Ag water enhancement funds; a canola and mustard field day
Washington Ag Today July 5, 2010 Four projects in Washington state are getting a total of 1.9 million dollars under the USDA’s Agricultural Water Enhancement Program. AWEP, as it’s called, provides technical and financial assistance to help farmers and ranchers implement activities to improve agricultural water. The Washington recipients are the Kittitas County Conservation District to improve irrigation efficiency; Department of Ecology for farming practices to improve Hangman Creek water quality in Spokane County; the North Yakima County Conservation District to address water conservation and quality for fish and wildlife and a project of Trout Unlimited to improve irrigation efficiency on the Methow. This Wednesday July 7th the University of Idaho holds its biennial Canola and Mustard Field Day at the Parker Farm near Moscow. Jack Brown is the U of I’s brassica breeder. Brown: “We have a field day that is dedicated only to brassica crops. So we cover canola, rapeseed. We do a lot of work on biodiesel so there is going to be a big biodiesel component. We also do a lot of work on mustard. That is yellow and oriental mustard, using these mustards as a condiment spice, but also using the byproduct, the meal, as a biopesticide to kill weeds, nematodes and wireworms in the soil.” The free field day with a hosted lunch starts at 8:00 a.m. and runs to 1:00p.m. By the way, U.S. farmers planted 1.5 million acres of canola this year, up 84 percent from 2009 and the second highest planted area on record. The USDA did not specify the canola acreage for Washington. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.
