August 2000

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New Fair Competition Rules For Livestock, Poultry Industries Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman has announced that USDA's Grain Inspection, Packers, and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) will issue new rules to help ensure fair competition in the livestock, poultry, and meat packing industries. "Our goal is to ensure there is fair competition in the marketplace and to help small farmers and ranchers compete more effectively," Glickman said. "These new rules will help level the playing field by increasing the transparency of market transactions." Specifically, the new regulations are intended to: * Mandate disclosure of basic contract terms, ensuring that production contracts are easy to understand. * Prohibit restrictions on disclosure of contract terms, preventing packers from imposing restrictions that may limit the ability of producers to obtain legal or financial advice and can constitute an unfair trade practice. * Clarify record keeping requirements for packers, specifying the form and content of records that must be maintained to describe livestock procurement transactions to ensure more complete and accurate information. * Prohibit conditional purchases in which the purchase of animals from one seller is tied to the purchase of animals from another seller, requiring each lot of livestock to be purchased or offered on its own merits. * Require that packers specify the basis on which they pay different prices for like quality livestock. Proposed regulations, which are based on suggestions from small farmers and ranchers and farm groups, are expected to be published in the Federal Register this fall. They will be open for public comment for a period of time before final regulations are issued. Glickman also announced that USDA will hold public forums in September to solicit dialogue and input on issues pertaining to captive supplies, including the petition of Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) which seeks to restrict packer use of forward contracting and packer feeding of cattle. "I continue to hear producers' concerns about anti-competitive practices," Glickman said. "These forums will provide a more structured way for USDA to gain new information and insights into ways to address producers' concerns about captive supplies." Secretary Glickman has already restructured GIPSA's Packers and Stockyards Program by broadening economic and legal expertise to enhance USDA's ability to investigate potential unfair and anti-competitive practices. He also fought for and won new legislation requiring mandatory livestock price reporting. Regulations implementing mandatory price reporting are expected to take effect later this year. Corps Fish Budget Won't Allow "Breaching Slush Fund" From the OWGL A Senate appropriations subcommittee has approved $81 million for the Army Corps of Engineers' Columbia-Snake salmon mitigation program next year. For the second year, the bill includes a provision by Sen. Slade Gorton, (R-WA), that prevents the Bonneville Power Administration from setting its wholesale electricity rates so as to pay for potential future increases in salmon recovery costs. The provision requires that rates for 2001-2006 cover only costs of fish "protection, mitigation and enhancement" for that period, whether under the Northwest Power Act or "any other act." This is aimed at preventing the Clinton administration from "setting up a dam removal slush fund," Gorton said. "I will continue to keep a close eye on this administration and make sure the people of the Northwest aren't being billed for dam removal." Drought In Northern China According to a recent Reuters news service report, China's worst drought in decades is devastating crops and sparking social unrest in the north as farmers protest against water rationing, officials and state media said recently. The disaster has dried up rivers and drained reservoirs since June, forcing more than 100 cities to implement strict water rationing, said an official of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters in Beijing. Out Of The Woodwork Reprinted from WAWG's Green Sheet From Liberty Matters. Now that the objective of cleansing the forests of loggers is all but accomplished in the Northwest, National Park Service biologists have discovered 50 nesting pairs of Spotted owls in Marin County, California near the Golden Gate Bridge. The birds are nesting in all kinds of trees, not exclusively "old growth," as the environmentalists have insisted. The owls are co-existing with large numbers of people who are "using their habitat every day for recreation," a fact the biologists seem to find baffling. As a result of the owl campaign, timber harvest in national forests is down 72% and American softwood imports have risen 58%. Socialism Growing In America From Liberty Matters The National Park Service will allow a small number of people to farm some of the 33,000 acre Cuyahoga National Recreation area by leasing 164 acres to persons who agree to use only approved farming methods. They must follow environmentally sensitive techniques and use chemicals sparingly. The Cuyahoga River Valley was once a productive area, producing fruits, vegetables and livestock. The government protected the area 25 years ago and is now trying to revitalize the valley. So far it has cost the taxpayers $500,000 to refurbish the run-down farms for the new tenants. The Park Service has even created the Cuyahoga Countryside Conservancy to recruit settlers (Serfs) and to oversee the farming operations. Is this possibly the "Legacy" of CARA? Humor! What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches? &emdash;A nervous wreck. Top 10 Reasons Farm Trucks Are Never Stolen: #10 They have a range of about 20 miles before they overheat, break down or run out of gas. #9 Only the owner knows how to operate the door to get in or out. #8 It is difficult to drive fast with all the fence tools, grease rags, ropes, chains, syringes, buckets, boots and loose papers in the cab. #7 It takes too long to start and the smoke coming up through the rusted-out floorboard clouds your vision. #6 The Border Collie on the toolbox looks mean. #5 They're too easy to spot. The description might go something like this: The driver's side door is red, the passenger side door is green, the right front fender is yellow, etc. #4 The large round bale in the back makes it hard to see if you're being chased. You could use the mirrors if they weren't cracked and covered with duct tape. #3 Top speed is only about 45 mph. #2 Who wants a truck that needs a year's worth of maintenance, u-joints, $3,000 in body work, tail-lights and a windshield. #1 It is hard to commit a crime with everyone waving at you!!!

