USDA Grant Partnership
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WWIF Grant Team Presents to USDA RMA |
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The Grant Team traveled to Kansas City October 11, 2007 to present grant results to national USDA representatives.
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GRANT NEWS |
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The Grant is complete!
WWIF and Grant partners have completed the final report for the 3+ year research partnership for the Grapes and Tree Fruit industries in WA, OR and ID.
Read the final report for the entire research grant
FINAL GRANT RESULTS REPORT
OR
Visit each grant project page to view the individual results reports.
Cost of Production Calculators for Tree Fruit and Grapes
Tree fruit added new calculators and grapes created their first calculators to help growers estimate costs.
Automating Crop Load and Yield Estimations
USDA ARS research new method to estimate load and yield while clusters are on the vine.
Acreage Inventories
New Technologies and 2006 Survey Results for Tree Fruit and Grapes in WA and ID.
Vineyard Database Template
Learn about the OVID database created by Oregon and to be used for the entire Northwest.
AgWeatherNet
The grant funded additional research into new telemetry methods for this important grower tool. |
In July 2004, the Washington Wine Industry Foundation (WWIF), working with northwest grower groups for tree fruit and wine and juice grapes, submitted a grant proposal to the USDA Risk Management Agency to obtain funds to provide grower decision making tools to the Washington, Oregon and Idaho grape industries and the Washington tree fruit industry. These are tools that growers/producers in each state can use.
The tools would provide user-friendly, timely and basic information to assist growers with decision-making for production, renewal, expansion, consolidation, and entry/exit in the industries, with research in the areas of crop mapping, yield estimating, crop surveying and cost-of-production estimations.
THE GRANT PARTNERSHIP AWARD
In October 2004, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman awarded to WWIF a grant partnership of $743,050 to fund research and assist grape and tree fruit growers in
their decision-making processes and reduce the impacts of year-to-year variability. Of the $5.1 million awarded, the WWIF grant is the largest awarded.
News Room: read the release
THE GRANT PARTNERS
The funds for the work are from a partnership grant between the Washington Wine Industry Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), through the Risk Management Agency (RMA) titled: Grower Decision-Making Tool for Grapes and Tree Fruit.
The grant tree fruit partner is the Washington Growers Clearing House Association.
Other northwest grant collaborators include:
WHO BENEFITS?
The grant partnership benefits the 1,000 grape producers, 700 wineries and 6 juice processors in the Pacific Northwest grape industry and the 4,000 growers and 80 warehouse processors in the tree fruit industry, encompassing apples, pears and cherries. The resulting
tools will also benefit industry providers such as lenders, insurance, sales, marketing research, extension, and others.
THE INDUSTRY ADVISORY TEAMS
To help guide the grant partnership work, WWIF assembled a team of grape and tree fruit industry experts comprised of growers, researchers and industry organization members. The Advisory Teams focus on industry needs, and the resulting tools, from the grant partnership.
View the Grape and Tree Fruit Advisory Teams
THE WORK INCLUDED:
1.) Research
• Documenting the data currently available and accessible
• Determining the wants and needs of growers – for data, timing, format and frequency
• Identifying the best way(s) to fulfill those needs on a long-term basis
• Piloting acreage inventory estimation by remote sensing surveys and reporting
• Refining crop size and load estimation techniques for commercial applications
2.) Implementation
• Developing Cost-Of-Production Calculators for tree fruit and grapes
• Implementing comprehensive industry templates and databases in each state
• Promoting the databases and calculators to the industries
• Maintaining the databases, calculators and equipment
3.) The Deliverables - the deliverables at the end of the grant partnership include real tools, such as the COP Calculators and research results from new technology to map crops to automating crop estimates.
In April 2006, WWIF hosted Grape Summits in OR, ID and WA to educate growers about the grant work, and present preliminary research results. Visit the Grape Summit page to view the presenations in PDF format.
Cost-Of-Production Calculators
COP Calculators provide an online budget form where growers can input fixed and variable costs to automatically calculate total production costs on a per block, per orchard, per acre or per foot of trellis basis.
Automating Crop Load and Yield Estimation
USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS) is working on a new tool to help northwest grape growers more accurately estimate yields by continuously measuring the tension in the horizontal (cordon) support wire of a single-curtain trellis.
Acreage Inventories - New Technology and Conventional Surveys
The grant parternship is funding research into the viability of new technologies to map crops, such as remote sensing and commercial satellite imagery. In addition, conventional surveys are being performed for Washington tree fruit and grapes, Washington wineries and Idaho tree fruit and grapes.
Industry Database Templates: Oregon Vineyard Database (OVID)
The Oregon Vineyard Database (OVID) was added to the grant partnership to assess the viability for the database for Washington, Idaho and as a regional resource. In addition, the grant partnership funded projects to help develop the OVID database for future use by WA and ID.
Agricultural Weather Network (AgWeatherNet)
In February 2007, The Washington State University (WSU) Agricultural Weather Network (AgWeatherNet) received funds from the grant partnership for researching and evaluating new telemetry technology to streamline collection and distribution of weather data to the Washington agricultural industry.
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