Confusion & Youth Farm Safety
Confusion & Youth Farm Safety plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.
So is the atmosphere and greenhouse gas trouble getting better or worse? Seems even the experts can't agree. According to a draft 2014 Climate Action Report released by the State Department - the U.S. made significant progress in reducing carbon pollution from 2009 to 2011. Average U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell to the lowest level for any three-year period since 1994 to 1996. Another report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that asserts with 95-percent certainty that human activity is the principal cause of the generation of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases that are warming the world.
When I was a kid before I could work on a farm I had to take a one-day course in farm safety. According to Aida Balsano of the National Institute for Food and Agriculture recent USDA award will pave the way to develop a nationwide farm safety curriculum aimed at youth.
BALSANO: To create something that is more holistic, more comprehensive than what we have and that would address the education and certification needs we have in the area specifically of U.S. farm safety. And then as the final part of what we're hoping to see done through this project is to see if we can determine resources that are required to sustain something like this beyond the first two years.
Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray.
Who owns United States farmland? The most recent report from the U.S. Farm Service Agency says that as of December 31, 2011 foreign investors hold an interest in 25.7 million acres of American agricultural land, which sounds like a whopping amount of acreage. In reality it's approximately 2% of all privately held U.S. agricultural land, and 1% of all land in the U.S.. Interestingly, forest land accounted for 54% of all foreign held ag acreage, cropland for 19%, and pasture and other ag land for 27%. All fifty states report having foreign held agricultural land. Canadian investors own the most U.S. ag land with 7.2 million acres, 1.8 million is owned by foreign investors from the Netherlands, 655 thousand acres is German owned, 570 thousand is UK owned, and Portugal owns 475 thousand acres. What defines a "foreign land holder"? It's a foreign person who is not a citizen of the United States and does not have permanent residence in the U.S., foreign governments, and U.S. entities in which there is significant foreign interest or substantial control.
Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
