Washington Ag Today June 7, 2010 The final rules for the Conservation Stewardship Program are out now. The program offers payments to producers for both their current work in good land conservation stewardship and also for extra work they do.

There are some changes in the final CSP rules from what had been published earlier. One is a split payment with producers getting a higher rate of pay for new conservation activities. Secondly, USDA is raising the payment limit to joint operations, doubling the yearly possible payment from 40-thousand to 80-thousand dollars. And third, no matter how small your farm is the program will pay no less than one thousand dollars.

Dwayne Howard with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service reminds producers.

Howard: “This is a nationwide sign up. It is not limited to particular watersheds. So, potentially all producers out there that meet the minimum eligibility criteria could possibly be eligible for this particular program.”

Finally, sign up for year two of the CSP program has been extended a couple of weeks. The sign up closing is now June 25^th.

The executive director of the Whatcom Conservation District, George Boggs, has been selected to serve on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Agricultural Advisory Committee. The committee advises EPA on a wide range of environmental issues of importance to agriculture and rural communities. Examples of topics the advisory committee provides insight on are non-point source water pollution, agricultural air issues and environmental markets.

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

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