Consumers Say They Want Healthy, but Aren't Buying It

A note to food marketers: Consumers who say they want healthy options are unlikely to actually order off the healthy menu. "There's definitely a dichotomy between what people say they want and what they actually do when it comes to healthy restaurant eating," Maria Caranfa, a registered dietitian and director at Mintel Menu Insights, said in a statement. "Over eight in 10 adults told us it's very or somewhat important to them to eat healthy, but when it comes to dining out, most people are really looking for taste, texture and experience." According to Mintel, price was also a deterrent in selecting better-for-you meals. As cash-strapped consumers tighten their belts, they're choosing cheap and tasty comfort food. Mintel found that only one in five consumers rank a food's health attributes as an important factor when choosing dinner. But 77% of them thought about "taste," and 44% considered "hunger satisfaction." And a particular problem for restaurants: While roughly 75% of those surveyed said they would like to see more healthy options, only 51% order from those selections...AdvertisingAge

Imagine that: Price, taste and fulfillment influence a consumer's choice.

A real shocker to the Politically Superior Ones.

Alligators Found In Rio Grande

KFOX has a picture proving alligators live in the Rio Grande. The Texas Game Warden Ray Spears said they are just east of Fort Hancock in Hudspeth County and there isn't just one or two of them. “There were approximately six alligators that were observed, three of them that were in the 2-to 4-foot range, and about three of them in the 5-to 6-foot range,” Spears said. Spears said people have nothing to fear with these alligators especially since they are in a rural area. He believes someone dropped them off in the area. There is a chance the alligators could reproduce, but the warden said they will be monitoring the alligators to make sure there is no present danger. KFOX-TV

Grasshoppers invading central Utah

Grasshoppers, when leaping on Tony Atherley's front door, make a "pop" like the sound of cooking popcorn. Atherley has been hearing thousands of pops since June 1, when the grasshoppers infested his Pine Canyon neighborhood, about four miles northeast of Tooele. One neighborhood child is so afraid of the swarms of grasshoppers outside her bedroom window that she sleeps away from home. Atherley's 4-year-old daughter was so scared when the grasshoppers first arrived that she asked her parents to carry her into the house. Swarms of grasshoppers infest Utah agricultural lands in 10-year cycles, and by all accounts, the summer of 2009 is the beginning of another cycle in central Utah — the Uintah Basin and Sanpepte, Millard, Sevier and Tooele counties. For the next few summers, the grasshopper population will increase until it peaks, said Clint Burfitt, an entomologist with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food. Shortly after the grasshopper population peaks, they get infected with a deadly fungus, and the population quickly drops off. The cycle will begin again in seven years...DeseretNews

Council seeks ordinance that doesn't conflict with grazing rights

The Fernley City Council is seeking common ground between cattle ranchers who graze their livestock in grazing allotments on Bureau of Land Management areas and property owners who live near those grazing areas. Both Councilmen Cal Eilrich and Don Parsons expressed concerns about the city's existing livestock at large ordinance due to the state of Nevada being designated a "fence out state," meaning that property owners who own land adjacent to open grazing range land must erect a fence to keep the livestock off their property. In April, residents who live in the Fernley Highlands complained that cattle owned by Dellis Bone were damaging their property, fences, landscaping and a host of other items. According to City Parks Director Keith Penner's staff report, "The cattle belong to the current holder of the Truckee-Virginia Allotment sold by the Bureau of Land management to Mr. Dellis Bone," he also reported about 44 square miles of BLM property used as grazing land is within the city limits...RenoGazetteJournal

Trent Loos Ag Talk Dominates Gala

Communication between America’s farmers and those not in the farming community, as well as the importance of raising future generations of hard-working rural farmers, were emphasized by featured speaker Trent Loos at the 2009 Beef and Wine Gala. Loos, a radio and television personality of the programs “Loos Tales” and “Loos Tales TV,” used humor, touching stories and audience interaction to entertain those attending the gala , held at the Riverfront Event Center in downtown Yankton Tuesday. He said his quest for the past nine years has been to share the stories of the people and places in rural America while emphasizing the importance of domestic food supply as a means of national security. “If we do not have someone tending to the land and the animals and the natural resources and the food, pharmaceuticals and fuel, then mankind will cease to exist,” he said. A current problem in the United State, Loos said, is trying to communicate the business of the agricultural industry to those not in it. Remembering to change the agricultural language and lingo when speaking to a non-farming individual is key to communication, he said. “Many times, we don’t even communicate in a language that people outside of our small rural communities will understand,” said Loos, who is a Nebraska rancher. “And then we say, ‘Why is it people don’t understand us?’”...YanktonPress

