Urban Farmer & Cutting Off Funding

Urban Farmer & Cutting Off Funding plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

The House Appropriations Committee adopted an important amendment that will protect domestic agriculture, hopefully requiring the EPA to use sound science over radical regulation when it comes to pesticide buffers. Washington Congressman Doc Hastings explains.

HASTINGS: Because this regulation process was on-going, the only way that we can affect that immediately is by going through the funding source and what we did was to go through the funding source by denying funding for EPA to carry out this regulatory process.

More and more people in urban areas are getting involved in agriculture practices whether it’s a simple container garden or raising small animals. but thousands of people in the Treasure Valley are adding to their home-grown choices and growing chickens in their subdivisions. More cities are approving chickens as pets for people living on smaller plots of land, even in neighborhoods. Caldwell is the latest in Idaho’s Treasure Valley with its revised ordinance taking effect at the end of June. Be sure and check your local ordinances before adding chickens or any small animals to your back yard.

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

This coming Saturday you might want to put aside some time to join the Bee-a-thon, a free online event happening worldwide in order to focus attention on the plight of bees. Over the last several years the world’s honey bee population has been disappearing, to such an extent that it has been designated Colony Collapse Disorder. There have been numerous studies trying to understand why this is happening, but scientists are still not sure of the true cause. To try and better understand why bees are dying off citizen observers have been keeping an eye on any bee activity in their gardens and reporting back to The Great Sunflower Project; a California based project that has been helping scientists map pollinators here in the United States. Saturday’s live Bee-a-thon broadcast will have leading experts in bee keeping, education, horticulture, and science. And since it’s an interactive online event you can pose any questions you might have right on the spot. Why not be the first in your neighborhood to have a “backyard bee party”, and get family and friends to join you in the first of many celebrations in honor of bees; those small creatures that provide an essential and nearly priceless pollination service to we humans.

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