Veterinary Shortage Areas Designated in WA

Dr. Amber Itle
Washington Interim State Veterinarian

Are you having trouble finding a veterinarian to work on your livestock?  Is your veterinarian getting ready to retire and unable to find another veterinarian to provide service in your area? In the last year, the Washington State Veterinarian’s Office has been hearing increasing concerns about a shortage of food animal and livestock veterinarians in our state.

In response, the state vet’s office successfully nominated for inclusion four veterinary shortage areas in our state, opening the door for veterinarians to take advantage of both the U.S. Department of Agriculture Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program (VMLRP) and the Veterinary Services Grant Program, also a USDA initiative. 

The shortage areas identified include Clallam, Adams, Franklin, Douglas, Grant, Lincoln, Asotin, Columbia, Garfield, and Walla Walla counties.  

The VMLRP helps qualified veterinarians offset up to $25,000 of student loan debt per year in return for their service in certain high-priority veterinary shortage situations. The shortage area designation also allows veterinary practices to apply for funds to expand service capability and capacity (i.e., obtain new mobile units, purchase ultrasound equipment, etc).  

For veterinarians interested in the loan repayment program, the application period is from February 1, 2022 through April 15, 2022.  

More information about both programs can be found at nifra.usda.gov or by emailing the USDA programs directly at VMLRP@usda.gov or VSGP@usda.gov. 

WSDA joins UW and WSU to learn more about COVID-19 impacts to agriculture

Hector Castro
Communications

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only taken a toll in lives, but has also led to significant economic hardship for many in our state, including those working in agriculture. Now, WSDA has joined with the University of Washington and Washington State University in an effort to survey Washington’s farms and ranches to learn how they have been weathering this deadly pandemic.

The hope is to learn more about the economic resiliency of our state’s farm operations and how they adapt, or recover, from an unforeseen event like the COVID-19 pandemic. Some farm businesses have seen little disruption to their operations, but others have suffered greatly during these past several months.

The Washington Farm COVID-19 End-of-Season Survey is open until Dec. 31 and is available in both English and Spanish. Any farm or ranch is invited to take part in the survey and all participants will remain anonymous.

There are about 80 questions in the survey, covering the type of agriculture operation as well as questions about finances before the pandemic and during this past year, including questions about how the two years compare to one another.  

Raspberry harvesting.

The survey questions are an effort to understand:

• What the major impacts were.
• Whether farms or ranches were able to adapt or transform their farm practices, and how.
• Which adaptations were the most successful.
• Why specific decisions were made.
• What barriers were encountered.
• What are the hopes and concerns of farmers and ranchers for the coming year.

The information WSDA, UW and WSU learn through the survey will help provide information for academic research and to government decision makers as they strive to develop policies to help businesses, including those in agriculture, recover from this crisis. 

The survey results will also be available to the public, though participants will remain anonymous. Visit the UW’s Center for Public Health Nutrition at nutr.uw.edu/cphn/wafarm to learn more about the survey project.

New website helps military veterans get on the farm

Brent Barnes, Pesticide Management Division

For some of us military veterans, returning to civilian life is a transition that requires a little help.

Brent Barnes is assistant director
of WSDA's
Pesticide Management Division

Before I left the U.S. Army, I had the chance to participate in a wonderful transition program called Northwest Edge that helps veterans enter Washington State and federal employment. This led to a Washington State Veterans Fellowship, a number of informational interviews and job shadowing opportunities and, finally to the position I currently fill, for which I am very grateful.

But not every veteran wants to work for the state government. Some want to farm.

WSDA had been hearing about efforts around the country to help veterans transition into agriculture. We would occasionally get calls for information about organizations involved in this type of work.

While there was interest in sharing this information, most websites I found focused on recruiting veterans for vacant agency positions or linking to benefits available to veterans based on their honorable service. I believed what WSDA needed was a web resource for those who wanted to become farmers, ranchers, or find another way to enter the industry that we support.

The result is www.agr.wa.gov/aginwa/veterans - a website sharing links for a range of resources that might be useful to a military veteran seeking a future in agriculture.

Creating this website is one result of WSDA’s interest and intent to help veterans.

We can now provide an online resource that I hope will serve as a clearinghouse for subjects such as assistance for beginning farmers, small farm loans and grants, education, ecotherapy and mentorships.

I hope this small effort will help those who want to enter the agriculture industry, whether in Washington or anywhere transitioning service members relocate. 

Inspecting livestock in the 21st Century

By:  Lynn Briscoe
Animal Services Division 

Our Livestock Inspection Program working at the Stockland Livestock Auction in Davenport recently hosted a few guests from Idaho's State Brand Department, Department of Agriculture and even the federal Department of Homeland Security.

WSDA's Kyle Schaffer demonstrates the new
system to Ken Wood of the Idaho Brand Board.

Why did they join us? Like many of our counterparts in neighboring states and nearby Canadian provinces, the representatives from Idaho and the federal government were interested in WSDA's new electronic system for tracking data collected during a livestock inspection.  

All this month, our Livestock Inspection Program has been working on this new system, created thanks to funding provided through the support of the Legislature and our partners in Washington's dairy and cattle industries. The application that was developed allows our brand inspectors to collect the same inspection data they always have, but store it electronically on a

computer tablet, rather than jotting it down on a paper form.

WSDA's Kris Budde enters livestock
data into a computer tablet. 

This makes the information easier to store and easier to retrieve. Modernizing this data collection not only creates efficiencies within the program, but also enhances the department’s animal disease traceability efforts. It updates methods and processes by which livestock movement information is collected, stored, and easily made accessible to animal health officials. That would be critical during an animal disease outbreak.  

The representatives and board members from the Idaho's brand and agriculture departments joined us July 26 and 27 to watch the new system in action and take part in its live implementation during the scheduled sale. 

If you are at a public livestock market and see our staff using a computer tablet, feel free to take a look at the process they are following. It is an historic change for the agency and animal disease traceability in our state.