WACD Reading List

Byron Kominek’s family farm near Boulder, Colorado was struggling to turn a profit when he began exploring solar generation as a strategy to diversify the farm’s income.

“Salmon-Safe is substantially about water quality,” Scribner said. Good for farmers, and good for salmon, too.

Kernza is a perennial crop that's essentially a cousin of wheat, but its roots store carbon in the ground to help prevent soil erosion and runoff.

Warmer summers — and winters — force Washington vintners to reconsider their crops.

These farms operate by creating a symbiotic relationship between fish and plants. It begins with a fish tank. Helpful bacteria in the tank turn ammonia from the fish waste into nitrites and then nitrates. The water is pumped from the tank into the area where the plants grow. Plant roots suck up the nitrates. The clean water then flows back into the fish tank to begin the cycle again.

The USDA has rolled out a new insurance option specifically for agricultural producers with small farms who sell locally. The new Micro Farm policy, announced last week, simplifies record keeping and covers post-production costs like washing and value-added products.

Tim Kovis, spokesman for the Washington State Tree Fruit Association, said it’s still too early to see the complete picture of the harvest.

Soft white wheat...had its worst production year nationwide since the mid-1970s

WACD Past President Chris Herron is quoted.

The Washington state Farm Bureau is working with a new program call ”Coming Home to Farm”, to promote an open and honest dialog about the changing of the guard.

USDA Meteorologist, Brad Rippey, said much like the small grains, pasture and rangeland across the region have been hit hard by the drought and hot temperatures.

WASHINGTON – Democrats and Republicans who represent Western states in Congress called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday to provide more aid to farmers and ranchers battling historic heat, drought and wildfires across the region. In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, lawmakers from nine states asked the USDA chief to “explore all potential flexibilities for additional relief,” noting that some Northwest berry growers have reported losing up to 80% of their crops to the heat wave that saw temperatures in the region reach as high as 120 degrees in June. “Although the extent of damages relating to the extreme heat has yet to be fully determined, agricultural producers expect these impacts to be severe,” the lawmakers wrote. “As producers continue to assess losses over the next 18 months, it is likely that the total impact of the heat wave will be much higher than current estimates.”

From Oregon to the Dakotas, hay stocks for hungry cattle are low and ranchers say summer pastures are already dry from the widespread drought. It leaves them little choice but to cut herds now. “People are just scared that we’re not going to have any fall green up [rains that grow grass] either — so it’s not looking good,” Clark says.

Farmers are among the most likely to die by suicide compared with any other occupation, according to a 2020 study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With COVID-19 fallout, record debts, drought, wildfires and a lack of access to counselors, the need for a conversation about mental health and solutions in rural America is more urgent than ever, experts said. "Therapists may not fully get that a lot of these farmers literally would rather die than lose the farm that has been in their family for 100 to 120 years," said McConkey. She said it's vital to provide an understanding of mental health to everyone associated with agriculture. Crop consultants, agronomists, crop insurance salesmen, seed salesmen and elevator employees should all know the warning signs of someone struggling with mental health issues.

HYDE PARK, Vt. (AP) — Grappling with a changed industry, two brothers operating their family’s dairy farm in Vermont have made the drastic decision to give up hundreds of cows for goats. The Jones family, which had raised cows for 150 years at Joneslan Farm, houses about 1,000 goats in their barn that remains adorned with painted cut-outs of dairy cattle. Fluctuating milk prices paid to dairy cow farmers and rising costs have driven some small family farms to go big or out of business — or get creative like brothers Brian and Steven.

WASHINGTON — The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is authorizing emergency procedures to help agricultural producers impacted by extreme drought conditions. USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) is working with crop insurance companies to streamline and accelerate the adjustment of losses and issuance of indemnity payments to crop insurance policyholders in impacted areas.

On July 6, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) designated 14 counties, mostly in Eastern Washington, as primary natural disaster areas. The declaration allows the Farm Service Agency (FSA) the ability to offer emergency loans to producers to help them replace essential equipment, inputs or the refinance of farm-related debts. Producers in 10 Washington counties that are contiguous to the primary counties are also eligible to apply for emergency loans. A federal drought designation is made when a county has a D2 (severe drought) conditions for eight weeks in a row or a D3 (extreme drought) conditions during the growing season. The primary counties are Adams, Asotin, Columbia, Franklin, Garfield, Grant, Kittitas, Klickitat, Lincoln, Spokane, Stevens, Walla Walla, Whitman and Yakima. The contiguous counties are Benton, Chelan, Douglas, Ferry, King, Lewis, Okanogan, Pend Oreille, Pierce and Skamania.

