U.S. - Columbia FTA & Farm To School

U.S. - Columbia FTA & Farm To School plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced yesterday that USDA will be investing in farm to school programs nationwide to help eligible schools improve the health and wellbeing of their students and connect with local agricultural producers.

MERRIGAN: It’s really, really important because it is drawing people back to American agriculture at a time when we need to transition our working lands, where the average age of farmers is in creasing and we need to bring young people back on the farms and ranches and why not start early interesting children about agriculture from K through elementary, middle school all the way through high school.

The U.S. - Columbia Free Trade agreement should be complete in about a month’s time, May 15th. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk called it a historic step. Collectively here the northwests approximately 25% of agriculture products will be affected.The agreement promises to help level the playing field for northwest exports and will eliminate tariffs for over 87 percent of U.S. exports of consumer and industrial products within 5 years. The agreement will also expand U.S. goods exports alone by more than $1.1 billion and give key U.S. goods and services duty free access in sectors from manufacturing to agriculture.

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

Because the estate tax, more commonly referred to as the death tax, is one of the leading causes of the breakup of multi-generation family farms and ranches, farm groups are making another push for permanent and meaningful estate tax relief. This outdated tax forces farming and ranching families to sell off land, equipment, parts of the farming operation, or sometimes even the entire farm or ranch to pay off tax liabilities on assets that have probably been taxed several times already in the course of a lifetime. Currently, estates worth more than $5 million per individual or $10 million per couple are taxed at a 35 percent rate, but that expires at the end of this year. Legislation that would reform the estate tax has been introduced in both houses of Congress. If Congress doesn’t act though, the exemption drops to one million and the top tax rate above the exclusion amount jumps to 55 percent. Since a permanent estate tax repeal is highly unlikely, most farm groups are in support of keeping the estate tax at its current levels. For now, estate tax relief remains an uncertainty. One thing is certain, the death tax hurts family owned farms and ranches hardest.

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