“Dryland,” a documentary about Eastern Washington wheat farmers that was 10 years in the making, will be shown Saturday, Nov. 15, at the Portland Art Museum.

The film, directed and produced by Sue Arbuthnot and Richard Wilhelm, follows Lind, Wash., residents Josh Knodel and Matt Miller as they grow up, go to college and join their families’ farming operations.

Among the scenes depicted is Lind’s annual combine demolition derby, in which contestants crash harvesters into each other. The producers first met Knodel and Miller, then teenagers, when they were competing in the derby.

“Dryland,” of course, refers to the farming style of wheat growers in Eastern Washington and Oregon, which receive very little rainfall.

The screening is at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in the museum’s Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 S,W. Park in downtown Portland. For advance tickets, visit http://bit.ly/1Gm8Yg2.

Several companies are asking an Oregon judge to dismiss a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the state’s “right to farm” law.

Oral arguments are scheduled for Nov. 21 in a case in which 17 residents of Curry County claim their properties were sprayed with chemicals intended for nearby logging sites last year.

The hearing will take place at 9:30 a.m. in Curry County Circuit Court in Gold Beach, Ore., but a judge has yet to be assigned to the case.

The plaintiffs claim that they’ve suffered physical ailments from the 2,4-D and triclopyr used by Pacific Air Research and several companies involved in logging.

Their complaint seeks a declaration from a state judge that Oregon’s right to farm law, which prohibits nuisance and trespass lawsuits against common farming practices, violates their constitutional right to seek a remedy for an injury.

At this stage of litigation, the defendants want the case dismissed largely on jurisdictional grounds.

The defendants argue that Oregon case law does not allow plaintiffs to challenge the constitutionality of a statute based on a hypothetical future nuisance or trespass lawsuit they might file.

Furthermore, the Oregon right to farm law only shields common agricultural and forestry practices that are conducted in a “reasonable and prudent manner,” the defendants say. In this case, the plaintiffs do not claim that the spraying was done prudently and reasonably, so the statute would not bear on their claims of being harmed by the chemicals.

The question of the right to farm law’s constitutionality was already affirmed by the Oregon Court of Appeals in 1993, the defendants claim.

The Curry County residents claim that this ruling is “worthless” because it has since been superseded by a 2001 opinion from the Oregon Supreme Court that interprets the constitution’s remedies clause.

Also, the 1993 ruling simply upheld the right to farm statute’s constitutionality “without discussion” and thus doesn’t provide the legal reasoning for the court’s decision, the plaintiffs claim.

The plaintiffs also argue that they must be allowed to challenge the constitutionality of the right to farm law before filing a nuisance or trespass case — otherwise, they would leave themselves vulnerable to paying the defendants’ attorney fees.

According to their interpretation of key legal precedents, a lawsuit challenging the statute’s constitutionality is allowable under these circumstances.

The plaintiffs are John Burns, Barbara Burns, Donald Hausmann, Janice Hausmann, Herman Liem, Partchara Liem, Charles Ott, Thomas Pitchford, Melissa Pitchford, Eric Rickard, Kathryn Rickard, Dan Sawyer, Janet Sinclair, Clinton Smith, Sandra Smith, James Sweeney, Barbara Welsh.

The defendants are Pacific Air Research, Crook Timberlands LLC, Barnes & Associates Inc., Josef Kaufman and Pro Forestry Consulting LLC.

Oregon voters may have joined Washington in legalizing recreational marijuana use, but that doesn’t mean employers have to tolerate workers who fail drug tests or show up for work high, labor lawyers say.

“Not as much has changed as employers may think,” said Andrew Schpak, a Portland attorney who represents management in labor cases.

Marijuana possession and use is still illegal under federal law, he said. Companies that test for drug use as a condition of employment and that enforce drug-free workplaces don’t have to change their policies, Schpak said.

Washington voters legalized pot in 2012 and Oregon voters did the same in the Nov. 4 election. Users can legally buy marijuana in Washington now; Oregon’s law allowing the possession, use, production and sale of pot goes into effect July 1, 2015.

Schpak said companies should tell employees: “Even though our state has legalized or voted to legalize marijuana, we’re not changing our policies.”

A reminder would be wise “Just to make sure on July 1, 2015, they’re not showing up at work with a joint in their hand,” he said.

Schpak and Jenna Reed, general counsel with the Cascade Employers Association in Salem, said Measure 91 approved by Oregon voters did not contain provisions relating to job protections. That is, employers don’t have to tolerate lawful use. The issue has already come up with Oregon’s Medical Marijuana law, and courts have ruled employers do not have to allow pot use as an accommodation for a disability.

