Mexico Trucking Issue & NW Home Sales

Mexico Trucking Issue & NW Home Sales plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently discussed the continuing efforts to address a trucking dispute between the U.S. and Mexico. VILSACK: We obviously are anxiously awaiting the resolution of the trucking dispute. Secretary LaHood and his counterpart in Mexico have a working team and they have been meeting and discussing this issue and our hope is that that will result in an agreement that will reduce and eliminate the tariffs that Mexico has imposed on some of our products which obviously impacted our markets. Idaho Senator Mike Crapo has introduced bipartisan legislation that would bring more efficiency to the trucking industry and help transport goods to consumers more safely and effectively by increasing truck weights from 80,000 to 97,000 on the Interstate System in any state that would opt in to the plan. Thinking of buying or selling a new home in the northwest? According to a new report home sales in Washington surged in the second quarter compared to a year ago, but median prices continued to decline. Meanwhile homeowners in Bend, Oregon are seeing housing values decline at a steeper rate than any other metropolitan area in the nation during the past year. Obviously coming out of this recession has a lot of people scratching their heads. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. We have all driven by homes that have a sign in the yard touting a particular siding, paint, or lawn care company. In seeing those signs we don't generally assume that any one of these companies own the house, we realize that they have just performed a service for the home owner. Interestingly, that same level of awareness doesn't seem to apply when people drive by a farmer's field and see a seed company sign. A recent survey of urban consumers reports that most think family farms are owned by large corporations, based merely on the simple act of seeing these signs along fields of growing crops. It would seem a small and fairly unimportant misconception, but can actually cause extensive damage to the relationship between consumers and their local farmers. A large percentage of people report to have trust in family farms, which the majority of our nation's farms are, yet they don't trust corporate farms. Be aware, seed signs are not announcing farm ownership by the seed corporation, simply that a particular seed was purchased by the farmer for a well growing crop, a source of pride for the farmer and the seed salesman. Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.