Lewis Farming Co

Farming at Dululu for 100+ years

BBC News at Ten: item on farm subsidy payment limits

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Mark Mardell reports on the Commission’s proposals for cuts to the very largest farm subsidy payments, including those to the British royal family. Includes an interview with Jack Thurston, co-founder of farmsubsidy.org.

Feds vs. Raisins: Small Farmers Stand Up to the USDA

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“They want us to pay for our own raisins that we grew,” says Raisin Valley Farms owner Marvin Horne. “We have to buy them back!”

This is but one absurdity that Marvin and his wife Laura have faced during their decade-long legal battle with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Every year, the Hornes plant seeds, tie vines, harvest fruit, and place grapes in paper trays to create sun-dried raisins. And every year, the federal government prevents them from bringing their full harvest to market.

It’s called an agriculture marketing order. Depression-era regulations meant to stabilize crop prices endanger the livelihoods of small farmers across the country, but the raisin marketing order is particularly egregious. An elected board of bureaucrats known as the Raisin Administrative Committee decides what the proper yield should be in any given year in order to meet a previously decided-upon price. Once they can estimate the size of the year’s harvest, they force every farmer to surrender a percentage of their crop to raisin packers like Sun-Maid. The packers then place the raisins in a “reserve pool,” a special holding vat for raisins that cannot be sold in the U.S. Eventually, the packers can sell the reserve pool raisins overseas at highly discounted prices set by the government or funnel them into school lunch programs for next to nothing.

The government allows them to sell one out of every two raisins.The farmers were always supposed to get a percentage of the money raised from the reserve pool raisins, but as profit margins dwindled over the years, so did the return to farmers. The tipping point came in 2003, when farmers received zero dollars in return for the 47 percent of the crop they had surrendered.

“You can’t work for a whole year and then give 47 percent of what you made away and still keep that business afloat,” says Laura Horne.

Frustrated and desperate, the Hornes started packing and selling their own raisins, which they believed would allow them to circumvent the marketing order. In doing so, they inadvertantly sparked a small revolution, as other independent raisin farmers saw their initial success and began to pack and sell, too. The government wasn’t happy (neither was Sun-Maid).

The USDA saddled the Hornes with massive fines in addition to demanding payment for the raisins they had failed to surrender. Marvin Horne estimates his outstanding balance at close to a million dollars, a virtually insurmountable figure for a small, family-owned farm. The Hornes decided to fight back.

When the Hornes andYeah, those raisins are gonna cost you. a few other raisin farmers tried to challenge the USDA’s seizure of their crop without payment as an unconstitutional taking of property in violation of the Fifth Amendment, the government balked and said that the issue should be heard in a Federal Claims court, as the case had nothing to do with the taking of property but instead was a matter of the Hornes violating farming regulations and being fined for doing so. Remarkably, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the USDA and declared that they had no jurisdiction in the case. Luckily for the Hornes, however, the Supreme Court took the case and ruled, in a 9-0 decision, that the 9th Circuit was mistaken and must consider the case on its constitutional merits.

And now, after nearly a decade of fighting, the Hornes must wait a little longer. This saga may well end in 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the next few months, or the Hornes may one day soon find themselves before the Supreme Court once again. A favorable legal outcome is far from certain, but their raisins—and our property rights—depend on it.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Tracy Oppenheimer and Weissmueller. Music by Case Newsom.

About 7 minutes.

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Farmers Union Iced Coffee Review – Is this the best iced coffee? SONG right at the end!

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Farmers Union Iced Coffee Review – Is this the best iced coffee?

Today I checked out a Farmers Union Iced Coffee. Haven’t had one for many years and enjoyed reviewing it for you. Also introduced to the world the official Shaky Shake.

Was this Farmers Union Iced Coffee good? Watch the video to find out. also watch to the end for the special song 🙂

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Get Back by Silent Partner from YouTube Audio Library http://goo.gl/YmnOAx

How did Hitler rise to power? – Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard

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View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-did-hitler-rise-to-power-alex-gendler-and-anthony-hazard

Decades after the fall of the Third Reich, it feels impossible to understand how Adolf Hitler, the tyrant who orchestrated one of the largest genocides in human history, could ever have risen to power in a democratic country. So how did it happen, and could it happen again? Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard dive into the history and circumstances that allowed Hitler to become Führer of Germany.

Lesson by Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard, animation by Uncle Ginger.

Scientists investigate Tasmanian tiger sightings

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Scientists investigate Tasmanian tiger sightings

Is Australia’s extinct thylacine — a striped, dog-like marsupial commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger — not extinct after all? Recent alleged thylacine sightings convinced scientists at James Cook University in Australia to investigate whether the species is still among the living.

The last wild thylacine was killed between 1910 and 1920, and in 1936, the last known thylacine died in captivity in Hobart, Australia. Since then, no conclusive evidence has emerged to suggest that Tasmanian tigers still exist in the wild, and the species was declared officially extinct in 1986, the Tasmanian Government’s Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment reported on the Tasmanian federal Wildlife Management website.

But rumors of thylacines in the wild have persisted. Recent reports from two people in North Queensland, Australia, provided “plausible and detailed descriptions” of animals that resembled thylacines. After those reports, researchers decided to launch a survey to determine whether any of the animals were alive in Australia, James Cook University (JCU) representatives announced March 24 in a statement. [6 Extinct Animals That Could Be Brought Back to Life]

Despite their “tiger” sobriquet, thylacines are not members of the cat family. Nor should they be confused with the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), another carnivorous marsupial that is native to Australia and is still widespread in Tasmania.

Fossil evidence suggests that the modern thylacine — Thylacinus cynocephalus, whose name means “dog-headed pouched one” — emerged about 4 million years ago. Once widespread across Australia, the animal disappeared everywhere except Tasmania about 2,000 years ago, according to the National Museum of Australia (NMA).

When European settlers arrived in Australia in the early 19th century, the last remaining thylacines — an estimated 5,000 individuals — entered a decline, their numbers dwindling due to hunting, introduced diseases and habitat loss, the NMA reported.

Extinct or elusive?
The new investigation for the purported thylacines will survey sites on the Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland, Australia, based on accounts supplied by an employee of the Queensland Park Service, and by another observer. This individual was “a frequent camper and outdoorsman,” study co-investigator Bill Laurance, a professor in the College of Science and Engineering at JCU, said in the statement.

Critically endangered species and beloved animals at risk
29 PHOTOS
Critically endangered species and beloved animals at risk
All the observations of the animals thought to be thylacines were made at night, but were descriptive nonetheless, Laurance reported. In one instance, four animals were spotted at close range, lit up by a spotlight at a distance of about 20 feet, and details in the descriptions strongly suggested that the observers had not misidentified a more common animal, Laurance said.

“We have cross-checked the descriptions we received of eye-shine color, body size and shape, animal behavior, and other attributes, and these are inconsistent with known attributes of other large-bodied species in North Queensland, such as dingoes, wild dogs or feral pigs,” he explained.

Researchers will employ 50 camera traps, and their survey is expected to begin in April, once the researchers receive the necessary permits from private landowners. The hunt for thylacines will also offer the scientists an opportunity to investigate the status of other vulnerable or threatened wildlife in the area, Laurance added.

“Regardless of which species are detected, the survey will provide important data on the status of mammal species on Cape York, where wildlife populations have evidently been undergoing severe population declines in recent years,” Laurance said in the statement.