Gas Prices & Looking at the Drought

Gas Prices & Looking at the Drought plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

2012 will go down in the record books as one of the worst drought seasons in history and the effects will be felt for a long time. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack explains some of the ways USDA has aided ag producers dealing with drought impacts to their crops and livestock.

VILSACK: We did provide expanded credit opportunities so that we got other federal agencies involved in providing credit. We talked about double cropping and the Risk Management Agencies work with crop insurance to reduce the barriers that exist currently to encourage double cropping so that we have forage opportunities next spring. We talked a little bit about the CRP program and the need for us to continue to look for creative ways but at the end of the day it all comes back to one thing and that is Congress getting a Food, Farms and Jobs bill passed through the process.

Gas prices across the northwest have been all over the place lately but AAA is reporting that the average price of gas has been dropping. Today’s national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline is $3.79.  This price is three cents less expensive than one week ago and eight cents less expensive than one month ago, but still 34 cents more expensive than one year ago. 

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

Given time, what’s old becomes new again. Baby boomers can easily attest to that, as the styles we wore in high school are being worn again by the teenagers in our house, and remakes of our favorite songs are done on a daily basis. Going a step further in the what’s old is new again scene, artist Martin Rauch built his dream home from rammed earth. People have been making houses from packed earth since ancient times. Many of our ancestors lived in sod houses during the frontier settlement of our country. If any were alive today, they’d probably tell you it was done out of necessity, not preference. It’s not as easy as packing some dirt into the shape you want. Rammed earth homes need to be made water resistant. Nothing like a gully washer to return an unfortified earth home to whence it came. But if you feel industrious and have more than an ample amount of time on your hands, then you too can have your very own energy efficient, environmentally conscious, sustainable home. Strange though, rammed earth or sod was once thought of as the “poor man’s” building material. Now, because the cost of skilled labor is so high, pretty much only the wealthiest of people can have a home made of dirt.

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