Tell state lawmakers agriculture's story; WSU shares in million dollar grant for onions

Tell state lawmakers agriculture's story; WSU shares in million dollar grant for onions

Washington Ag Today June 21, 2010 Republican State Senator Mark Schoesler was out on plot tours at the Lind Field Day last week when he received the latest forecast for state revenue. That forecast showed projected General Fund revenue down three-million dollars.

Schoesler: “If you do a carry forward cost of government budget, a very simplistic one, you are looking at potentially a three to six billion dollar deficit when we go back in January.”

The Ritzville lawmaker and farmer says agriculture dodged the bullet in the legislative sessions earlier this year and was not singled out far any special taxes. That’ doesn’t mean there weren’t tax ideas tossed around that would have hit agriculture, and Schoesler told the Lind Field Day luncheon most of the bad ideas were in the Senate.

So, if state lawmakers face another big deficit in the January session what does Schoesler recommend?

Schoesler: “I think it is more important now than ever that agriculture tells its story about its uniqueness and its contributions to our state and its economy.”

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Plant pathologists at Washington State University have won more than one-million dollars in grant funding to participate in a multi-state team of scientists and industry professionals to create management tools to improve the productivity and profitability of the United States onion industry. The long term goal of the project is to develop, fully deploy and evaluate a sustainable online information-management platform to integrate innovate diagnostic tools and optimize sound pest management decision making in specialty crops such as onions.

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

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