CRP payments coming; fruit prices

Washington Ag Today October 5, 2010 It’s October and that means a new federal fiscal year, which also means its time for USDA to issue annual Conservation Reserve Program rental payments. Nationally the CRP payments total 1.6 billion dollars. Of that CRP contract holders in Washington are receiving 78.5 million dollars for about 12-thousand contracts covering 1.4 million acres that are enrolled in the voluntary conservation program.

Cool, wet weather in many fruit growing regions of the U.S. has led to smaller, apple, pear and grape crops. And therefore according to USDA economist Agnes Perez;

Perez: “We are looking at looking at maybe the market being stronger for the fall and into the coming marketing year 2010-11.”

Perez says USDA forecasts have apple production down four percent from last year despite a rise in Washington, the number one apple producing state.

The Washington Field Office the Agricultural Statistics Service reports that the value of Washington’s 2009 potato crop was 645 million dollars, seven percent lower than the 2008 crop. The 2009 average marketing price received by growers was $7.40 per hundredweight, five cents lower than the average 2008 price. Washington’s potato production in 2009 totaled 87.2 million hundred weight, eight percent below the previous year.

USDA won’t issue an estimate of this year’s potato production until next month. Meanwhile, the harvest of the 2010 crop is 64 percent complete, just a few points behind the average for now.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.