Scientists at a loss for solutions, fear ecological impacts, as white-nose syndrome moves west

Since white-nose syndrome was first discovered in New York bats four years ago it has spread as far west as Oklahoma and killed an estimated 1 million bats. "A majority of the dead were little brown bats, which have lost an estimated 20 percent of their population in the northeastern United States over the last four years," Louis Sahagun of the Los Angeles Times reports. "The fungus seems to prefer the 25 species of hibernating bats, but each of the 45 species of bats in the United States and Canada may be susceptible to white-nose syndrome." A similar fungal growth has long been observed on bats in Europe.

"It is unbelievably sad and disheartening, and we can't seem to move fast enough to get ahead of it," said U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist LeAnn White. "We may be looking at phenomenal losses across the country with unknown ecological consequences." The loss of bats may have severe economic implications; a recent study published in Science estimated the value of pest control provided by bats was at least $3.7 billion nationwide, Sahagun writes.

With the disease continuing its westward march, Thomas Kunz and Jonathan Reichard of Boston University's Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology are urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the little brown bat as endangered. Solutions to curb the spread may bring about even worse complications. "Scientists have considered using fungicides, but studies have shown they could kill other microbes in caves," Sahagun writes. Placing heaters in the caves could raise the bats' body temperatures to a level that might prevent the growth of the fungus but would disrupt their hibernation.

"Killing infected animals would slow the spread of the disease but would not eliminate it because of the complexity of bat life," Sahagun writes. Tom Hallam of National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis at the University of Tennessee explained, "It would be all but impossible to find and kill every infected bat. Yet, because of the size of bat colonies and the many arenas in which they interact — reproduction, hibernation, swarming, mother and pup activities — it would only take one infected bat to start it all over again." (Read more) (Times video)
 

Early research by major skeptic of government-backed studies supports global warming

In the debate over global warming and climate change, it seems rare that one side manages to convince the other of anything, but now one skeptic of government-sponsored climate studies says his  preliminary research supports the prevailing view that the earth is warming.

University of California-Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller recently released data to support the prevailing global warming view. Muller started the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project "to address what he called 'the legitimate concerns' of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated," Margot Roosevelt of the Los Angeles Times reports. That got him called to a Congressional hearing controlled by Republicans, at which Muller unexpectedly said his preliminary findings showed "a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."

While Muller's findings are based on just 2 percent of the total expected data, he called "excellent" the research "of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science," Roosevelt reports. "The Berkeley project's biggest private backer, at $150,000, is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation," Roosevelt writes, noting "oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are the nation's most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on the burning of fossil fuels." Muller told Congress that estimates of human-caused warming still need to be "improved" and further data-crunching "could bring our current agreement into disagreement." (Read more)

Daily Yonder offers original rural journalism

Our friends at the Daily Yonder got a nice write-up recently from the folks at Columbia Journalism Review, in The News Frontier Database. "The Daily Yonder began in 2007, primarily as a response to a nationwide reduction in news delivery for rural communities," Chris Benz wrote. "Daily Yonder contributors are often simply rural Americans willing to put pen to paper," and the Yonder allows rural newspapers to reprint its stories without charge.

The Yonder and we are first cousins, meaning we have the same "grandparents," a cadre of people concerned about rural issues and how they are addressed in national, regional and local news media. The Rural Blog started in 2004 at the suggestion of Bill Bishop, left, a Kentucky native, Texas journalist and adviser to the freshly founded Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. In 2007 Bill and his wife, Julie Ardery, started the Yonder for the Center for Rural Strategies.

The Yonder emphasizes original journalism and is aimed at a general audience, while The Rural Blog is an aggregator designed to bring story ideas, sources and approaches to rural journalists, and sometimes those stories come from the Yonder. We both deal in "analysis of national government news from a rural perspective," as Benz puts it, and we both steer clear of ideological agendas.

“We try to get local stories that tell a national story,” Bill told CJR. “Online journalism is fragmented and plays to its crowd. We wanted a place where people weren’t separated by ideology or geography.” (Read more)

Massey's avoidance of serious, direct punishment is an allegory for many extractive industries

The Rural Blog has published scores of items about Massey Energy, the company that had the largest number of coal-mine fatalties from 2000 to 2009 and lost 29 miners in one explosion almost year ago. The company is being sold to Alpha Natural Resources, but it remains one of America's leading examples of how extractive industries use legal, political and business strategies to limit accountability for their actions. (Array File photo from Gazette)

This is an issue beyond Central Appalachia, where Massey does most of its mining. It is an issue for all of rural America, because extractive industries do most of their extracting in rural areas, and for rural journalists, who need to cover not only the events of the day or week, but step back and take a longer look at the players involved: not just companies, but regulators, lawyers, activists and others.

Just such a look at Massey, and the modus operandi that it and many other companies follow, is published today in The Charleston Gazette. The 2,450-word story is written by Ken Ward Jr., left, whom we consider America's leading coal and mine-safety reporter and one of its leading environmental reporters. He writes, "Despite years of environmental problems and dozens of mining deaths, Massey and its corporate officials – including now-retired CEO Don Blankenship – have mostly escaped any serious, direct punishment." (Read more)

Studies show nuclear power is the electricity-generation method least damaging to health

The disaster at a nuclear power plant in Japan has cast doubt on prospects for increasing nuclear energy's share of the U.S. power portfolio, encouraging coal interests, but "Making electricity from nuclear power turns out to be far less damaging to human health than making it from coal, oil or even clean-burning natural gas, according to numerous analyses," and those calculations don't even take global warming and climate change into account, David Brown reports for The Washington Post.

"Compared with nuclear power, coal is responsible for five times as many worker deaths from accidents, 470 times as many deaths due to air pollution among members of the public, and more than 1,000 times as many cases of serious illness, according to a study of the health effects of electricity generation in Europe," Brown writes.

Gish Award winner says her investigation of sheriff was based largely on records requests

The investigation that largely won Samantha Swindler, right, the 2010 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues was based largely on a simple fundamental of reporting: requests for public records, Swindler said this weekend in "On the Media," the public-radio series about journalism and the news business. "A lot of it was through open-records reqiuests, and we had to fight for every single one of them," Swindler, the publisher of the weekly Tillamook Headlight-Herald on the Oregon coast, told interviewer Brooke Gladstone.

Swindler was managing editor of the 6,000-circulation daily Times Tribune in Corbin, Ky., when she heard a sportswriter joke about gun sales at the back door of the barber shop owned by then-Whitley County Sheriff Lawrence Hodge. When the paper filed a request for the sheriff's evidence logs and he mounted an aggressive defense, forcing the paper to appeal to the state attorney general, "I realized there was something a lot bigger going on," Swindler said. "When we finally got a chance to view the evidence logs, I saw that there were months where there was nothing logged." The sheriff said "we just flush" drugs, but state police said he can't do that.

When the paper filed a records request about 18 seized guns, the sheriff announced that his office had been broken into and 78 guns, drug evidence and paperwork were taken, "When that happened, I realized we were really onto something," Swindler said. "I knew we were on to something before, but then I knew, 'Oh my gosh, it's this bad: He staged a break-in of the sheriff's office.' I'm absolutely concinved that is what has happened." She said that was borne out by a recently filed affadavit from a federal agent describing how drug dealers helped Hodge dispose of guns. He has been indicted.

