Bill Richardson may have got a vote as the best presidential candidate for agriculture here in the Blogriculture poll, but it wasn't enough to save his campaign. The Democrat announced officially today he's dropping out of the race.
We'll leave him in the poll anyway. After all, he's one of only three presidential candidates to get a vote so far in our little poll.
With the New Hampshire primaries going on today, it's got me thinking about presidential politics. I was wondering which of the presidential candidates would be best for America's farmers and ranchers. Rather than speculate, I figured I'd turn to Blogriculture readers to help determine the answer.
I've added a couple of polls, one Democrat and one Republican, to let you the people decide who will better serve rural American from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Feel free to cast your vote in one, or both, polls on who you think would be the best president from each party for American farmers and ranchers.
We'll leave the poll up for a few weeks to collect as many votes as possible, so come back and see how your candidate is doing in the days and weeks ahead.
Farmers and ranchers in the West raise hundreds of things to feed and cloth the people of the United States and the world. At the Capital Press newspaper, we try to cover as many of them as we can, with particular emphasis places on the biggest commodities in our region.
We realize that finding information we have published on particular commodities can be a bit of a challenge sometimes on our website. We have a search function that can help, but if you find one story you like and want to read other stories similar to that one, sometimes that can be difficult, short of running a whole new story search.
We hope some changes we've made to the site will make it easier for subscribers to find some stories they may be interested in. In print, we publish pages each week dedicated to issues for dairy producers and livestock producers. Now, we have added links to our online Dairy and Livestock pages to help subscribers interested in those topics stay on top of developments in those specialties throughout the region.
Look for the Dairy and Livestock links on the left-side navigation bar on www.capitalpress.com. And if you have any other suggestions on how we can make our websites easier to use, please let us know.
By Kevin Duling
Animals typically rule the roost at my place. I always presumed I would just have a dog and maybe even a cat. Throughout time and a few unfortunate events, I was left with two cats, fourteen chickens, a barn full of guinea hens, a pet steer, a dog, some wild quail which must be fed daily, and lastly, two finches.
When I leave for a small vacation, (all my vacations must be small with that many animals) I have to print out a detailed map of instructions on the appropriate care of each animal. The two finches, Frederick and Francine Finch, are by far the highest maintenance of all.
Daily care for finches involves simply changing their water, blowing the chaff off their food dish, giving them five fresh leaves of spinach, replacing the millet stalk, and wiping the poop off the perches. For the sake of time and entertainment value, I did not mention the cage cleaning, mite control, the proper mixing of charcoal with the gravel, the cuttlebone, and keeping the thermostat constantly above 65 degrees.
A few years back I was contemplating whether to give them to someone else or keep them. Frederick was busy trying to get a small piece of a millet branch into their nest. It was slightly too big and too slippery to stay inside. Frederick would place it in position and the branch would slide back out, falling the far twelve inches to the cage floor.
Two hours later, Frederick was still trying to get the small stick to stay up in his nest, while Francine waited patiently on the nearby perch. Finally, after hours of work and toil, Frederick got his branch to stay. With a cheerful little song he decided to get some approval from Francine.
As they sat together on the perch looking horizontally at their nest, the branch decided to fall back out. Frederick’s reaction was an ear piercing “CHIRP!” I do not speak finch well, but I do know this was not a kind word. After Frederick’s sinful outburst, Francine glanced at Frederick and began to verbally let him have it.
It was not until evening when I discovered the extent of Frederick’s verbal discharge. For the first time, Francine would not let Frederick into the nest. He had crossed a line and he was in big trouble. For a full week Frederick slept on top of the nest, while his spouse slept inside.
Finally, after trying for seven long nights, she allowed him to come back in and sleep in the bedroom. The happy little couple hasn’t had a problem like that since. I have managed to witness at least a dozen traits from these two that would correspond directly to a married couple.
Being engaged, I have to ask myself what verbal outburst I am capable of that will end with me on the couch for a week. I am also curious what I will have to do to get me off the couch. One would not think one could learn so much from a pair of birds, whose aggregate weight equals about 2 ounces.
Life hasn’t always been perfectly rosy for the two finches. They have suffered through a week of paint thinner fumes, a week of staying at the grandparents while the paint dried, numerous temporary furnace outages, some heat waves, a cat dangling from the cage, and the time I tried to start a fire with the chimney completely plugged. All of these events were life-threatening to the finches, but together they made it through.
