By Michael Moline | Deputy Editor, Florida Phoenix
The good news for American farmers is that crop prices are really high: up 50 percent for wheat, 30 percent for corn, and 20 percent for soybeans, largely due to the war in Ukraine.
The bad news: So are prices for farming inputs like fertilizer and fuel, also because of the Ukraine war — benchmark prices on crude oil and U.S. fertilizer prices approximately tripled between January 2021 and March 2022.
Congress is trying to account for all of this in drafting the new farm bill. “The bottom line is that agriculture is a business and, at the end of the day, it is not what you bring in but the margin you are left with,” U.S. Rep. Glen Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, said. “I have tremendous concerns with where we are headed right now.”
Pa State Senator Steve Santarsiero announces assault weapon ban legislation at a news conference in Lower Makefield Township, Pa. News conference video
In the wake of mass shootings in New York, Texas, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, state Sen. Steve Santarsiero on Thursday announced legislation that would ban military-style assault weapons in Pennsylvania.
Santarsiero, D-10, of Lower Makefield, said the measure is modeled after a 2013 Connecticut law targeting more than 150 gun models, banning high-capacity magazines, and providing a voluntary buy-back program for gun owners.
The Connecticut bill Santarsiero used in crafting his legislation passed that state’s legislature a few months after the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, where Adam Lanza used an assault-style weapon to kill 20 children and six adults.
“I’m here to tell you today, we’ve had enough … after these most recent incidents in Buffalo and Uvalde, it’s time we stand up with a single voice and say, ‘Enough. Enough. No one needs to have a military-style assault weapon,’” Santarsiero said during a press conference at the Lower Makefield Township Municipal Building.
May 25, 2022 –Harrisburg An effort by Democratic lawmakers in Pennsylvania to ban owning, selling or making high-capacity, semi-automatic firearms went nowhere Wednesday as state House Republicans again displayed their firm opposition to gun restriction proposals.
The state House of Representatives voted 111-87 against the effort by Democratic Rep. Danielle Friel Otten of Chester County to take up the bill after Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff argued it should have to go through a committee first.
The bill has spent more than a year in the Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Rob Kauffman, R-Franklin, has bottled up most proposals to regulate or restrict firearms.
Two people fell into a tank of chocolate while completing maintenance work at the Mars/M&M factory in Lancaster County, Pa., and now federal workplace safety officials are investigating.
The fall into a partially filled chocolate vat happened around 1:51 p.m. at the Mars facility on the 200 block of Brown Street in Elizabethtown, authorities said.
Federal labor officials confirmed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is investigating the incident. OSHA has six months to investigate and submit its findings, according to a U.S. Department of Labor spokesperson.
The workers who fell into the tank are employed by the Manheim-based I.K. Stolzfus Services, the Labor spokesperson said.
According to its website, I.K. Stolzfus Services specializes in “professional industrial cleaning, water tank repair, cleaning & painting, abrasive and sandblasting services.”
Firefighters rushed to the Mars factory Thursday afternoon and rescued the workers by drilling a hole in the bottom of the tank and pulling them out, according to the Elizabethtown Fire Department.
I.K. Stolzfus declined to comment and directed any questions to a Mars Wrigley spokesperson. Mars did not provide an update on the workers’ conditions. Elizabethtown police also directed questions to Mars.
If you liked this post you’ll love our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
TRENTON – In an attempt to reduce food waste throughout the state, the Senate Environment and Energy Committee yesterday approved legislation sponsored by Senator Richard Codey and Senator Bob Smith, which would require each solid waste management district in the State to develop a strategy to reduce food waste.
The bill, S2730, would require each solid waste management district, by 2030, to implement a strategy for reducing the amount of food waste generated annually by at least 50 percent of the quantity of food waste generated in the year this bill is enacted into law. The strategy would be adopted as an amendment to each district’s solid waste management plan and be subject to the approval of the Department of Environmental Protection.
“Food is a terrible thing to waste. Annually, it is estimated that one-third of all food produced in the world goes to waste, equaling more than a billion tons of fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, seafood, and grains that are thrown out,” said Senator Codey (D-Essex / Morris).
“This amount is also an environmental concern since, when food is wasted, all the energy and water it took to grow, harvest, transport, and package it are squandered too. Additionally, when food goes to a landfill and rots, it produces methane—a greenhouse gas approximately 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide.”
The bill would also require the Department of Environmental Protection to develop and publish a list of measures that solid waste management districts could utilize to achieve food waste reduction.
“In the last session, we were able to pass legislation that required large generators of food waste such as hospitals, prisons, restaurants, and supermarkets to recycle food garbage rather than sending it to incinerators or landfills. This marked an important step towards systematically addressing food waste Statewide, and this bill could continue this work at the regional level,” said Senator Smith (D-Middlesex / Somerset), chair of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee.
The bill was released by the committee on a vote of 5-0.
If you liked this post you’ll love our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
A blistering state report on Baltimore’s ailing Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant made public Thursday detailed “systemic problems” plaguing the facility, including “failures at nearly every level.”
The report, produced by the Maryland Environmental Service, which took over the plant in late March, laid out a variety of infrastructure problems that have caused solid waste to build up in various parts of the sewage treatment process at the plant, leading to excessive releases of harmful bacteria and nutrients. But it also dove into problems with management, safety, and staffing, blasting Baltimore Department of Public Works officials for a “lack of leadership” and providing a first look at a failing culture inside the facility, where problems first became public last summer.
In addition to a litany of mechanical fixes, the report recommended the hiring of several new employees, including an on-site safety manager, a training and certification manager, and a biosolids manager with two supporting staff members focused on processing solid waste.
A spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Public Works emphasized that the issues at the plant pre-date Public Works Director Jason Mitchell, who started in 2021, adding that the department has a “renewed commitment to continuing to address these challenges, including governance, operations, and employee safety” under his leadership.
If you liked this post you’ll love our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, June 8 (EFE).- Used as a propaganda symbol against the brutality of the United States Army, Kim Phuc, the so-called “Napalm Girl,” is an uncomfortable image for Vietnam’s regime 50 years after the iconic photo of her running nude because of how she fled the country in search of freedom.
The photo of little Kim Phuc crying in pain from a napalm strike in Jun. 8, 1972, can be seen today at the Ho Chi Minh War Museum, where atrocities committed by American soldiers are exhibited, but for 20 years, the conflict’s most iconic image was missing.
The photo was in the museum in the 1980s when, according to Canadian writer Denise Chong in the book “The Girl in the Photo,” Kim Phuc herself was surprised to see it exhibited, but disappeared after she fled Vietnam and sought asylum in Canada in 1992.
The image took more than two decades to return to the museum: it did so in 2013 at the hands of author Nick Ut, who donated it on one of his many trips to his native Vietnam.
The text accompanying the photograph in the museum shows Vietnamese authorities’ discomfort. It speaks of the 9-year-old girl Phan Thi Kim Phuc “hopelessly burned” by napalm by a US attack on the village of Trang Bang where she lived, and the awards received by Ut. It says nothing about the woman that girl became.
Vietnamese press, which barely mentions the 50th anniversary of the photo in recent days, usually goes a little further by saying Phuc, 59, lives in Canada with her family, without mentioning her departure from the country or suffering from having become the regime’s propaganda weapon.
If you liked this post you’ll love our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.
