Glickman To Announce Crp Results

Farmers will learn Thursday whether acreage is enrolled After two months, growers in Eastern Washington will hear if they’ve won federal funding to idle portions of their farmland under the Conservation Reserve Program.

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman will announce changes in the number of Washington state acres enrolled in the 10-year program when he visits Olympia on Thursday.

Wheat farmers and landowners have been waiting since the last CRP sign-up ended on Nov. 14 to decide what to do with the 591,509 acres they have offered.

If their land is accepted into the program, they will leave a portion of it in a natural state to help fight erosion, improve water quality and provide wildlife habitat. If not accepted, they could reclaim those acres - often the most erodible farmland in the state - and plow them under for a spring wheat planting.

Nationally, farmers earned about $39 an acre for land in the CRP.

In the last sign-up, in spring 1997, Washington’s farmers fared worst in the nation. Only 21 percent of their CRP lands were renewed as a result of changes in the 1996 farm bill. Owners of similar land in Oregon and Idaho, by contrast, had approval rates of up to 80 percent.

“We’re real optimistic that the results will be better,” said Al Pry, district director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “The scoring that producers received in this sign-up were much higher than they were before.”

The improved scores, given for things like varieties of grasses and shrubs grown on the land, are due in part to changes in sign-up requirements.

“Last year growers in our state were shocked and disappointed at their loss of CRP acres,” Sen. Patty Murray said in a release. “I am confident the secretary’s announcement will recognize the importance of CRP to growers in Washington state.”

, DataTimes