04/04/07 A Sampling Of Issues

A sampling of issues. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. A number of issues important to Ag producers in the Pacific Northwest are hanging in the lurch as legislative sessions are getting ready for a break. MCKINNIE: The problem is you just never know until all the boys and girls go home. That's Scott McKinnie, President of Far West Agribusiness on where some of the issues are right now. MCKINNIE: It's all in budget time right now, the reconciliation of the budgets between the House and the Senate versions and of course those affect different pieces of legislation and what may be killed on the floor gets new life again when there's budget money allocated to it so all of that is occurring right now. McKinnie says each state right now has some issues that need attention. MCKINNIE: There's several pesticide bills there in Oregon that  one is particularly troublesome is calling for a mile buffer strip around schools including the roadways up to a school from any aerial or powered application and you have to submit a plan 14 days ahead of time. Well, that's impossible because you may not need to spray something 14 days ahead of time but if you don't do it, it becomes a 5-mile buffer strip and a 25-hundred dollar fine. McKinnie discusses an upside issue. MCKINNIE: One of the positive things we've been successful in getting 260-thousand dollars for the next biennium or 130-thousand for each of the next 2 years in support of pesticide container recycling. This is a program that we got through last year as part of a supplemental budget. Unless they are recycled, plastic containers pile up in barns and storage sheds. MCKINNIE: Ideally if you put plastic in the market you need to find a way to pull it out at least that's the theory. Well not all the players are playing so you've got some challenges there with some people who do saying until you get everyone to participate, we're not going to which creates some funding issues on a national level. He says there are some national issues that affect local farmers as well. MCKINNIE: Inside the bill that's passed both the House and the Senate on the funding provisions for the Iraq situation, there's a piece in there that talks about security provisions for chemical plants. And how this affects agriculture is that retail fertilizer and chem dealers get swept into the same giant rug as a chemical manufacturing plant would. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.