Calls for reform in Fort Collins

From the National Farmers Union:

WASHINGTON (Aug. 27, 2010) – Amid much anticipation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) held a joint workshop focused on competition in the livestock industry in Fort Collins, Colo., today. The workshop had 1300 individuals registered, including Farmers Union members and staff from at least 12 states.

“A lot of attention has been drawn to this workshop based on the recent disputes on the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) proposed rule,” said National Farmers Union (NFU) President Roger Johnson. “NFU is pleased to have two members on the speaker panel representing U.S. family farmers and ranchers, who are in favor of the proposed rule. It is vital to have speakers from groups that represent the family farmer, not just the packer-producer organizations.”

Chris Peterson, Iowa Farmers Union president, and Armando Valdez, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union member, both livestock producers, spoke at the workshop. Peterson and Valdez each highlighted the need for reform in the livestock industry, with an emphasis on the increasing consolidation and vertical integration in the livestock and poultry marketplace, resulting in a tougher environment for independent producers.

“GIPSA has put forth the revisions as called for by Congress in the 2008 Farm Bill,” said Johnson. “The rules reinforce the existing Packers and Stockyards Act and amount to a Farmer and Rancher Bill of Rights.”

Editorial: 'Us vs. them' nothing new

Today's Capital Press editorial weighs in on the infighting that's going on among national beef organizations, which we detailed last week. It starts with some history:

Back before the turn of the last century, the nation's farmers got all worked up over the power of the railroads, their only ticket for moving large quantities of fruit, grain and livestock from rural areas to urban centers, where their customers lived.

And here's another snippet:

The beef industry is set up for "us vs. them" mind sets. There are over 900,000 cattle producers in the country, most of them in the business of raising calves for sale. Then there are margin operators, who get a percentage of the price, regardless of whether the cost of calves is up or down. Both cattle feeders and meat packers are targets of complaints -- sometimes justified.

Everyone complains about the bankers, who call the shots when the line of credit is maxed out.

Read the editorial here.

Vilsack offered to quit over Sherrod flap

Fox News' Kristin Brown reports:

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack reportedly said that he offered to resign over the department's handling of former employee Shirley Sherrod - furthering Vilsack's insistence that the blame lies with him, despite Sherrod's assertion she was told that the White House was behind the decision to have her fired.

Sherrod was removed from her position as the Georgia state director for rural development at the USDA after a video surfaced of her giving a speech in which she said she once refused to help a white farmer because of his race. It soon became clear the comment was taken out of context. Sherrod was in fact illustrating a point about overcoming racial challenges - and in the end, Sherrod had, in fact, gone on to help the farmer.

Vilsack told Politico that he made a hurried decision to put Sherrod on administrative leave,after an aide showed him a few lines of Sherrod's speech shortly after it appeared online.

Vilsack recalled his reaction. "Good Lord, this is not going to help the department." He said he realized later that there was a lot more to the story than those few sentences.

Vilsack said once he realized his mistake, he spoke with both White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and White House senior counselor David Axelrod and offered to resign. He says he learned "there was no appetite for resignation at the White House."

Summer at the CP

This summer is the first summer in the last four years that I haven't spent my days on a boat wearing waders. I wasn’t covered in Klamath Lake's algae nor did I use my skill of spotting a sucker amongst hundreds of other fish or try to keep the midges off my lunch.

It is also the first summer ever that I haven't been able to just roll out of bed, put on a hat and a pair of boots and go to work. I have always said that I could never work in an office, but this summer I did and I lived to tell the tale.

My first day of work I remember thinking that maybe I was in a little over my head, but as the summer went on I found that interviewing, writing, taking photos, doing research and fact checking became easier.

I realized that I really will use my ag economics classes, which means the next time I'm in one, I’ll stop saying, “When am I ever going to use this?”

I learned how to avoid a journalistic catastrophe, mostly from other people's stories. For example, always take two pens – or in my case three, because in one instance, two wasn't even enough.

I found that there is plenty that I don't know and there always will be. But, in the meantime I will try to close that gap.

The part I enjoyed most was getting out and talking to people and learning about new subjects. My experiences and education focus on either livestock or fish, which are important, but agriculture encompasses so many disciplines, it's good to know how other industries conduct business.

I have also found that familiarity with agriculture and all those years of sitting around drinking coffee, talking with farmers and ranchers made my job this summer much easier.

Some surprises for me: I never thought I would read so many legal documents. I also never thought I would be covering sexual harassment lawsuits, attend a sentencing for attempted murder, get paid to go to a rodeo or meet a member of the President's cabinet.

One big factor that helped make my experience such a positive one has been the people at the paper. I lacked experience when I started – and I'm still not an expert – but everyone has been helpful and provided the input I needed to improve.

I really appreciated the fact that I had this opportunity to do plenty of writing and learn more about journalism than I ever would in school.

