No responses for jet fuel crop signup

Friday marks the deadline for farmers to sign up for the United States Department of Agriculture’s biomass crop assistance program.

The program provides farmers incentives to grow camelina that will be contracted to a pair of biofuel processors to make jet fuel.

Fred Hendrickson, acting director of Whitman County’s office of the federal Farm Service Agency, said no farmers in Whitman County have signed up for the program as of Tuesday.

“I think the crop is new enough that it may take a little while for producers to get real interested in growing it,” said Hendrickson.

Hendrickson also suspected the timing for enrollment of the program may have something to do with the lack of response. Farmers now are scrambling to finish harvest and start fall work.