07/12/06 Ag Secretary talks Immigration

The Secretary of Agriculture spoke with the State Farm Bureau Presidents on Monday about an issue very important to agriculture - and very contentious these days - immigration. Mike Johanns says he is very familiar with the importance of immigration to the nation's food production. JOHANNS: This is an issue you can cuss it, you can discuss it, you can have a lot of different opinions on it but facts are facts and reality is reality. This is an interesting issue. It gets people fired up; a lot of passion behind the debate on immigration. Certainly understand it, I came from a state where I think we were the largest beef processing state in the United States. I'd visit those plants on a fairly regular basis. I'd walk in and 90 to 95 percent of the workforce was Hispanic. Just the reality of the situation. Johanns describes the two main issues within the immigration debate. JOHANNS: The reality of the current situation is number one; we don't have a very effective system for enforcing the border. Number two; we don't have a very effective worker program. We've got a lot of deficiencies in our immigration program. The President looked across the whole breadth of this issue and said, you know what? Solving one piece of this problem doesn't solve the problem. Solving only one piece of the problem is only going to make the problem worse. And so he said we've got to solve this in a very comprehensive way. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. We are on our way and I guess, better late than never. Finally the term "flex fuel" will flow off our tongues like a shiny SUV. The big dogs in Detroit recently announced their plans to double production of flex-fuel cars by 2010. In fact some auto makers are already rolling out new models like the new Jeep liberty diesel that runs on a 5 percent Biodiesel blend. There is still a rocky road ahead for flex fuel vehicles, given the fact that only 700 out of 170,000 gas stations are equipped to sell the stuff. Wall-Mart commitment to biodeisel will help distribution and so does the fact that analysts estimate that if all of the flex fuel autos currently on the road today ran on E85 they would displace more than 3.5 billion gallons of gas a year. Think of it this way& that would equal a full year of gas consumption for either Missouri or Tennessee. That statistic alone should shake up some sheiks. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.