Leadership Conference & Clean Plants

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Washington Farm Bureau's 2014 Leadership Conference will be March 28 - 30 at Campbell's Lake Chelan Waterfront Resort. The Conference will offer Washington producers the opportunity to partake in a variety of learning sessions covering such topics as USDA Risk Management and New Farmer Resources, Adding Value To Your Farm Business, Agvocating through Social Media, and Precision Farming Tools and Trends. Keynote speakers will be American Farm Bureau Federation Director of Media and Advocacy Training Johnna Miller and John Torres, American Farm Bureau Federation Director of Leadership Development. The Conference is being sponsored by Women's Leadership and Young Farmers & Ranchers. Registration deadline is March 14.

Clean plants is a huge issue in the agriculture industry. The last thing growers want to worry about is disease in the rootstock. That's where a certified nursery can help. Kevin Judkins, with Inland Desert Nursery explains.

JUDKINS: We've worked with WSU to establish some of the only mother blocks in the state that provide certified material to growers. So growers come to us when they're looking for clean stuff and we work with all the researchers and industry in order to supply the industry needs.

Judkins says that keeping up with the latest science is paramount.

JUDKINS: For example we have viruses like Red Blotch that have been around for years but they just were able to test for it and knew that it existed about a year ago. So what was clean a couple of years ago had to be reindexed to see if it had Red Blotch. And some stuff did, so it's a new thing as the science gets better we keep finding new stuff. Our mother blocks start clean but there's vectors that can spread virus and disease so vector management, staying up with the latest science is an evolving ongoing process.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.