Washington Grain Commission adopts budget; boosts reserves

Washington Ag May 24, 2010 The Washington Grain Commission has approved a budget for its new fiscal year starting in July of four- million 853-thousand dollars.

Commission Chairman Dana Herron says the largest part of the budget, 42 percent or just over two million dollars, is going to fund research.

Herron: “Which is up about 250-thousand dollars over last year. We have an excellent program at WSU. We have two new plant breeders that are exciting. They are very knowledgeable. They have new ideas about how to breed better wheats faster. And we are fully funding their programs in the near future.”

Market development represents the second largest spending category, 944-thousand dollars or about 19 percent of the budget.

Herron says maintaining the level of spending in the new budget won’t be easy.

Herron: “The simple fact of the matter is our expected revenues for the coming year will about 3.5 million and we just approved a budget of 4.8 million. You can do the math. We can‘t do this too much longer. We do have significant reserves because of the conservative fiscal management the Commission has experienced over the past ten years. So we can pull a million dollars out of reserves and continue these programs for a couple of years.”

And the Commission added 800-thousand dollars to its reserves bringing the total to 2.5 million dollars.

The Washington Grain Commission administers the assessments collected on producers' sales of wheat and barley.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.