ag Relief & Sea Lion Reprieve plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. For farmers struggling to find a legal workforce, a temporary fix to their problems is better than nothing. American Farm Bureau Labor Specialist Paul Schlegel explains why the Emergency Agriculture Relief Act is important to farmers. SCHLAGEL: A step like this is necessary because we do have a great deal of uncertainty in the agricultural sector. We depend a large degree on workers that don't have the appropriate documentation. In our hired workforce of about a million people, it's estimated that over half lack legal status so if we lose those in sectors, particularly like diaries or nurseries or mushrooms, that will have a huge dislocating effect in the sector so we need both the guest worker program and we need the transitional status of our current workers to be legalized. A federal appeals court on Thursday granted a partial reprieve to hungry California sea lions on the Columbia River. The appeals court allowed some of the sea lions to be trapped but none to be killed this spring. Washington and Oregon had been authorized to trap and even kill the animals because they were depleting salmon stocks at the base of the Bonneville Dam. Agents plan to move the trapped sea lions to permanent homes at marine parks or zoos, including Tacoma's Point Defiance Zoo. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. Picture it; a large boardroom full of important looking people decked out in their finest power suits snickering and laughing at their best coup ever, convincing nations around the world that biofuels production is the cause of all the world's problems especially starving people in third world countries. What better way to maintain status quo and their ever prospering bank accounts. Even our local newspaper is caught up in the biofuels bashing mania; printing only anti biofuels political cartoons and stories. Biofuels are quickly becoming the scapegoat for the ever rising commodity prices, but the real cause lies behind poor harvests worldwide due to drought, natural disaster, and growing food demand. Perhaps fingers should point at the growing numbers of "players" in the financial market that have dashed to procure profits and have deliberately driven down food supplies while pushing demand in order to boost food commodity prices. A recent statement from a Midwest farmer sums it up for me, "When was the last time you saw soldiers having to defend my corn field"? Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.