H. LOUIS MOORE Agric. Economist Penn State Assessing The End Of The Drought- From The Air week of July, I g flew to New appear on a nationally tele vised program to assess the econ omic impact of the 1988 drought The drought was at its worst. I had done my homework but was uneasy as I boarded the airplane in Harrisburg for the short flight to La Guardia. I thought “What a perfect opportunity to see how bad the drought is from the air.” As we flew over central and eastern tffcK TO LANCASTER FORD TRACTOR SIGN COMPACT DIESE] NEW HOLLAND SKID LOADERS Call For New Programs To Be Announced The 10% Off On All Toys In Stock For Christmas! LANCASTER FORD TRACTOR, INC. Your Lancaster County Reliables 1655 Rohrerstown Rd., Just off Rt. 283, Lancaster, PA 17601 (717) 569-7063 counties at 4,000 feet, the damage was evident You could see com fields that looked as though they had more soil showing than com stalks. As it turned out the infor mation didn’t mean much. The host of the television program only wanted to talk about the eco nomic impact of the drought on consumers. As time passed the rains came and better crops than expected were harvested, at least in some places. But now concerns about 1989 are increasing. Will drought repeat next year? Even though sta tistical data indicates that we have not had two extreme drought years in a row for 75 years, there are uneasy concerns. On November 13th during take off from Pittsburgh enroute to a conference in Dcs Moines, lowa I UNDER THE OF QUALITY First Week Of December thought this would be the perfect opportunity to again assess drought conditions from the air much as I had done in July. This lime I could look at Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and part of lowa. But two things had changed. The jets flew at 35,000 feet to Chicago and at 22,000 feet from Chicago to Des Moines. The second factor that changed was the season. In mid- November the landscape was all a dull brown: a color it takes on just before the winter snows arrive. Several interesting things were evident from the air that indicated that the drought might be retreat ing. The farm ponds and rivers seemed full of water. Water was evident standing in the comers of many fields as the late afternoon sun reflected from it. The baiges being pushed up the upper part of the Mississippi appeared to be in no danger of going aground. 1 arrived in Des Moines feeling pretty good about how observant I had been and that the drought was probably over, even though I still had concerns about subsoil mois ture levels back in Pennsylvania. The conference opened on Monday morning and agreement that, financially, agriculture has indeed turned the comer for the better. Grain prices are higher and land prices in lowa have increased about 20 percent in 1988 (a mira cle compared to the 68 percent decline in land values from 1981 to 1986). But there were concerns among the conference speakers. Subsoil moisture levels are low in a big part of the Midwest. There is water on top but it hasn’t replen ished the subsoil. Then there were FARM TRACTORS Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 10, 1988-C5 serious concerns from high gov ernment officials for the environ ment in lowa. Specifically men tioned was the pollution of ground water supplies. I relaxed and leaned back in my Christmas Tree Growers Reject Marketing Program HARRISBURG Secretary of Agriculture Boyd E. Wolff announced recently that Christ mas tree growers in Pennsylvania have decided against a marketing program. Tree growers who own or grow three or more acres of Christmas trees voted in a referendum between October 24 and Novem ber 7. The vote was 175 for and 248 against. “We are disappointed that the Christmas tree growers rejected the proposal because marketing is often the key to success in modem agriculture,” said Wolff. “Under the law, growers would have had Health Major Concern In Rural WASHINGTON, D.C. Call ing health issues facing rural America a top priority, delegates attending the 122nd Annual Con vention, the National Grange last month, called for Congressional funding for the newly created office of Rural Health Research and the National Advisory Com mittee on Rural Health in the U.S. Department of Social Services. Separate delegate action called for federal legislation to require food service and health care workers and all incarcerated persons to be tested for Acquired Immune Defi ciency Syndrome (AIDS) and increased federal funds to pay for AZT medication used by AIDS victims. The delegates opposed legislation that would mandate employers to provide health care insurance for their employees. They urged Congress and the President to investigate the causes of rapid increases in Medicare and Mcdicaide costs and report to the public their proposals for slowing medical cost increases while maintaining quality health care. The Grange delegates adopted resolutions commending various law enforcement agencies for their seat and thought, “Well, I didn’t assess the end of the drought very well from the air, but this pollu tion concern sounds just like the concerns back home in Pennsylvania. Statewide total control of their own program.” Act 1 of 1987 returned control of commodity marketing prog rams to producers, who must vote to create a marketing program funded by assessments on their products. The recent referendum was the second attempt by producers to establish a marketing program for Pennsylvania fresh-cut Christmas trees. If the program had been approved, each producer would have been assessed 10 cents per tree cut and sold. Those funds would have been used for research and marketing programs to benefit tree producers. America support of local drug awareness programs such as Drug Awareness Resistance Education (DARE) and called for additional state and federal funds to expand these programs. The delegates also advocated toughening laws deal ing with illegal drug users and sellers by calling for a prohibition on the manufacturing and sale of products or paraphernalia exclu sively designed for the purpose of consuming illegal drugs. They proposed giving law enforcement officers the authority to seize all personal property such as air planes, automobiles and boats used in illegal drug dealing and recommended that seized property should be sold with the proceeds then to be used for drug preven tion programs. The Grange leaders adopted new policy calling for more accu rate labeling of ingredients such as the percentage of vegetable pro tein contained in all meat pro ducts, irradiation, tropical fats listed separately from vegetable oils, cholesterol levels of ingre dients, percentage of mechanical ly separated meats and the amounts of sugar and salt.
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