Two black buffaloes are born on North Fork farm

According to Native American culture, white buffaloes are considered to be sacred signs of spiritual importance. That association most likely had to do with their rarity; the National Bison Association estimates that only one out of every 10 million buffalo are born white. But very little is known about their polar opposites on the color spectrum: the black buffalo. Pat Jamieson, the outdoor recreation planner for the National Bison Range Wildlife Refuge in Moiese, Montana, said that is most likely due to the fact that black buffaloes are even rarer than their albino-looking counterparts. And Eva Fearn of the Wildlife Conservation Society Institute at the Bronx Zoo explained that black buffalo are so unusual that there are no tangible statistics that document their birth rate. So, it is easy to imagine Edwin Tuccio’s surprise when, a few weeks ago, he discovered that two black bison were born on his 250-acre North Quarter Farm in Riverhead...27east

Editor of American Cowboy to accept award

Jesse Mullins, editor-in-chief of American Cowboy magazine, will accept the Ogden Pioneer Days Spirit of the West Award next month. American Cowboy, a Western lifestyle magazine, initiated the National Day of the American Cowboy campaign in 2004 to generate public awareness and support for the passage of a permanent holiday honoring the cowboy. The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives has approved a resolution each year proclaiming the fourth Saturday of July as a day to commemorate cowboy and Western heritage, as well as to honor working cowboys and ranchers, Western musicians and artists, cowboy poets, and others who continue to contribute to that culture. Mullins, of Abilene, Texas, was a reporter and freelance writer in the early years of his career. He has been editor-in-chief of America Cowboy since its inception 15 years ago...DeseretNews

Song Of The Day #069

Many may not be aware of what an accomplished mandolin player Jethro Burns was. Yes that same Jethro of Homer & Jethro fame.

Here he is doing Nola. It's available, along with 21 other tunes on his The Puritan Sessions.

Environmentalists baffled by Obama's strategy

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama wooed environmentalists with a promise to "support and defend" pristine national forest land from road building and other development that had been pushed by the George W. Bush administration. But five months into Obama's presidency, the new administration is actively opposing those protections on about 60 million acres of federal woodlands in a case being considered by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The roadless issue is one of several instances of the administration defending in court environmental policies that it once vowed to end. Its position has been a disappointment to environmentalists who had hoped for decisive action in rolling back Bush-era policies. Administration officials say that in some cases, they are defending the policies to prevent the courts from settling the issues -- a prospect that would restrict the government's ability to set the environmental agenda. They say the task of setting policy is better left to government agencies and legislators. Still, the strategy has puzzled some environmentalists because the administration has used the courts to backpedal from Bush policies in some areas, including spotted owl protection, energy efficiency standards and hazardous-waste burning...LATimes

Army Corps of Engineers takes on bold task: Moving flood-prone Ky. town to higher ground

The trucks have come again to haul away soaked sofas and waterlogged mattresses. Cars that weren't moved soon enough have been towed away, their engines and interiors fouled. The 600 people who remain in this once-bustling coal town are used to it. Martin has flooded no fewer than 37 times since 1862 — four in the past decade alone. Soon, they hope, the trucks will come to move their town to higher ground. The mammoth undertaking has been in the works for the past decade and will take another 10 years and $100 million to complete. The Army Corps of Engineers plans to save Martin by raising its businesses and homes out of the reach of the stream that has wreaked so much havoc over the years. Already, contractors have carved out a flat spot on a mountainside overlooking downtown that is large enough to accommodate key government structures, including the fire department, city hall, post office, and the only school in town. The aging buildings, weakened by the intermittent soakings, won't be moved to the new site. Instead, they'll be razed and replaced with new ones...AP

HT: Paul Gessing

Coalition petitioning UN for Glacier Park protections

Glacier National Park and its neighbor to the north are endangered by mining proposals, and the international community must intervene to protect the region's natural and cultural heritage. That's the message being delivered this week by tribal leaders, community organizers, business interests and conservationists, whose concerns will be aired at the 33rd annual meeting of the United Nations World Heritage Committee. “Our petition,” said Will Hammerquist, “asks the World Heritage Committee to hear the concerns of local communities and indigenous peoples by recognizing the threat these projects pose to a globally significant ecosystem.” Hammerquist works for the National Parks Conservation Association, which joined a dozen other groups in petitioning for the endangered status. Glacier, along with adjacent Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada, was named a World Heritage Site in 1995, by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. At the time, UNESCO recognized the region for its “outstanding universal value.” As two of the 157 signatories to the World Heritage treaty, Hammerquist said, both the United States and Canada accepted certain conservation obligations. But Canada has failed to meet those, he said, by moving ahead with controversial coal and coalbed methane energy development plans in southeastern British Columbia, on the borders of the parks...Missoulian

