10/18/06 New Air Rules & Flex Fuel Problems

New air rules & flex fuel trouble. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. The EPA has released their new air quality standards that have left out an exemption for agricultural sources from particulate matter provisions. The exemption was in an earlier version of the standards but does not appear in the final version. American Farm Bureau Regulatory Specialist Paul Schlegel talks about the potential impact new air quality rules could have on agriculture. SCHLEGAL: A people are harvesting, you could have levels of dust and of course particulate matter that go above the allowable limits on course particulate matter. Senator Grassley has been very vocal in saying he want to demonstrate what this means for agriculture on a daily basis for people trying to do their jobs and produce the food that America needs. Flexible fuel vehicles are designed to run on a variety of fuels including E10 and E85 - but according to a corn farmer, state officials and a Washington advocacy group - the Ford Taurus does not. And a Ford memo to dealers last year acknowledges that fact - noting the cars are hard to start even when burning gasoline with a 10-percent blend of ethanol. Ford instructed dealers how to modify the vehicles. But it appears that effort was only partly since owners were charged for those repairs if the vehicles were out of warranty even if they complained about the problem during the warranty period. According to Ford - the vehicles should be running properly now. And in most cases - the motor company says costs should have been covered under warranty. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. If you work in a fast food restaurant, clean motels or man the counter of a convenience store in Washington State, you just received a .31 cent an hour raise. While it is nothing to write home about, and won't even buy a cup of diner coffee, the fact that you are now paid nearly $8.00 an hours, ($7.94 to be exact) means you receive the highest minimum wage in the US. It might be great for you but it is bad for our farmers. Despite rising fuel and fertilizer costs, farmers are now faced with increasing employee wages making it nearly impossible to grow labor intensive crops like asparagus and tree fruit competitively in a global market. Even more frustrating is the fact that even if they opt to pay well over minimum wage workers aren't showing, instead they are choosing to work in construction, landscape or the hospitality industry. Now that California will also be raising their minimum wage to $ 7.50 in January growers will also loose the financial incentive next season that drew pickers north as high gas prices and travel will cease to make $7.94 a carrot. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.