Washington Ag Today September 1, 2010 Three organizations and one individual in Washington have received state-level Conservation Innovation Grants to address a wide range of natural resource issues.

The CIG grants as they are called are administered by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and Washington assistant state conservationist Dave Brown says the agency was able to award four grants this year from a total of 11 applications.

Brown: “This is our state’s opportunity to fund grants that fit our purposes here in Washington. So we have grants this year dealing with some sage grouse issues up in the Douglas County area. We have WSU helping us to train some technical folks to do forest planning with private landowners. We have Trout Unlimited working on helping producers to become certified as Salmon Safe farmers. Our final one is an on-farm biofuel project down in the Whitman County area.”

That is Lacrosse farmer Steve Camp who will evaluate the sustainability and effectiveness of on-from production of biofuel from camelina.

The grants range from 28-thousand to 50-thousand dollars and are equally matched with non-federal funding and in-kind contributions.

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