Legal “off duty” use of may be a point advocates press in future pot and employment cases. Schpak said Oregon has already decided employers can’t prevent the use of lawful tobacco products.

“Cigarette smoking off the job is protected,” he said. “That doesn’t apply to marijuana, but if it continues to pick up steam that could be a choice of where marijuana advocates go next. That’s an argument we might see.”

Reed, of Cascade Employers Association, said alcohol use is different because it is not illegal under federal law.

“Because of this important distinction, only alcohol use or impairment on the job can be prohibited,” Reed said in a news release.

“Because marijuana is still illegal under federal law, any employee testing positive, regardless of when they used, can still be considered a violation of your company’s policy.”

Reed also said employers can rescind a job offer if an applicant tests positive for pot, even if the worker wasn’t impaired at the time and argues that they lawfully used days before the test.

“This could be true, but it probably doesn’t matter,” Reed said. “Measure 91 doesn’t provide any job protections and it is illegal under federal law.”

Potato yields increased throughout the Northwest and nationwide in the fall of 2014, according to a recent USDA report, but industry sources say strengthening fresh carton prices reflect a shortage of large, quality spuds.

Idaho’s yields, at 425 hundredweight per acre, were up 10 hundredweight from last year, and the state’s total production rose 2 percent to 134.2 million hundredweight, according to the report.

Washington’s yields, estimated at 605 hundredweight per acre, were up 5 hundredweight from last season, and the state’s total production rose 4 percent to 99.8 million hundredweight.

Oregon’s yields were up 40 hundredweight per acre to 585 hundredweight, and its total production of more than 22.8 million hundredweight was up 6 percent. U.S. yields were up 14 hundredweight per acre at 439 hundredweight, with total production up 3 percent at 406 million hundredweight.

Industry sources say strong fresh carton demand and flat prices of consumer bags evidence that the 2014 crop size profile is skewed toward smaller tubers.

“The (market) is telling you there aren’t many big potatoes,” said University of Idaho Extension economist Paul Patterson.

USDA estimates Idaho’s percentage of 4- to 6-ounce spuds rose 4.7 percent to 27.2 percent in the 2014 crop profile, and the percentage of spuds in the largest size category was down 5.3 percent at 9.4 percent.

According to USDA Market News, the price of five, 10-pound film bags of smaller, consumer-sized Russet Burbanks has remained flat in the Twin Falls and Burley District at $4.50 to $5. However, the price of a 70-count carton of larger Burbanks has risen from $8-$9 since USDA began tracking sales of the variety on Oct. 4 to $11-$12 on Nov. 8. Carton sizes are based on the number of potatoes needed to reach 50 pounds.

Potandon Produce in Idaho Falls has been receiving calls from buyers who aren’t normally Potandon customers seeking fresh cartons, said Ralph Schwartz, vice president of sales, marketing and innovation.

“We’re seeing a lot of smaller potatoes from a sales perspective,” Schwartz said. “We’ve probably been oversold on the larger-count bakers every single day for three to four weeks.”

Oakley, Idaho, farmer Randy Hardy, chairman of Sun Valley Potatoes, has also noticed rising demand for larger spuds, and he’s unconvinced that USDA’s estimates of significantly higher Idaho yields are accurate.

“It’s certainly not what I’m hearing from other growers and what I saw myself,” Hardy said.

Hardy believes a crop that started with a large set of tubers per plant, was stymied from bulking by wet August weather.

“We’re more optimistic than we were a few months ago,” Hardy said. “Mother Nature dealt us a blow with this weather in August, but maybe it was a blessing in that we don’t have a huge crop to deal with.”

He emphasized grower returns on cartons have risen $6 in recent months and the Thanksgiving rush is “always a good time to market potatoes.”

Dan Hargraves, executive director of Southern Idaho Potato Cooperative, is also skeptical of the USDA yield estimates.

“I think it’s way high,” Hargraves said.

Drones, climate change, succession planning and even a little crop talk are on the agenda when the annual Tri-State Grain Growers Convention unfolds Nov. 12-15 at Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Wash.

The annual gathering of Washington, Idaho and Oregon producers features presentations, panel discussions, outings and exhibitions.

Highlights include a discussion Nov. 13 on the use of UAVs — unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones — on wheat fiels. The presenter is Ryan Jenson,a founder of HoneyComb Corp. of Wilsonville, Ore., which makes a battery-powered AgDrone aircraft equipped with cameras and sensors. Backers say the technology can be used to monitor field conditions, spot disease or irrigation problems, Jenson and his company were featured in a January 2014 article in the Capital Press.

