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U.S.
Senator Ken Salazar
Member of the Agriculture, Energy and Veterans Affairs
Committees
2300 15th
Street, Suite 450 Denver, CO
80202 | 702 Hart Senate Building, Washington, D.C.
20510
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SEN. SALAZAR
ANNOUNCES SUCCESSFUL FIRST STEP TOWARDS NEARLY $2M FOR CSU AG RESEARCH,
$31M MORE FOR AG PROGRAMS HELPING COLORADO AND U.S. FARMERS
WASHINGTON, D.C. - United
States Senator Ken Salazar today announced his successful first step
towards the inclusion of $31M in federal funds for federal agriculture
programs as part of the agriculture appropriations bill approved by
the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday.
“In Colorado, agriculture
is an essential part of our economy. Colorado has more than 31,000 farms
and nearly half of our state is farmland. With agriculture contributing
$5.5 billion to our state’s economy, it pays to invest in agriculture,”
said Senator Salazar.
Senator Salazar delivered
more than $1.9 million directly to Colorado State University through
agriculture research programs:
- $817K for Infectious
Disease research, the backbone of the first-of-its-kind Animal Population
Health Institute at CSU focusing on diseases such as Foot and Mouth,
West Nile Virus, BSE, scrapie and Chronic Wasting Disease;
- $306K for research into
Russian Wheat Aphid resistance to help improve the sustainability
and development of wheat varieties. Colorado’s wheat crop is estimated
at more than a quarter of a billion dollars per year; and
- $780K for the National
Beef Cattle Genetic Evaluation Consortium, an internationally recognized
consortium of scientists from Colorado State, Cornell and the University
of Georgia that collects, interprets and distributes data to beef
cattle breeders across Colorado and the nation so they can producer
high quality, affordable beef for U.S. consumers and international
markets.
- Senator Salazar was also
active for Colorado farmers through a number of national programs,
including:
- $25M in additional funds
for Resource Conservation and Development Councils across the nation,
bringing the program funding total to more than $51M. Colorado has
77 Resource Conservation and Development Councils. For example, last
year the San Luis Valley RCDC received a rural development grant of
$99,700 to assist a group of farmers in the Valley in cooling and
transporting fresh produce to consumers;
- $2M for the National
Organic Program, the USDA program that assists with organic labeling.
According to USDA’s Economic Research Service, in 2002, 268 organic
farms in Colorado produced $12.5 million in crops on more than 19,000
acres of farmland;
- $2M for the National
Agriculture Imagery Program, which helps enhance commodity imagery
catalogues, repositories and data warehouses at the USDA Aerial Photography
Field Office located in Salt Lake City, UT. The APFO houses more than
10 million aerial photographs of U.S. farmland to develop data on
the growing season to allow planning for agriculture commodities,
crop insurance and resource management. The APFO collects data in
more than 30 Colorado counties on the Eastern Plains and Front Range.
The FY06 Energy and Water
Appropriations bill will now be considered by the whole Senate.
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