Spring is officially here, and that means farmers markets are back. NWPB’s Rachel Sun visited with vendors at the first week of the Moscow Farmers Market.Read More
Andy Juris seeds his spring soft white wheat fields with a hulking John Deere tractor outside of Bickleton, Washington. (Credit: Anna King / NWPB) Listen (Runtime 3:50) Read Inky black […]Read More
Every October in the backyard of a Bothell home, a team of workers swarm around millions of blue orchard mason bees, to harvest the hibernating bees.
The company, Rent Mason Bees, quickly takes apart and cleans the wooden nesting blocks that gardeners and farmers across the state use in the spring to house these tiny pollinators. The company offers this service as part Read More
The United States Department of Agriculture is soliciting applications for funding to build farmworker housing nationwide.
In the Pacific Northwest, leaders hope the money can address gaps in farmworker housing. The Pacific Northwest is in a housing crisis and that impacts rural small businesses and agricultural producers, as well as farmworkers, said Helen Price Johnson, Read More
Freshly picked red delicious apples gather in a bin. Northwest red delicious and galas are again shipping to India after tariffs were lifted. (Courtesy: Washington Apple Commission) Read Many Northwest […]Read More
A field of wheat stands straight up and lovely just uphill from the Snake River outside of Windust, Washington – but tall standing wheat can also mean that the heads […]Read More
The Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake River. CREDIT: BPA Listen (Runtime 1:02) Read At a Congressional hearing in Richland, Wash., designed to defend the four Lower Snake River dams […]Read More
Celestino Mendoza, 68, of Kennewick, says it’s been a lot of work to harvest a giant push of asparagus with the record-warm spring weather across much of the Northwest. [Photo: […]Read More
Legislators in Washington state are joining more than a dozen other states that are considering whether to restrict or ban foreign entities from buying farmland. The initial hearing on Olympia's version of the foreign ownership restrictions however drew more criticism than support on Tuesday.Read More
Harriet Weber (left) and Nancy Warner at their StoryCorps Northwest recording in Moses Lake. Listen (Runtime 4:23) Read Do you ever dream of owning your own land and growing food […]Read More
Rainier cherries in the Northwest bloomed after the snow, so the crop should be stronger. (Photo courtesy of the Washington State Fruit Commission) Listen Snow fell throughout the Northwest in […]Read More
Mason Douglass leans on one of his thirty seed bins at Tri-State Seed outside of Connell, WA Listen Anna King reports on a serious shortage of seeds for forage crops […]Read More
A tractor and sprayer work a stubble field spraying Roundup. Killing volunteer wheat and cheatgrass will help save moisture in the soil for next year’s crop / Anna King – […]Read More
Wet weather and varying temperatures had impacts on Washington farming in February Listen Read By Brandon Hollingsworth For Washington’s agricultural interests, February was marked by wet weather and temperature shifts. […]Read More
Gangs of wild elk are attacking farmers’ haystacks in Washington and Oregon. They’re hungry, after a long drought and record mountain snow this winter has driven animals down to the lowlands. Climate scientists say things may only get worse in the future.Read More
Who needs a concert hall when there’s a barn nearby? Or a brewery? Or an old electric power plant? The Northwest is home to some classical music venues with decidedly non-classical histories. This is the story of Trillium Woods Farm, home of Concerts in the Barn.Read More
From Oregon to the Dakotas, hay stocks for hungry cattle are already low. On top of that, ranchers say summer pastures are dry from the widespread drought.Read More
Blueberries, raspberries and blackberries from Oregon to Washington to British Columbia are baked on the bush and vine. Growers are calling the heat damage widespread and catastrophic. Read More
Record heat across the Northwest is taking a toll on agriculture – both the crops and the workers who harvest them. Read More
Northwest farmers are pouring on the water to moisten soils ahead of the triple-digit temperatures and possible record highs expected this weekend. Read More
The agricultural arm of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints — Farmland Reserve, Inc. — has agreed to pay about $210 million for a major swath of southeastern Washington farm ground.Read More
Nearly 12,000 acres of Easterday family farmland in Benton County will likely sell for more than its $210 million asking price, according to court documents and sources with knowledge of the deal.Read More
Some stunted wheat fields won’t see the combine this summer. Cattle operators are severely cutting back their herds for lack of grass. Little moisture since February in wide swaths of the Northwest is to blame. And drought is deepening across the West, with federal drought maps showing massive and growing areas of red.Read More
Easterday Ranches and Easterday Farms has provided beef, potatoes, onions and produce to dinner tables for more than three generations. Now in bankruptcy, many of the family’s key properties will be sold to repay debts. It’s one of the largest sales of prime water-rich agricultural lands in the Columbia Basin in recent history. Read More
Much of the Northwest’s high country is still deep in good snowpack but short on rain this spring. That has dryland wheat farmers and cattle ranchers fretting. Cold, wind and dust are even wreaking havoc with produce farmers in the region.Read More
Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of several tribes.Read More