A Thursday session on succession planning — turning farm operations over to the next generation — will be led by Sherri Noxel, director of the Austin Family Business Program at Oregon State University. Another session on that topic, “Real Life Farm Transition Stories,” will be held Friday.

Other Friday sessions include discussions of the climate change initiative and its impact on cereal grain production, and on building better barley markets in the Pacific Northwest.

Other topics on the convention agenda include spray drift impact grapes, a review of the Farm Bill, and the capacity of rail and river shipping systems.

For more information, visit www.wawg.org/convention.

The future of Pendleton agriculture is in bright, capable hands after local students shined during the 87th annual National FFA Convention and Expo in Louisville, Ky.

Twelve kids competed at the event Oct. 29-Nov. 1 representing the Pendleton FFA chapter, which took home a three-star rating from the National FFA Organization — the highest possible level of excellence.

Adviser Patty Abell, who teaches agricultural science at Pendleton High School, said the award recognizes all the hard work and community service their chapter does outside the classroom. In particular, she mentioned the FFA’s “Food for All” program, which has helped deliver 18,000 pounds of fresh produce to needy families.

“It’s just the hard and positive attitudes of the kids,” Abell said. “No matter if you win or lose, I was just proud of what they did and what they accomplished.”

Other Pendleton FFA members also received individual and team honors. Danny Paul, a freshman at Blue Mountain Community College, won the National Agricultural Proficiency Award for Agricultural Mechanics Repair and Maintenance.

The award is another top honor for students who have developed a specialized skill they can apply toward their career. Paul has been working on trucks since he was 9 years old, and works side-by-side with his father, Troy, servicing and repairing big rigs. He plans to continue working as a diesel technician.

It is the first time a Pendleton FFA student has received the award.

Pendleton’s agricultural issues team also won a bronze medal for their Saturday Night Live-inspired skit about the pros and cons of growth hormones in dairy and beef cattle. It was the only medal awarded to an Oregon team this year.

“It’s hard at the high school level for kids to act and present information in a way everyone can understand,” Abell said. “Our kids did pretty well with it.”

The team featured PHS juniors James Bradt, Julia Livingston, Dakota McCambridge, Emily Wanous and Kaleigh Waggoner, as well as sophomore Chris Nickerson and BMCC freshman Delaney Paullus.

PHS sophomores Isabelle Chapman and Annalise Oertwich placed fourth in the nation for their social systems agriscience project focused on genetically modified organisms. BMCC sophomore Garrett Correa received his American FFA Degree, a prestigious award which is presented to less than 1 percent of all FFA members nationwide.

In her four years as an adviser, Abell said this is the most students they’ve ever sent to FFA Nationals. And she expects the success will only continue.

“There’s a lot of strong support from farmers and ranchers in the community,” she said. “All the kids are excited to jump on the bandwagon.”

A Eugene, Ore., pesticide service company and an applicator have been fined a combined $16,000 for killing an estimated 1,000 bees in an incident at an apartment complex last summer.

An investigation by the Oregon Department of Agriculture determined that Glass Tree Care and Spray Service, Inc. and pesticide applicator James P. Mischkot, Jr. violated the state’s pesticide control law through “gross negligence” and in a faulty, careless manner.

The company was fined $10,000 and Mischkot was fined $6,000.

According to the ag department, Mischkot sprayed a pesticide containing the active ingredient imidacloprid on the grounds of a North Eugene apartment complex, including on 17 linden trees.

The trees were in full bloom and attracting pollinators at the time. After highly publicized bee kills in 2013, the department prohibited using imidacloprid and dinotefuran on linden trees and other Tilia species. The department also ordered labeling changes on the products.

Anticipating the presence of pollinators is part of the reasonable standard of care for pesticide application in Oregon, according to the ag department. In this case, the company and its applicator disregarded that standard, the department said.

No one’s ever accused Oregon grape growers and wine makers of speaking poorly of their crops and vintages, but accounts of this year’s work are expansive. With notes of, what is that? Hyperbole?

A news release from the Oregon Wine Board, a semi-dependent state agency that handles marketing for the industry, says the 2014 vintage “may be remembered as the vintage of a lifetime.”

Really?

Because the industry is famously optimistic, the glass is always half full. Dump a cold monsoon on the Willamette Valley in the middle of harvest, no problem. Tests your mettle, the industry said last year, had to bring all our skills to bear. Grapes have to struggle, after all. Gives them character.

