Hello Again!
The snow and ice are gone but the recent wind storm brought down a lot of trees in our neck of the woods. I’ve been meaning to take down an old dead oak tree at the corner of the machine shed for some time now. Mother Nature did it for me.
The tree had to fall between the corncrib and hay shed in order for it not to damage either. Well, there it was lying as if felled by a skilled woodsman.
I guess I was luckier than several of my neighbors. Guess there’s no end to the surprises the weather can bring this time of year. Hopefully the wind will dry up some of the mud.
As I was munching a handful of peanuts recently I couldn’t help but think about what George Washington Carver would think of our peanut mess today. Here was a man who turned down a salary the equivalent of $1 million a year in today’s terms to continue his research on behalf of his countrymen.
By today’s high tech standards, Carver worked in his primitive laboratory discovering more than 300 uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. Carver became the Director of Agriculture at Tuskegee in 1897 and remained on the faculty until his death in 1943.
He freely gave his discoveries to mankind. “God gave them to me,” he would say about his ideas. “How can I sell them to someone else?”
In 1940, Carver donated his life savings to the establishment of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee, for continuing agricultural research. I think perhaps a scientist of the rare caliber of George Washington Carver would be very disappointed in our abilities to detect and contain foreign contaminants in our food supply today, and even more so in putting profit before the common good of our fellow man.
Ohio has been selected as one of the states approved for the new Planting Transferability Pilot Project. This new program will permit producers in Ohio to plant such vegetables as cucumbers, green peas, lima beans, pumpkins, snap beans, sweet corn or tomatoes for processing on base acres under the Direct and Counter-Cyclical Program.
Without the program, planting these crops on base acres would be prohibited. Base acres on the farm will be temporarily reduced each year on an acre for acre basis, for each base acre planted with an approved fruit or vegetable on that farm.
Eligible producers must agree to produce one of the approved crops for processing and to provide the county FSA office with a copy of the contract between the producer and the processing plant.
Sign up for the Planting Transferability Pilot Project program will run through March 2. USDA will not accept applications filed after that date.
A new document, CCC-471 NAP BP is now available for producers of NAP crops. This document provides producers with the basic provisions of the NAP program and can be obtained at your local FSA office or online at http://www.fsa.usda.gov under the Disaster Assistance Program heading.
As always, you can contact your local FSA office with any questions.
That’s all for now
FSA Andy