Rainbows have permit this year – allegedly

Not in Sublette County – this time they are congregating in central New Mexico, and this time they have a permit. Every year, members of the Rainbow Family of Living Light drive, bike, walk and hitchhike to the North American gathering during the first week of July. This year’s gathering is being held near the quiet ranch town of Cuba, N.M., elevation 6,906, population 800. The Forest Service (FS) estimates 600 Rainbows have already arrived in the Santa Fe National Forest. Last year, many Sublette County residents complained when a U.S. Department of Agriculture official allowed the Rainbows to stage a gathering without a permit. But this year things have changed, according to FS Public Information Officer Lawrence Lujan. “We are following our Forest Service policy to require a commercial use permit for 75 participants and above,” Lujan said. “And (the Rainbows) have secured a permit.” Lujan said his agency was informed of the site selection less than three weeks ago. The signed non-commercial permit was issued on June 13. Lujan refused to name the permit holder, saying the information was being withheld to protect the individual’s privacy. Last year, FS representatives met with Sublette County residents and Rainbow Family members two weeks prior to the gathering. Aside from the permit issue, residents were indignant to learn the Rainbows’ site interfered with a Boy Scout Order of the Arrow project in the same location. The Scouts had planned their project many months in advance while the Rainbows made their site selection in the second week of June without consulting the FS...Examiner

120 citations, seven arrests at Rainbow gathering

The U.S. Attorney's Office agreed to reduce fines and drop criminal liability charges filed Monday against more than 50 people attending the annual Rainbow Family gathering in the Santa Fe National Forest near Cuba, N.M., according to one of the pro bono attorneys representing the defendants. Since June 14, Forest Service law-enforcement officers reported 320 incidents at the Rainbow gathering, including seven arrests and 120 notices of violation for offenses ranging from drug possession to not wearing seat belts, according to Forest Service spokesman Lawrence Lujan. The rest were warnings. Some of the people arrested were local residents from nearby communities, however, and not Rainbow gatherers, according to Albuquerque attorney John McCall, who represented some of the defendants. "We had some local ranchers who were driving their trucks, chasing down their cows, an open (alcohol) container between their knees and not wearing their seat belts," McCall said. An estimated 1,500 people were already camped in the Parque Venado east of Cuba by Monday afternoon, with more arriving daily. Between 10,000 and 12,000 people are expected for the main Rainbow Family gathering July 1-7...NewMexican

The Forest Service has rules against open containers, not using seat belts, and riding in the back of a truck? I thought maybe these federal employees were cross-commisioned, but the charges were handled in federal magistrate court by the U.S. Attorney, so they must be federal infractions.

Prosecutors say NV water officials aware of fraud

A northern Nevada irrigation district official under indictment on federal fraud charges conceded he knew water deliveries to farmers were being falsified, a federal prosecutor and government agent said in court documents. David Overvold, a project manager for the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District, acknowledged to investigators that the practice “has been going on for a while,” and he did nothing to stop it, court records show. But Overvold maintained he never directly ordered any employees to “write-off” water, according to Robert Eric May, a special agent for the U.S. Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General. Overvold, the district’s lawyer, Lyman McConnell and two irrigation district employees – John Baker and Shelby Cecil – were named in a 10-count indictment handed up in December 2008 by a federal grand jury in Reno. Cecil since has died. Federal prosecutors accuse them of carrying out a scheme from 2000-05 to alter water delivery data to earn special “efficiency credits” that would entitle the district to more water and reduce a court-ordered water debt owed to the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe...AP

Garfield County officials want to take a closer look at Rulison nuclear blast site

Garfield County officials believe the best way to gauge the Rulison nuclear blast site's potential danger is to get in close and drill, inside the half-mile boundary set by the U.S. Department of Energy as the closest that drilling should be allowed. But the DOE has yet to respond to the idea, which was first suggested to a federal official more than a year ago. The Rulison blast site is where, in 1969, the U.S. Department of Energy detonated a 43-kiloton atomic device at a depth of 8,426 feet in an effort to free up deeply buried fields of natural gas and oil. The blast, which took place about 30 miles west of Glenwood Springs, was hailed as a potential peaceful use for nuclear energy. The blast produced less gas than expected when it fractured the sandstone formations, though, and the gas that was produced was unusable because it was radioactive, and the contamination could not be removed. The Garfield County commissioners, along with several Colorado congressmen, recently asked the DOE to determine how close drillers can come safely to the radioactive cavern created by the blast...PostIndependent

