Mitigating Climate Change & Genetic Labels

Mitigating Climate Change & Genetic Labels plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

There is a quote that says “Everybody Talks About the Weather, But Nobody Does Anything About It.” But in this case when it comes to climate change, farmers can indeed do something about it according to USDA’s Climate Change Program Director Bill Hohenstein.

HOHENSTEIN: Enhancing soil organic matter, employing conservation practices can help. And we saw that last year with farmers that had better soil that had conservation practices in place did better in the drought. They bought bigger equipment, they had shorter planting windows, they got in and out of the field much quicker. They drained a lot of fields. There’s a lot more tiling going in in the midwest.

Does it matter to you if the foods you eat are genetically modified? That will be put to the test come November in Washington State as legislators are sending Initiative 522 to the ballot. 522 would require labels on genetically engineered food. 63 countries have mandatory labeling laws and many have bans or other restrictions against genetically engineered crops and foods according to the web site labelitwa.org. Some farm groups are afraid this initiative would created unwarranted fears of what supporters call “Frankenfoods.” How about you? Let me know what you think.

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

It is sad in this day and age that the poaching and smuggling of protected wildlife and wildlife parts still goes on around the globe. From elephants tusks and rhinoceros horns to aquatic sea life the smuggling trade continues to thrive at an alarming rate. Poachers have killed roughly two thirds of Africa’s few remaining forest elephants over the the last decade. Thankfully, man’s best friend is stepping up to help make things harder for wildlife smugglers. Butter, Lancer, Locket and Viper are recent graduates of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s new wildlife detector dog teams, ready to sniff out illegal wildlife shipments at airports, ports of entry, and even UPS and FedEx shipping centers. The four dogs spent thirteen weeks training with their human counterparts in order to sniff out illegal wildlife shipments. Detector dogs with the Fish and Wildlife Service are normally trained to sniff out fruits and plants to intercept potential insects or diseases that could hurt U.S. agriculture. It only makes sense to put their keen sense of smell to work sniffing out smuggled wildlife parts and products, before the trafficking of protected wildlife pushes another species to the brink of extinction.

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