More Troubles & Ecology Making Changes

More Troubles & Ecology Making Changes plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

A failed farm bill is not the only trouble agriculture faces. Come January 1st - automatic spending cuts and dramatic tax hikes also loom unless a lame duck Congress acts. American Farm Bureau Federation’s Pat Wolff says unless a lame duck Congress acts to head off so-called sequestration and tax break lapses - January 1st is looking ugly. Some USDA programs would be cut more than eight-percent.

WOLFF: The programs that would be cut by 8.2% would include things like ag research, extension, food safety, marketing and inspection activities and rural development telecommunications. Those kind of things.

On Friday the Washington Department of Ecology began formal rule-making activities to adopt new human health-based water quality standards for toxics. The new standards will include updating assumptions about how much fish Washingtonians eat. The state's water quality standards are important because they guide how the state regulates water pollution. The human health-based standards are particularly important because their goal is to keep Washington's fish and shellfish the cleanest in the nation and protect people who eat them. The effort is part of Ecology's job responsibilities as the agency delegated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to carry out the Clean Water Act in Washington.

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

Will September 30 really come and go without a passing of the Farm Bill? It appears so. It is hard to believe that House and Senate leadership would be quite as clueless, or perhaps more accurately, as callous as to believe that not reauthorizing the Farm Bill will mean that no one will really suffer “down on the farm”; USDA projects record farm income after all. To believe this is akin to not being able to see the forest for the trees. Perhaps a reality check on where a substantial amount of that income might be coming from is in order. Could it be in part to rather large crop insurance payouts due to the worst drought in over fifty years? With this year’s corn crop being a lost cause and livestock being liquidated at record rates, that record farm income will more than likely start to slide back down pretty quickly. Sadly, there are many out there, including some members of Congress, who believe that the Farm Bill is about paying farmers not to farm. We as a nation tend to take farmers for granted. There will always be farmers, there will always be food, right? Yes, there will always be farmers, but how many will survive is the real question.

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