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Washington State's federal lawmakers sound the alarm on federal cuts to the United States Forest Service (USFS) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). United States Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, along with Reps. Kim Schrier, Rick Larsen, and Marie Glusenkamp Perez sent a letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins and USFS Chief Tom Schultz on the firings of hundreds of employ

How fascinating!

Cuts to the federal workforce will have a greater impact on rural Oregon.  Oregon is home to more than 28,000 federal employees.  Gail Krumenauer, an economist at the Oregon Employment Department, said, based on the population, federal workforce cuts in rural counties will have a greater impact because they have a higher percentage of federal workers.   "It does t...

The hop industry is reeling from the announcement that two of its researchers were fired, thanks to the Administration's ongoing effort to trim federal spending.  Maggie Elliot, Science and Communication Director at the Washington Hop Commission and Hop Growers of America, said Hop Horticulturist Dr. Paco Gon...

By a 72-28 vote Thursday, Brooke Rollins was confirmed as the 33rd Secretary of Agriculture.  House Ag Committee Member, Central Washington Representative Dan Newhouse said he was excited when the vote became official.   “I'm delighted that a farm girl from Texas who knows something about agriculture is going to be at the helm of the USDA at a time when agriculture is facing a lot of challenges,&q

ERS is forecasting inflation-adjusted U.S. net cash farm income, better known as gross cash income minus cash expenses, to increase by $30.6 billion from 2024 to $193.7 billion in 2025.  U.S. net farm income, a broader measure of farm sector profitability, is forecast to increase by $37.7 billion...

ABC News is reporting the USDA has directed agency officials to review and remove content related to climate change from its public websites.  ABC News said they obtained internal e-mails that say the directive instructs web managers to identify, archive, or unpublish materials mentioning climate change by "no later than close of business Friday”.  In an email sent Thursd...

On Wednesday, USDA’s Rural Development announced that it will invest $94 million in Yakama Power's Clean Energy Project.  The funds come via the Powering Affordable Clean Energy program, PACE, where rural electric cooperatives and communities can use funding to lower electricity costs for businesses and families, while reducing climate pollution.    Yakama Power said th...

Late last week, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced another round of states coming on board with the National Milk Testing Strategy.  Washington, Montana, Indiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio and Vermont will make up the second round of testing.  The Str...

Some of the numbers from USDA's latest look at irrigation and water management within agriculture.    “There were 212,714 farms and they irrigated 53 million acres.  It was down a little bit from 2018, where the survey showed that there were 231,000 farms with close to 56 million irrigated acres, so down 8% in total, farms irrigating and about 5% for acres irrigated,” noted Julie Weber with NASS.