This year, they’re saying an extraordinarily long and warm growing season resulted in excellent flowering and fruit set and large, evenly-ripened clusters of grapes. The vintage broke the record of “degree days” heat accumulation because overnight lows were higher than normal. Meanwhile, daytime highs lingered in the 90s, and the vines escaped the stress that comes when temperatures soar past 100 degrees.

Earl Jones, who grows multiple varieties southwest of Roseburg in Southern Oregon, said it was his best vintage in 20 years.

Jones said the growing season at his Abacela vineyard stretched nearly 230 days, while 195 days is average.

“My weather this year was incredibly in favor of making great wines,” he said.

Jones acknowledged it will be two or three years before the professional wine critics give their reviews, but said his grapes displayed great flavor and aroma before harvest. The wine he’s tasted from barrels has been excellent, he said.

“Farmers live at the whims of Mother Nature,” Jones said, “and Mother Nature often gives us things we don’t want: Insects, various diseases, birds that come in and eat your crop.

“We didn’t have any of that this year, either,” he said.

Jones said he harvested 224 tons of grapes, nearly 20 percent more than last year.

Vineyards in Oregon’s largest wine growing region, the Willamette Valley, also reported large yields and prime quality.

In the Oregon Wine Board news release, Brick House Wine Co. founder Doug Tunnell was quoted as saying he’d “Never seen the likes of it in 25 years.”

“It was as if Mother Nature just heaved grapes out of the bosom of the Earth,” Tunnell said in the news release. “The good news is that the wines are by and large lovely, ripe, rich, deeply concentrated and aromatic.”

Michelle Kaufmann(cq), assistant communications manager with the Wine Board, said she surveyed 30 vineyard operators and heard similar vintage reports.

“I said tell me the good and tell me the bad,” Kaufmann said. “It really is a good as we say it is.”

BEND, Ore. (AP) — A proposed wilderness encircling Oregon’s Painted Hills has the backing of local leaders.

The Bulletin newspaper reports the Wheeler County Court and the city of Mitchell support the plan for the Sutton Mountain Wilderness. The Bend-based Oregon Natural Desert Association is now trying to win over the state’s congressional delegation.

The federal designation of a wilderness requires an act of Congress and approval by the president.

The planned Sutton Mountain Wilderness would cover nearly 60,000 acres around and in the Painted Hills Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

The Bureau of Land Management currently oversees the land.

ASHLAND, Ore. (AP) — The last time Logan Linker and his fellow Ashland High School students got their hands on the 2-foot-tall incense cedar trees growing in the ScienceWorks’ shade-house nursery, they were little starter plants barely one-third their current height.

“Things grow all the time,” says Linker, 17, as he plops a milk crate full of cedars and similar-sized Ponderosa pines into a pickup bed.

Starting next week, these trees will be growing along the banks of Bear Creek, where they may create shade, cooling and cleansing the creek for future generations of wild chinook salmon.

“Doing this is a way I can help the environment, do something for salmon,” Linker says.

Linker and hundreds of other Rogue Valley students will be doing much of the same over the next seven days as the Ashland-based Lomakatsi Restoration Project embarks on its seventh annual Streamside Forest Recovery Week at five sites throughout the Bear Creek Valley.

Students will take more than 1,000 native plants, ranging from Oregon ash and incense cedar, as well as shrubs such as Oregon grape and Pacific ninebark to fortify streamside riparian zones either torn up over time by development or choked out by non-native Himalayan blackberries.

It’s a hands-on lesson in ecology and stewardship for grade- and high-school students who adopt these projects and get to watch them blossom into living sentries warding off stream degradation.

But you can’t plant ‘em until you grow ‘em.

And that’s just what Lomakatsi workers and their teenage volunteers do painstakingly at four greenhouse sites at ScienceWorks and nearby Wellsprings, as well as at Ashland High and Helman Elementary School.

Volunteers take native starter “plugs” bought from area nurseries and put them in pots for two years of coddling before they are prepped for planting and driven to the restoration sites, where armies of young hands will choose where they will take root.

It’s a formula Lomakasti has used, and expanded on, since 1997 at places such as the confluence of Paradise Creek as it wiggles into Bear Creek in southeast Ashland.

“Some of those trees along Paradise Creek are now well over 50 feet tall,” says Alicia Fitzgerald, Lomakatsi’s outreach and communications manager.