At more than 300 farms, Washington state accounts for a quarter of U.S. shellfish production — valued at $108 million in market sales — according to the Pacific Shellfish Institute. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife received at least six reports of shellfish die-off in Puget Sound waters after the record heat in late June, according to communications manager Ben Anderson. Some came from the public on recreational shellfish beaches and one from a grower. “The suspicion, obviously, is it’s related to the heat wave,” Anderson said. Like Macias, he noted the impact won’t be known for some time but said the department is actively monitoring potential fallout.

Experts hold little to no optimism about this year’s wheat harvest after droughts during the spring and summer, and the record heat wave, shriveled fields in the Inland Northwest. Glen Squires, CEO of the Washington Grain Commission, said he’s expecting winter wheat to be about 50 bushels per acre for Eastern Washington when the average tends to be about 70 bushels per acre. Harvesting has not started in the region, but some results have come in from farms in drier south-central Washington that start the process earlier. They’re not good.

STILLWATER, Okla. — Oklahoma State University researchers have received funding from the Environmental Protection Agency to examine how virtual fencing technology could improve the water quality and ecosystems of cattle grazing lands. The new EPA grant totaling more than $800,000 supports research on how GPS-enabled collars worn by cattle can help producers not only better manage grazing, but also improve water quality and other natural resources, such as wildlife habitat and soil health.

LYNDEN, Wash. — The raspberries growing high on the rows of vines Rolf Haugen has cultivated on his Lynden farm for 41 years should not look like this on July 5. “They’re sunburned and shriveled,” said Haugen, who says he has never seen such damage from the heat of a single day — June 28, when temperatures reached 108 degrees on his farm — and the highest in recorded history for Lynden.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Biden administration plans to issue a new rule to protect the rights of farmers who raise cows, chickens and hogs against the country’s largest meat processors as part of a plan to encourage more competition in the agriculture sector.

EAST WENATCHEE, Wash. — The Batterman Fire, which started about noon on the Fourth of July, grew to 7,900 acres by Monday evening, burning brush and grass in steep terrain near East Wenatchee and Rock Island. About 10% of the fire’s perimeter was contained, and firefighters burned the west side of Rock Island Grade to hold the fire’s southeastern line, according to the Southeast Washington Interagency Incident Management Team out of Pasco.

Something unusual happened a few months ago in an asparagus field on the Oregon-Idaho border: Six thousand people showed up on a Saturday for the chance to pick some free veggies. "I am a big fan on community, so it's really cool to see so many people out here," said one picker. Children who were out picking were divided on whether they like eating asparagus.

Grower leaders from the Washington Association of Wheat Growers (WAWG) and the Washington Grain Commission (WGC) have sent a letter to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee asking him to announce a drought declaration in wheat counties so growers will have access to federal natural disaster aid.

WHATCOM COUNTY, Wash. — At the request of two tribes, the Washington Department of Ecology plans to sue water users in Whatcom County, raising the possibility of severely curtailing irrigation in Western Washington’s top farm region. Salmon need more water, the tribes say. Receptive to that, Ecology invokes equity, climate change and environmental justice to justify the adjudication, in which a local judge will sort out the region’s water rights.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today additional aid to agricultural producers and businesses as part of the USDA Pandemic Assistance for Producers initiative. As part of the Pandemic Assistance initiative announced in March, USDA pledged to continue Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) payments and to provide aid to producers and businesses left behind. Implementation of the assistance announced today will continue within 60 days to include support to timber harvesters, biofuels, dairy farmers and processors, livestock farmers and contract growers of poultry, assistance for organic cost share, and grants for PPE.

In 2017, he tried subterranean clover in his NE field. Subterranean clover is a cool-season annual legume that produces seeds during the summer at or below the soil surface (hence the name subterranean). Seeds then germinate in the fall after the first rains and grow rapidly through the fall/early winter. It may go dormant for a time during the winter, but becomes active again in early spring. It grows in densely matted clumps that are 6-15 inches tall. The clover spreads through rootless runners reaching up to 3 feet in length. After a few years of trial, Fred reports that the “Subclover cover crop, in what is now our nine-year-old hazelnut orchard, is working very well and is quite easy to manage. Plus, now as the trees have sent roots out in the row centers, we are getting some nitrogen benefits. This orchard was visibly greener than our other orchards last spring. Every year it [the cover crop] gets better without having to add any seed since it is self-seeding.”