Earth Day & EU Trade Agreement

Earth Day & EU Trade Agreement plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Yesterday was the 43rd annual Earth Day celebration with many events happening around the U.S. Acting Rural Utilities Service Administrator, John Padalino, gives an examples of an Earth Day project being funded this year.

PADALINO: The city of Grand Rivers and Livingston County, Kentucky - we’re announcing an award to receive a $3.6-million dollar loan and a $2.4-million dollar grant that will help construct a new waste water treatment plant and modify an existing pump station. What does this have to do with Earth Day? Well a waste water treatment plant improves the environment. It takes waste water, it treats it and it makes it so it’s safe to be put back in our rivers, streams, bays and things like that and so when this projects completed it will allow the city to provide safe and reliable sanitary sewer service and this will benefit the 715 waste water customers in rural Livingston County.

According to the top trade official for the European Union - free trade negotiations with the U.S. should be concluded before the end of next year. Predictions are the talks will be completed before the midterm elections in the U.S. It’s anticipated an agreement between the U.S. and EU would foster growth and jobs by lowering tariffs and removing other trade barriers for most industries. But negotiations aren’t expected to be easy - in part due to disagreements over the ag sector.

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

Mom always knows best right? Well, according to a recent survey commissioned by U.S. corn and soybean farmers there are five things that Moms get wrong at the grocery store. The survey wasn’t done with the intent of proving Moms wrong, it was done to identify some of the misunderstandings that consumers may have about food at the grocery store. One of those five things was misunderstanding the definition of organic production. A whopping 84% of Moms believe that organic food is farmed completely without pesticides, fertilizers, or herbicides, while in fact there are more than fifty synthetic pesticides that may be used in organic crop production if other pest control substances fail. Also, Moms reported that they felt feeding hormone free poultry and pork to their families was important, but that they would have to pay a lot more for it. Truth be told, poultry or pork labeled hormone free shouldn’t cost more as the USDA prohibits farmers from using hormones to raise chickens and pigs. Another interesting belief by Moms came to light during the survey and that’s that 70% of Moms believe the family farm is nearly extinct, when according to the USDA out of the 2.2 million farms in the U.S. 96% to 98% of them are family farms.

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