08/30/05 Field day for bluegrass alternatives

The University of Idaho Kentucky bluegrass research team is holding a field day tomorrow near Potlatch to look at various post harvest residue management methods. There's baling the straw and then burning, baling and mowing, animal grazing, baling and grazing, herbicide use or mechanical methods. Preliminary results show that post harvest grazing might be an effective way of managing residue while sustaining seed production. The main method to achieve that goal now is burning, something State Agriculture Director Pat Takasugi says is allowed because. TAKASUGI "By law I'm to make a determination if there any viable economic alternatives to burning crop residue and in this case Kentucky blue grass residue. I do that ever year just in case there's some new cutting edge technology out there, some new research." Growers like Keith Damon says there have been significant improvements in the smoke management program. DAMON "You know we're using some pretty sophisticated computer modeling to determine the direction and dispersion of the smoke." The growers and the smoke management officials have incorporated that into the program. Voice of Idaho Agriculture Bill Scott