'Summer of Ag' comes to a close

Ten or 11 weeks always goes by much faster than I think it will during the first or second day of Week One, when I'm sitting at a new desk in a new place looking wide-eyed and terrified.

The first couple days of an internship always feel like you're in way over your head. You don't know anyone, you're doing something new at a new place with different procedures and expectations than you're used to.

At the beginning of this internship, I knew I was going to be designing pages, editing copy, editing some video and maybe doing a story here and there. The three months prior to June 14, I had only been doing one night per week of very limited layout/design, and I came in feeling really rusty. I was thrilled that Quark was intuitive and similar enough to InDesign that I could actually get by that first week. In fact, I was really proud of myself, even though I knew that by design standards, those first pages were hideous.

But slowly I got to know the news and office staff, the writers, the editors and the paper itself. I started to learn what worked, what didn't and what people wanted to see. Most importantly for this type of internship, I think, I got to know the subject matter.

I'm more or less a complete stranger to agriculture and rural America. Aside from growing up riding and training horses (we never owned any land, though, so I was always living in the suburbs or a city and boarding somewhere) and the one year I spent raising a goat in FFA, I have no connections to the ag world. I've never made anything grow — I don't even cook. I know that 11 weeks at a weekly ag paper doesn't qualify me to be a member of the Farm Bureau or work for USDA, but I feel like I have so much more awareness of this huge, vital industry now. I can actually carry on a conversation with someone in the ag world about what's currently going on.

In fact, I impressed my boyfriend's dad a few weeks ago by asking him about his wheat and grass seed harvests.

I really hate how unaware of this entire world I was before this internship. I barely know anything now, but as a person who is more or less obsessed with learning and discovery, I'm excited and I want to learn more. I'm moving to a dingy, tiny apartment in a barn in the middle of nowhere when I move my horse to Corvallis in a month because I want to be more a part of this world.

Aside from my ag education, I had never really done intense, daily page design. I really enjoy reading and editing copy, and I feel like I have a pretty good handle on AP style, but I think I kind of learned that designing pages isn't my forte. I can do it, and I'm happy to do it, but I just don't feel like I'm good at it. Also, I start to miss getting to interview people and track news and write when I'm at the copy desk for long periods of time. But if I hadn't had this internship, I wouldn't know that.

I can't imagine what I would be like right now if I hadn't gotten to do this internship. I feel like I'm at least competent at page layout now and I know, if nothing else, what doesn't work. It seems natural, I don't fumble as much. But I think it's something you have to always work on, like writing.

I had an internship once where I felt like I was kind of a superstar. The staff and editors loved me and I had front page (and even centerpiece) stories regularly. I floated out of 10 weeks feeling like I'd have no trouble finding another internship and a job when I eventually graduated.

But aside from really rigorous practice in writing and reporting, I didn't learn much that summer. And the year after it, I didn't get any of the prestigious internships I applied for (ridiculously lofty ones, like NPR and The New York Times, which I clearly am still not ready for).

I loved that internship and still love that paper, don't get me wrong. But the point is that I learned more this summer — so much that I'm almost a different person now. I feel like I'm leaving here a smarter, more well-rounded human, not to mention a better copy editor, better video editor, better photographer (although still admittedly really weak) and a better reporter.

This was a random, last chance opportunity that ended up being a really significant one. Before Joe e-mailed me and told me they were looking for a copy editing intern of sorts, I was planning on going home to Woodinville and working at a brewery as a hostess for the summer. If I'd done that, right now I would probably be wildly irate from dealing with obnoxious drunk customers for two months straight, but I also wouldn't have what is basically a completely revamped and improved skill set.

And now I can bring an agricultural edge to my fall reporting internship at The Oregonian, which is an angle that many Oregonians from rural backgrounds have told me they feel like The O is missing. If there's any chance for me to push that angle, I will.

The worst part about internships is that you grow attached to the place, the people and the job about two-thirds of the way through, right when you know you only have a few weeks left. This was an invaluable experience for me as a young journalist, and I'm so thankful for everyone who made it possible and who helped me out during my time here. But you probably won't get a chance to miss me — I'm sure Anna and I will be back to visit before long.

-Candice (copy desk intern, summer 2010)

Are we in another Depression?

Economist David Rosenberg thinks so. From CNBC:

Rosenberg calls current economic conditions "a depression, and not just some garden-variety recession," and notes that any good news both during the initial 1929-33 recession and the one that began in 2008 triggered "euphoric response."

"Such is human nature and nobody can be blamed for trying to be optimistic; however, in the money management business, we have a fiduciary responsibility to be as realistic as possible about the outlook for the economy and the market at all times," he said.

The 1929-33 recession saw six quarterly bounces in GDP with an average gain of 8 percent, sending the stock market to a 50 percent rally in early 1930 as investors thought the worst had passed.

"False premise," Rosenberg said. "And guess what? We may well be reliving history here. If you're keeping score, we have recorded four quarterly advances in real GDP, and the average is only 3%."