Oregon Wildfire & Still Working on Trucking Issue

Oregon Wildfire & Still Working on Trucking Issue plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Winds were hampering efforts to contain a wildfire about seven miles northwest of Sisters, Oregon according to state firefighters. The Black Butte II Fire had grown to at least 350 acres by 9 p.m. Monday night, according to the Central Oregon Interagency Dispatch Center. The fire was moving in a northeasterly direction on the butte's southeast side and was likely caused by a lightning strike.

The Mexican truck tariff issue is still no closer to resolution according to Dan Newhouse, Director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

NEWHOUSE: This Mexican trucking issue is something that we’re working hard on trying to get the Obama Administration and Congress to move forward with. That’s really impacting a lot of our commodities in the state. Most notably right now I suppose are cherries certainly, pears, the processed potato industry is experiencing a big impact. Once you lose that to a competitor it’s tough to get those markets back.

The tariffs were put into place after Congress stripped funding for a pilot program that allowed a limited number of Mexican trucks access to the United States. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement called for free movement of truckers between Mexico, the United States and Canada, but opposition from labor and safety groups has blocked Mexican drivers from U.S. roads.

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

The great digital divide may be narrowing between rural areas and their urban neighbors. Last week Vice President Joe Biden outlined the $4.7 billion loan and grant program that will be used to deliver high speed internet to rural areas that have been left behind in the advance of the modern communications infrastructure. There are those that are strongly opposed to any government stimulus package that is used to improve rural internet access; going so far as to say that rural broadband funding is akin to “building a cyber bridge to no where”. These people are displaying not only an extreme arrogance but ignorance as well. To leave a large portion of our country out of the nation’s communication infrastructure is to condemn them to obscurity.  Farmers and ranchers who have internet access use it to monitor commodity prices, weather conditions, markets and even run irrigation systems. Those rural communities yet to be connected to high speed internet access have the same right to service as their predecessors, who decades ago were connected to electricity and phone services through federal funding.

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