To listen to the 6½-minute interview with Swindler, or get a transcript, click here. To read more details of her investigation and the Gish Award, go here. Her article about the investigation, and her reflections on rural journalism, in the latest Nieman Reports from Harvard University, is here. UPDATE, April 6: Greg Masters of American Journalism Review reports on Swindler's work.

Bill to end enrollment-only criterion for school consolidation fails in Ark. House by one vote

An Arkansas bill that would have ended the state's policy of closing schools based solely on enrollment failed by one vote in the state House. The bill got a 50-33 vote but needed 51 votes to advance, Arkansas News reports. In 2003 Arkansas adopted a law that dictates mandatory consolidation of schools that enroll fewer than 350 students in consecutive years.

State Rep. Jon Hubbard, who sponsored the bill, said his bill would have shielded school districts that fall below the enrollment criteria if they are academically, structurally and financially sound. Gov. Mike Beebe had spoken out against the bill because he said it "threatens to reopen long-running litigation over the adequacy and equity of the state's method of funding public schools," Hubbard writes. Democratic State Rep. Buddy Lowell said if the bill passed schools that had been forced to close under the current law would sue the state. (Read more)

Gas drilling with hydraulic fracturing creates a lot of solid waste, and some Texans dislike it

Most of the conversation about waste from hydraulic-fracturing drilling operations has been focused on water, but the process also creates a large amount of solid waste. Texas farmers are struggling to "reconcile Texans’ storied love of the land with the growing practice of spreading tons of drilling mud and other toxic waste across it, a process euphemistically called 'landfarming'," Spike Johnson and Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe report for the Denton Record-Chronicle. About 1.2 barrels of solid waste are created with each foot drilled in Barnett Shale operations, and that waste is dumped onto the North Texas prairie.

"Some landowners open their gates and bank accounts to the industry’s need to dump the waste, oblivious to environmental risks," the reporters write. "While official eyes are averted, permits to dump are stretched beyond their limits." Dick Ross, a Texas goat farmer, has been fighting the Texas Railroad Commission for two years about a dump on a corn farm 50 feet from his front door. Ross says the wind blows fumes from the site in his direction the paint is striped from his house.

"Permit applications for the site came into the Railroad Commission and were approved by e-mail the next day, without a site inspection or toxicity tests," the reporters write. "Nothing in the process allows for public notice, for either comment or protest, on the dumping." Ramona Nye, a spokeswoman for the Railroad Commission, said testing of the landfarm revealed no contamination above normal background levels. "My advice to anyone dealing with the gas industry: Sell your whole place, get the hell out," Ross told the reporters. "They cheat you out of your money, wreck your view and destroy your property value." (Read more)

Feds cited deadly Massey mine for no flagrant violations before last April's explosion

A law passed after coal-mine disasters in 2006 gave the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration authority to issue fines up to $220,000 for each flagrant safety violation, but that power was never used at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine where an April 2010 explosion killed 29 miners. "The idea was to more harshly punish chronic and serious mine safety violations as part of a strategy to force mine operators to follow federal regulations," Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette reports. "MSHA has used the authority more than 125 times in the last five years to fine mine operators $19.5 million."

MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere said the question of why Upper Big Branch was never cited under the flagrant violation provision is one subject of an internal review. "It's a very good question, and one that will be ably answered by the internal review team," Louviere said in an email response to questions from the Gazette. "If they find anything amiss or any deficiencies on MSHA's part, they will appear in the report and MSHA will need to address them."

The 2006 law defined flagrant as "a reckless or repeated failure to make reasonable efforts to eliminate a known violation of a mandatory health or safety standard that substantially and proximately caused, or reasonably could have been expected to cause, death or serious bodily injury." MSHA issued its first flagrant violations in April 2007 and issued 70 such violations in 2008. "Congress gave us powerful new tools to strengthen mine safety, and we are going to use them fully," Then-MSHA chief Richard Stickler said at the time. The agency issued just 19 flagrant violations in both 2009 and 2010 and has issued only three flagrant violations so far in 2011, Ward writes. (Read more)

Many teacher layoffs are on the horizon

Uncertain budgets have led many schools to warn teachers of impending layoffs, which could result in "the most extensive layoff of their teaching staffs in decades," The New York Times reports.

"When layoffs do occur, they cause a chaotic annual reshuffling of staff members. Thousands of teachers are forced to change schools, grades or subjects, creating chronic instability that educators call 'teacher churn," Sam Dillon writes. This has created a division "between politicians and union leaders over the seniority-based layoff methods stipulated in union contracts," Dillion writes. We think the division also exists in non-unionized school districts, between teachers who have gained tenure and those who have not.

"Many argue that the rules rob schools of the talented young teachers who are the first to be let go," Dillon reports. "Union officials say that without such protections, more senior teachers would be let go first to save money." Quyen Tran, a teacher in California "knows this turmoil well," Dillon writes. "Tran has been pink-slipped in the spring four of the five years she has taught, but called back to teach every year. She has taught five subjects and grade levels in three schools."

Layoffs' effects go beyond teachers. "The churn caused by layoffs can be extremely disruptive and hurt student achievement," Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, told Dillon. "And conditions are ripe for disruptions to be dramatic this year." (Read more)

Pennsylvania gas and oil inspectors must get top-level OK to cite drillers in Marcellus Shale

A recent directive by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection requires oil and gas inspectors get approval from top officials before citing violations in drilling of the deep, dense and gas-rich Marcellus Shale.

The department says the rule is aimed at inconsistencies in enforcement, but there is concern "that the state's environmental inspectors can no longer act independently and that regulations could be overridden by the political whims of the state's new governor, Tom Corbett," reports Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublica, the nonprofit, investigative news operation that has won awards for its coverage of the industry. "Corbett has made no secret of his support for drilling and has stated repeatedly that regulatory reforms can help spur job creation."

Corbett's position has former DEP head John Hanger and others questioning the origin of the directive. Hanger told ProPublica, "I do not believe this is coming from John Hines," the department's executive deputy secretary, who will have to consider "each of the hundreds of enforcement actions taken routinely against oil and gas operators in Pennsylvania each month," Lustgarten reports. Hanger, who headed DEP under Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell "and worked to strengthen the state's oil and gas regulations," said he disagrees with the directive because "it represents a break from how business has been done in the department within the Marcellus Shale and within the oil and gas program for probably 20 years."

DEP spokeswoman Katy Gresh told ProPublica, "The initiative is not political, will not interfere with enforcement, and is intended to clear up confusion and inconsistency in the agency's regional offices. The governor's office is not behind this. The governor charged [DEP] secretary [Michael] Krancer with bringing about consistency in his agency. This was a decision made at DEP in order to affect positive change." (Read more)

UPDATE, May 9: DEP Secretary Mike Krancer debunked reports that inspectors were ordered to seek top approval before issuing violations by saying "such approval had not been required" and "that story was blown way out of proportion," Nicholas Kusnetz for ProPublica reports. Katy Gresh, DEP spokeswoman, added in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "The notice of violation process is just as it was. The inspectors don't need pre-approval and that has been communicated to them."

GAO says USPS could save big by ending Saturday mail but would hurt rural people and newspapers

The U.S. Postal Service could save more than $3 billion by ending Saturday mail delivery, but it would hurt catalog businesses, local newspapers, the elderly and rural Americans, says a report from the Government Accountability Office. USPS says it could help stave off $7 billion in losses this year by ending Saturday delivery. "The GAO report agrees USPS could save $3.3 billion by cutting the work hours of letter carriers and reducing operational costs to better match declining mail volume," Ed O'Keefe of The Washington Post reports. Last week we reported the Postal Regulatory Commission said in an advisory opinion that USPS should not end Saturday delivery without further study on the effect it would have on rural customers.

