Facing Disasters & LightSquared Fails

Facing Disasters & LightSquared Fails plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Will budget cuts mean that the new farm bill will leave farmers without a financial safety net? Not if Agriculture Secretary Vilsack has anything to say about it.

VILSACK: We need to have something that will also supplement crop insurance so if you are faced with a natural disaster or you’re faced with a serious decline in commodity prices and you are facing a huge increase in input costs that you can weather that storm. And that’s why I think you are going to see some kind of revenue protection program that’s going to be discussed.

A test of the LightSquared network shows there would be significant interference with global positioning systems from the mobile broadband carrier. A federal committee charged with testing the network unanimously agreed that none of LightSquared’s proposals to combat GPS interference would work. The report said there appear to be no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or years without significantly interfering with GPS. LightSquared said that a test showing interference between its service and GPS systems was rigged by manufacturers of GPS receivers and government workers to produce bogus results.

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

The firebombs that destroyed fourteen cattle trucks at the family owned Harris Ranch in California January 8 was touted by the North American Animal Liberation group as being done in protest of “the horrors and injustices of factory farming”. What could possibly be more horrific than a group of proto-terrorists who feel acts of criminal violence and destruction are somehow their inalienable right. They are not the “heroes” they think themselves to be. Quite the contrary, such groups that direct acts of physical violence and property destruction at persons having opposing beliefs or views are nothing short of cowards and thugs. Thankfully, no one was injured during this act of insanity, although the cost of the damage is immense. Isn’t it time members of the non-violent animal rights community, be it animal rights leaders or the companies that profit through association with the animal rights movement, make a public stand against this type of terrorism done in the name of animal rights? Their response of, “We don’t support or condone such acts of violence, but we understand their motivation”, should no longer be allowed as a shield to hide behind. You either condone violence, or you don’t.

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