Ammonia Accident & Going Mobile

Ammonia Accident & Going Mobile plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Accidental exposure to ammonia has led to the death of a Simplot subcontractor. 23-year-old Derrick E. Martinez of Garden City, Kan., died Wednesday after being found unconscious in a mobile testing trailer at the plant near Pocatella. Martinez was flown to a Utah hospital where he died. Martinez worked for a Simplot subcontractor, Blick's Phosphate Conversion.

The Agriculture Department continues to increase resources to its customers through smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. USDA Director of Web Communications Amanda Eamich explains the continuing growth of mobile digital options to obtain USDA information and resources.

EAMICH: Part of our mission at Department of Agriculture, we’re certainly committed to providing the best possible service to all of our customers regardless of where they are and part of the digital government strategy is making sure those services and information are available any time, any where and on any device. So we’ve been doing a lot of work on USDA.gov to make sure that information is relevant, it’s current. We’ve been streamlining our website and improving our search tool to make sure that people can get to that information. As part of this we made the website mobile optimized. As we know a lot of our customers are in the field and on the go so it’s important to make sure they don’t have to wait for a large website to load on a mobile device.

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

The week or so prior to Memorial Day weekend brings back memories for me of my grandmother carefully picking her best peonies, wrapping them in newspaper, and storing them in the old refrigerator in her garage until it was time to take them to the cemetery to decorate the graves of loved ones. Peonies remain one of my favorite flowers probably because they remind me of my grandmother. Grandma had a yard full of beautiful flowers, and good thing, because we always visited and decorated the graves of several relatives. I have moved far away from my childhood home and I’m no longer able to visit our families “people garden”, as my nephew used to call cemeteries. Isn’t it amazing how children can come up with such simple yet accurate descriptions. This great distance between myself and “home” doesn’t stop me from remembering those times and people. Originally named Decoration Day to honor those who died while serving in the military, Memorial Day has now come to encompass that and so much more. It is a time to remember service men and women, remember family members, and remember who we are and what we value.

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