Eliminating Saturday deliveries could also "diminish USPS’s image, in part by reducing public contact with carriers," the report said. Congress has the final say on USPS's plan to end Saturday delivery, and lawmakers have yet to act on several proposals that would accomplish that goal, "partly because they’re worried how any change would impact small businesses and the elderly — two loyal, vocal voting blocs," O'Keefe writes. GAO cautioned that the actual amount of savings from ending Saturday deliveries would "depend on how quickly the Postal Service implements any changes and whether they’d have any impact on overall service," O'Keefe writes. (Read more)

Researchers examining pesticides' effect on bees

Insecticides have been identified as a culprit in the mysterious colony collapse disorder affecting bee populations around the world. Vera Krischik, an associate professor of entomology at the University of Minnesota, is examining bees to determine the effect of pesticides, Kathleen Masterson of Harvest Public Media reports. "It's not an easy question to answer," Krischik said. "It was easy when you had a contact insecticide and you sprayed in on an insect and it died. The effect of poisoned food is just a complex issue." (Masterson photo: UM graduate student Judy Wu)

One of the insecticides being examined is clothianidin, which was banned in Germany in 2008 when "some clothianidin seed treatments didn't stick to the seed, and the pesticide dust killed a large number of bees," Masterson writes. Like many pesticides, clothianidin was registered conditionally with the Environmental Protection Agency in 2003, meaning Bayer, the company behind the chemical, had to conduct and submit follow-up studies. "With clothianidin, the EPA accepted a bee study that the maker Bayer submitted for its follow-up assessment," Masterson writes. However, not everyone agreed with the Bayer study.

"Basically, the researchers hired by Bayer set up different plots, some with poisoned plants and some with untreated plants," Masterson writes. "But Krischik said they let the bees roam in both plots." Krischik explained, "So then if you looked at the effects on bees, you had no idea what they foraged on. So that created the controversy that is this data that was out there, did it show anything, because the experimental design wasn't really getting at the question."

As we recently reported, pesticides may be only one piece of the puzzle of colony-collapse disorder. "It's not going to be one thing that is causing honeybee decline or causing bumblebee decline," Krischik said. "It's habitat destruction, loss of food resources, poor quality food, loss of just the place to put your nest for a bumblebee, viruses, fungal diseases. We happen to be looking at pesticide issues, not to say other issues aren't as important." (Read more)

Colorado prison inmates tame, train wild horses for border patrol and other work

The Bureau of Land Management, which has been criticized for its wild-horse roundup policy, has for 25 years "been quietly shipping thousands of wild mustangs it rounds up each year to the East Canon Correctional Complex near Canon City, Colo," Jenny Deem reports for the Los Angeles Times. There, inmates train horses for possible border patrol duty. (Denver Post photo by Andy Cross)

"The horses come from herds across the West, the majority from Nevada, Wyoming and California," Deem writes. "Once they arrive at the prison's vast acreage they are checked over and their fates determined: They are trained as pets or working ranch horses to be offered for adoption, or they are set loose in long-term pastures scattered across the country." Only about 10 of the approximately 2,000 horses at the prison in a given month are selected for training. "It takes three to four months to take a horse from feral to friendly," Deem writes.

Four years ago Lee Pinkerton, a retired U.S. Border Patrol supervisor, decided the horses' compact bodies and heavy feet would be ideal for border patrol work. "Each trained horse costs the Border Patrol $1,025 — less than half what it had been paying for its horses previously," Deem writes. Border Patrol has bought 84 Canon City horses to date and is expected to buy almost 90 more by year's end. "There are 55 inmates who work in the program each day," Deem writes, noting there has been just one escape attempt and it was on foot, not on horseback. (Read more)

17 Republican members of Congress got $5.3 million in farm subsidies from 1995 to 2009

Republican lawmakers, who dominate rural congressional seats, are the biggest recipients of farm subsidies, a new analysis from the Environmental Working Group shows. EWG "says 17 Republicans in Congress and six Democrats received payments from 1995 to 2009 either directly or through family members," Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reports. In terms of total money received, Republicans collected $5.3 million in subsidies while Democrats collected $489,856.

"The fact that so many more Republicans in Congress receive so much more in farm subsidies than their Democratic colleagues does highlight the GOP’s controversial decision to spare those programs from the budget ax – even as it slashes funding for so many others," EWG says. EWG notes that two subsidy recipients, Charles Grassley of Iowa and Richard Lugar of Indiana, "have been long-time leaders in the effort to reform federal farm programs" and "have fought to right the gross inequity of sending 74 percent of taxpayer-funded payments to the largest and wealthiest 10 percent of farm operations." (Read more)

'Coal' show fails to give broader view of industry

Many are eagerly awaiting tonight's premiere of SpikeTV's new documentary-style reality show "Coal," but at least one reviewer says it lacks insight about issues in the industry. Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star measures the documentary against Barbara Kopple's "classic 1976 documentary Harlan County U.S.A. and concludes that while "Kopple made a brave film about mine workers fighting for a better life and future for their families, 'Coal' is a formulaic, context-free hour about hazardous duty that shuttles the viewer brilliantly from one adrenaline rush to the next."

The show's creator, Thom Beers, told Barnhart in an interview last fall that he had looked for "a family business" that was "barely making a living" for the show. Beers found Cobalt Coal's Tom Roberts, who was hired in 2010 to restart the Westchester, W.Va., mine, the setting for the show. Roberts says he has "blown a couple of fortunes in coal," but that conclusion is misleading, Barnhart writes. Roberts' money is not "on the line here. In fact, he’s on salary and got a signing bonus of 500,000 shares of stock, according to the website of Cobalt, which is owned by a giant Canadian energy concern," Barnhart reports.

"Men’s lives and livelihoods are on the line, which makes 'Coal' a perfect fit for Spike, the cable channel well-known for its ultimate fighting bouts," Barnhart writes. "But 'Coal' is so focused on the daily operations at the Westchester mine that it ignores the larger drama facing the area around it, devastated by 150 years of coal mining." McDowell County's population of 30,000 is a far cry from the 100,000 during the height of the coal boom in the 1950s, it has the highest poverty level in West Virginia, and the state took over its school system in 2001. Barnhart concludes, "If 'Coal' won’t give you the lay of the land, do yourself a favor and download or rent Harlan County U.S.A." (Read more)

Rural population loss means less political power

The 2010 census will causing a shift in the political landscape, giving less weight to rural areas because they lost population. Rural legislative districts will become less numerous, and individual districts will cover more land area. State Sen. Jean Leising told Gary Truitt of Hoosier Ag Today that her southeastern Indiana district, which is already large, will have to be increased even more. Leising worries that, with fewer and larger rural districts, the rural voice and rural political power will be diminished." (Read more)

Charles Johnson of the Billings Gazette in Montana reports that most of the state's "urban counties continued to grow from 2000 to 2010, while many of its rural counties kept losing people." Craig Wilson, a political science professor from Montana State University-Billings told Johnson, "The real significance of these movements is you have a gradual shift of political power from east to west and from rural to urban." (Read more)

Indiana and Montana are not be the only states facing such power shifts. The U.S. Census Bureau reports, "Many Appalachian counties in eastern Kentucky and West Virginia; many Great Plains counties in the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas; and a group of counties in and around the Mississippi Delta saw population declines. In addition, many counties along the Great Lakes and on the northern U.S. border either lost population or grew below 10 percent." (Read more)

Cash-poor states, localities let roads go to gravel

In the face of dwindling local budgets and rising asphalt prices, some states and local communities are opting for gravel over repaving. "The paved roads that finally brought rural America into the 20th Century are starting to disappear across the Midwest in the 21st," Pam Louwagie of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports. "Some engineers estimate it costs up to $300,000 to replace a mile of paved road surface now. Gravel isn't free, but it's far less expensive." (Star-Tribune photo by Pam Louwagie)

Louwagie writes, "In states like South Dakota and Michigan, the reversions are bringing substantial changes to the landscape." In South Dakota "a state transportation official estimated that 120 miles of pavement have been ground up or left to crumble back to gravel" and "Michigan has changed more than 100 miles of pavement to gravel."

