CRP, Carbon Footprint and Winemaker Passing

CRP, Carbon Footprint and Winemaker Passing plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

From the file of physician heal thyself…President Obama has signed an executive order directing each federal government agency to measure its greenhouse-gas emissions and set targets to reduce them by 2020. The measure affects such things as the electricity federal buildings consume and the carbon output of federal workers' commutes. Each agency must report its 2020 emission targets to the Council on Environmental Quality within 90 days.

Officials are working through the process to get new rules and regs for the Conservation Reserve Program in place so farmers can know what will happen to expiring contracts and if there will be a general signup next year. FSA’s Jonathan Coppess is not sure.

COPPESS: We’re in an unfortunate time period of uncertainty, I understand that.

They must first complete an environmental impact statement.

COPPESS: It’s in draft form. We’re holding public meetings under this comment period, that actually ends Friday, October 9^th and from that point on, we take in all the comments, evaluate them. From that we draft the final EIS which goes to an evaluation process and publish that.

David Lake, one of the most influential people in the history of the Washington wine industry, passed away Monday after a lengthy illness. Lake suffered from several health issues in recent years. Lake pioneered and promoted such grape varieties as Pinot Gris, Viognier, Merlot and Cabernet Franc

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

We’ve seen it in the movies for years; we’ve even experienced it ourselves first hand thanks to new age technology. I’m talking about long distance conference call meetings where everyone can join in no matter how far away their office. Ok, now how about long distance wine tasting? Think it can’t be done, think again. Oregon winemakers have recently joined Hong Kong business people in a wine tasting event without ever leaving their tasting rooms. With the help of FedEx shipping and videoconferencing technology Willamette Valley vineyard owners were able to share their fine wines with distributors and restaurateurs who were sitting in a tasting room over six thousand miles away. The piece de resistance was being able to actually have visual contact as a group. With the recent elimination of import duties and sales tax on alcoholic beverages of 30 percent or less alcohol content by Hong Kong the videoconference couldn’t have came at a better time. They’ve always said it’s a small world, and it just keeps getting smaller all the time.

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