Oregon's New Cell Phone Law & Encouraging Nutritious Purchases plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

How can officials encourage SNAP or Food Stamp participants to shy away from buying junk food and buy more nutritious fare? Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says they are looking into it.

VILSACK: What we are looking at is creating a set of incentives. We have a program now in which we are encouraging states to look at point of sale incentives where instead of a dollar being credited to your EPT card for vegetables and fruit purchases, the grocer would get the dollar but the person with the card would only be charged 80 cents as a way of encouraging and incenting fruit and vegetable purchases.

Using a cell phone in Oregon is not illegal unless you are operating a motor vehicle and not using a hands free device. Over one hundred drivers in Oregon have been cited since the state's ban of using a cell phone while driving went into effect. Troopers in Oregon say since January 1st, they have cited 113 drivers and warned 492 others. They issued 72 citations and 233 warnings during February, almost doubling January's numbers of 41 citations and 259 warnings.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

Well, we saw this one coming. The U.S. postal service is looking at possibly cutting costs by closing nearly seven hundred post offices and trimming mail delivery to five days a week instead of six. With most people now relying on the internet to write letters, do business, and pay bills the U.S. postal service has seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of regular mail being sent resulting in a staggering multi billion dollar loss. Thankfully the post offices that are being regarded for closure are in urban areas where customers usually don’t have far to go to find another one, unlike rural areas where persons may have to travel several miles to reach their nearest post office. When asked how they felt about cutting Saturday mail delivery most people responded that they had no problem with it, but that the suggested Monday, Wednesday, and Friday delivery only to residences was not something they were comfortable with. Sadly, like its predecessor the Pony Express, the U.S. postal service may soon find itself simply put out of business due to “technological innovation”.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.