CRP General Sign-up & Gas Prices

CRP General Sign-up & Gas Prices plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

The 43rd Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) general sign-up received some 48-thousand offers on 4.5 million acres. Juan Garcia, Deputy Administrator for Farm Programs has the details.

GARCIA: Of those we did accept a little over 42-thousand offers for a total of 3.9 million acres. Currently we do have a cap of 32 million acres. We have 6 1/2 million acres that are actually expiring this September. It is a large amount of acres compared to last year that are expiring. With the acceptance of this offer we’ll be a little over 27 million acres that we’ll have enrolled as of this September.

Washington State has the 4th highest gasoline prices in the nation and it seems that Governor Christine Gregoire wants to know why. On Friday, the Governor sent letters to every refinery in the state asking them to "take all prudent measures to increase production and supplies sufficiently to reduce the costs for consumers on the West Coast." She plans to send similar letters to refineries in California as well. She is directing the state Department of Commerce to monitor rising gas prices in the state and is asking the agency to recommend what actions can be taken to help reduce costs.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

Have you heard about the smog producing dairy cows in LA? Right about now you probably have a mental picture of a cow driving down an LA freeway. That’s about the only way you could truly blame LA’s smog on dairy cows, but that doesn’t stop some people from trying! A recent study estimates that ammonia emissions due to dairy cattle in the Southern California air basin could be almost triple the tonnage of ammonia emissions from automobiles. Ammonia is one of the ingredients in the recipe for smog. Did you catch all the key study words though - estimates, could be, and almost. Interestingly, ammonia alone does not cause smog, ammonia must react with nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere, a contaminant that does not come from farms. Automobiles and industrial sources generate nitrogen oxide emissions. The EPA reports that mobile sources are responsible for more than half of all nitrogen oxide emissions in the United States. It seems easier for some though to focus on targeting dairy operations as a way to control smog, rather than utilizing car pools, public transportation, converting to hybrids, or electric vehicles.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.