Saturday, February 04, 2012
last week. "Whenever someone creates a new drug, you have to have very smart people looking at lots of trial-based data to make sure the benefits far outweigh any of the dangers." That makes sense. But to critics of advanced technologies, Gates offered a blunt warning: Countries can embrace modern ...
Thursday, February 02, 2012 10:00 AM
Editorial During his State of the Union address last week, President Barack Obama proposed, as a matter of fairness, taxing people with incomes of $1 million or more at least 30 percent. Missing from the president's remarks were any indication as to what would be done with the money. Would it go t ...
Thursday, February 02, 2012 10:00 AM
Technology takes farming over cliff A recent article, "Small technology offers big reward," stated: "Tiny, highly specialized tools known as nanoparticles have the potential to transform agriculture and make current 'precision ag' devices look like blunt implements in comparison. "Nanotechnology i ...
Thursday, February 02, 2012 10:00 AM
Washington state is losing farmland at a rate of about 21,600 acres per year. That's the equivalent of 1.7 million bushels of Palouse wheat. One hundred thousand people are moving to Washington annually. Changing weather patterns have modified the seasonal distribution of water in ways that signif ...
Thursday, February 02, 2012 10:00 AM
Editorial While litigation surrounding transgenic alfalfa will likely live on for some time to come, farmers seem to have settled their questions on the issue. At least that's what we take from a recent survey of growers by Daniel Putnam and Steve Orloff at the University of California-Davis. The ...
Thursday, January 26, 2012 10:00 AM
Editorial GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney rather sheepishly admitted during a debate last week in South Carolina that he pays an income rate somewhere around 15 percent because most of his income is derived from capital gains on long-term investments. Romney's tax returns show he made $21.7 ...
Thursday, January 26, 2012 10:00 AM
Editorial President Barack Obama's idea to combine federal trade and business programs under one roof is a good one, sort of. Any time the folks in Washington, D.C., start to shuffle around agencies, it can get out of control. Witness the behemoth Department of Homeland Security. The initial idea ...
Thursday, January 26, 2012 11:00 AM
Most Californians welcome wolves A headline on a front-page article in the Jan. 13 edition is not only inaccurate, it is irresponsible. "Californians howl over wolf's arrival" suggests that the majority of Californians don't want wild wolves in the state. That is not the case. If you check with th ...
Thursday, January 26, 2012 10:00 AM
and several other media outlets last week reported that 14 big-rig tractors and several trailers at California's Harris Farms Fresno County cattle operation were destroyed by fire. Firefighters responding to the early-morning blaze at a feedlot storage area found the 14 trucks fully engulfed. The ...
Thursday, January 19, 2012 10:00 AM
Editorial When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says jump, you jump. The agency doesn't have time to fuss with formalities like due process. That's the message contained in a lawsuit between the EPA and an Idaho couple. Chantell and Michael Sackett had planned to build a house in a subdivi ...
Thursday, January 19, 2012 10:00 AM
Last week, I announced a Blueprint for Stronger Service at USDA. It is our effort to make sure that in this era of reduced budgets, the folks who live, work and raise their families in rural America don't see reduced services from the department. Over the past three years, USDA has made significa ...
Thursday, January 19, 2012 10:00 AM
Under pressure from the Humane Society of the United States, federal legislation is now proposed to tell egg producers what kind of cages they can use for their chickens. This is only one small indication of the crisis smoldering in the agriculture and food production business. How long will it b ...
Thursday, January 19, 2012 10:00 AM
Editorial The Washington Legislature this session could consider expanding a small-farm internship pilot program that expired Dec. 31. Unpaid internships historically were an accepted point of entry into any number of professions and vocations. They had been especially popular in more recent times ...
Thursday, January 12, 2012 11:00 AM
Editorial This is a story about four Western states. One -- Idaho -- projects a budget surplus for the current fiscal year. Three others -- Washington, Oregon and California -- have little hope of seeing anything other than red ink. California is the poster child for fiscal irresponsibility. It h ...
Thursday, January 12, 2012 11:00 AM
Wolf celebrity not Hollywood variety I am dismayed watching the media hype over OR-7, the lone wolf wandering through Oregon and now apparently in Northern California. This animal is being treated in the mainstream media as quite a celebrity. The majority of time, all you see would be pictures of t ...
Thursday, January 12, 2012 11:00 AM
Editorial Increasing the minimum wage is a noble cause. Handing out an automatic pay raise reflects the goodwill many people have toward workers on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. The reality, however, is less than noble. At best, it does little to help workers. At worst, it hurts those it ...
Thursday, January 05, 2012 9:00 AM
reported that 2011 was generally a good year for farmers. Commodity prices were relatively high, and demand at home and abroad was strong. It would have been an even better year if inputs, diesel and gasoline in particular, hadn't also increased in the past year. Nationally, gasoline prices for 2 ...
Thursday, January 05, 2012 9:00 AM
Last week Frank Priestley submitted an opinion to Capital Press titled "Wolf advocates miss mark again." Priestley is president of the Idaho Farm Bureau. The Idaho Farm Bureau is not a state or federal entity, but an independent, nongovernmental 501(c)(5) nonprofit corporation. It is unfortunate t ...
Thursday, January 05, 2012 9:00 AM
says that there are transparency issues with both the Humane Society of the United States, a 58-year-old organization with 11 million members and constituents, and a 2-month-old organization called the Humane Society for Shelter Pets, formed by a notorious public relations hit man named Rick Berman ...
Thursday, January 05, 2012 10:00 AM
Editorial The latest salvo in the battle between animal agriculture and the Humane Society of the United States puts puppies and animal shelters in the middle but leaves out important facts. In an advertisement appearing in the Los Angeles Times, the newly minted Humane Society for Shelter Pets at ...
Thursday, December 29, 2011 9:00 AM
Editorial American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman said last week that delegates to his organization's national convention next month will consider endorsing a shift in farm policy that would include the elimination of direct commodity payments in favor of an expanded risk management ...
Thursday, December 29, 2011 9:00 AM
No free lunch in Klamath deal I am responding to an inaccurate guest opinion piece by Cheri Bacchi Little, about the proposed order in the Klamath adjudication. Unfortunately some people, including Little, apparently believed in free lunch and failed to file legal challenges to Klamath Tribal in-st ...
Thursday, December 29, 2011 10:00 AM
'Made in USA" are three words you won't see very often on items sold by major retailers. It's so true of consumer goods that a store in upstate New York is making a name for itself by selling only items made in the United States. The Made in America store has been so popular that buses on the way ...
Thursday, December 29, 2011 10:00 AM
Editorial Occupy movement protesters believe large banks, corporations and the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are working in concert against the economic interests of the remaining 99 percent. In their view, CEOs and Wall Street fund managers are paid too much, while they and their companies pay ...
Thursday, December 22, 2011 9:00 AM
Editorial Whether you like the federal Endangered Species Act depends on your perspective. If you're an environmentalist, you love it. It offers many loopholes that allow your lawyers to stay busy. Some loopholes are deadlines so difficult to meet that suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over ...
Thursday, December 22, 2011 9:00 AM
Almost every American is an "environmentalist" in some respects. That is, an overwhelming number of us are rightly concerned about the dangers of excessive pollution, and appreciate that efforts are undertaken to safeguard important natural resources, such as drinking water. But not every America ...
Thursday, December 22, 2011 9:00 AM
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