Climate Change Assessment & Chinese Exports

Climate Change Assessment & Chinese Exports

Climate Change Assessment & Chinese Exports plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

The Third National Assessment report was released yesterday. The report is similar in many respects to previous climate assessments.  The authors conclude that climate change is already happening across the United States. The report documents ways climate change is altering agriculture and forestry systems across the country and evaluates how these systems are likely to be affected in the future. The authors found that climate disruptions to agricultural production have increased in the past forty years and are projected to increase over the next twenty five years. By mid-century and beyond, these impacts will be increasingly negative on most crops and livestock.

U.S. agricultural officials and business leaders believe that with persistent efforts more agricultural goods currently not allowed into China can find their way into the Chinese marketplace. Agriculture Under Secretary Michael Scuse says some northwest products have already had success.

SCUSE: We've had some success in the last year with potatoes from the Pacific Northwest, with our apples as well as with pears so we're going to continue to see if we can't open up the market for some of our other products.

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

I grew up in a small rural community fortunate enough to have not one, but often three or four doctors. Of course, that was quite a while back and today's rural communities are lucky to have even one doctor close by. Because of this great need for primary care physicians in rural communities, rural medical education programs have popped up around the country. Their goal is to recruit students with rural backgrounds, as they can more easily relate to a rural community. These students also take supplemental curriculum, focusing on issues more pertinent to rural physicians. Sadly, most newly graduated doctors will not even consider rural areas because the economy tends to be less than affluent, creating a vicious circle; because in order to improve the local economy a community needs adequate medical services. The "cradle to the grave" care that often makes up a rural medical practice consists of long hours, hard work, and less monetary rewards, but Mae West could have been speaking of rural medicine when she made the statement, "I never said it would be easy, I only said that it would be worth it."

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

Previous ReportNW Fishing Activist Dies & Losing Small Farms
Next ReportRFS Court Ruling & Brazilian Beef