Hardship comes every spring and fall when I clean out their nest, which requires them to rebuild with tiny sticks and pieces of napkin. After a couple of hours of remorse and complaining, they get to work.
These little guys may be the highest maintenance pets in the world, but their character, perseverance, trust, and loyalty make them almost worth it. I won’t give a finch.
Kevin Duling is a wheat farmer from Maupin, Ore. His stories will be posted on the Capital Press blog every Friday. Comments are welcomed at kevinddul@aol.com .
Copyright, January 2008, Kevin Duling
As the subprime mortgage debacle drags down the housing market, Barron's reports that agricultural land prices are booming across the Midwest. Analysts aren't particularly worried about a farmland bubble:[Farmers] are reinvesting their gains in additional acreage. This means that the market isn't nearly as leveraged as was residential real estate, says Iowa State's Duffy, and so is less prone to becoming a bubble. Furthermore, farmers can lock in profits on futures exchanges at current prices going out two or three years. Indeed, 2008 futures for corn, soybeans and wheat reached new highs in late-fall and early-winter trading.
Pressure from sprawl and increasing commodity prices are part of the surge in land value, but the biggest boost is the e-word:
The rush for ethanol is easily the biggest factor behind rising farm prices. And a glut of ethanol could develop quickly as more and more farmers try to get rich quick by switching production to corn. In fact, the glut may be here. More than 130 ethanol plants now operate in the U.S., up from around 80 three years ago, while the number of gas stations selling ethanol is as underwhelming as the number of drivers demanding it. Recently, construction on three proposed U.S. plants was halted amid a growing oversupply of the fuel. Hart Energy Publishing reports that U.S. ethanol inventories climbed 12% from August through September, while average prices had slid from $1.91 a gallon to $1.67.The article looks back at the last farmland bubble in the '70s and is well worth a read.
What's the best way to welcome the new year?
On the farm, my family and I always liked to go for a long drive or a long walk, as weather permitted. If our roads were snowed in, and snow too deep to walk, then skidoos were used to travel the fields.
Whether by vehicle or foot, usually a few wild animals were seen along the way.
Being far from home and the family farm, I decided the best thing to do yesterday was to drive to the Oregon coast. I was curious to see the damage from some of the bad storms that have hit there in the last few weeks, but I also was drawn to the beauty of the coast and the chance to see whales this time of year as they migrate south.
Along the way, between Salem and Lincoln City, there was evidence that a fair bit of trees had been knocked down and cleaned up along the highway. In Lincoln City itself, there are still some missing signs that need to be replaced, a few roofs are being repaired, and there is evidence that trees got knocked down here and there. But for the most part, the town appears to have done surprisingly well in either avoiding direct damage or in recovering quickly from winds that had reached hurricane strength there.
From Lincoln City to Newport there are more signs of trees taking the brunt of the wind, but again, clean up has gone well in the majority of the areas. Restaurants and some other businesses open yesterday did well with business from local people as well as visiting tourists.
It was cloudy, dry and windy at the coast, keeping most people away from walking the beaches, but there were two groups that did venture out: surfers and whale-watchers. Along the coast in several places there were people with binoculars, long zoom lenses, and a a lot of patience.
They scanned the horizon hoping to see the familiar spouts of water going up to reveal where the whales were in the water. Occasionally, if people are lucky, they might actually see part of the whales as they swim or dive.
I saw only a few spouts. When the water is calm, it's a lot easier to spot the whales. However, this definitely was the time to see the whales. This past week is one of the best times to see them migrate, when the largest number travel south.
The sun was mostly clouded over, but the shimmering of the sun's rays on the ocean's surface really gave a surreal beauty to the day.
After the sun set, smaller fishing boats began to return to Newport. The cries of sea gulls and the barking of sea lions welcomed each boat that slowed chugged towards the processing plants. By this morning, their catch will start to appear in markets up and down the west Coast.
Gazing at this watery world far from the fields I had explored on past New Year's Days, I thought about how different parts of the country welcome the new year through their traditions, lifestyles and careers.
Back on the farm, on New Years Eve, my family had welcomed a new calf born a bit earlier in the season than usual. In the city, some people in the neighborhood had cheered and shot off mostly illegal fireworks for several hours. At the coast, the fishing boats prepared their boats to harvest fish and crabs.
Welcome, 2008, may it be a good year to all — no matter where people are and what they do.
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