10/29/08 Who'll Win & Worried About Credit

Who'll Win & Worried About Credit plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. One week and counting. In one week all the hoopla of the 2008 Presidential election will be over with and if you've been living and dying by the national polling, here's a piece of advice: stop looking at just the national poll numbers. As we all were reminded in the 2000 election, the presidency is not decided by popular vote. It's decided by the Electoral College so it is the state polling numbers you should pay attention to. The candidate who gets 270 Electoral College votes wins, so poll analysis turns into a simple math game. What collection of states can a candidate put together to get to 270? According to Chris Galen with the National Milk Producers Federation, dairy farmers are not really worried about credit. GALEN: I think the credit situation is less of an issue than just the forecast for milk prices. If you look at what's happened to the futures markets over the past couple of months there's been quite a plunge from near $18 - $19 dollars for Class 3 down to about $14 dollars right now for the foreseeable future and I think that still has yet to make it's way into the milk checks that farmers are receiving this fall but we know it's coming. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. The landscape is changing. As more and more wind farms are cropping up across the Northwest, the debate over the environmental impact of wind turbines rages on. While most people in the surrounding areas are enthusiastic and supportive of renewable wind energy, there are those few that continue to oppose wind power. The two main concerns appear to revolve around aesthetics; citing that the giant wind turbines disturbs the landscape, and problems associated with bird mortality. Personally, I don't think you could get much more aesthetically unappealing as the giant electrical hummers and wiring poles that have dotted our landscape for decades. People have just become familiar with these. In regards to wildlife, wind farm developers have been sensitive to the issue with better siting of turbines, better design and slower turning rotors. There is great potential in the Northwest and across the rest of the nation for harvesting wind power, and in working together we can all benefit from this clean renewable source of energy. Change can be a good thing. Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.