Ag Industry Responds

Ag Industry Responds plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Late last week the Department of Labor decided to drop their stance on youth or child labor regulations due to pressure from the ag industry and others. A statement from the White House said: “The Obama administration is firmly committed to promoting family farmers and respecting the rural way of life, especially the role that parents and other family members play in passing those traditions down through the generations and deeply committed to listening and responding to what Americans across the country have to say about proposed rules and regulations.” Earlier this week Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack predicted this would happen.

VILSACK: A recognition by the Department of Labor, by this Administration and certainly by the USDA of the value of hard work and responsibility and the lessons that can be taught on the farm.

Also almost en masse the ag industry has responded to the Senate’s version of the 2012 Food, Farm and Jobs bill...and most of it is praise although there are some hold outs. Southerners upset by the impact of subsidy cuts on peanuts, rice and cotton vowed a floor fight.

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

Lake Superior State University has been releasing an annual list of “banished words” for thirty-seven years now. These are words that LSSU deems as misused, overused and generally useless. This year’s list finally includes the highly overused “amazing”. There had apparently been so much over-use of the word by television programs hosts, and reality TV stars that a Facebook page was started encouraging people to submit the word to LSSU for inclusion. Other words and phrases on this year’s list are occupy, baby bump, man cave, shared sacrifice, win the future, and three words that would make Sarah Palin proud, blowback - a word made up by corporate types for backlash, trickeration - used by football analysts to describe trickery, and ginormous - a combination of gigantic and enormous, which must mean really, really, really big. At some time or another we have all been guilty of using, if not these particular offenders, then some that would be considered equally annoying. While LSSU’s list of banished words isn’t an effort to control the language, as some people have perceived it to be, it is a tool meant to inspire people to think about the language they use to express themselves.

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