FSA starts making payments for biomass material

Washington Ag Today December 17, 2009 USDA’s Farm Service Agency has begun making payments to Washington agricultural and forest landowners for biomass materials used for energy production.  Be it power, heat or biofuel. Rod Hamilton with the state FSA office says there are two phases to the Biomass Crop Assistance Program.

Hamilton: “The phase we are rolling out right now is a matching payment to folks who sell existing biomass to an operation that is in place now that converts it to energy. In our state, that looks like primarily that is going to be for people who are delivering forest waste; such as, clean up from logging operations, thinning for disease control, or fire control. Those kinds of things.”

Hamilton says the second phase later on may be more oriented toward the production of crops just for bioenergy.

Washington has 13 approved facilities for collecting biomass materials.

Hamilton says the program matches dollar for dollar up to 45 dollars a ton, what the landowners are getting paid for the delivered biomass. That payment is limited to two years.

Hamilton: “In the second phase we will do that, but in addition we will also provide cost-sharing assistance to get the crop started, and a contract similar to a CRP contract, to provide rental income for folks as they are growing the crop and experimenting with it and so forth.”

For more information on the Biomass Crop Assistance Program check with your local FSA office.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.