Streamlining Government & Food Prices Are Up

Streamlining Government & Food Prices Are Up plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

A visit to your local grocer can quickly validate this next story.  Led by a rise in vegetable prices, food prices as a whole in the February Consumer Price Index increased according to Economist Ephraim Leibtag.

LEIBTAG: There were some big increases in vegetable prices and a lot of that has to do with the temporary kind of weather issues, freeze that we’ve seen. And so although a lot of the fresh vegetable prices are up quite a bit thins month I don’t think that’s a long-term problem. I think the higher prices we’ve seen for wheat we’ve seen over the last few months take a longer time to reach through to the final retail product so although some of the bakery products did not rise that much I think we’re going to see that down the road.

Recently, President Obama sent a memo to the heads of all executive branch agencies directing them to assist in the development of a plan to restructure and streamline the federal government. Officials are creating a Government Reform for Competitiveness and Innovation Initiative that will start with a comprehensive review of the federal agencies and programs involved in trade and competitiveness. The President's Export Council that handles trade and exports is slated to be the first area of focus. Trade issues are currently handled by 12 different agencies, which lead to fragmentation of roles and responsibilities.

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

Just what sugar beet growers don’t need during the on going litigation over the rights to plant biotech sugar beets is a judge that considers himself the Laurence Olivier of the judicial stage, quoting Shakespeare and other less noteworthy story tellers. I’m speaking of federal Judge Sidney Thomas, who is presiding over the court case which pits environmentalists and organic sugar beet growers against the USDA and the mainstream sugar beet industry. Thomas recently used the book Jurassic Park as an example, issuing forth possible parallels between the real world sugar beet issue and the piece of fiction about dinosaurs. Yes, a judge has to take into consideration all views and possibilities, but to what extent should the “what if game” be pursued? Perhaps Judge Thomas should explore further the very Shakespeare he’s so fond of quoting to discover  “fair discourse”, he may find that “conscience does make cowards of us all”.  Will the development of biotech crops be slowed to a mere crawl by requiring longer and longer environmental studies, or even worse, stopped entirely because of a fear of the unknown?

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