Farm Dust Bill & Lay-offs

Farm Dust Bill & Lay-offs plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

A new bill would choke off EPA efforts to impose stringent new dust rules on the nation’s farmers and ranchers. The bipartisan Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act - introduced by South Dakota Representative Kristi Noem - would halt EPA plans to tighten the current dust standard for one year. Ashley Lyon is Deputy Environmental Counsel for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

LYON: Areas are different and dust across the United States is different in different areas so given the state and local authorities the first chance to regulate dust in the way they see appropriate is an important feature of this bill and one that we fully support.

Washington state’s Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic has cut 50 jobs due to cuts in state reimbursements for Medicaid. Most of those jobs are in the Yakima Valley. The cuts represent a 3.8 percent reduction in staff. The Farm Worker’s Clinics have operations in Washington and Oregon. Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital has eliminated 34 jobs over a period spanning from last October to January due to similar budget problems.

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

At least it’s a step in the right direction. After months of legal battles involving organic sugar beet growers and genetically modified sugar beet growers, GM growers have been given the go ahead to plant biotech sugar beet seed. The difference this planting season over past planting seasons though lies in how GM sugar beet growers plant their crop. Before they even started putting seed in the ground they were required to complete an online training session to help them meet the new government requirements that have come about through the litigation process. During planting growers are now required to have precautionary measures in place that assure no GM seed is spilled as they move from field to field. Also, they’ll need to monitor the crop during growing season for possible bolter seed and finally, carefully avoid spillage of any beets during harvest. All in all, most growers feel these new requirements are worth the trouble, if it means being able to grow superior sugar beet varieties. Will this stop the lawsuits? Sadly, probably not, but just maybe it will restrict litigations to those which involve any actual harm done.

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