701-566-9300When I last wrote you the first part of May, I mentioned $10 million for townships. Now that the math has been done ($10 million divided by the number of Congressional Townships) it comes out to slightly over $6,000 per township. That money will be released by the State Treasurer on August 1, 2021. Also, your township will be receiving $214 per mile of road maintained.
No Interim committees have met other than the one that organizes all the rest and none are yet scheduled as of this morning.
However, the NDSC and NDSGA in coordination with UGPTI have sponsored a couple of webinars that were quite informative. One was on dust suppression using a new soy-based product developed by NDSU named BioBlend. The same program featured 10 innovative ways to save big money on small deck bridges which included using flat cars from railroads, buried preformed structures and the like. One can track down a recording on the NDSC website, I believe. The second webinar last week was focused on carbon and sustainability issues. National organizations (read-a lot of smart people) are working on this as well as our own North Dakota entities such as NDSU ag research and extension as well as the EERC in Grand Forks. It would benefit any producer to try and stay up on this (again, try and find time to watch the recorded webinar – bit.ly/CarbonOpportunitiesinAg) as it was mentioned that trillions are being invested in companies adhering to ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) guidelines and the speakers discussed trying to get investors to put some of their money into Agriculture. At the Governor’s Ag roundtable that took place Monday afternoon, the Governor asked our industry to get on board because $45 trillion are being invested by these same folks and it is driven by ESG protocols regardless of how some may feel about it.
