06/10/08 Emerson Humanitarian Trust is empty

Farm and Ranch June 10, 2008 USDA sales of soft white wheat from the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust have frequently been criticized by the Northwest wheat industry for depressing local wheat prices. But for the time being at least the region's growers won't have to worry. Not that many days ago the Trust held 915-thousand tons of wheat, but not anymore. Connor: "We have liquidated all of the wheat stored in the Emerson Trust. Converted all of that into cash." Which Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Connor says was the right thing to do under the current conditions. Connor: "The market needed the wheat badly. We got a good price for this wheat and it is able to relief some of the pressure out there as buyers of wheat are trying to hold on waiting for the new crop to come in. So it was just a very good time to execute this transaction. Food aid was the winner here because we now have nearly 300-million dollars available for emergency food assistance and that is a lot of food assistance." Deputy Connor also points out that getting the wheat out of storage will save the federal government millions of dollars in storage costs. That's savings to taxpayers but those storage costs were income to grain elevators in the region that stored the wheat for the Trust. The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust can hold bulk grain and cash for emergency food aid use. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.