Milfoil Mess & Food Stamp Fight

Milfoil Mess & Food Stamp Fight plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

A food stamp fight is brewing in the Senate between those opposed to cuts and those who argue the farm bill spends too much on food stamps. Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions argues the farm bill will spend 82-billion on food stamps next year - even after cuts - and 770-billion over 10-years - almost all of what the farm bill spends. Sessions complains food stamp spending has soared in the last 10-years due to both a poor economy and relaxed eligibility standards.

SESSIONS: So to put these figures into perspective and it’s so large it’s difficult to comprehend, we will spend next year $40-billion dollars on the federal highway problem but 80 on the food stamp program. Food stamp spending has more than quadrupled since the year 2001.

Milfoil is an invasive water weed that can tangle boat motors, swimmers, fishing line and even choke off the oxygen in water. The Idaho Department of Agriculture is scaling back funding to battle the Milfoil invasive species on Hayden Lake.  Rather than using chemicals to kill the plant across most of the lake, they'll only use it on parts of the water. Property owners will have to use their own money to combat the issue in their shore areas. In losing funding, they will soon look over the lake to find the areas hit by the Milfoil and kill it. 

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

The other day my son was laughingly telling me about how his young son, my grandson, told him that he thought his Dad had “scary super power” - he can always tell what his son is going to do before he does it! Little does my grandson know, it’s because his Dad remembers being that age in the not so distant past and having the same lack of common sense so to speak when it comes to making certain decisions. As parents, we all experience this type of deja vu. And hopefully by the time we do make it to parenthood common sense has become our new found super power. It’s too bad that same type of “common sense super power” doesn’t seem to extend to our governing bodies. The daily onslaught of new and generally unnecessary regulations imposed upon the ag industry and small businesses can be frustratingly costly, burdensome, and confusing; confusing because you find yourself wondering why there needs to be a regulation for something that should just be covered by plain old common sense. Increasing regulations imposed on the federal, state, and even local levels are making it nearly impossible for family farms and small rural communities to remain competitive in today’s global market, let alone simply survive.

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