Pumpkin Shortage & Libraries Get Boost

Pumpkin Shortage & Libraries Get Boost plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. If you are like me and really enjoy a good book there is good news if you live in a rural area where libraries are few and far between. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says the government is making an investment in rural libraries. VILSACK: We're investing nearly $15 million dollars of recovery money in an effort to leverage an additional $10 million dollars of local support to help repair leaky roofs and create meeting rooms in libraries; to help build new libraries; to assist in the establishment and construction of computer labs and purchasing equipment for more than 70 libraries. Allowing some libraries to use the funds to install for the very first time bar-coding equipment, all of this working very well with our efforts to expand broadband to communities across rural America. Last years devastating pumpkin shortage due to wet weather had many people hording canned pumpkin and prices soaring. Well it looks like you can rejoice and break out the pumpkin pie. This year's crop looks great and there should be plenty of pumpkin to go around. Nestle, which sells about 85 percent of the canned pumpkin in the U.S. under its Libby's brand, said customer inquiries have grown five-fold since last fall, when it warned it might not have enough to get through the holidays. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. Nearly a year ago several US organic standard holders were quoted as saying that a crackdown by the USDA on the misuse of the term "organic" on products was not expected to come to pass any time soon. They were wrong. The National Organic Standards Board, a Congress appointed panel to the USDA, working to obtain general agreement in the organic community for informed regulatory decisions, has obviously been successful in recommending that the USDA get tough on the misuse of the word organic or misrepresentation of organic status by producers or companies. The manner in which the USDA National Organic Program has decided to get tough is hitting most companies and operations where it hurts, in the pocketbook. For nearly the first time ever hefty financial penalties are being issued in the organic community by the USDA, which will hopefully help remove the chaff, so to speak, from the industry. With this and other new operating procedures now in place for the NOP a much more effective auditing and enforcement entity within the USDA should be forthwith, and "organic integrity" should be the resulting outcome. Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.