“Last summer, many home gardeners and commercial growers from New York to Wisconsin experienced late blight firsthand as they lost their tomatoes to this destructive plant disease,” explained Adrian Barta, DATCP plant pest and disease specialist. “Fortunately, Wisconsin’s commercial potato crop was mostly spared. While the fungus is not believed to overwinter in Wisconsin’s soil, it can survive on live plant material that survives the winter, in potatoes left in cull piles or on infected plants and tomato fruits that were put into compost heaps or bins.”

Wind can move late blight spores from infected gardens and fields. There is a risk of spreading the disease to this year’s crop if any infected potatoes remain in mismanaged cull piles. This is why the state agriculture department requires that potato growers destroy piles of unwanted or waste potatoes by May 20. The unwanted potatoes can be spread on cropland then plowed or disked into the soil, taken to a licensed landfill or fed to livestock as long as the potatoes are completely eaten by the deadline. Other disposal methods must be approved by the department.

“Our staff will be checking for cull piles as we do our field work this season. We hope growers will take the initiative to make sure that their cull piles are properly handled,” Barta said.

Wisconsin potato growers can also protect against late blight by scouting fields for volunteer potato plants and either removing the plants or applying herbicides.

Home gardeners and smaller growers should also take precautions during the upcoming growing season.

“Be sure to watch for volunteer potato plants in your garden and compost heap. Pull them out and place them in a plastic bag then put the bag out with the trash,” Barta said. “When planting this spring, purchase healthy looking tomato plants and select varieties that are resistant to late blight. If you raise your tomatoes from seed, there is no risk of introducing late blight into your garden.”

Some gardeners have discovered that potatoes they saved last year with the intention of planting this spring are infected with late blight.

“If you normally grow potatoes, do not reuse seed potatoes from last year because the seed pieces may be carrying late blight. Buy new certified potato seed from a reliable supplier,” Barta advised.

Compost bins or piles also need extra attention to prevent the spread of late blight.

“Compost bins or piles may harbor late blight because they don’t generate enough heat to kill the pathogen,” Barta explained. “Destroy any sprouting plants or green plants that you find. Your neighbors and farmers will appreciate your efforts to prevent the spread of this disease.”

You can find more information on late blight at http://www.plantpath.wisc.edu/wivegdis/. If you suspect late blight on potatoes or tomatoes, please contact your county’s Cooperative Extension office or the University of Wisconsin Plant Disease Diagnostic Clinic, http://pddc.wisc.edu.

For more information on regulations governing cull piles and late blight, call Adrian Barta at (608) 224-4592 or email Adrian.barta@wisconsin.gov.

Posted @ 6:00 a.m.

Madison, WI —The Wisconsin Department of Transportation released 106,012 non-driving related administrative license revocations this past weekend pursuant to Wisconsin Act 102, which received bipartisan support in the state legislature and was signed into law by Governor Jim Doyle on February 4, 2010. The law ended the automatic license revocation on the 4th Operating While Suspended (OWS) conviction to make such revocations discretionary with judges.

The bill allowed the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to apply the law change retroactively, which it did over the weekend. The Department released 106,012 of these non-driving related administrative revocations that had occurred over the past decade, positively impacting over 40,000 low-income drivers. Revocations that were ordered by judges were not released.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation, judges, law enforcement, district attorneys, and the Wisconsin State Public Defender all supported this critical reform as it will end thousands of unnecessary, non-driving related license revocations and give law enforcement, judges, and the Department of Transportation more time and resources to focus on serious traffic violations that threaten public safety.

The Center for Driver’s License Recovery and Employability advocated for this bill as part of its goal to limit license suspension and revocation to unsafe driving. The group has demonstrated that non-driving related driver’s license suspensions and revocations disproportionately affect people who have low incomes in all areas of Wisconsin and that a valid driver’s license increases wages.

The Honorable James A. Gramling, Jr., a retired municipal court judge in Milwaukee and pro bono attorney for the Center for Driver’s License Recovery and Employability, points to the pragmatism of the law change, “The legislature and governor looked at the data and found correctly that this type of revocation was doing more harm than good and the DOT acted efficiently to apply the law retroactively.

We are hopeful that the next legislature and future administration leadership will pay the same attention to facts and make sensible, muchneeded reforms to traffic law.”

The Center for Driver’s License Recovery and Employability was established in March of 2007 to increase the number of licensed low-income drivers in Milwaukee County. The Center is part of Wisconsin Community Services (WCS), which advocates for justice and community safety, providing innovative opportunities for individuals to overcome adversity. Other major partners of the Center include the City of Milwaukee Municipal Court, Legal Action of Wisconsin, and Milwaukee Area Technical College.

Posted @ 9:53 p.m.

Attorney General J.B.Van Hollen

Madison, WI – On April, 22, 2010, Wisconsin Department of Justice Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen was joined at Bangor Elementary School in Bangor, Wisconsin, by school officials, law enforcement officials and Wisconsin school children who had participated in this year’s national missing children poster competition.

