11/5/08 USDA Awards Northwest

USDA Awards Northwest. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. The USDA as announced that the Pacific Northwest is going to receive a significant amount of support to help develop risk management tools, education and outreach programs according to RMA's Jo Lynne Seufer. SEUFER: We're excited that $220-thousand dollar partnership agreement awards have been awarded to producers to manage agriculture risk and it's going to go to entities that will deliver those education and outreach opportunities particularly the women, limited-resource, and other traditionally underserved farmers and ranchers. Seufer says most of the Pacific Northwest received help. SEUFER: Here in the Pacific Northwest one of our first awardees is the Washington State Department of Agriculture and they were awarded $50-thousand dollars for outreach to women and Latino farmers throughout the entire state. And Oregon State University was awarded $75-thousand dollars for growing specialty crop production and they're also going to include some farm business management for new and existing farmers throughout all of Oregon. One of the awards according to Seufer will go beyond the northwest. SEUFER: Another one that's a little bit different in scope is going to reach several areas of our United States and that's the Indian Nations Conservation Alliance. And what they're doing is a tribal producer risk management training and going to reach individual farmers and ranchers on tribal Indian reservations. Each year groups submit application to the USDA for these kids of funds that help provide farmers and ranchers in the region with quality risk management products, tools, and information. SEUFER: Each fiscal year Congress has authorized Risk Management Agency to go and publicize education and outreach opportunities for funding through the Federal Register and we did that last March or April. And then requests for applications through the Federal Register opened anywhere from 45 to 60 days and these applicants who I just announced applied and it was on a competitive basis nationwide. Other awards were given to Right Risk LLC for education projects. SEUFER: If any producers, entities, organizations, commodities, non-profits are interested in applying for these programs or when they will be announced I encourage everyone and anyone to call me at 1-800-205-9953. For more information about these and other agreements, check out the RMA Web site. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.