In Freeborn County, Minnesota, Sue Miller, the county engineer, "helped launch a study with the state Local Road Research Board to come up with alternatives, including "putting additives into gravel to make it harder and more durable and building stronger road bases that can use just a thin layer of pavement," reports Louwagie. However as County Commissioner Glen Mathiason told Louwagie, "Gravel won't sit well with residents."

When Tony and Gertie Monat of Lansing, Iowa, lost the paved road in front of their house, they lost one of the principal attractions that brought them there. "We definitely miss the hard surface," Gertie Monat told Louwagie. "I'm like, how can you take that away now?"

USDA tightens reporting rules for tainted eggs

After learning its inspectors unknowingly approved the sale of eggs from an Ohio farm that tested positive for salmonella, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is tightening its reporting rules for egg producers. "The USDA's inspector general uncovered the problem during an investigation started after the massive recall last summer of eggs linked to farms in Iowa owned by or associated with Jack DeCoster," Phillip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reports. "USDA has started requiring farms to notify its inspectors anytime salmonella contamination is found either in eggs or on the farm."

Eggs from the unnamed Ohio farm were recalled on Nov. 5, 2010. USDA "grades eggs for quality, while the Food and Drug Administration regulates the safety of egg production," Brasher writes. "The inspector general said neither the farm nor the FDA had notified USDA's egg inspectors of the salmonella finding." Michael Jarvis, a spokseman for USDA's Agriculture Marketing Service, told Brasher, "We are toughening the requirements, and I think we've opened the lines of communication much better than they were." (Read more)

Florida farmworkers pressure Publix, Ahold and subsidiaries to adopt 'Fair Food' principles

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, representing farmworkers in South Florida, launched a campaign in the Northeast to pressure food retailers to address human-rights violations in their production chain. The workers "held their first rally in Boston in late February and continued their corporate accountability actions aimed at the large supermarkets with a week-long tour of the East Coast," Yana Kunichoff reports for Truthout, a liberal-oriented news service. Santiago Perez, a farmworker who participated in the campaign, told Kunichoff "We hope this tour will help us achieve our goal of reaching agreements with the supermarket chains such as Publix, Stop & Shop, and others."

The campaign is pushing Publix and Ahold, which owns Stop & Shop, Giant of Landover and the online grocery delivery service Peapod, "to join a partnership of farmworkers, tomato growers and retail food stores and agree to CIW's 'Fair Food' principles, which include a wage increase of 1 cent per pound on tomatoes picked by workers, a cooperative system to resolve complaints, a comprehensive health and safety program, a worker-to-worker education process and a strict code of conduct for the industry," Kunichoff writes. Companies such as Whole Foods, Yum!Brands, McDonald's and Burger King Holdings have signed on to the Fair Food principles.

The farmworkers earn 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes. "CIW argues that a penny per pound increase for a worker who carries two tons or more of tomatoes a day could raise that worker's yearly income from $10,000 to $17,000 a year," Kunichoff writes. Publix and Ahold, have refused to sign on to the principles, saying "they source many of their tomatoes from growers who cooperate with the CIW," Kunichoff writes. (Read more)

Drug makers lobby successfully against bills that would make meth ingredient prescription-only

Drug manufacturers have mounted a so-far successful effort to keep states from making pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient in methamphetamine, available only by prescription. "Prescription-only bills were defeated or failed to make it to a vote this month in Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky and West Virginia after heavy lobbying by the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a trade group representing makers of over-the-counter drugs," Abby Goodnough of The New York Times reports. "Similar bills are still alive in Alabama, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee and several other states."

The bills would force consumers to obtain a prescription for drugs such as Sudafed, which contain pseudoephedrine. Some bills would apply to two similar decongestants. Police say efforts to keep the drugs out of the hands of meth cooks have failed, Goodnough writes, quoting Thomas Farmer, director of the Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force, who is pushing for a prescription-only law along with most other law enforcement officials in the state: "It’s a no-brainer. This has got to be the next step." Meth-lab counts have risen sharply in some states as makers move to simpler "shake and bake" processes using 2-liter bottles.

The drug companies and retailers, often backed by major advertising campaigns, "say the measures would place an undue burden on cold and allergy sufferers," Goodnough writes. "They are promoting other bills that would help the police monitor pseudoephedrine sales with interstate electronic tracking." Joy Krieger, executive director of the St. Louis chapter of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, which is fighting a prescription-only bill in Missouri said, "we can't change lives just to stop these weirdo people." (Read more)
For previous Rural Blog coverage of electronic tracking click here.

Animal-rights groups' photographic exposés prompt bill to ban taking images without consent

A bill designed to discourage animal-rights activists from taking pictures of farms passed its first hurdle in Florida last week, after considerable changes. The original bill made it a "first-degree felony charge — the same level for rape or murder — for anyone who took photos or video of a farm or its animals without the property owner's consent," Katie Sanders of the St. Petersburg Times reports. Under the original bill "photographers, journalists, law enforcement officers — even motorists pulling over to capture a pastoral roadside scene" could have been punished, Sanders writes.

The revised bill "provides exceptions for law enforcement officers and Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services agents conducting inspections or investigations," Sanders writes. "It also stipulates that photography would be illegal if it happened upon entering the property without written consent, so photographs by road or air are okay." The penalty was also down graded from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Even with the revisions, animal-rights groups are unhappy with the bill. "The amendment simply replaces one absurd bill with another absurd bill," said Jeff Kerr, general counsel of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "This bill would aid and abet criminal animal abuse." State Sen. Jim Norman, who proposed the bill, said he is trying to protect farmers from "unfair outside assaults" on their property rights. (Read more)

Farmers should "YouTube proof" their operations, Andy Vance writes for Feedstuffs. He says that doesn't just mean taking steps to prevent controversial videos. "More importantly, we need to YouTube-proof our farms and processing facilities because it’s the right thing to do," he writes. "We have a moral and ethical obligation to treat and handle our animals with the dignity and respect rightly due all living creatures." (Read more)

Eastern Livestock bankruptcy trustee files what he says will be only the first of several lawsuits

A lawsuit filed by a federal bankruptcy trustee alleges that an Eastern Livestock Co. branch manager deposited $1.24 million in checks in the days immediately following a bank's hold on the company's accounts. "According to court documents, Eastern Livestock employees signed over 28 checks to Lexington, Ky., branch manager Willie Downs instead of depositing them in the Fifth Third Bank account. Downs then endorsed and deposited the checks," Katie Micik of DTN reports. Trustee Jim Knauer said about half the checks cleared; he said many of those who wrote them probably filed stop-payment notices after word spread that Eastern had issued bad checks to cattle producers.

