State

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) encourages all farmers, ranchers, and FSA program participants to take part in the Garfield and Asotin County Committee election nomination process. FSA’s county committees are a critical component of the day-to-day operations of FSA and allow grassroots input and local administration of federal farm programs. Committees are comprised of locally ... Read More »

By Xianming Chen Last week, we completed collecting the stripe rust data in our germplasm screening nurseries of winter crops and took the first time of stripe rust data of the spring crop nurseries at Mount Vernon in northwestern Washington (Skagit County). As always for this location under natural infection, wheat stripe rust was severe, up to 100% severity on ... Read More »

From NASS There were 6.3 days suitable for fieldwork in Washington, down from 7 days recorded the previous week. Western Washington received a couple of days of rain which helped promote grass growth in pastures. Central Washington had a good week of farming. Most of the first cutting of hay had been cut and baled. There was low moisture, so ... Read More »

From the Capital Press Washington’s carbon fee rose by 15% at the state’s second cap-and-trade auction, the Department of Ecology reported Wednesday, and is high enough to turn on an emergency valve to contain energy costs. Read the rest of the article here. Read More »

From NASS There were 7 days suitable for fieldwork in Washington, up from 6.8 days recorded the previous week. Western Washington saw cooler temperatures than the rest of the state, but statewide, it was a dry and warm week. The dry weather did not help topsoil or pasture conditions. Skagit County started seeing the first signs of heat stress on ... Read More »

From the Capital Press The vast majority of salmon are getting up, over, around and through the four lower Snake River dams even as legal challenges and political battles swirl around them, according to the federal agency in charge of monitoring fish health. Read the rest of the article here. Read More »

From NASS There were 6.9 days suitable for fieldwork in Washington, up from 6.4 days recorded the previous week. Widespread warm temperatures allowed farmers to complete planting for spring planted grains and row crops in some areas. Farmers irrigated throughout the week to maintain adequate topsoil conditions. Grass growth and crop emergence benefited from the warmer temperatures. In Western Washington, ... Read More »

By Dr. Xianming Chen On May 16, we were checking winter wheat fields in Whitman, Garfield, Columbia, Walla Walla, Franklin and Adams counties in Washington. Winter wheat ranging from early jointing (Feekes 5) to early flowering (Feekes 10.51). Stripe rust was not found in any of the checked commercial fields and not found in our stripe rust experimental plots in Central Ferry (Garfield County) and ... Read More »

From NASS There were 6.4 days suitable for fieldwork in Washington, up from 5.8 days last week. Western Washington had some grass growth, but the warm weather slowed the growth. In San Juan County, grass was heading even though it was too short to cut for hay. Central Washington had a great week for farming. Tractors cultivated, seeded and sprayed ... Read More »

Canadian agronomist will dial into the details of growing a successful wheat  crop By Trista Crossley Editor, Wheat Life The details matter when it comes to growing a successful crop, and it’s the details that Ted Labun will be focusing on at next month’s Wheat College. Labun is the owner of TLC Agronomics Inc., a consulting company based in Calgary, ... Read More »