July 12, 2017

NDFB President applauds wildlife groups

Topic: Issues

Wildlife/environmental groups have come through for North Dakota ranchers with support for early haying of Conservation Reserve Program acres, and NDFB applauds that decision.

Download the CRP open early mp3

Read the transcript:

Debate, disagreement and downright arguing seems to be the normal nowadays. But when someone that you generally maybe have differences with does something that deserves credit, give credit where credit is due.

And what I’m talking about is this time that we’re in drought right now in North Dakota; we’re in extreme situations in this state of the need for feedstuffs for livestock. I’ve got to give credit to some organizations that last Friday put out a letter supporting the early opening of CRP for haying, moving it from August 1st back to the middle of July.

And those groups are some of the wildlife groups in the state, including the North Dakota Game and Fish. The Delta Waterfowl, Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, Natural Resources Trust and the North Dakota Game and Fish said they would support – and do support in these extreme conditions – opening of the haying of CRP to the July 16th date instead of the August 1st primary nesting time-frame.

This scenario is something where they deserve credit. There are a lot of times when we’re at odds with these groups on different issues. Or we have that debate and argument. But they understand that in extreme times, everyone has to share a little bit of the proverbial pain, so to speak, and make decisions and adapt to the current conditions.

So with that, I thank those organizations. I thank the leadership of the director of the North Dakota Game and Fish Terry Steinwand, of who I was able to sit down nearly a month ago and have these discussion with, of where they would be at, what would be acceptable for grazing and haying of these set-aside acres. And I’ve had conversations with some of the folks in those other organizations as well, about what their biologists – and what their membership – would accept and would help promote. So it may not be easy at times to give credit to someone that you maybe disagree with a fair amount of time, or you have debates about things a fair amount of time, but I’m a firm believer that this is a case where they need a thank you.

We’re not going to agree on everything and there’s still a lot of things we have to work on yet, that we disagree on. And we will continue to work on those things to make sure that we can do the best things possible for North Dakota agriculture, the number one industry in the great state of North Dakota.  

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