 |
|||
 |
" I heard it |
||
February 15, 2010
· New rule makes hiring ag labor much harder
· Calif. water plan ignites political fire storm
· Fertilizer prices tumble 60% off record high
· New Mexico farmers seek seed protection act
· Some phone apps have garden possibilities
New rule makes hiring ag labor much harder
(Los Angeles Times) – In a move that is sure to have the agriculture industry grimacing and labor-rights advocates cheering, the Labor Department is reversing a Bush administration rule that allowed farmers an easier path to hiring temporary or seasonal foreign workers.
The department has issued new regulations that will require growers to take more steps to try to find Americans to fill jobs picking crops and other harvest-time roles, as well as increase pay and provide more job-safety protections for the thousands of foreign farmworkers they do hire.
The old rule, which affected the H-2A guest-worker program, was adopted shortly before President George W. Bush left office. The Labor Department suspended that regulation in May.
The new rule, slated to take effect March 15, will increase the average pay for temporary farmworkers by nearly a dollar per hour. Farmers also will be required to list their job openings on a new online job registry, and state workforce agencies must inspect worker housing before employers can get the nod to hire foreign laborers.
Department officials said last week that the changes were designed to protect the agriculture industry's most at-risk workers.
"This new rule will make it possible for all workers
who are working hard on American soil to receive fair pay while at the same
time expand opportunities for
Even when unemployment rates are high, finding temporary or seasonal workers remains a concern for the agriculture industry. During fiscal 2009, employers filed 8,150 labor certification applications requesting 103,955 H-2A workers for temporary agricultural work. The Labor Department certified 94% of the applications, for a total of 86,014 workers.
The Bush-era rule, which let employers hire foreign workers if they couldn't find Americans to fill the jobs, sparked a fierce battle across the country's farmlands. Labor advocacy groups railed against the rule for slashing wages and weakening worker safety rules.
Farmers have said they need help easing the hurdles to bring
in foreign workers to harvest crops, saying
Last year a group of growers associations -- including the National Christmas Tree Assn., the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Assn. and more than a dozen others -- filed suit against the Labor and Homeland Security departments, alleging that they could be unfairly prosecuted for labor law violations.
California
(SFGate.com)
– Sen. Dianne Feinstein ignited a firestorm among fellow California Democrats
last week as word spread of her proposal to divert Northern California water to
Feinstein wants to attach the proposal as an amendment to a
fast-tracked Senate jobs bill. She is pitching the plan as a jobs measure to
address the economic calamity in the
Bay Area Democrats were livid, accusing Feinstein of
concocting the plan in secret, upending fragile water negotiations that
Feinstein has supported and pitting
"I was pretty shocked," said Rep. Mike Thompson, a
St. Helena Democrat and ally of
Influential farmer
Feinstein has long supported
In September, Resnick wrote Feinstein complaining that "sloppy science" by federal wildlife agencies was causing farm water shortages. A week later, Feinstein forwarded the letter to Obama administration officials, who authorized a review by the National Academy of Sciences.
"It seems to be a complete reversal of her position," Thompson said. "The entire Bay Area delegation had agreed we would do this National Academy of Sciences report to find out scientifically what should and shouldn't be done, and for her to turn that on its head and go out unilaterally with this proposal does not take into consideration the needs of all of California."
Thompson accused Feinstein of "trying to spin this as a
job saver, but that ignores the jobs up north that depend on water." He
compared Feinstein's plan to the Bush administration's water diversions in the
Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, said, "Best I can see, she's making a decision that jobs in the Bay Area and Northern California and the Peninsula south of San Francisco aren't as important as jobs in the Central Valley."
Feinstein contends that the amendment to the jobs bill would
not waive the Endangered Species Act but instead follow a 2003 precedent that
guaranteed water deliveries in
Miller, a former chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Feinstein's amendment would suspend federal environmental laws that protect fish.
Verifying the science
Feinstein made no mention of her demand for the National Academy of Sciences report, due next month, to verify the science behind fish-conservation demands.
Resnick's business has given $29,000 to Feinstein's campaigns and $246,000 more to Democratic political committees during years when she sought re-election, according to a report by California Watch, an investigative journalism nonprofit organization, that was published in The Chronicle in December.
Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater (
Cardoza said recent studies show
the pumps that environmentalists say pulverize fish are in fact destroying only
a handful. "The pumps were shut down for six or 10 additional fish," Cardoza said. "This is the height of insanity, and
it's time we quit devastating the
In a statement Thursday, Feinstein said that recent weeks of heavy rain and Sierra snowfall have brought snowpacks to 130 percent of their normal level. At the same time, "water has been gushing past the canals and into the oceans while farms on the west side of the (Central) Valley are likely to receive a very low percentage of their water allocations for a second year because that water cannot be pumped and stored."
Political jockeying
Feinstein's action comes after months of political jockeying
between Republicans and Democrats over whether the Endangered Species Act is
destroying
Farmers have also seen water supplies evaporate. Before this season's heavy rains, a three-year drought forced big cuts in their water allotments, forcing 400,000 acres to lie fallow and pushing unemployment in some towns toward 40 percent.
Farmers, fishermen and environmentalists had been negotiating on a long-term remedy to the decline of California's delta estuary, one of the largest in the world and on a scale with Florida's Everglades, but even more heavily damaged by a century of water diversions.
