03/22/07 House Demo budget plan and ag

Washington Ag March 22, 2007 When state House Democrats unveiled their proposed biennial budget this week Helen Sommers, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, highlighted an item of interest to agriculture. Sommers: "We have added some agricultural research money at WSU. WSU is of course our lead and is a national leader in agricultural research. They have about 50-million now in agricultural research. They get into a lot of areas. It is also very important to much of our economy in eastern Washington and here as well because they do research that impacts western Washington agriculture." House Democrats included 9.5 million dollars for WSU's Unified Agriculture Initiative. That's a little less than WSU's request of 10.8 million but over triple what Governor Gregoire included in her budget proposal. The House Demo budget plan also includes four million dollars to start up WSU's byproducts program in the Tri-Cities. That's the same amount the governor proposed but less than the 6.7 million WSU asked for. The proposed budget also has two million dollars for helping with capital costs of anaerobic digesters, over one million dollars for the state Department of Agriculture to improve animal health regulation enforcement and 7.7 million for implementing farm conservation plans. I'm Bob Hoff.