Washington gains CRP acreage
Washington Ag Today September 14, 2010 Over 182-thousand acres of Washington land were accepted by the USDA into the Conservation Reserve Program from the recent general sign up. That’s a net gain of nearly ten-thousand acres from the amount of acreage for which contracts are expiring at the end of this month. Farm Service Agency state director Judy Olson says Washington producers made 11-hundred-36 offers during the August sign up. Olsen: “And we had an 84.3 average percentage rate acceptance. Now, that is a little bit misleading because we have several counties that were right at or very near their cap. There is a limit that 25% of the cropland in a county is all that can be accepted in the CRP. We had four counties that were right close to that cap and that limited the number of offers that could be accepted in those counties. The remainder of the counties were at the mostly the 98 to 100% acceptance rate.” Olson says the counties which ran up against the cap should come as no surprise. Olson: “Are Adams, Asotin, Douglas and Garfield. They are the counties that historically have had the highest percentage of CRP.” The average rental rate for this round in Washington was $49.22. The national average is $46.08. More tomorrow on what is next for producers who had land accepted. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.
