03/15/06 Implementing 25 by `25

Farm and Ranch March 15, 2006 Armed with a public opinion survey that shows nearly unanimous support for a national goal of having 25 percent of U.S. domestic energy needs met by renewable resources by the year 2025, the 25 by '25 Work Group is going to work on Congress. Read Smith, an eastern Washington farmer and rancher is co-chair of the Work Group, which has a vision of providing 25 percent of U.S. energy needs from renewable resources on agricultural working lands by 2025. Smith spoke about the focus on Congress during a teleconference at last week's Agriculture and Forestry Renewable Energy Summit held in Washington D.C. Smith: "We have a goal of getting 50% of the members to endorse the vision by November 1st so we are going to take off on this thing right away. We think it will be very popular here in town. It is a win-win-win. There are very few downsides to it and you are going to see the 25 by '25 Work Group aggressively go after the Congress to embrace this vision." Parallel to that Smith says is an initiative on how to achieve the goal of 25 by'25, or the implementation plan. Smith: "We don't have a time schedule for that but we recognize that it is time sensitive. We are going to move very quickly, as quickly as possible, to begin forging that implementation plan. Hopefully within the near future we will have a plan, which obviously a part of that will be public policy." I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.