After Linker and his classmates carry crate after crate of trees and shrubs to a Lomakasti pickup, they get down and dirty with Lomakatsi Education Director Niki Del Pizzo in the nursery’s center.

“Now you will be, basically, restoring this nursery,” Del Pizzo tells the group.

Kyle Levin stops taking inventory to take stock in ensuring a Pacific Ninebark plug gets properly potted so its root ball has room to grow for 2016’s round of streamside plantings.

“When I think about what’s happening to the Earth, it makes me angry,” says Levin, 19, who has volunteered with Lomakatsi for three years. “Being able to do something like this makes me feel better.”

That’s a theme among teen volunteers on projects like this, says Jennifer Wahpepah, who teaches the alternative program at Ashland High.

“It’s a big self-esteem builder,” Wahpepah says. “They’re overwhelmed with a lot of negative things, like global warming. This helps them push through that wall by taking part in small actions to help change things.”

Consider Jesse Applegate a convert.

“They’re keeping nature as close as they can to original, not artificial,” says Applegate, a 15-year-old sophomore. “I love what they do, and I’m excited to be part of it

The Oregon Board of Forestry voted unanimously Nov. 5 to proceed with a new plan to create specific timber harvest and conservation zones on 600,000 acres of state-owned forests west of Portland and along the north coast.

The Oregon Department of Forestry currently uses a single management strategy to pursue both timber revenue and conservation goals, but officials concluded in 2012 that approach was not generating enough money. The new concept is known as land allocation. It grew out of recommendations from a stakeholder group that included representatives from the timber industry, environmental organizations, anglers and county governments.

During the board meeting in Portland, some of those stakeholders said they are concerned at the lack of detail in the proposal. State officials said that will spend the next eight months filling in details of the plan and forecasting how it would affect timber harvest revenue and conservation goals.

The forestry board would still need to give final approval to a detailed plan, before it could take effect.

“What’s before you here is not a management plan,” State Forester Doug Decker said. “We do have the broad contours of a management plan.”

A year ago, Gov. John Kitzhaber asked the board to look for opportunities to increase conservation in the northwest region, which includes the Tillamook, Clatsop and Santiam state forests.

The Oregon Department of Forestry also needed to increase revenue from timber harvests, which have not kept up with the cost to manage the state forests over the last decade. Financial Analyst Joan Tenny said the department’s $27.9 million annual state forest budget is approximately $6 million short of what the department needs.

As a result, the department has cut back on forest thinning, research and monitoring and improvements related to recreation, Public Affairs Program Manager Dan Postrel said.

State officials have not determined how much of the state forests might be designated for conservation or for timber harvest, despite an earlier version of the plan developed by the committee that would have roped off 30 percent of forest land for conservation and 70 percent for logging. Officials said there also might be more than two types of management zones.

One difficult question state employees face is how to divvy up timber harvest revenue among counties, if the state shifts to land allocation management. The state keeps one-third of the timber revenue to cover its management costs, and sends the remaining two-thirds to the county governments where the forests are located. If some forests are designated as conservation land where logging is reduced or banned, those counties would lose revenue unless the state and counties find a way to share timber money among counties.

Tim Josi, a Tillamook County commissioner and chairman of the Council of Forest Trust Lands Counties, said the council supported the land allocation concept. However, Josi said, “there are still some trust issues with some of the counties about changing the revenue sharing formula.”

W. Ray Jones, vice president of resources for Stimson Lumber Company, said the new management proposal would likely meet the goals to increase both conservation and revenue. However, Jones said he is concerned about proposals by Oregon Department of Forestry employees to include habitat conservation plans and expanded no-cut buffers along streams in the new plan.

“I’m having a hard time connecting the dots of why those no-cut zones would be expanded,” Jones said.

Bob Van Dyk, forest policy manager at the Wild Salmon Center, said at this early stage, the new management plan is like a Rorschach test: because there are few details, everyone who looks at it finds different potential problems.

“We support continued exploration of this,” Van Dyk said. “There’s at least a chance we can find something not anyone’s happy with, but everyone’s happy enough with.”

State officials currently plan to bring a detailed version of the plan back to the forestry board in June.

COOS BAY, Ore. (AP) — The Coos County, Oregon, sheriff’s office says a Bureau of Land Management employee was fatally injured when a falling tree at a logging site struck her Ford Explorer.

The sheriff’s office says 55-year-old Estella Morgan came upon a logging operation in the Blue Ridge area east of Coos Bay on Tuesday. A tree that had just been cut fell on her SUV, crushing the driver’s area. She died at the scene.

The accident is under investigation.