By Xianming Chen Last week, we were checking wheat fields in Whitman, Lincoln, Adams and Franklin counties in Eastern Washington. Winter wheat ranged from Feekes 2 to 6. With the good moisture in March, most wheat fields looked good. In Whitman County, stripe rust was not observed in all fields, except one field close to the Adams border. In contrast, ... Read More »

By Diana Carlen WAWG Lobbyist The Washington State Legislature adjourned late Tuesday night, March 29, after passing final supplemental operating and capital budgets. The supplemental budget adds $191 million in spending to the two-year, $38.2 billion budget approved in 2015 and reflects a compromise between the $467 million spending increase originally proposed by House democrats and the $49 million proposed ... Read More »

Earlier today, the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) released their prospective planting report. For wheat, all wheat planted area for 2016 is estimated at 49.6 million acres, down 9 percent from 2015. The 2016 winter wheat planted area, at 36.2 million acres, is down 8 percent from last year and down 1 percent from the previous estimate. Of this total, ... Read More »

From the Capital Press Washington State University’s new president says he was drawn to the school because of its land-grant mission. “I spent my career at land-grants, they have a certain style and philosophy that I think really speaks to the state they reside in,” said Kirk Schulz, currently the president of Kansas State University, in a telephone interview with ... Read More »

From NAWG The National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) has announced Jim Palmer has decided to step down as its chief executive officer effective May 31, 2016. “Jim has been a tremendous and tireless advocate of the U.S. wheat grower specifically, and the U.S. wheat industry in general, during his tenure as our CEO,” stated NAWG President Gordon Stoner, a Montana ... Read More »

From U.S. Wheat and the National Association of Wheat Growers Over the past few years, U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) and the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) have demonstrated how the policies of a few advanced developing countries are distorting world wheat trade and hurting farmers in the United States and other wheat exporting countries. In 2015, an Iowa State ... Read More »

From the Capital Press The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) has dropped plans to buy a ranch and riverside grasslands in Eastern Washington, signaling the agency’s increasing sensitivity to complaints that state land purchases rob taxes from rural counties. WDFW had identified 5,542 acres of Lincoln County rangeland and 2,560 acres in Walla Walla County along the Touchet ... Read More »

By Bruce Knight From Agri-Pulse In our ongoing discussion of the next farm bill, I want us to consider carefully the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), which has become the largest USDA conservation program for private working lands. Of immediate interest, of course, is the 2016 sign up, continuing through March 31. NRCS is making available $150 million through CSP this ... Read More »

From the Capital Press The high value of the U.S. dollar in relationship to foreign currencies is affecting U.S. commodities on the global market, but industry representatives say it’s only part of the export puzzle. The impact of a strong dollar is “huge,” said Ken Ballard, relationship manager with Northwest Farm Credit Services in Pasco, Wash. When the dollar is ... Read More »

From the Capital Press Based on the volume and distribution of recent grower reports about barley yellow dwarf infections in winter wheat, University of Idaho Extension cereals pathologist Juliet Marshall said it’s clear the disease will be rampant again this season. Last season, southern and eastern Idaho grain growers coped with the most widespread barley yellow dwarf outbreak they’d ever ... Read More »