05/04/06 A fuel crop reserve

Washington Ag May 4, 2006 Some ideas on oilseed crop production for biodiesel feedstock in Washington were put forth at a recent forum in Moses Lake on the next farm bill. Rich Baden of the Spokane County Conservation District talked about a fuel crop reserve program on some of the land coming out of the Conservation Reserve Program over the next four years that could be put back into production. Baden: "And what we propose is that if you take it out early that you be compensated 50% of what you were compensated when you were in CRP and that same acreage that is planted to an oilseed crop on CRP be rotated throughout the farm, but it has to be applied in a direct seed concept so that we get the same amount of conservation throughout the farm that we had." Baden said money saved from the half CRP payments on land in the fuel reserve could fund a conservation mitigation program say for Douglas County to keep land in the CRP that exceeds the 25 percent county cap. At the same forum, Jim Fitzgerald, State Director of the Farm Service Agency tossed out a proposal for an oilseed incentive program that would provide a direct payment to farmers growing biodiesel feedstock. Fitzgerald said an incentive payment combined with the market price for canola would provide growers with a per acre return that would make the crop profitable. I'm Bob Hoff