Washington Ag Looking Good

Washington Ag Looking Good. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. A look around the northwest shows a fairly good year ag-wise even though most producers have had some weather related troubles. A recent trip to China and Viet Nam by a group led by Washington Governor Christine Gregoire focused on exports from a number of different sectors including agriculture and WSDA Director Dan Newhouse says the Viet Nam market could be a good place for northwest products. NEWHOUSE: There's a lot of potential there for the kinds of things we produce here in Washington State so I think it was important for us to be there. It opened a lot of doors and like I said I think we're going to see a lot of real good results because of that. Newhouse was attending the annual Washington Cattlemen's Association meeting and I asked what were going to be some of the major issues for producers in the next year. NEWHOUSE: Well we're here at the livestock meeting and one of the biggest things that they're facing right now is this whole animal traceability issue. The federal government had been wanting to impose a national program. That was met with some resistance and they held some listening sessions and said okay, you guys want to do this at the state level, do it. The one caveat with that is there's no money provided for them to do that so we need to come up with a system to fund animal traceability and that's a lot of the big conversations going on right now. And in deed many discussions and speakers took the time to have open and honest conversations about the traceability issue. Garry Edwards with Integrated Traceability Solutions, Ltd out of Alberta Canada gave a presentation on a number of systems he has had the opportunity to work on. Newhouse in the meantime feels confident that this issue will be resolved. NEWHOUSE: I think there's a good understanding that we have to have a good traceability system in place. You know the future of the industry depends on us being able to quarantine or isolate a problem animal if we have one. The alternative is we quarantine the whole state and that would just be a tremendous blow to our industry and so people see the need for it but just coming down to how are we going to get it done, how are we going to pay for it, that's the rub right now but we'll get there. I'm confident the industry will get together and we'll figure out a way to do it. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.