09/09/05 Regulators get real world tour

Farm and Ranch September 9, 2005 Nearly fifty people from the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal agencies in Washington D.C. along with legislative aides, have a better understanding of agriculture and the role of crop protection products after participating late last month in the Specialty Crops IPM Symposium. IPM standing for Integrated Pest Management. The event is grower funded through various state commodity commissions including the Washington State Potato Commission. It's assistant executive director Karen Bonaudi, says participants get to see how crop protection chemicals are actually used in the fields and talk to growers and scientists. Bonaudi: "Some of them are city kids who have never been out in farm country before. So this gives them an opportunity to really see what happens and what they are really writing about when they write these registrations." Symposium participants saw the potato industry from the field to the french fry processing plant. The tour also included apples, alfalfa seed, corn, onions, mint and speakers on water, irrigation and wheat. Bonaudi: "We also make it interesting for them so we took them out on a boat in the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River. We took them to a wind farm and they got to go into the base of one of the huge windmills that generate electricity." Bonaudi says the EPA values the tour so much it uses the event as a training and refresher course for its personnel. That's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report. Brought to you in part by the Washington State Potato Commission. Nutrition today. Good health tomorrow. I'm Bob Hoff on the Northwest Ag Information Network.