Washington Policy Center Expands & Off the 20-Year Average

Washington Policy Center Expands & Off the 20-Year Average. I'm Greg Martin with Washington Ag Today.

The Washington Policy Center, the state's leading, independent research organization with offices in Seattle, Olympia, Spokane and Tri-Cities has announced the expansion of its research team into the area of Agriculture. WPC plans to hire a research director that will focus specifically on Agriculture – its impact on the state, the regulatory burden facing farming families, the importance of water availability and much more. Agriculture is responsible for $51 billion of the state's yearly economic output and 160,000 jobs with the jobs being more than Boeing and Microsoft combined.

During a House Natural Resources Sub-committee, U.S. Forest Service Chief, Tom Tidwell, was asked why are fuel removal and logging activities and timber sales so much lower that 20 to 25 years ago? Tidwell's answer:

TIDWELL: The cost of fire suppression. It's eroded the agencies ability to be able to do the work.

He says that due to the longer fire seasons and the greater intensity of many blazes the service has had to shift people and money into fire suppression.

TIDWELL: Our staffing that would put timber sales together has gone down 39%, our foresters have gone down 50% and we have then doubled the number of people that work on our fire crews.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.