"Anytime you have a company that owes creditors and you take money from the company to pay someone else, that's fraud," Knauer told DTN. "That's especially true when the company is insolvent and doesn't have assets left to pay everyone." Knauer said the lawsuit is the first of several he is planning to file.

Fifth Third froze Eastern's accounts Nov. 2 "after uncovering an alleged check kiting scheme and as much as $2.5 billion in fictitious sales to related entities," and Knauer's investigation revealed the company had been writing checks for fictitious transactions since at least 2008, Micik reports. A lawsuit in Cincinnati alleges that Downs converted the checks criminally, and under Indiana law, the trustee could be entitled to three times the monetary damages, about $3.73 million -- in addition to recovering the $1.2 million plus interest," Micik writes. (Read more)

Southern farmers forsake food crops for cotton, despite growing global need for food

With worries of a global food crisis rising, farmers may be setting up an acreage war between crops used to feed and clothe the world's population as many plant "cotton in ground where they used to grow corn, soybeans or wheat," William Neuman of The New York Times reports. This change has been "spurred on by cotton prices that have soared as clothing makers clamor for more and poor harvests crimp supply," Nueman writes. (NYT photo by Matt Nager)

"There’s a lot more money to be made in cotton right now," Ramon Vela, a Texas Panhandle farmer, told Neuman. "The prices are the big thing. That’s the driving force." Webb Wallace, executive director of the Cotton and Grain Producers of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, says the decision to follow the money behind cotton may have big implications. "It’s good for the farmer, but from a humanitarian perspective it’s kind of scary," he told Neuman. "Those people in poor countries that have a hard time affording food, they’re going to be even less able to afford it now."

In the middle of the last decade, as food prices rose and cotton prices remained low, many farmers switched from cotton to grains and other food crops, and corn production has been on the rise in recent years as ethanol demand helped drive up corn prices, Neuman writes. "This year, cotton prices are the highest they have been in years, luring farmers despite strong prices for other crops,." The Agriculture Department predicts Southern farmers will plant 12.8 million acres of upland cotton, a 19 percent increase from last year. The National Cotton Council expects substantial increases in all cotton-producing states, including large jumps in North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. (Read more)

List of 407 closed post offices is released

The U.S. Postal Service tried to keep secret its list of 407 post offices it has recently closed, but the Postal Regulatory Commission asked for the list and then made it public. The list, of "post office/station/branch suspensions" through Feb. 28, apparently had already been shared with members of Congress.

The list includes such distinctive names as Only, Tenn.; Oxbow, Maine; Delta City, Miss.; Vulcan, Mo.; Silver, Tex,; Port Byron, Ill.; Donnybrook, N.D.; Sweet Briar, Va.; Bob White, W.Va.; Rowdy, Hardburly and Yosemite, Ky. (they pronounce it YO-see-mite); and these branches or stations: Assinippi, a branch of Hanover, Mass.; Buttsville (Oxford), N.J., and Surprise (Earlton), N.Y.

While most of the offices appear to be rural, the list includes some notable urban locations: West Hollywood, Calif., and the United Nations and Wall Street stations in New York City. For a PDF of the list, click here.

Threatened end of Corporation for Public Broadcasting endangers rural community radio

Community radio stations in rural areas may have to cut programming or sign off, if Congress eliminates funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as House Republicans have voted, writes the general manager of one Appalachian radio station. WMMT-FM in Whitesburg, Ky., is the station of Appalshop Inc. and serves 30 counties in rural Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and West Virginia. The station is "funded through listener support, business underwriting and the occasional grant to produce radio documentaries about Appalachia," Marcie Crim, WMMT's general manager, writes in an op-ed for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "We are not a National Public Radio affiliate, but like countless other community radio stations we receive funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that is critical to our survival."

Community radio stations, which often receive more than 40 percent of their funding from CPB grants and generally serve rural areas, people of color and Native American reservations, "will have to cut programming significantly and in some cases go completely dark" if CPB funding is cut, Crim writes. She notes WMMT is in danger of shortening its schedule to just a few hours a day, cutting all public affairs broadcasting or possibly going off the air all together.

Community stations provide essential public services. When a diesel spill polluted the North Fork of the Kentucky River in Whitesburg in February, the city waited to notify people in the affected area. "Without WMMT on the air telling our community of the danger, even more people would have continued to use the water," Crim writes. "We don't air NPR programming; we tell our listeners when their water is poisoned (which happens more often than you can imagine)."

Crim concludes, "Community radio is produced by and for our communities and we can't do it without the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR may lose only 2 percent of its budget if CPB is defunded. However, whole communities will lose a vitally important local voice." (Read more)

Forum to focus on agricultural conservation policies in wake of expected budget cuts

The National Agriculture Landscapes Forum, hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service, American Farmland Trust and Farm Foundation, will be held in Washington April 7-8 at the Metro Center. It will bring together "Capitol Hill, state and federal agency staff, local government and tribal officials, agriculture and conservation organizations, farmers and ranchers, and others concerned about the future of the nation’s agricultural landscape," says a release from the trust. The event is free, but pre-registration is required by Thursday, March 31.

"The goal of the forum is to provide a venue for key stakeholders to engage in honest dialogue about priorities for USDA’s national conservation program and the future of the agricultural landscape given multiple, often competing, demands on our land and water resources to produce everything from food, shelter and domestic energy, to economic development and ecosystem services," said Julia Freedgood, managing director of farmland and community initiatives for American Farmland Trust. Sponsors of the forum include Altria Group, CropLife America, DuPont, the National Association of Conservation Districts and The Nature Conservancy. (Read more)

Restrictions on gas drilling advance in Md., Tex.

Two states are moving toward more restraints on natural-gas drilling in the wake of concerns over possible water pollution from hydraulic fracturing operations. The Maryland House of Delegates "on Wednesday passed a bill that would essentially place a moratorium on drilling until the Maryland Department of the Environment completes a two-year study to determine whether it endangers drinking water and public health, as some environmentalists in nearby states that allow drilling charge," Darryl Fears of The Washington Post reports. A companion bill in the state Senate is expected to face a tougher road as gas industry lobbyists work against it.

"We’re not going to be like other states that drilled first and asked questions later," Democratic Delegare Heather R. Mizeur, sponsor of the legislation, told the Post. "We understand that second chances are expensive, so we should slow down and take the time to do this right the first time."

Fears notes that U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said earlier this month he was considering federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing. "We are going to have a huge backlash . . . from the American public if we continue to inject chemicals and fluids into the ground without people knowing what it is that’s being injected," he told the House Natural Resources Committee. (Read more)

Texas, the nation's leading gas-drilling state, may require companies to disclose drilling fluids. A bill, which has won praise from industry and environmental groups, "would create a website containing information about the chemicals used in each well," Kate Galbraith of The Texas Tribune reports. David Blackmon, the Texas state committee chairman for America's Natural Gas Alliance, said with a few changes the bill could be a good way to address what the industry considers are misplaced concerns about hydraulic fracturing. (Read more)

USDA sued over its OK of Roundup Ready alfalfa

The Center for Food Safety, a group critical of genetically modified crops, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture in federal court in San Francisco, challenging the USDA's January approval of Roundup Ready alfalfa as unlawful. Ken Anderson of Brownfield Network reports, "The center alleges the approval is based on faulty information, and that genetically modified alfalfa will damage the organic industry because it could contaminate conventional or organic alfalfa." (Read more)

"This is the second time the USDA has been sued over its approval of Roundup Ready alfalfa, which is genetically engineered (GE) to tolerate glyphosate, a popular herbicide commonly sold under the Monsanto brand name Roundup," reports Mike Ludwig for Truthout. The concern is "that Roundup Ready alfalfa will increase reliance on already overused herbicides like Roundup, encourage the spread of herbicide-resistant 'superweeds' and contaminate organic and conventional alfalfa with Monsanto transgenes through cross-pollination," writes Ludwig. This could "threaten the production of organic meat and milk," since alfalfa is used for livestock feed, Ludwig opines. (Read more)

Interactive 2010 U.S. census map available

The New York Times has made an interactive 2010 U.S. census map available. Click here to view population data for individual counties or view the data by state. The map below, showing population trends, is not interactive, but all those on the Times' site are.

