03/19/07 WWC proposes another WSU endowed chair

Washington Ag March 19, 2007 A decent wheat crop this past year and high prices are providing the Washington Wheat Commission with increased revenue from its assessment on wheat sales. That income will be used to fund Commission programs for the fiscal year starting this July and chairman Randy Suess proposes spending a record 5.4 million dollars. Suess says 1.5 million dollars could go to an endowed chair at Washington State University. Suess: "The endowed chair would be for somebody in the ag econ area. Herb Hinman is almost ready to retire over at WSU. We are looking for somebody to be able to crunch ag numbers in the Economics Department. And with this endowment it would provide money for projects for us to be done. but the actual costs for paying for that professor would come from WSU and they would have to pay for benefits too. So this is early stage talk about doing this. It is something we would like to see and now we will have to visit with WSU to see if we can make this thing happen and really get some good economic numbers for us." In the past Washington Wheat Commission funds have gone to help create two endowed chairs at WSU, the Vogel Chair in wheat breeding and genetics and the Cook Chair in cropping systems. Suess says if the ag econ chair is created the Commission would ideally like to fill it with a big-name economist. I'm Bob Hoff.