The Farm Post eNews

Friday eNews from the Pike and Scott County Farm Bureaus

AUGUST 14, 2015

Maps Show Massive EPA Overreach

A series of maps released Wednesday by AFBF show how the Environmental Protection Agency will radically expand its jurisdiction over land use if its controversial Waters of the United States rule takes effect as expected Aug. 28. That expansion comes even as major parts of the rule remain largely incomprehensible to experts and laypeople, alike.

The maps, prepared by Geosyntec Consulting, show the dramatic expansion of EPA's regulatory reach, stretching across wide swaths of land in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Montana. In Pennsylvania, for example, 99 percent of the state's total acreage is subject to EPA scrutiny. Landowners have no reliable way to know which of the water and land within that area will be regulated, yet they must still conform their activities to the new law.

AFBF news release

EPA Maps Affect All

Maps released this week by AFBF further prove a massive increase in authority and uncertainty under the Environmental Protection Agency's Waters of the U.S. rule, which goes into effect Aug. 28. AFBF General Counsel Ellen Steen explained how the rule will affect all facets of agriculture in Thursday's Newsline.

"It means a tremendous amount of uncertainty because once you look out across the landscape, anything that EPA or the Corps might call a water, it is almost impossible to know for sure whether it is or isn't regulated," Steen said.

USDA Crop Report

Wednesday, the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) released the first survey-based forecasts of 2015 corn and soybean production in the August Crop Production report. To understand the methodology for those forecasts see our farmdoc daily article from Monday, a more extensive description in this Marketing and Outlook Brief, or the USDA publication "Understanding USDA Crop Forecasts."

The USDA's World Agricultural Outlook Board also released new projections of corn and soybean consumption, ending stocks, and average price for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 marketing years in the monthly WASDE report. Projections for the rest of the world were also updated in the WASDE report. Here we review some of the new projections and the implications for corn and soybean prices. All of the projections will be updated by USDA in upcoming Crop Production and WASDE reports so we also address some of the anticipated changes in future projections.

Continue reading at farmdoc.

Wettest May - July in History

According to Jim Angel, State Climatologist, Illinois experienced its wettest May - July on record with 19.69 inches of precipitation, 7.88 inches above the 20th century average, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Most of that was due to the record precipitation of June with 9.44 inches statewide, based on their latest numbers and discussed in more detail here.

Here is the time series of May - July precipitation in Illinois since 1895. The second wettest May - July was a tie between 1990 and 2010. And it was just three years ago, in 2012, when Illinois had its third driest May - July on record with only 5.60 inches (6.21 inches below the 20th century average).

On This Day

AUGUST 14, 1935

SOCIAL SECURITY BECOMES LAW

Following is a transcript of President Franklin Roosevelt's comments at the signing of the Social Security Act 80-years ago today.

Today a hope of many years' standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.

This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.

This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.

I congratulate all of you ladies and gentlemen, all of you in the Congress, in the executive departments and all of you who come from private life, and I thank you for your splendid efforts in behalf of this sound, needed and patriotic legislation.

If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time.

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