Fertilizer prices tumble 60% off record high
(Reuters)
–
Nitrogen, phosphate and potash -- the three essential crop nutrients -- have dropped sharply since hitting record levels, due to decreased demand and fallout from the recession.
Farmers will likely increase fertilizer applications this year as they replenish soil nutrients and boost corn and soybean acreage, analysts and crop specialists said.
Allendale Inc. and Informa Economics, two closely watched analytical firms, have forecast both crops to grow beyond the already record-large size of the 2009/10 crops. The US Agriculture Department will release its first acreage projection on March 31.
''Farmers last year put less phosphate and potassium on
because of the high prices, and they're going to need to make up this year to
replenish the soil,'' said Gary Schnitkey, professor
of farm management at the
Diammonium phosphate fertilizer (DAP) prices in Illinois have fallen about 60 percent from its top of more than $1,100 per ton in October 2008, while potash and anhydrous ammonia have fallen 50 and 52 percent, respectively, according to USDA data.
Falling prices and lackluster demand have pressured earnings
at the world's largest fertilizer maker Potash Corp of
Lower fertilizer costs and a huge South American soybean
crop may also lead to an increase in US corn acres this year at the expense of
soybeans, said Chad Hart, agriculture economist at the
Corn demands roughly twice the amount of fertilizer as soybeans and also yields more bushels per acre.
''In 2009, producers saw high fertilizer prices and they made a conscious choice because (soybeans need) less fertilizer,'' Hart said. ''We probably won't set another record this year in soybeans.''
New
Mexico
(Santa
Fe New Mexican) – A group of
It is the third time farmers have tried to get a similar bill passed, but this time it has the backing of Gov. Bill Richardson, who put it on his call for the session.
Senate Bill 303, known as the Farmer Protection Act, was withdrawn Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee and sent to the Senate Conservation Committee.
Under the bill, carried by Sen. John Pinto, D-Tohatchi, farmers would not have to create buffer zones around their fields to protect from cross-pollination by a patented crop. It also protects farmers from damages and attorney fees if they "unknowingly come into possession" of a genetically engineered plant. Finally, the bill establishes ground rules for when the supplier of genetically modified seeds can inspect fields.
The New Mexico Food and Seed Sovereignty Alliance failed to get a similar bill, introduced by Sen. Carlos Cisneros, D-Questa, two years ago. Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque, carried the bill last year, but it died in committee after New Mexico Department of Agriculture Secretary Miley Gonzales said he was concerned the bill, as written, penalized farmers who chose to use genetically modified seeds.
This year, the alliance started talking to legislators and the governor about the bill months before the session started, according to Paula Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association. The acequia association, and three native American farm groups — Traditional Native American Farmers Association, Tewa Women United and Honor Our Pueblo Existence — make up the alliance.
The bill was drafted by Isaura Andaluz, an
Genetically engineered seeds have been a controversial subject among farmers and seed companies for years. Seeds can be genetically modified in a lab to resist common pests and diseases, helping farmers protect crops. But the engineered seeds are patented by the companies, such as Monsanto, that develop them. Farmers who use patented seeds aren't allowed to save seeds and replant them from year to year. Farmers can be sued if the company thinks they're using patented seeds without permission.
Some small-scale
Their fears aren't unfounded.
Monsanto, one of the largest producers of genetically engineered seeds, has sued a few farmers claiming they knowingly collected seeds cross-pollinated by the company's modified seeds. Courts have found in the company's favor several times, and Monsanto dropped at least one case. In mid-January, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear for the first time arguments regarding genetically engineered crops in Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms.
Some phone apps have garden possibilities
(DemocratandChronicle.com) – I love my iPhone, so I try to avoid getting it all wet and muddy in the garden. But lately, warm and dry by the fire, I've been thinking that there must be some useful horticultural application for the thing — after all, it does everything else but make toast.
I found most of the 45 gardening "apps" I investigated to be duds, but a few stood out.
With Houseplant411, $4.99, you can browse a list of houseplants, sensibly sorted by common name, look up their care requirements and add them to a list of favorites. There is a helpful "FAQ" section for each, and you can jump to the parent Web site, houseplantconsult.com, within the app without opening a separate browser. You can also search for houseplants that meet your exact specifications.
Gardening, 99 cents, is a cute little application that lets you browse different vegetable crops, read their planting instructions and learn about their pests and diseases, and then "plant" them to your garden; bar graphs then count down the days until harvest.
I could see using Garden ToDo, $1.99, after the day's work is over and I'm wandering around the yard with a glass of wine. See something you want to remember to divide, fertilize, etc., then snap a picture, give the task a priority and add it to the list. You even get a round of applause when the task is done.
Using TreeID, $3.99, you can search for landscape trees by common or scientific name or identify them using various characteristics.
There is a lot of information in this app, but the pictures are so low in resolution it's hard to make them out.
Want to add some native plants to your landscape? Check out Rochester-grown Florafolio, $3.99.
The pictures are gorgeous, and you can narrow down selections based on many different criteria — tons of fun to just browse.
The two most expensive, and probably most valuable, apps in my lineup are Audubon Wildflowers and Audubon Trees, both $9.99. Browse by name, characteristic or even ZIP code, and you'll get detailed information and beautiful photographs.
All of the Audubon apps (I'm going for Birds next) link together with one account. And geeks rejoice — the Audubon apps allow you to add anything you identify with just a click.
End Transmission