Newsline Interview By American Farm Bureau Federation The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is supposed to find $1.2 trillion in budget cuts. AFBF Farm Policy Specialist Mary Kay Thatcher discusses how much of that will likely come from agriculture funding. AFBF’s Johnna Miller reports. Miller: The House and Senate […]

Rep. Bruce Hanna Named “Most Valuable Legislator” by OFS By Oregonians for Food and Shelter (SALEM, OR) – Oregon House Co-Speaker Bruce Hanna (R-Roseburg) was named as the 2011 Session’s Most Valuable Legislator by Oregonians for Food and Shelter (OFS), a prominent statewide coalition of natural resource and agricultural based […]

Timber and grazing groups ask Supreme Court to review forest road case Permits not needed to control sedimentation PORTLAND, OR—The American  Forest Resource Council (AFRC), together with a 6 other associations representing federal forest and rangeland resource businesses and families, has filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court […]

Ag inspections suffered in wake of 9/11 By Kurt Kipp, Daily Digger Associated Oregon Nurseries If you fly on an airplane, then you have experienced firsthand how U.S. security priorities changed following 9/11. A huge new agency, the Department of Homeland Security, was created and given broad powers to stop […]

Forest Policy Briefs by Rex Storm, Forest Policy Manager Associated Oregon Loggers Politically-Correct Biomass: Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Nancy Sutley, visited John Day in August to tour only those forest industries deemed to offer politically-correct jobs subsidized by federal taxpayer debt. Sutley met with the […]

In a rarity, a California sawmill reopens By California Farm Bureau Dignitaries will gather in Sonora tomorrow (Wednesday) to celebrate the reopening of a sawmill that had been closed for two years. It’s a rare occasion in a state where more than 80 sawmills have closed in the last 20 […]

By Corn Commentary National Corn Growers Association The Pixar movie sequel “Cars 2″ has been out since June, but I just got a chance to see it this past weekend and while it got some bad reviews, I thought it was hilarious and an interesting commentary on big oil and […]

Five Years in the Making, Three FTAs Approved by Congress From National Association of Wheat Growers Congress approved this week free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, nearly five years after the agreements were first negotiated. The House and Senate both passed the agreements on Wednesday. The Colombia […]

Lawmakers Fail to Address Growing Cougar Problem By Oregon Small Business Association Despite growing concern over Oregon’s exploding cougar population, the 2011 Legislature took a pass on approving meaningful legislation that would have helped get Oregon’s cougar population under control. Rod Harder, a lobbyist for the Oregon National Rifle Association, […]

By Oregon Department of Forestry State officials announced that a new site with trees infected by the pathogen Phytophthora ramorum – also known as Sudden Oak Death – has been discovered in Curry County. The new infection site is over six miles north of a quarantine boundary established by state […]