Columbia Plateau PM10 Conference this Thursday
Washington Ag Today December 15, 2009 Progress on research to reduce wind erosion and improve air quality in the inland Pacific Northwest will be reported at the Columbia Plateau PM10 Project annual meeting this Thursday Dec. 17 at Washington State University. The multi-disciplinary research focuses on developing economically viable best management practices for farmers to control blowing dust and smoke. WSU crop and soil scientist Bill Schillinger says one item on the agenda is that early October dust storm. Schillinger: “So we have air authorities from the county, state and federal level, which will be addressing air quality concerns, which certainly included this October 4th dust event. Again just progress on cropping systems for wind erosions control. On-farm testing that has been going on to back up the research on some of what we are calling best management practices to reduce dust. Also we will have Derek Schafer, a wheat farmer from Ritzville, talking about this pursuit of a new deep furrow drill prototype for the typical winter wheat-summer fallow areas. The idea there is to develop a new prototype that can pass through and retain more residue than the existing John Deere HZ and International 150 drills.” The free conference this Thursday begins at 9 a.m. in room 210 of the Compton Union Building on the Pullman campus. You can register online. Just do a search for pnw wind erosion. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network. ?