Farmers say they’ve already taken a hit from the pandemic and higher fertilizer costs. Now they are going to get 3% less for their potatoes from Lamb Weston, McCain Foods and J.R. Simplot Company. Read More
The aid, delivered in two separate packages over the course of the year, went to a wide variety of people in agriculture, including corn and soybean farmers, cattle ranchers, and fruit and vegetable producers. The $46 billion in direct government payments to farmers in 2020 broke the previous annual record by about $10 billion, even after accounting for inflation.Read More
Several big farm groups, traditionally hostile to environmental regulations, are now working with environmental advocates in support of farmer-friendly actions to reduce carbon emissions. Read More
Cover crops are a vegetation that farmers can plant in the off-season to protect and enrich the soil. It's great for the environment — and in the long run, for crops, too — but it costs money upfront. Farmers who rent land, and who may not have access to that land in the long run, are reluctant to spend that money.Read More
For the last decade, the Northwest asparagus industry has been challenged by lower-cost imports, labor shortages and increased farming costs. But this year, the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the foreign asparagus supply, increasing sales for the Northwest’s crop. Read More
Across the Northwest, small and mid-sized farms are grappling with a range of challenges brought about by coronavirus.Read More
One of the most vulnerable groups currently working through the coronavirus pandemic is made up of immigrant farmworkers. As this population works through some of the unique challenges they face due to the coronavirus, one Tri-Cities radio station is trying to help.Read More
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how wage rates for immigrant farmworkers can be reduced. Critics say it will hurt all workers.Read More
For much of the Northwest, snowpack is above normal. That’s a good sign this time of year, when snowpack usually reaches its peak. Having enough snowpack is critical for spring and summer runoff that will supply water for irrigation and salmon runs. But that doesn’t mean everywhere has that much snow.Read More
The coronavirus pandemic continues to make its presence known in all facets of daily life, including agriculture. That extends to some supply and demand economics lessons for Northwest apple and potato growers.Read More
Spring work starts up, ready or not. And Northwest growers are scrambling to figure out how to work around the global coronavirus pandemic and still bring in the coming harvest. Read More
Washington regulators must soon consider rules to limit the use of a controversial pesticide that can cause neurological and health problems, especially in young children. A bill passed by state lawmakers this session didn’t outright ban the pesticide, as health and farmworker activists had proposed. Read More
Climate change isn’t a new topic for progressive churches like Shalom United Church of Christ in Richland. But it is perhaps tinged with new urgency. Survey results from the Pew Research Center show that congregations are delving into environmental awareness recently. And so are farmers.Read More
American farmers spend about $32 billion each year to rent land, and Tillable CEO Corbett Kull thinks his company could be farmland's AirBnB or Zillow. "This is one of the beauties of digital marketplaces, where you can bring two parties together that otherwise might never meet," he says.Read More
In Washington Skagit Valley, a conflict is unfolding between the Upper Skagit Tribe and farmers as elk are making a comeback there. Read More
For the love of Johnny Appleseed! Why are so many apples left hanging (and rotting) on trees in Northwest orchards after the fall harvest? Industry experts and growers says it’s a combination of factors – but really not due to tariffs, as some people think.Read More
In 2019, the federal government delivered an extraordinary financial aid package to America's farmers. Farm subsidies jumped to their highest level in fourteen years, most of them paid out without any action by Congress.Read More
Dairy farmers in Massachusetts are using food waste to create renewable energy. Each farm produces enough to power about 1,500 homes. This helps prevent the release of methane, a greenhouse gas.Read More
Heavy rains and even an early fall snow in October matted down the garbanzo bean plants tight to the land. That means Palouse-region farmers are scrambling to dry out beans to get them to silos and co-ops. It's on top of already depressed prices due to international trade wars.Read More
The number of family farms seeking bankruptcy protection grew 24% over the last year, according to an American Farm Bureau Federation analysis of recent federal court data. The analysis found family farm bankruptcies are rising fastest in the Northwest.Read More
Fertilizer runoff is fueling the toxic algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico. Farmers could help by growing crops in rotation to reduce the need for fertilizer. But it's unclear who will buy them.Read More
Right now, Northwest wheat farmers are wrapping up their harvest in many areas. But across the country, farmers are losing money on every load of that golden grain. Read More
If everyone around the globe began to eat the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables, there wouldn't be enough to go around. That's the conclusion of a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.Read More
Of the 70,000 acres of mudflats in Willapa Bay, less than 10,000 acres are used for shellfish cultivation. Researchers estimate about a quarter of that farmable land has already been taken over by burrowing shrimp. But the battle over land between shellfish growers and the shrimp is not entirely new. Read More
