WSU research farm manager discusses land use fees

Washington Ag April 14, 2009 Washington State University is likely to impose service fees for land used by scientists at the Cook Agronomy Farm, Spillman Farm and the Plant Pathology Farm. Ryan Davis manages those three WSU research farms where the responsibility is to prepare the ground for planting for researchers. That requires equipment and the support needed to maintain it. Davis says when he took over Spillman in 2007 it was 50-thousand dollars in the red. Davis: "That is something that essentially the department has to pick up the balance for. We can keep spending in the red but it catches up with us eventually. I realized there had to be some way to recoup the costs." In checking around the country Davis found that both the University of Idaho and Oregon State University charge a land use fee. He says the University of Nebraska had a very similar system to WSU when it comes to who does the work and they had to impose a service fee of $250 an acre with additional charges for options like fertilizer. When Davis put pencil to paper he come up with a fee of $190 an acre for Spillman for seed ready, fertilized ground. He believes such a fee will provide better service and benefits to researchers. Davis: "We could provide some soil sampling for researchers, which I have started to do. We can provide better equipment in the shop whether it be bolts, nuts, consumables, things like that." Organizations who have research done at the farms, like commodity commissions, could see scientists pass the land fee on to them in their research proposals. I'm Bob Hoff and that's Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.