Ag Secretary Perdue announces grants for 128 DLT projects
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31, 2018 – Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue today announced that USDA is awarding grants for 128 projects to increase access to job training (PDF, 351 KB), educational and health care services in rural areas.
“Empowering rural Americans with access to services for quality of life and economic development is critical to rural prosperity,” Secretary Perdue said. “Distance learning and telemedicine technology bridges the gap that often exists between rural communities and essential education, workforce training and health care resources.”
USDA is awarding $39.6 million through the Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) Grant Program. More than 4.5 million residents in 40 states and three territories will benefit from the funding.
Below are summaries of some of USDA’s investments in rural communities:
In April 2017, President Donald J. Trump established the Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity to identify legislative, regulatory and policy changes that could promote agriculture and prosperity in rural communities. In January 2018, Secretary Perdue presented the Task Force’s findings to President Trump. These findings included 31 recommendations to align the federal government with state, local and tribal governments to take advantage of opportunities that exist in rural America. Increasing investments in rural infrastructure is a key recommendation of the task force.
To view the report in its entirety, please view the Report to the President of the United States from the Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity (PDF, 5.4 MB). In addition, to view the categories of the recommendations, please view the Rural Prosperity infographic (PDF, 190 KB).
USDA Rural Development provides loans and grants to help expand economic opportunities and create jobs in rural areas. This assistance supports infrastructure improvements; business development; housing; community facilities such as schools, public safety and health care; and high-speed internet access in rural areas. For more information, visit www.rd.usda.gov.
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Geo-engineering: Acting in Ignorance of the Consequences. The Latest Insane Plan.
By Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris
The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report said there are 12 years left to save the planet. It triggered the usual frantic and ridiculous reactions. NBC News even proclaimed, “A last-ditch global warming fix? A man-made ‘volcanic’ eruption” to cool the planet.
Proposal such as this are defined as geo-engineering, trying to artificially modify Earth’s climate to offset what are defined as unnatural events. The problem is, the events they are trying to offset are actually natural events and if you don’t know that, you will undoubtedly create worse problems.
From 1940 to almost 1980 the global temperature went down. Concerns and consensus were global cooling. The alarmists told us it would be the end. Journalist Lowell Ponte wrote in his book, “The Cooling,”
"It is cold fact: the global cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species."
Change the seventh word “cooling” to warming and it applies to the alarmist threats today.
The problem then was, and is still now, that people are educated in the false philosophy of uniformitarianism: the misguided belief that natural change is gradual over long periods of time. Consequently, most people did not understand that the cooling was part of the natural cycle of climate variability, changes that are often huge and sudden. Just 18,000 years ago we were at the peak of an Ice Age. Then, most of the ice melted and sea levels rose 150 meters because it was warmer for almost all of the last 10,000 years than it is today.
This misunderstanding, combined with the new and necessary paradigm of environmentalism—it is illogical to soil your own nest—to create the belief that perfectly ordinary changes were man-made and so had to be corrected by us as well.
During the cooling threat the geo-engineering proposals included,
· Building a dam across the Bering Straits to block cold Arctic water, to warm the North Pacific and the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere
· Dumping black soot on the Arctic ice cap to promote melting
· Adding carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere to raise global temperatures.
All these actions would impact global climate in unpredictable ways. Now we know they would have exacerbated the warming trend that followed.
The recent ‘volcano’ proposal involves adding particulates (microscopic particles) to the high atmosphere to block sunlight to lessen the supposed global warming. The NBC News article references the cooling effect of the Pinatubo volcanic eruption of June 15, 1991 which ejected more particulates into the stratosphere than any eruption since Krakatoa in 1883. The resulting sulfuric acid haze led to a reduction of global temperatures by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) between 1991–93.
What NBC News neglected to mention was that this occurred in a period of warming. Had the eruption happened during a cooling phase, the results would have been catastrophic. This is what happened with the volcano Tambora in 1815. It was followed by the “Year with no summer” that altered the course of history and was so devastating because it occurred during a cooling trend. Since the best climate experts say that we can expect a gradual cooling over the next few decades as the Sun weakens, the last thing we should be doing now is artificially cooling the planet still further.
“Taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,” as advocated by the IPCC in their October 8 news conference, is also foolish. The historic record shows that, at about 410 parts per million (ppm), the level of CO2 supposedly in the atmosphere now, we are near the lowest in the last 280 million years. As plants evolved over that time, the average level was 1200 ppm. That is why commercial greenhouses boost CO2 to that level to increase plant growth and yield by a factor of four.
The IPCC has been wrong in every prediction since 1990. It would be a grave error to use their latest forecasts as the excuse to engage in geo-engineering experiments with the only planet we have.
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Dr. Tim Ball is an environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba. Tom Harris is executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition.
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Three additional NC counties will be eligible for disaster food benefits through USDA’s D-SNAP
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31, 2018 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced that residents of three additional North Carolina counties -- Chatham, Durham, and Gilford – will be eligible for disaster food benefits through USDA’s Disaster SNAP (D-SNAP). President Trump extended the disaster declaration for these three counties as part of ongoing federal efforts to support Americans impacted by Hurricane Florence in September.
Households that may not normally be eligible under regular SNAP rules may qualify for D-SNAP if they meet the disaster income limits and have qualifying disaster-related expenses.
“North Carolina was hit by two devastating storms in a span of a month,” said USDA’s Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Brandon Lipps. “The D-SNAP expansion USDA is announcing today is meant to help ease the burden of finding a healthy meal for the families in these counties still recovering from Hurricane Florence.”
D-SNAP eligible households in the affected areas will receive one month of benefits, equivalent to the maximum amount normally issued to a SNAP household of their size, to meet their food needs as they settle back home following the disaster. To be eligible for D-SNAP under this expansion, a household must be in one of the three affected counties. (D-SNAP had previously been approved in 31 other North Carolina counties.)
D-SNAP timing varies with the circumstances of each disaster, but always begins after commercial channels of food distribution have been restored and families are able to purchase food to prepare at home. Before operating D-SNAP in an approved county, the state must ensure that conditions related to safety and readiness are in place. For example, power must be restored, roads must be passable, and a sufficient amount of stores must be open and available to redeem D-SNAP benefits. Affected households should look for public information notices from the state regarding the location of application sites and dates of application in each county.
The D-SNAP announcement today is the latest in a series of USDA actions taken to help North Carolina residents cope with the storms and aftermath. For more information about North Carolina SNAP, visit the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services website.
USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) works to reduce food insecurity and promote nutritious diets among the American people. The agency administers 15 nutrition assistance programs that leverage America’s agricultural abundance to ensure children and low-income individuals and families have nutritious food to eat. FNS also co-develops the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which provide science-based nutrition recommendations and serve as the cornerstone of federal nutrition policy.
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