Letters To The Editor

By Luke Brubaker
A lot of change is coming to Pennsylvania, Maryland and four other states whose rivers and streams flow into the nation’s largest fresh water estuary, the Chesapeake Bay.

This week the Obama administration announced a “draft strategy” to work harder with the states to clean up the water faster, including requiring states to set two-year milestones for reaching their water quality goals.

Federal and state efforts to clean up the Bay and our local waters are likely to bring new requirements to reduce nutrients and sediments entering waters that lead to the Bay. Fifty percent of the fresh water flowing into the Bay comes from Pennsylvania.

Editor’s note: Maryland Farm Bureau President W. Michael Phipps sent the following letter, dated Nov. 6, to U.S. Sen Ben Cardin (D-Md.) regarding his sponsorship of S. 1816, The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act. The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife held a hearing on the bill Monday.

Dear Senator Cardin:
On behalf of 32,000 Farm Bureau families across the state of Maryland, I would like to thank you for the ongoing dialogue between your office and our organization concerning the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort. As you know, Maryland farmers have been longstanding partners in the effort to protect the Bay. In fact, our farmers lead the nation in the use of conservation best management practices and have committed more personal funds to this effort than any sector in the watershed.

Editor:

Your editorial in the Oct. 31 issue “Calling for Communicators” was right on the mark.

I have operated and been involved in dairy farming all my life. One of the projects I became involved with after retiring from milking cows was farm promotion. For the past six years, I have hosted a weekly half-hour Orange County (New York) farm talk show on our local radio station, WTBQ. I had many good programs — some could have been better — but apparently I had many listeners.

Management decided to move my program to a different time slot in favor of a national syndicated talk show. I felt that I would lose most of my listeners from the 12:30-1 p.m. slot, so I decided to quit. That might have been a mistake, but what is the use in doing a show with few listeners? Apparently the station felt that agriculture wasn’t that important.

Editor:

Thank you for your editorial (“Protecting ‘Industry’ Fails to Ensure Meat Safety,” Oct. 10) maintaining that the safety of the public should trump business concerns.

You’re right — but I think the little people are often voiceless in the face of big business. This is really the issue with this huge agribusinesses like Dean Foods — and I’m not suggesting they are evil. They may make money more efficiently than Mom and Pop businesses, and consequently have lots of clout — but that’s not the same as being best for America.

And to get an editorial right above it (“Let Them Drink Milk: Euro Dairy Farmers Protest with Panache”) suggesting that American farmers should maybe consider taking their drubbing a little less complacently — like the Belgians — was wonderful. That’s how democracy should work.

Editor:

I am an advertiser and have been a reader of Lancaster Farming for more than 25 years.

An article by Charlene Shupp Espenshade in the Oct. 17 issue (“Farming Looks Easy — From a Distance”) was both interesting and thought provoking. My family has been in the livestock hauling business for 60 years, since 1949. We were also dairymen, but I sold my cows in 1979. If I remember correctly I received $12.50 to $13 per hundred for my milk.

Here it is 30 years later, and you are receiving the same price or less.

I used to ship my milk to Dairymen’s League and sat through many meetings and listened to the same speeches, the same promises and the same proposed solutions.

The National 25 x ‘25 Alliance, with a goal of getting 25 percent of our energy from renewable resources like wind, solar, and biofuels by the year 2025, last week called S.1733 (the Kerry-Boxer Climate Change bill) “a work in progress that will need serious modification” before it can maximize the role of farms, ranches and forestlands in reducing the nation’s carbon footprint and combating global climate change.

The alliance said that S.1733 fails to explicitly exclude the U.S. agriculture and forestry sectors from rules that cap emissions, and to allow the sectors to deliver quick, low-cost, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions in a volume significant enough to help meet the national goal established in the bill, which starts at 20-percent below 2005 emission levels by 2020.

John Berry
Penn State Extension

Wow! The past several months (seems like years some days) have been stressful in many farm communities. I’ve been around a while and do not remember economic/financial conditions such as these. As I drink my coffee in the morning and reflect on what is going on around me, thoughts center on not only the dollar effect of all this, but more significantly the human effect.

A topic causing me concern lately includes this:

We (everyone, no matter what our perception) exist surrounded by a global market situation. In this context, market conditions may have little to do with supply and demand. The world does not always operate as we wish. People can distort a market when they start to act as a herd.

Editor:

A recent Cargill announcement regarding the launch of an ingredient for use in making non-dairy cheese product has raised concerns by a number of our customers which I would like to address. The product, called Lygomme ACH Optimum, is designed to replace the functionality of casein in imitation cheese applications.

Cargill developed Lygomme ACH Optimum for food manufacturers who already are making imitation cheese. It meets a specific nutritional need for those who cannot consume dairy products, and helps food manufacturers address challenges within the current casein supply chain, which in the U.S. is imported. Lygomme ACH Optimum is one of a wide array of food innovations developed by Cargill to meet specific customer needs.

Editor:

On Oct. 19 a forum was held at the N.Y. state capitol building in Albany to develop solutions N.Y. state government could adopt to aid state dairy farm families who are dealing with the worst downturn in the dairy farm economy in several decades. The meeting was called by New York state Senators Catherine Young, ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee; John J. Bonacic, James L. Seward, and George Winner.

Witnesses were heard from all aspects of the New York dairy industry — farmers, milk co-ops, processors, farm and industry advocacy groups.

Much was said; little was clarified. In reviewing testimony one thing stands stark — lack of consensus.

Paul Slayton
Pennsylvania Beef Council
Beef isn’t the only part of the food industry faced with safety concerns. The Center For Science In The Public Interest (CSPI) released their list of the Top 10 riskiest FDA-regulated foods include leafy greens, eggs and tuna. While the beef industry is regulated by USDA, not FDA, food safety concerns are growing in all areas of the country.
Here is the list:
1. Leafy Greens: 363 outbreaks involving 13,568 reported cases of illness
2. Eggs: 352 outbreaks involving 11,163 reported cases of illness
3. Tuna: 268 outbreaks involving 2,341 reported cases of illness