Bad Cash Crop & Farm Income Down

Bad Cash Crop & Farm Income Down plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

USDA'S new forecast for this year's farm income shows receipts dropping far more than had been expected. Jim Johnson, USDA economist, saying this is going to be a very unusual year for farm income.

JOHNSON: This will be the first year since 1998 that both crop and livestock producers receipts have dropped in the same year and you have to look farther back in history, believe it or not, to find another year when receipts dropped at the same time for both crop and livestock in the same year. So it’s an unusual year when that occurs.

Well it’s not exactly the kind of big cash crop you’d expect.  Idaho State Police investigators and Gem County Sheriff's deputies have located a major marijuana growing operation in the backcountry near the small town of Ola. Thousands of plants have been spotted in a well hidden area. Officers have been working to remove the plants and say this is part of bigger drug problem in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Several large marijuana growing operations were busted in central and eastern Idaho earlier this summer. No word yet on whether any arrests have been made.

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

The old warning “be careful you don’t cut your nose off to spite your face” is one that is very familiar to most of us, and has been issued in my general direction more than once or twice. Perhaps someone should heed that warning to those critics that have decided to fight and hinder the research and development of biotechnologies that could help provide food to starving third world countries.  While they are busy debating agriculture and food production issues people around the world continue to watch their loved ones slowly succumb to the ravages of starvation. It’s easy to argue over how one thinks crops should be grown and cultivated when one has a full pantry. The world’s population is well over six billion and is predicted to double in the next fifty to sixty years. It is not farfetched then to consider food shortages extending beyond third world countries and encroaching on our shores. Ensuring adequate food supplies for generations to come is going to be challenging at best and nearly impossible if these critics of biotechnology and even certain conventional farming techniques have their way.

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