House Appropriations boss, from most-rural and 2nd-poorest district, thinks earmarks are over

Are the days of congressional earmarks over? "I think so," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers said in a television interview broadcast today. Rogers represents southeastern Kentucky's 5th Congressional District, which is the most rural district and the second poorest, and he has used earmarks to funnel money to it for more than two decades.

Now that era appears to be over, Rogers, R-Somerset, told interviewer Bill Bryant of Lexington's WKYT-TV on "Kentucky Newsmakers," which aired this morning. Rogers said he didn't like the idea of executive-branch officials making all specific spending decisions, but "We'll be looking over their shoulder."

Rogers' main job right now is as a House negotiator for his Republican-controlled chamber's $61 billion in current budget cuts, which the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Obama administration are strongly resisting. He said making the cuts was painful. "It’s hard to do," he said. "The most difficult thing to do, though, is to try to make it as fair and even as you can." He said his constituents have indicated they are willing to go along: "As long as it’s fairly spread we’re willing to have shared sacrifices." (Lexington Herald-Leader photo by David Perry)

Rogers said the programs that he started and maintained in and near his district with earmarks will be able to continue with suppoprt from private sources and state and local governments. Perhaps the leading example is Operation UNITE (Unlawful Narcotics Investigations, Treatment and Education). "They will be eligible to apply for grants on a competitive basis … I think successfully," he said. "They’re going to be OK." He said private support will also continue Kentucky PRIDE (Personal Responsibility In a Desirable Environment) which has cleaned up dumps, stopped blackwater discharges and taken other steps to restore and preserve the natural beauty of 38 counties he has represented in Eastern and Southern Kentucky.

Preliminary tests show electric barriers won't keep small Asian carp out of the Great Lakes

The electric barrier designed to keep rapacious Asian bighead and silver carp out of the Great Lakes probably needs more voltage to stop small fish that may eventually make their way to the man-made connection of the lakes' watershed and the Mississippi River system in which they live, preliminary research indicates.

"Federal officials said Friday that lab testing found the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal's electric dispersal barriers . . . were effective for large fish 5.4 inches or longer," the Chicago Tribune's Katherine Skiba reports. "However, higher electric power levels might be needed to immobilize small Asian carp about 2 to 3 inches long, they said." The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the closest small carp are 116 miles downstream of the barrier.

The tests were done at a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lab in Vicksburg, Miss. "Because of the lab setting's physical limits," Skiba reports, officials said "more field research near the fish barrier system is needed." (Read more)

Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation seems overcome by horse crisis; failing farms, animals

"One of the largest private organizations in the world dedicated to caring for former racehorses has been so slow or delinquent in paying for the upkeep of the more than 1,000 horses under its care that scores have wound up starved and neglected, some fatally, according to interviews and inspection reports," Joe Drape reports for The New York Times.

The Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation "has received millions in donations from some pillars of the industry," writes Drape, the newspaper's top Thoroughbred writer. "But over the past two years, according to the foundation’s financial disclosure documents, it has been operating at a deficit, and as a result has not reliably been paying the 25 farms it contracts with to oversee the retired horses." When Oklahoma farm owner Gayle England, below, complained about TRF's chronic slow pay and apparent lack of regard for the farms and the animals, 26 horses were taken from her. She has since received others. (NYT photo by Brandi Simons)

This month in Kentucky, inspectors found that 34 horses at a farm that is supposed to get funds from the foundation were in “poor” or “emaciated” condition, and one "had to be euthanized because of malnutrition," Drape reports. Stacey Huntington, the Missouri veterinarian in charge of inspections, "found that the foundation’s education of the caretakers and oversight of their farms had been poor," Drape writes. "At one farm, Dr. Huntington said, the horses were being fed cattle feed that contained a toxic element." The inspections are being conducted at the behest of the estate of financier Paul Mellon, which has put $7 million into the foundation's endowment.

The foundation's president, George Grayson, told Drape that it has been pinched by circumstances: “We have dug ourselves a big hole financially, and we’re still behind. ... It’s been a struggle to keep up with the costs associated with a large and aging horse population, at a time when the economy and giving is down.” (Read more) "Days after the article appeared, the TRF ended its association with Huntington," reports Glenye Cain Oakford of the Daily Racing Form, which offers many more numbers and details. (Read more)

Rural unemployment down 1 point from last year

Though the rural unemployment rate increased in January, it was still down one percentage point from the year before, from 11.2 percent to 10.2 percent. The January rate in both urban and exurban counties was 9.7 percent this January, down from 10.4 percent and 10.6 percent, respectively, Bill Bishop of the Daily Yonder reports. While the rural unemployment rate was down as a whole from last year, the largest groups of unemployed remain clustered.

"The counties with large numbers of rural unemployed are clustered in the Southeast, the Midwest, the Northeast and in the large counties in the western states," Bishop writes. "The rural unemployment rate in the states was highest in California, with a rate of 15 percent in rural counties. That is almost four times higher than the 4.3 percent unemployment rate in rural Nebraska, the state with the lowest rural unemployment rate in January." (Read more) (Yonder map omits metropolitan-area counties)

Interior overstated income from Wyo. coal sale

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appears to have vastly overstated the economic benefits of coal lease sales in the Powder River Basin in announcing his department's decision to advance lease sales of 758 million tons of coal earlier this week, the Casper Star-Tribune reports.

Salazar said Tuesday the sales "would add between $13.4 billion and $21.3 billion to government coffers over the life of the leases — numbers repeated by media outlets worldwide, including the Star-Tribune," Jeremy Fugleberg writes for the newspaper. "The likely total is far lower, or the amount you get if you move the decimal point over one spot to the left."

"That was off by a factor of 10," Marion Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, told Fugleberg. Loomis said the proceeds from 758 million tons of coal would more likely produce about $2 billion, with almost half of that going to state coffers. An Interior Department representative referred the Star-Tribune to a Bureau of Land Management spokesperson who did not respond to several calls. "A spokeswoman for the Wyoming BLM office said the office was looking into the numbers," Fugleberg writes.

"Salazar’s numbers would mean the government would get $17 to $28 per ton of the newly available coal," Fugleberg writes. "But that number is considerably higher than the current spot sale price for a ton of coal" in the basin. The federal Energy Information Administration reports a ton of 8,800-BTU Powder River coal is selling for $13.65. (Read more)

Ethanol industry pushes USDA to change the way it accounts for use of grain

In the latest attempt to improve its public image, the ethanol industry is pushing the Agriculture Department to change the way it reports the use of grain. Governors of ethanol-producing states say the reports undercount the amount of corn fed to livestock, leading to unfair criticism of the industry, Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reports. "The governors said the numbers fail to note that some of the corn that is processed into ethanol winds up as a byproduct called distillers grains that is widely fed to cattle," Brasher writes.