How To Water Outdoor Plants By Carol Savonen, Oregon State University Just about all of us have some plants growing outside in pots or containers. Hot summer temperatures warrant giving them some extra attention. Water your container plants at least once every day, recommends Ross Penhallegon, horticulturist with the Oregon State University Extension Service. Sometimes plants will need water two or even three times per day, if the summer heat is intense. Use a slow, steady stream of water, and don't stop until it seeps out of the holes at the bottom of the pot. Misting some plants, like fuchsias, is helpful, too. Watch for signs that the plant needs more water. Wilting, drooping or brown leaves with "tip burn" is a sure sign of a thirsty plant. Water-stressed foliage may not have its normal, healthy, rich green color. If a plant is in a clay pot, slow down evaporation by placing that container into another, larger, one. Pack insulating material like sphagnum moss or perlite between the two pots. Be sure there's still adequate drainage. Don't forget to keep your potted plants well fertilized so they stay healthy and vigorous. Add a soluble fertilizer to your plant water once every two weeks or so. Flowering plants will require a well-balanced fertilizer such 20-20-20, which has 20 percent nitrogen, 20 percent phosphorus and 20 percent potassium. Cyberspace Brings Bigger, Better Tools To Producers Farm & Ranch Column By Terence L. Day, Washington State University It seems everything is bigger and better on America's farms today. Bigger tractors. Bigger combines. Bigger computers, if not physically, at least in capacity. Everything is getting bigger, more sophisticated and better. This is especially true of educational information available on the World Wide Web. MoreCrop is a good example. This is a computer software application that helps Northwest wheat and barley growers plan and manage their crops. MoreCrop's roots go back to 1991 when Roland F. Line, then a USDA-Agriculture Research Service scientist at Washington State University, and Ramon M. Cu, a graduate student, began developing the program. It was released on floppy discs in 1993. An upgrade, MoreCrop 2.0, was released last year and placed on a World Wide Web page at WSU where it can be downloaded by producers anywhere. The new version has a powerful database with information about cultivars, diseases, weather, fungicides and other things that influence crops. It contains information on 30 diseases, including high-resolution images of diseased plants that help farmers identify diseases in various stages. The program provides management tools for each of the Northwest's six agronomic regions. Farmers can use the program to help determine what variety to plant, when to plant, and how to manage the crop. For instance, as the season progresses, growers can average weather data from projections of temperature and moisture to what is really happening in the field in the current year. MoreCrop doesn't provide financial estimates, but it provides the background data farmers need to figure fertilizer and other chemical costs, as well as to forecast yield. Line cautions that because MoreCrop, like tractors and combines, is bigger and better, it will take a while to download. Just how much time depends on the speed of your modem and the telephone lines that connect you to the Internet. He estimates download time could easily run an hour for some farmers. So, start the download and go do a chore or have a cup of coffee and enjoy a television program while your computer does the work. You will find the software and a lot of information about it at http://pnw-ag.wsu.edu/. That's the direct address. You'll also find a link to it from the Farm Management Resources page at http://farm.mngt.wsu.edu/. I mention that because the Farm Management Resources page offers information on a variety of farm management topics and provides links to other sources of management information. For instance, there's a link to the University of Minnesota's Center for Farm Financial Management. There you will find such offerings as Marketeer, a planning tool to help market your crop. Like MoreCrop, it is a sophisticated software application. Unlike MoreCrop, which is free, Marketeer costs $295. UM also offers a variety of FINPACK applications. The university touts FINPACK as "the most comprehensive computerized farm financial planning and analysis system available." It provides software for balance sheets, long range plans, cash flow plans, year end analysis, and historic financial and production reports, among other things. FINPACK comes in both personal and professional versions. The professional version is for consultants, educators and ag lenders. The personal version, intended for producers, costs $395, the professional version costs $1,195 Several add-ons are offered, including a risk-rating system. The Center for Farm Financial Management is at http://www.cffm.umn.edu/cffm.htm. WSU Cooperative Extension is rapidly expanding its Web offerings of bulletins and software programs. Only a few hundred of extension's 2,400 publications are online today, but the number grows almost weekly. Some are free and you have to pay for others. Currently, you can print an order form from the web site and mail it in with payment. But, by fall you should be able to order publications online and pay for them online with a credit card. That's just one of the ways that educational information offerings are getting bigger, better, faster, smarter. Shrunken World If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like this. There would be: 57 Asians 21 Europeans 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south. 8 Africans 52 would be female 48 would be male 70 would be non-white 30 would be Christian 97 would be heterosexual 3 would be homosexual 6 people would possess 59 percent of the entire world's wealth, and all 6 would be from the United States. 80 would live in substandard housing 70 would be unable to read 50 would suffer from malnutrition 1 would be near death 1 would be near birth b (yes, only 1) would have a college education and 1 would own a computer.

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