Grand Opening & Stock Report Surprises

Representatives of both Northwest Farm Credit Services and CoBank, along with local union members, contractors and suppliers joined together this past Friday to celebrate the grand opening of the new Second Harvest Distribution Center in Pasco. The 14 thousand square foot warehouse, made possible by a NFCS and CoBank campaign gift, along with locally donated construction materials and thousands of hours of donated manpower, will make it possible for Second Harvest to expand their dry storage space while resourcing more perishable and fresh food donations. Jason Clark, President and CEO of Second Harvest spoke at the ribbon cutting ceremony.

CLARK: There are so many people to thank for this project. Hunger has grown in this region dramatically in the last few years and we’re going to be able to move from 5 million pounds of food a year to 9 million pounds of food just because we (now) have the facility and the equipment to do it.

Skone and Connors Produce donated 40 thousand pounds of potatoes and onions for the Second Harvest, Pasco Distribution Center grand opening.

USDA’s latest grain stocks and small grains production reports came with a few surprises. Old crop corn stocks were well below the average pre-report estimate, and soybeans were larger than expected. Corn ending stocks are at an eight year low of 988 million bushels, down 12% from this time last year. Quarterly wheat stocks also came in below what had been anticipated at 2.1 billion bushels, which is 2% less than a year ago.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.