USDA is considering adding the words "and co-products" to the report category that shows corn-for-ethanol usage. The change could be made in time for the next supply-and-demand report on April 8. "Adding a few words to the report, however, is unlikely to go far enough to satisfy the ethanol industry, which would like to see changes in way the numbers are calculated," Brasher writes. Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, said, "Most people don't know the arithmetic as to how many pounds (of corn) goes into distillers grains."

The industry's concerns reflect the public-relations battle it is "waging to quell concerns about the impact of biofuel production on global food prices, concerns that complicate the industry's efforts to persuade Congress to extend its subsidies," Brasher writes. RFA says one-third of every bushel of corn used for ethanol production ends up as livestock feed, and the Governors' Biofuels Coalition wrote in a recent letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that USDA was "inadvertently perpetuating" a damaging misconception about how much corn is available for feed. (Read more)

Pending construction of solar plant in Arizona leads to the end of a popular hunt

In what may be a harbinger of things to come, construction of a solar power plant in the West has led to cancellation of a popular hunt.

After the Arizona Game and Fish Commission scratched the pronghorn antelope hunt, Chair Robert Woodhouse "said this was the first time in the commission's history it canceled a hunt because of a public access closure," Joanna Dodder Nellans of The Daily Courier of Prescott reports. Chino Grande Ranch "owners informed Game and Fish last week that they won't allow any hunting this fall on the nearly 50,000-acre ranch in the Big Chino Valley, so the commission members voted to cancel the entire 19B hunt and its 65 antelope tags." The ranch accounts for about a third of the antelope habitat in state area 19B.

Arizona Senate Majority Whip Steve Pierce, a Prescott-area rancher, told Nellans he is concerned about the continuing loss of hunting access of private property, but he said he understands private landowners have the right to close off their land. Ranch co-owner Larry Geare said "The antelope will have plenty of room to roam" even aftre the plant is built. (Read more)

Commission tells Postal Service to gauge impact on rural areas before ending Saturday delivery

The U.S. Postal Service should not eliminate Saturday delivery without more study of the impact on rural customers, the Postal Regulatory Commission said in an advisory opinion today.

"The Commission recommends that the Postal Service, before implementing five-day delivery, create a plan that provides an acceptable level of service to rural, remote or non-contiguous areas that may be particularly affected," the opinion concluded. "Such a plan should mitigate any disparity in service caused by five-day delivery."

The opinion "takes a skeptical look at many of the Postal Service’s assumptions about the impact of the proposed change," the National Newspaper Association, which fought the service's proposal, said in a news release. "While it does not firmly recommend for or against five-day mail, the PRC advises the Postal Service and Congress that USPS has over-estimated how much money it would save, under-estimated how much business it would lose and failed to sufficiently analyze the impact on rural, remote and non-contiguous areas (like Alaska and Hawaii) if Saturday delivery is eliminated."

Congress has long required six-day and rural delivery, but reconsiders the subject annually, and the Postal Service is eager to find ways to save money to erase its multi-billion-dollar deficits. Now it must "respond to the commission’s reservations about potential financial gain" from eliminating Saturday delivery, NNA said.

The commission's opinion pointed out several ways five-day delivery would hurt rural areas. "A number of post offices in rural areas are not open on Saturday or operate on a limited-hour basis, and the Postal Service has not indicated if it will maintain existing post office hours," it said. "Furthermore, the Postal Service is also proceeding with plans to close post offices stations, and branches and reduce the number of blue collection boxes available."

It would be better to eliminate Saturday delivery than "close thousands of small post offices," Commissioner Tony Hammond said in a supplementary opinion that amounted to a dissent. But the full commission's opinion noted other factors, such as the heavy use of mail-order pharmacies by rural residents, and pointed out that that more parcels are delivered on Saturday than any other day.

The commisison said the Postal Service "made no attempt to develop information on the unique postal needs" of rural areas, and noted in its news release that commissioners "received significant input from rural America." That included testimony from Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, who argued that the mail is a more important part of the civic infrastructure in rural America.

The Postal Service argued that a poll showed Americans would prefer the loss of Saturday mail to a postage rate increase, but the commission said the survey used "an improbable 10 percent rate increase, which may have biased the responses." The opinion is a 211-page PDF, available here.

Splitsville is a rural place now: Rural divorce rate has caught up with the urban rate

The gap between rural and urban divorce rates has all but disappeared, 2010 census data show. "Forty years ago, divorced people were more concentrated in cities and suburbs. But geographic distinctions have all but vanished, and now, for the first time, rural Americans are just as likely to be divorced as city dwellers," Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff of The New York Times report.

June Carbone, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, told the Times that college-educated Americans are more likely than high-school graduates to get married and stay married. This is important because census data show one in six rural residents has a college degree compared to one in three in the cities, Tayernise and Gebeloff report.

"Nationally, there were about 121 million married adults and 26 million divorced people in 2009, compared with about 100 million married and 11 million divorced people in 1980," the reporters write.

"It has hit the whitest, most married, most idyllic heart of America — Iowa," said Maria Kefalas, a sociology professor at St. Joseph's University. "The cultural narrative about marriage — you get a job, you marry your sweetheart, you buy a house, you educate your kids — has been torn to shreds. Without that economic foundation, the story cannot support itself." Carbone siad, "A blue-collar guy has less to offer today than he did in 1979," Carbone told the Times, adding that those shifting forces "create a mismatch between expectation and reality,"that result in women becoming frustrated and leaving, because now they can.

In Sioux County, Iowa, the low divorce rate in the 1970s resembled the national rate of the 1910s. The rate is up seven-fold since then, and while the county's rate is still lower than the national average, "its sharp jump illustrates a fundamental change in the patterns of family life," the reporters write. (Read more)

Organic growers lose ground in battle with genetic engineering; disappointed in administration

Based on recent rulings, the genetic engineering industry seems victorious in the battle over organics and genetically engineered crops. "The administration has announced a trio of decisions that have clouded the future of organics and boosted the position of genetically engineered crops," Lyndsey Layton of The Washington Post reports. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "approved genetically modified alfalfa and a modified corn to be made into ethanol, and he gave limited approval to GE sugar beets," Layton notes.

Some supporters of organics say they have been disappointed by the administration, which they hoped would be friendlier to their interests. "It was boom, boom boom," Walter Robb, co-chief executive of Whole Foods Markets, a major player in organics, told Layton. "These were deeply disappointing. They were such one-sided decisions."

The argument centers on concerns about contamination. Organics supporters fear that pollen and seeds from GE crops could drift across fields to nearby organic crops. "Contamination can cost organic growers — some overseas markets, for example, have rejected organic products when tests showed they carried even trace amounts of GE material," Layton writes. GE crop advocates say the industry's farmers "should be free to grow the crops because they do not harm other plants," Layton writes.

Jim Greenwood, head of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, told Layton, "Biotechnology can help crops thrive in drought-prone areas, improve the nutrition content of foods, grow alternative energy sources and improve the lives of farmers and rural communities around the globe."

