Exports Are Booming, Idaho Wind & Farming Myths

Exports Are Booming, Idaho Wind & Farming Myths plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

The future of Idaho's sales tax rebate for wind power developments is in limbo after a lawmaker introduced a measure to scuttle a deal that industry and utilities worked out last Friday. Republican Rep. Ken Roberts of Donnelly introduced a bill to extend the 6 percent sales tax rebate on qualifying purchases by geothermal, low-impact hydro, biomass and landfill gas projects until 2014. It dumps the five-year-old sales tax rebate for wind and solar projects after July 1.

The Department of Agriculture is working hard to meet President Obama’s charge to double the nation’s exports over the next five years according to Janet Nuzum with USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

NUZUM: Ag exports on a calendar year basis last year reached a record high of almost $116-billion dollars.

Alex McGregor, president of the large Colfax, WA-based fertilizer and farm supply company that bears his name recently told a class of agriculture students at Columbia Basin College there are many myths about agriculture but he added that young people need to realize there are many attractive careers to be had in agriculture. There are about 40 students are in the CBC ag program right now, up from a few years ago, the program almost folded.

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

Anyone who doesn’t know about “no driving while texting or cell phoning laws” either lives in a bubble or simply doesn’t drive. The National Safety Council estimates that over twenty-five percent of all auto crashes in the U.S. are a result of drivers who are texting or using their cell phones. So it comes as no surprise that the dangers of texting while farming would come to the forefront. Most farmers drive a minimum of three to four different large farming vehicles or machinery a day from tractors, flail mowers, combines and balers, foragers, to grain trucks, just to mention a few, any of which offer operating hazards in their own right. Throw in the distraction of using a cell phone and the danger levels become extreme. And while heavy traffic and other drivers aren’t usually an issue while working a field the importance of farmers keeping their mind on the job can’t be stressed enough. Overall farm safety has improved greatly over the last several years, but texting while farming is fairly new on the scene. Farmers need to be pro-active when it comes to this newest farm safety issue by making the smart choice; texting and farming, don’t do it!

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