Draft Sage Grouse Plan & Food Price Outlook

Draft Sage Grouse Plan & Food Price Outlook. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

Gas prices are once again headed back up as if that would be news to anyone...nor would an increase in the price of food. Economist Annemarie Kuhns says that you can expect about the same increases as last year.

KUHNS: We're expecting retail food inflation to fall between 2 and 3% so it's relatively in line with the 20-year historical average to perhaps slightly below.

The exception here are beef prices that rose over 12% last year and could go up another 5 to 6% this year according to Kuhns.

Sage grouse protections are once again on the table in Idaho as the states Department of Lands has produced a draft plan that would protect the sage grouse on state endowment land. The plan is in an effort to avoid listing the bird as endangered. The government is looking at the idea of adding the bird to the Endangered Species Act across eleven western states. The plan is also similar to one Governor "Butch" Otter submitted recently. The IDL manages more than 2.4 million acres, 700,000 acres of which are habitat for the sage grouse.

That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.