11/13/08 Deadlines

Washington Ag November 13, 2008 Tomorrow, November 14th is the last day for Washington landowners interested in restoring or enhancing wetlands to submit an application for the latest round of funding for the Wetlands Reserve Program. The 2008 Farm Bill simplified the process the Natural Resources Conservation Service uses to assess property values in determining easement payments to landowners. A reminder from USDA's Risk Management Agency is that November 20th is the final closing date for crop insurance in Washington for numerous fruit crops for 2009 including apples, blueberries, and the Actual Revenue History Cherry Pilot. USDA's Farm Service Agency recently announced changes to the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program, SURE, that will give producers whose crops had an insurance deadline prior to August 14th of this year, an opportunity to still become eligible for the disaster program for 2009. FSA's Lynn Tjeerdsma explains. Tjeerdsma: "These crops had to be insured to be eligible for SURE so now with these changes what FSA is doing is allowing these crops to be covered through a buy-in fee up until January 12th 2009. And this fee is just for catastrophic coverage." I'm Bob Hoff.