8-25 FB Otter on Ag Economy

 Is it true that ag still provides one of the largest economic engines in the Gem State? I’m David Sparks and I’ll have an answer in a minute. In a sit-down interview with Governor Otter, I was interested in finding out about the long term health of agriculture in Idaho.

Ag has and traditionally ag has always been the stalwart because we’ve been fortunate for the most part when one commodity seems to be a little weak in the market place or there’s global over-production and therefore we find weaker markets, there’s some other commodity that picks up the slack. As we turn hay into milk and hay into beef, as we turn cereal grains into consumable meat products or other products I’m confident that it will always play a major role, but Dave, one of the things that the ag folks have been very forward thinking on is to take the new technology that becomes available from the high tech folks, software companies and they move forward with that and as they do, we’re able to add that to the agricultural industry whether it’s value added products, we produce more because of the high tech that we can add. We can process more we can process it better, faster, cheaper.