Changes in Organics & Web-Based Payment Calculator

Changes in Organics & Web-Based Payment Calculator plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

A move to an independent program will mean more funding and more visibility within USDA for the National Organic Program. N.O.P.’s Deputy Administrator Miles McElvoy.

MCELVOY: The programs funding has gone from about one and a half million dollars in 2006 to about 7 million dollars this year so it’s increasing in terms of its resources that it has to have that oversight over these certification agencies and to do adequate compliance and enforcement work. It also has direct access to the administrators office so it has a higher visibility within the agricultural marketing service and enables issues that are important to the organic community and to implementing the national organic program to have more traction, more visibility so we can move things forward.

USDA has unveiled a web-based 2008 crop program payment calculator to help producers calculate the financial benefits they may receive under the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payments program. The calculator, designed by USDA's Farm Service Agency, will give producers a tool to help them better understand and participate in this new crop disaster program. The calculator provides an estimated 2008 program payment to help producers better understand what they may qualify for under SURE and is available on the FSA website.

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

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That has obviously been Washington D.C.‘s motto since the “New Deals” Roosevelt administration and continues to be yet today.  The Bush administration was under the impression that destroying the poppy crops in Afghanistan would be the push Afghan farmers needed to get them to produce legal crops. It didn’t work. The opium trade is bigger and richer than ever. Up steps the Obama administration with a revised plan to provide the Afghan Agriculture Ministry with twenty million in funding in order to aide them in getting the resources, expertise and services  to Afghan farmers for the production of legitimate crops. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack has spoken of the utmost importance in making sure Afghan farmers understand the value and opportunity of legal crops. I’m sure they do, Afghan farmers were once major exporters of dried fruit and nuts. I’m also sure they understand the cash cow they have in poppy crops; a crop that is a lot less labor intensive and definitely a lot more lucrative.  

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