BLM sets wild horse roundup

Federal officials are planning a massive roundup of nearly 1,000 wild horse later this year in an effort to reduce populations on Wyoming rangelands, according to Bureau of Land Management officials. The agency's Rawlins and Lander field offices are proposing to gather approximately 948 horses from five different herd management areas that are collectively known as the Red Desert Complex, BLM wild horse and burro specialist Melanie Gilbert said in a scoping notice. The complex includes the Antelope Hills, Crooks Mountain, Green Mountain, Stewart Creek and Lost Creek herd management areas. Officials said the gathering operations will include helicopter drive trapping, which utilizes a helicopter and on-the-ground wranglers to herd wild horses into a temporary trap. Gathering is scheduled to start on or about Oct. 1, according to plans. The project may also utilize a fertility control vaccine...StarTribune

Planet Saver

The Nature Conservancy's mission is to protect the Earth's biodiversity by conserving essential land and water. The group has safeguarded more than 119 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of rivers. The organization, founded in 1951 as the Ecologists Union, is based in Washington. It employs approximately 3,500 people and has programs in all 50 states plus Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and Africa. The nonprofit group has an operating budget of $450 million derived mostly from contributions and income from endowments. The conservancy boasts more than 1 million members. The conservancy's approach has been to establish legal protection for specific lands and waters of biological diversity. Strategies include securing legal title and using conservation easements, land registries and public-land designations. Helping to develop conservation-friendly public policies and market incentives, such as debt-for-nature swaps or payments for ecosystem services, is also on the legal team's plate. The team includes 48 attorneys among a staff of 115. The organization has invested primarily in in-house counsel; only 25 percent of the legal work goes outside...law.com

EPA Climate Change Ruling Would be a Stimulus for Lawyers--And No One Else

A formal government proclamation that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health and welfare, and are thus subject to the Clean Air Act, is a dream come true for plaintiffs' lawyers and litigious professional activists. Up to now, litigation has thus far, thankfully, played a minor role in addressing climate change. Courts have largely rebuffed lawsuits by state attorneys general alleging that greenhouse gas emitters were a "public nuisance." (A $400 million nuisance and conspiracy suit filed against 23 energy companies by an entire Alaskan village remains undecided.) But the slow drip of climate change lawsuits is about to become a deluge, drowning the judiciary and thousands of businesses, in a tsunami of litigation. Swiss Re, a leading insurance company, recently opined that global warming suits will explode and expand faster than asbestos litigation. The EPA's endangerment finding will be cited in countless class actions and other suits alleging that productive economic activity caused health problems or led to damaging heat, flooding, drought, wildfires, or the spread of pathogens. The EPA's proposal makes no effort to quantify the risk of any of these potential outcomes of global warming, or to specify a direct health effect from them. This won't, of course, stop creative plaintiffs' lawyers from using EPA's finding to sow fear or prevent judges and juries from favorably noting the government determination in liability suits. Just as with asbestos liability, exposure to climate change litigation will be spread throughout the economy, with the small scale rancher or farmer, the corner restaurant, and the community nonprofit hospital bearing the brunt of the burden...USNews

Video: He's Barack Obama 2:06

Checkout how easily he cures global warming. The last minute is a jib jab commercial.

New Wind Incentive Good for Landowners

A new federal wind incentive signed into law will make it more feasible for farmers and ranchers to own wind turbines instead, says Cole Gustafson, NDSU biofuels economist. The law allows allows U.S. taxpayers to deduct 30% of the cost for installing new wind energy systems through the year 2016 or obtain a 30 percent direct grant if the project is completed by 2012. Landowners who participate have to give up the production tax credit, which has been a major catalyst for wind development. Last year, the PTC provided a .021 cent per kilowatt-hour tax credit for electricity produced by a wind tower for 10 years after it was placed in service. However, many landowners didn't have sufficient income to utilize fully the PTCs that were generated. Therefore, landowners typically partnered with high-income external investors who could claim all of the credits during the 10- year project life. This source of investment capital was commonly referred to as "tax equity" financing. The new legislation provides commercial businesses (including farmers and ranchers) the opportunity to receive this incentive in the form of an immediate investment tax credit or grant. These commercial businesses no longer will have to search for external tax equity partners. Rural small businesses and agricultural producers can receive the grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Energy for America Program. DakotaFarmer