Illegal Crackdown & Christmas in July

Illegal Crackdown & Christmas in July plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

The Obama administration is going to crackdown on companies employing illegal immigrants. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has started an audit of over 650 companies to verify if employees were eligible to work. It’s not clear how severe penalties might be if an employer is discovered to have hired illegal workers - but violations could lead to fines - as well as civil and criminal charges. The announcement comes as President Obama attempts to gain support for a new policy that put millions of illegal immigrants on the path to become U.S. citizens.

I know now is not the time to be hearing about the Christmas holidays since they are still 6 months away, but for Christmas tree farmers the hardest time of year is right now. John Tillman is a Christmas tree grower in Washington who says

TILLMAN: We start culturing in July and trimming the trees and getting just the perfect shape on them for the customers.

Believe it or not, most Christmas trees do not grow in that perfect shape.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

It is a known fact that mankind suffers from the ostrich syndrome. We have the innate tendency to stick our heads in the sand and pretend if we don't see it or acknowledge it, it doesn't really exist, and therefore won't hurt us. Hard fact is that the longer we stick our heads in the sand in regards to the fuel shortage, the more it will hurt us and future generations. The starts and stops that have procured in the last couple of decades with research programs designed to find a replacement for the world's fossil fuel use have been abundant. One such program involved the possibility of using algae as an oil replacement. The U.S. Government abandoned its research into algae based fuel in 1996 because they didn't feel they could reasonably compete with the price of petroleum. But with the price of oil fluctuating dramatically, and the worry over world food supply competition from the production of ethanol, the interest in algae oil production is once again coming to the forefront. And with algae oil being homegrown and plentiful, will it be the world's future? We don't know, but the need for a fossil fuel replacement is glaringly apparent and the cost for not finding and implementing a replacement is eminently disastrous.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.