Vilsack seemed poised to restrict genetically engineered crops prior to the alfalfa ruling, but he said "ultimately regulations prevented him from restricting GE crops," Layton writes. Despite the recent rulings, Vilsack told Layton he hopes the two sides can co-exist. "I had no expectation that the dialogue was going to end in some grand understanding or a kum-ba-ya moment," he said. "This is going to require a lot of work by reasonable, smart people to get this done. It’s in the interest of the country for these folks to stop fighting and get together and figure out how to live in the same neighborhood." (Read more)

Grain bin deaths reach record high in 2010

Deaths from grain-bin accidents hit a record high in 2010. Judith Graham of the Chicago Tribune reports, "51 men and boys were engulfed by grain stored in towering metal structures that dot rural landscapes, and 26 died — the highest number on record, according to a report issued by Purdue University." (Tribune graphic)

"Accidents can occur when someone enters a bin to break up clumps that form when grains are moist and have started decomposing", Graham writes. When someone steps into flowing grain they can sink up to the chest, becoming immobilized within 10 seconds. Within another 10 seconds the person can be submerged and unable to breathe, Jeffrey Adkisson, executive vice president of the Grain & Feed Association of Illinois, told Graham, adding, "The 2009 corn crop was a particularly wet one, leading to more stuck-together grain than usual. In turn, that caused more workers to go into grain bins in 2010, exposing them to potential danger."

Graham writes, "If machinery is on, helping to keep corn flowing, a sinkhole can form and pull down a worker who gets too close. Or corn caked on the sides of a bin can collapse like an avalanche, burying someone. Or someone may walk across the top of the corn, thinking it's safe, and plunge under the surface."

With proper safeguards, almost all such accidents are preventable, Graham reports. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration recommends "turning off machinery that helps move grain when someone enters a grain bin, and using body harnesses so workers can be pulled to safety," Graham writes. (Read more)

Key Democratic senator says farm-subsidy cuts are inevitable; GOP colleague targets sugar

A pair of influential U.S. senators, one of each party, had bad news for agriculture this week. Democrat Max Baucus of Montana told farmers in his home state Monday that they should start thinking about what subsidies they can live without, because cuts are coming, Tom Lutey of the Billings Gazette reports. "Agriculture is still our largest industry by far," Baucus said. "Half our economy is tied to it, so we better make sure it stays strong." Baucus said he would make sure the "budget isn’t balanced on the backs of rural states, although cuts were certain," Lutey writes.

While serious talks about the Farm Bill may be a year away, conversations about what programs to cut have already begun, Baucus said. Among the early targets are the Conservation Reserve Enhancement program and the direct-payment program. One Montana farmer at the meeting, Don Steinbeisser, said he didn't want small-cost programs like the federal sugar program cut, but if Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar has his way that program is in trouble. (Read more)

Lugar told Robert Costa of National Review that he plans to soon introduce legislation that would eliminate the government-mandated tariffs, quotas, subsidies and related price-inflating mechanisms that benefit the sugar industry. "I’m energized to take on the sugar program again because many more Americans understand that they personally pay the costs of government overreach," Lugar said. "It’s time to leave Franklin Roosevelt’s farm policies behind us."

Lugar said that by supporting the sugar industry the government has caused U.S. citizens to pay more than double the world's price in sugar, and the industry is driving jobs in the candy business and others out of the country. "Cutting sugar subsidies was an early vote I took when I came to the Senate in 1977," he told Costa. "Since that time, I’ve authored various bills to end the sugar program and reform the entire Farm Bill subsidy system. Those bills could have saved taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, but usually I found myself nearly alone when push came to shove on voting in favor of reform." (Read more)

Florida prescription-pill database's main supporter, opponent in legislature meeting

In February we reported new Florida Gov. Rick Scott had proposed eliminating a program that was designed to curb the prescription-pill pipeline from Florida to Central Appalachia, but now the opposition could be softening. Scott continues to voice opposition to the program, which would create an electronic database to track prescriptions, but today the leading opponent and supporter of the program in the state legislature, both Republicans like Scott, are meeting to hash out their differences, Meg Laughlin of the St. Petersburg Times reports.

"The pill-mill issue is a major issue in our state. And we are losing people every day. So we've got to come up with a plan that's going to solve this issue," Scott said Tuesday, noting he still feared the database could breach patient confidentiality. "With regard to the database, I am very uncomfortable where we are now because of privacy," he said. Laughlin notes that Scott's Tea Party supporters did not include the database on a list of the 11 issues that matter most to the organization.

Today Republican Rep. Rob Schenck, who has been among the most outspoken opponents of the database, and Republican Sen. Mike Fasano, who has been its lead supporter, will meet to discuss how to move forward. (Read more)

As health reform turns 1, big farm employers worry about providing coverage, now scant

To mark today's anniversary of the health-care reform law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Agriculture Secretary Tom Visack issued a statement lauding the law's benefits for rural people, saying “For too long, rural Americans have been getting the short end of the health-care stick, with limited insurance options, fewer doctors and nurses, and higher out-of-pocket expenses. The health-care law is helping to change that – increasing payments to rural health-care providers, strengthening Medicare and training thousands of new primary care doctors to serve in rural areas.”

But some in rural America have problems with the law. On January 1, 2014, employers with 50 or more full-time workers will be required to offer health insurance to their employees, and that will be a challenge for big farms; only 10 to 15 percent of the 1.6 million agricultural workers in the U.S. have even basic health insurance, reports Agri-Pulse, a Washington newsletter.

The specialty-crop industry says that creates a significant problem since approximately “70 percent or more of [its workers] are believed to be falsely documented,” reports Agri-Pulse, “largely due to the transitory nature of the workforce, which often migrates from farm to farm and sometimes from state to state, creating administrative headaches for employers.” The industry is lobbying Congress for changes.

The law will also cost employers, most of whom are expected to have employees paying higher insurance premiums and/or co-pays, reports Agri-Pulse, and “For the vast majority of migrant workers, health care coverage may cost more than they are willing to pay.” Cathleen Enright, vice president of federal government affairs at Western Growers Association, which represents about half the nation's produce output, told the newsletter that many seasonal agriculture workers will elect to get cheaper state coverage or no coverage at all, triggering a penalty for employers.

Agri-Pulse is subscription-only, but offers a free four-issue trial subscription.

Resistance to hydraulic fracturing in gas drilling continues in Marcellus Shale states

As Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania introduced legislation for federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing in natural-gas drilling last week, there was action in other states underlain by the deep, dense, gas-rich Marcellus Shale (map), a prime target of the frackers.

Maryland’s House of Delegates "advanced a plan calling for a two-year study of Marcellus Shale drilling, overriding the objections of Western Maryland lawmakers who want to see the potentially lucrative activity sooner, " writes Julie Bykowicz of the Baltimore Sun. Delegate Maggie McIntosh said "the state needs time to study hydraulic fracturing and that proceeding quickly could prove harmful to Maryland's waterways," Bykowicz reports.

In West Virginia, after the legislature declined to establish new regulations for Marcellus drilling, “Lawmakers and surface-owner groups met to announce the signing of a letter urging Randy Huffman, secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, to use his emergency authority to halt the issuance of new horizontal drilling permits in the Marcellus Shale,” reports Taylor Kuykendall of the Register-Herald in Beckley.

Supporters of the moratorium in West Virginia include the Lewisburg City Council, which Peggy Mackenzie of the Mountain Messenger reports “may well be the first municipality in the state to declare the prohibition of locating, drilling, equipping, operating or producing any oil and gas wells within the city limits.” The council approved a resolution expressing “concerns about the lack of protection afforded the state’s water resources, particularly the Greenbrier River watershed, which is the source of water for Lewisburg’s regional system, serving 4,732 customers,” writes Tina Alvey of the Register-Herald.

New York state is enforcing a moratorium on Marcellus drilling until at least July 2011, reports the Associated Press.