Northwest Looks At Soybeans
Northwest Looks at Soybeans. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
The United States is the largest producer of soybean followed by Brazil, Argentina and China and up until recently was a crop not found in the Pacific Northwest. That has slowly been changing according to Dave Paul, USDA’s Risk Management Agencies NW Director.
PAUL: Probably 5 or 6 years ago, we got invited to a meeting in the Tri-Cities (WA) at the fairgrounds and it was about soybean production and they actually invited and had a couple of guest speakers from North Dakota State University, my Alma Mater. I remember they asked us if we’d come and talk about possibilities for insurance down the road and as we pulled into the fairgrounds I remember I thought there must be like a gun show going on here too. There was all kinds of vehicles and they had over 100 people at that meeting.
He says it was being looked at as another alternative crop for producers to add to their rotation.
PAUL: So it’s really started small, probably only a few hundred acres of soybeans in ’04 and then since then in the Pacific Northwest we’ve seen just some gradual increases. We looked at some of the FSA data and so on to see if we could articulate how many acres we’re being grown. Looks like probably anywhere from 1200 acres in 2007 to nearly 3000 acres perhaps in 2010 and those are sort of estimates on our end.
That pales in comparison to crops like wheat and corn and most of it is grown under irrigation although there are some acres of dryland. Paul says RMA has a program for soy producers.
PAUL: For 2012 for the first time we have insurance programs filed in Umatilla County, Oregon and Walla Walla County, Washington and producers that are planning to grow soybeans for 2012 can obtain insurance in those counties. Insurance programs that are very much like our wheat insurance program for example. And then any growers who are outside those two counties, they can request coverage.
Again the number of acres of soybeans is relatively small but then Paul says you never know.
PAUL: I grew up in North Dakota and I graduated from college in 1981 and I don’t know that there was any soybeans grown in the state of North Dakota and now it’s one of the primary crops grown in the state of North Dakota and it’s amazing to me how soybeans has taken over that state but this is certainly a lot smaller scale. I think our land grant universities are doing a lot of research with it.
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
