Higher Beef Prices & Gray Wolf Migration

Higher Beef Prices & Gray Wolf Migration plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Retail beef prices are already much higher than this time last year and they could go still higher as 2011 wears on. Economist Shayle Shagam.

SHAGAM: As prices move up consumers will be looking at the price of beef versus the price of pork versus the price of poultry and having to make decisions about how much of each type of meat they’re going to be purchasing, what kinds of cut they’re going to be purchasing dependant of their perceived value of each of the types of the meat and the financial circumstances of the consumer.

Increased sightings of the endangered Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf in northeastern Oregon suggest to wildlife biologists that the animals have begun a migration from?Idaho that could spread to Washington by the summer. One state wildlife biologist does not consider that a wolf pack, yet. They are being studied to find out what kind of "social formation" they are in. Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves have federal and state endangered species protection. There have been no efforts to reintroduce wolves in Oregon after people killed the animal off about 80 years ago. Officials say the migration is natural, and not a result of habitat loss.

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

So just who are the fifty most important and powerful people in food? Well, foodie website The Daily Meal, claiming “extensive research”, ticks off such names as Rachael Ray, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Martha Stewart, Michael Pollan, Ingrid Newkirk, Oprah Winfrey, Wolfgang Puck, Michelle Obama, and the American Consumer; who  at least made it onto the list. Several more big names are included in their listing, but one name is glaringly absent, the American Farmer. Which would leave any person of average intelligence to pose the question, where would all these people be without farmers to grow their food for them? And where on this list of important people are the volunteers who give of themselves at our nation’s food banks? Isn’t it appalling that television super stars, animal rights activists, and even mega box store CEOs made it onto a list of the most important people in food, but the very people who work to grow the food that Michael likes to complain about, Martha likes to decorate with, and Oprah likes to scarf are omitted. Guess that’s because it’s a list more about power than importance.

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