Mexico Trucking, Murry's Wheat Award & Idaho Revamps License

Mexico Trucking, Murry’s Wheat Award & Idaho Revamps License plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

U.S. Senator Patty Murray from Washington received the National Association of Wheat Growers’ 2010 “Wheat Leader of the Year award,” the wheat industry’s highest public service award because of her proven leadership in securing funding for agricultural research, her support for beneficial farm bill programs, and her efforts to secure funding to dredge the Columbia River to increase the flow of agricultural products throughout Washington state.

Idaho will be unveiling a new driver's license and identification card design in a few months. The cards have been in the planning stage for over a year and officials say the reason for the new design is to improve the security and safety of Idahoans.

Idaho hasn't upgraded their driver's licenses in almost 10 years.

Washington Congressman Doc Hastings says there is a little good news on the Mexico trucking issue.

HASTINGS: The good news is the discussions have started which is something that has been absent for the last, nearly 2 years. Now when I spoke to Transportation LaHood on this issue, he said it would take a while in order for this to get itself worked out. But the mere fact that it is moving in a positive direction is good news.

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

2011 has been deemed the International Year of Forests by The United Nations General Assembly in order to raise awareness on sustainable conservation, development, and management of all types of forests.  Often when people in the U.S.think of saving forests they think of rain forests and jungles half way around the world. In reading the proposed activities planned by the Department of State one gets the sense of it being ambiguous. The lack of sound federal forest management has left our nation’s forests and the rural communities whose livelihoods depend on these forests to die a slow and completely unnecessary death. With each new lawsuit filed blocking sound forest management practices another community is sentenced to poverty, and another forest is destined to destruction by disease, pestilence or fire. In the government’s misguided efforts to do right by our nation’s forests they have ultimately created the very thing they were seeking to prevent, the destruction of our forests healthy ecosystems. While it’s good to be concerned about global deforestation, it is vitally important that we take action to sustain forests and their communities in our own backyard.

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