Tillamook Fined & Honeybee Discovery
Tillamook Fined & Honeybee Discovery plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.
A discovery has led researchers to perhaps find one of the factors behind the sudden drop in honeybee populations. Researcher Greg Hunt of Purdue University explains how seed treatments used at planting time could possibly be a contributor to declining honeybee populations.
HUNT: We found that at the time of planting they could be exposed to this talc which contains about 1% of the pesticide by concentration and it can also be translocated through the plant because it’s a very stable compound. We found it in the soil in fields that hadn’t had corn in them for several years and we found it in the corn pollen itself later in the season, and the bees collected that corn pollen. But the only times we see acute toxicity so far is when corn is planted.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has issued a $3,711 penalty to the Tillamook County Creamery Association, which operates a dairy processing plant at 4185 Highway 101 North in Tillamook, for discharging wastes into nearby Boquist Slough without a permit. DEQ has also told the creamery association it must repair storm water collection system problems at the plant and increase discharge monitoring until repairs are complete.
Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.
When was the last time you chatted with your neighbor over the backyard fence? Can’t remember? You’re not alone. A new Pew Research study cites that more than fifty percent of us don’t even know our neighbors names. Socializing strictly through the media has obviously made us a nation that now prefers to socialize alone. In an attempt to recapture the days of actually knowing your neighbor, the first private social network for neighborhoods, called Nextdoor, was created. It's designed to help neighbors connect and communicate online about important information, services, and goings-on in their specific communities. Around for about a year now it’s quickly caught on, and now includes over two hundred neighborhoods in forty-three states. Each site is owned and maintained by locals actually living in the neighborhood, with neighbors choosing how much information they want to disclose on their personal profiles. While not ideal, it is after all still communicating through social media instead of actual face to face communication, it’s at least a start. Perhaps it will prompt people to truly get to know the neighbors behind the on-line profiles.
Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
