Hop Crop & FUELS Act

An amazing 75 percent of the total U.S. hop acreage is located in Washington’s Yakima Valley. With hop growers gearing up for harvest come late August Ann George, of the Washington Hop Commission, talks about how the hop crop is looking this year.

GEORGE: As far as I know it’s looking pretty good. We had a nice cool spring and I think everything is developing fairly well. There was some hail damage that went through the Sunnyside area, so I’m sure there many have been a few hop fields that were impacted. But again that’s a small portion of the total industry.

July 26 the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the Farmers Undertake Environmental Land Stewardship Act. This bill would ease restrictions imposed by the current EPA administered Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure rule, which is applicable to any agricultural operation with an aggregate above-ground oil storage capacity of 1,320 gallons in tanks of 55 gallons or greater; a threshold number that many ag leaders state has “no basis in science, or in normal tank sizes for agriculture”. H.R. 3158 provides realistic threshold sizes for tank regulation at the farm level and would allow more farms to self-certify, saving producers money spent hiring professional engineers to sign off on the SPCC plans.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.