Fruit Freeze & Request For Proposal
Fruit Freeze & Request For Proposal plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.
The weather is sure giving some farmers a cold shoulder. Freezing temps are rolling across a large part of the northern U.S. and that could damage crops. USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey, outlines what fruit crop states might be hit.
RIPPEY: The big states we’d be looking at here would be Michigan, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania. There’s of course a tremendous amount of cherry activity and other specialty crops in Michigan and you move into the northern Atlantic region and you have a lot of peaches and apples that could be vulnerable to temperatures in the 20’s.
The Oregon Department of Agriculture has issued a "Request for Proposal" to further understand the interaction of fertilizers, agricultural amendments, or agricultural minerals with ground or surface water. There are two categories in the proposal that the ODA is seeking in the RFP: One category is to distribute up to $50,000 per year for up to three years for projects conducted within the Lower Umatilla Basin Ground Water Management Area . The second category is for $20,000 per year, also up to three years which can be conducted within the same or other areas within the State.
Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.
Seems the nation’s food police aren’t doing so well when it comes to winning frivolous lawsuits, and thank goodness for that. The latest dismissal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s lawsuit against McDonald’s, where the CSPI argued that Happy meal toys were making kids fat, is just one of many in a long series of court defeats for this group. Remember when CSPI sued Denny’s over the salt content of its food, or how about the groups similar lawsuits against KFC and Burger King over trans fats - all of which have been thrown out of court. What’s not so good is the sad fact that legally worthless lawsuits such as these clog court systems for months, sometimes years. Judges are generally reluctant to find an action frivolous, so as not to discourage people from using the courts to resolve disputes, but in these instances it’s good the judges overseeing these cases had the wherewithal to deem them as the invalid and frivolous tripe that they really were. Now, for wasting the court’s and other parties’ time, sanctions should be imposed by the court upon the lawyers who present such frivolous claims.
Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
