Abandoning Tourism Marketing & Food Prices Holding Steady

Abandoning Tourism Marketing & Food Prices Holding Steady plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

A trip to the grocery store can quickly sort out the men from the boys so to speak. Food prices have been on a steady march upwards but even so, not enough to make USDA analysts raise their 2011 forecasts for overall food price inflation. USDA Economist, Ephriam Leibtag.

LEIBTAG: I think that with the fruit prices coming down a little bit we were able to just keep it in that range. Already we’ve seen meat products with a rather high inflation so beef products are still forecast 7 to 8% higher for this year, pork 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 and poultry 2 1/2 to 3 1/2. That’s the one that actually on the low end of all the protein products.

Washington State has made a drastic budget decision. Stop marketing for tourism. Many states have cut back on their marketing but Washington is now the only state that has eliminated spending to get more people to visit. Washington's tourism spending dropped in recent years from about $7 million annually to about $2 million annually. To fill this void, Washington's tourism industry has established a new organization to promote the state. It will take over some state assets like the tourism website but is still trying to identify a way to steadily fund a marketing campaign.

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

Often research labs and agencies base findings on worst case scenarios that have been entered into a simulated computer modulation. This method of exaggerated testing usually results in extreme regulations being put into effect for numerous industries, the agriculture industry included. The Environmental Protection Agency has a long track record of just this sort of testing. This type of methodology is flawed for the simple reason that it doesn’t reflect reality. In an attempt to enlighten EPA officials to the realities of pesticide use by farmers, normally a much lower concentration used in fewer treatments, the Washington Association of Wheat Growers put together a tour to show them how farmers use pesticides and to what degree. Hopefully the information gleamed by the EPA on this tour will help them become better educated on what farmers really do in the field, and will give them the opportunity to base their determinations on truth rather than computer modulated fiction; because nothing is quite as bad as having those in positions of power lacking proper knowledge or information. In other words, clueless.

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