In an effort to educate children across the country about child safety, the United States Department of Justice, through its Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Child Protection Division, sponsors a National Missing Children’s Day poster contest in coordination with Amber Alert for fifth grade students to create artwork that will represent America’s efforts to search for missing children and bring them home safely, and also promote child safety. The Department of Justice’s Wisconsin Clearinghouse for Missing and Exploited Children and Adults is a proud supporter of this effort.

Bailee Peters, a fifth-grade student at Bangor Elementary School, was chosen as this year’s winner of the statewide poster contest in Wisconsin. The contest theme is “Bringing Our Missing Children Home”. The children participating in the contest provide a brief biography, and must also include a brief paragraph that explains what the artwork in their posters
exemplifies.

The annual poster contest promotes awareness about missing children and provides an opportunity for children and their families to discuss important safety issues.

Today Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen presented Bailee Peters with an award recognizing her achievement, along with a U. S. Savings Bond. Bailee’s poster will be displayed in the Attorney General’s office in State Capitol, and she will be presented with an award by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen at the State Capitol on May 19, 2010 as part of the annual ceremony recognizing Wisconsin’s missing children and adults. That ceremony is open to the public.

Posted @ 4:13 p.m.

“Science and technology are among the top reasons people go online,” says Ashley Anderson, a UW-Madison doctoral student in life sciences communication. “And those people are more diverse in age and race and more knowledgeable about science and technology than people relying on traditional media. This points to the importance of online communication in reaching a broad audience for science.”

Readers of science and technology news online are twice as likely to come from non-white racial groups as consumers of print science news. The Internet virtually levels out gender differences, according to data from the Nielsen Company and Wisconsin Survey Center, while shifting upward the percentage of the audience with college degrees and completely missing those without high school diplomas.

Tracking Google search queries and Web content on nanotechnology, Anderson – along with UW-Madison life sciences communication professors Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele – analyzed who goes online for science content, what nanotechnology topics people are looking for, and what they are likely to find when they search for nanotechnology online. Their work will appear in the May issue of the Journal of Nanoparticle Research and is available now on the journal’s Web site.

The researchers found that online searchers were most interested in nanobots and health topics, with specialized applications of nanotechnology cropping up slightly less often. In analysis of 19 top sites commonly found in Google searches, health-related information dominated, appearing roughly twice as frequently as technology, research and business nanotech information.

“Clearly, health is the dominant topic for nanotechnology, which somewhat restricts the discourse,” Brossard says. “Obviously the technology has much wider applications.”

Tracking online content about nanotechnology is important because of the specialized nature of the topic, which is less likely to be found covered in depth in traditional print or broadcast media, according to Anderson.

“Our study tracked 10 different content themes and found that different types of Web sites deal in widely different types of nano content,” Anderson says.

Science sites without a particular nanotechnology focus – http://sciencedaily.com and http://nature.com – were more likely to feature stories about applications of nanotechnology in health or environment or national security arenas. Web sites aimed specifically at nanotechnology – http://nanowerk.com and http://foresight.org among them – were more likely to be reporting on policy issues such as research and regulation, while health almost disappeared as a topic. Government sites primarily focused on business information.

Topics like risks, benefits and uncertainty fell well behind the rest of the content.

“How nanotechnology is portrayed online is important because of the broad reach online media has to different audiences of science information,” says Anderson. “Online media sources are the predominant information environment for specialized scientific issues like nanotechnology.”

Posted @ 7:00 a.m.

Rep. Scott Suder

Abbotsford. WI – State Representative Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford) expressed dismay at Joint Finance Committee (JFC) approval of $10 million in taxpayer money being spent on a host of new programs for convicted felons. The committee’s action sets aside GPR (taxpayer) monies for such items as:

- Free Housing for Felons (up to $3200 per felon – $1.5 million total)
- Subsidized Employment For Felons ($1.8 million)
- Scholarships for Felons (up to $600 per participating felon)
- A Drug “Relapse” Treatment Program ($235,000)
- 9 new full-time state employees (cost unknown)
- A barber and cosmetology program for released felons
- A Drivers License ‘Recovery’ Program
- A “Welcome Home The Offender” community program

The JFC voted this week to provide funding for the Becky Young Community Corrections program. According to the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the vote authorizes a $10 million appropriation over two years for employment services, half-way houses and drug abuse treatment services for recently released felons.

“At first I thought it was a poorly timed April Fool’s Day joke, but unfortunately the joke is real and taxpayers are paying for it,” Suder stated. “With record job losses, devastating unemployment and our constituents
scraping to get by, a few politicians in Madison just spent $10 million to give freebies to felons. It’s going to leave every taxpayer in Wisconsin wondering what’s in the water in Madison.”

Among the programs being funded by this money is $1.8 million Community Corrections Employment Program that would provide employer job training grants, subsidized employment, scholarships, and case management support for former inmates. Over 100 former inmates and over 300 current inmates would be targeted for job placement and job training programs.

