Heading Out of Town
● Congress will adjourn sometime between now and October 8—perhaps as early as this Friday. Issues, such as immigration reform and food safety, probably will either be handled in a lame-duck session after the November 2 election, or put off until the start of the new 112th Congress, which forms next January.
● The appearance last Friday by comedian Stephen Colbert before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee probably helped the general public’s awareness of the need for a legal agricultural workforce, but did further harm to the serious policy-making image of the House and drove additional distance between Democratic and Republican members of Congress on the red-hot emotional immigration issue. Cute stunts often misfire.
● Terry Humfeld, a long-time staffer at the Produce Marketing Association, has been chosen to be the new executive director of the Cranberry Institute (Wareham, Massachusetts). In November, he will replace Jere Downing, who has been an active leader in agricultural chemical issues and the work of the Minor Crop Farmer Alliance.
● POLITICAL FRUIT: Edmund Burke, a leading English political figure of the late 1700s, was a friend of James Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Boswell said of Burke after watching him give a speech in Parliament: “It was astonishing how all kinds of figures of speech crowded upon him. He was like a man in an orchard where boughs loaded with fruit hung around him, and he pulled the apples as fast as he pleased and pelted the ministry.”
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