“Where they found $10 million to give away to career criminals given our massive budget deficit is beyond me,” Suder stated. “The people I represent in Northern Wisconsin would love to see some money for job retraining, scholarships and free housing but they are disqualified because they haven’t been convicted of a crime.”

The funding proposal was generated by the Study Committee on Justice Reinvestment last year. Rep. Suder was a member of the committee and voted no on the original proposal, warning at the time that taxpayers would be stuck paying a hefty bill for services only felons would be eligible for.

Posted 7:41 p.m.

Based on the information gathered by researchers, Wisconsin currently has 723 solar installations, ranking 8th in the nation and first in the Midwest region. In comparison, Illinois has just one project and Michigan has two.

Engineers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are hopeful that people in every state with solar projects will add their information to the public database. This will not only help gauge the growth of the industry, but the mapping clearly illustrates how solar energy projects are much more accessible than ever before.

“Wisconsin leadership in solar energy projects is just another proactive steps the state has taken in environmental conservation,” Thad Nation, executive director of CREWE, said. “We hope other states in the Midwest follow Wisconsin’s example.”

To check out the interactive map, or to learn more about the project, go to http://openpv.nrel.gov/

CREWE is a coalition that formed to advocate meaningful change in energy policy consistent with the Governor’s Global Warming Task Force final report, which will have a positive impact on Wisconsin’s economic development and security while fostering job creation.

CREWE’s membership consists of CleanPower, Alliant Energy, EcoEnergy, Johnson Controls, Xcel Energy, C5•6 Technologies, Axley Brynelson, Madison Gas and Electric, Orion Energy Systems, Forest County Potawatomi Community, Wisconsin Energy Corp., Poblocki Sign Company, Emerging Energies of Wisconsin, MillerCoors, American Transmission Co., WPPI Energy, DTE Energy Services, Kranz, Inc. and Greenwood Fuels.

The coalition is dedicated to joining forces with other supporters to promote responsible policies that address climate change; create jobs; promote energy efficiency, reliability and independence; and mitigate the economic impacts of rising energy costs.

For more information on joining this campaign, please visit www.WICREWE.com and follow CREWE on Twitter (@WI_CREWE).

Posted @ 11:21 a.m.

“Organics has held its position as an area where all sizes of operations can find opportunities to meet a loyal consumer demand. Organic producers, with their systems-based, low input approaches to farming, are well-equipped to weather lower prices,” say Harriet Behar and Jerry McGeorge, members of Wisconsin’s Organic Advisory Council, in the introduction to “Organic Agriculture in Wisconsin: 2009 Status Report.”

The report, prepared by the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, will be available at the Organic Farming Conference this weekend in La Crosse, Wis.

The global recession has hurt organic product sales, the report notes. Surveys show that sales of organic foods likely declined by 0.3 percent in 2009 after increasing about 20 percent annually since the early 1990s.

Last year’s decline in conventional milk markets has crimped the organic dairy industry, the source of about two-thirds of Wisconsin’s $86 million in annual organic commodity sales. Plunging farm gate milk prices led to lower prices in the dairy case, luring customers from organic products, notes McGeorge, an executive with Organic Valley.

“While organic prices have always commanded a price premium, the reduced prices for conventional dairy products have widened that price differential. Increasingly, price-conscious consumers have opted for the cheaper conventional prices,” he writes.

Weak sales caused organic milk processors to reduce the prices they paid to farmers, and some set quotas limiting the amount of organic milk they would buy. Still, in general, established organic producers have fared better than those selling milk through conventional channels, notes Tom Kriegl, an economist at the UW-Madison Center for Dairy Profitability.

“(T)he combined impact of price reductions and quotas in 2009 was similar to reducing their milk price from about $25 to $22 (per hundredweight), which was far less than the decline of nonorganic prices,” Kriegl says.

But the year was disastrous for farmers making the switch to organic dairying, he adds. During the transition producers must meet organic standards but can’t sell milk in organic markets. In 2009 they “experienced the worst of all worlds: high production costs and dismal conventional prices,” Kriegl notes.

Wisconsin ranks second nationally in number of organic farms and fourth in the value of organic products sold. The state had 1,155 certified organic farms in 2009, up by 24 percent since 2007. It ranks first in number of organic dairy farms and second in dollar value of organic milk produced. It also has the most organic livestock and poultry farms.

“Wisconsin continues to lead in many sectors of organic agriculture,” says Erin Silva, organic research coordinator at the UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. “However, to maintain this leadership and ensure financial success for our organic farms, further research and education efforts will be critical. It will take support at the local, state, and federal levels to provide growers with the tools and information to help them make sound production and marketing decisions.”

“Organic Agriculture in Wisconsin: 2009 Status Report” is available online at http://www.cias.wisc.edu. To request a print copy, contact Laura Paine at the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection: 608-224-5120, laura.paine@wisconsin.gov.

Posted @ 5:15 p.m.