Corvallis, Ore. — Agricultural educators are taking advantage of new advances, providing students with an interactive experience through online “Ecampuses” powered by the latest technology.

Adam Lindsley, crop and soil science instructor at Oregon State University, uses photogrammetry, three-dimensional printing and — soon — virtual reality in his two landscape analysis soil morphology courses.

“These courses are traditionally conducted almost entirely in the field, and, as you might imagine, field work is tough to accomplish in an online class. There are many challenges,” Lindsley said.

One of these challenges comes during winter term when the ground could be frozen, making it impossible for online students located in northern climates to collect soil samples.

“I hit upon the idea of using photogrammetry to make 3-D photos of the soil pits here, and the models correspond with what’s in the (lab kits),” Lindsley said. “It’s a little bit less exciting to load up a 3-D model on your computer, but they do seem to have similar learning as if they were outdoors.”

Photogrammetry makes these models by taking multiple photos from different angles and compiling them together. The software matches up the pixels in each photo and builds a geometry around it. Students can also draw on these models.

Lindsley is also trying 3-D printing to create models that could potentially be part of lab kits. He found shipping actual soil structures by mail would destroy the structure.

“I thought, what if I applied photogrammetry to that and make models of structures?” he said. “It’s nice to have something you can hold that I’m certain won’t turn into dust.”

Lindsley hasn’t designed any learning activities around virtual reality yet, but is using it as a tool to interact with the 3-D models. He’s now experimenting with which headset offers the best ease of use and cost. At the moment, he’s leaning towards Google Cardboard.

Lindsley is not the only instructor in the Oregon State Crop and Soil Department experimenting with these technological advancements. His colleague, Meg Mobley, an instructor in the Crop and Soil Department and Sustainability Double Degree Program, teaches a mixture of on-campus and online labs and courses, and has noticed a “really interesting contrast.”

“(Online is) different from on-campus, even though I’m teaching the same concepts and similar activities,” she said. “It’s setting up different learning environments.”

Instead of a teacher’s assistant setting up the lab for the students, the students have to assemble the lab themselves before they can start the assignment. Mobley said that while it takes more work, the students who do it learn more.

The starkest difference between her environmental science on-campus course and her online course is the field trip that her on-campus class takes to McDonald Dunn Forest — a distinction that she is trying to correct for by creating a virtual field trip.

“The plan is to craft a field trip with the 360-degree photos (of the forest) and implant ‘hot spots’ within the photos that students can navigate themselves and get more information,” she said.

Mobley said that the virtual field trip would also be beneficial for students with physical disabilities who couldn’t make the trip in person.

Although there have been some struggles bringing the department to an online platform, Lindsley said he is up for the challenge. He is trying to address the best way to teach students with a visual impairment, and has started experimenting with sound. He used the example that if someone was measuring in a soil pit and stuck the knife into the horizon, the sound would differ if the substance was sand instead of clay.

“We’re still figuring it out. We’re having a hard time figuring out how that would work, but I’m willing to give it a shot,” he said. “Sound is one way to interact.”

Mobley has encountered this concern as well with her color-blind students when the class covers the differences in soil coloring. She believes that, at least for an introductory course, that specific learning material could be postponed until later in the degree.

However, that isn’t a permanent solution.

Despite the challenges, Lindsley believes there are several benefits to using an online platform, such as enabling more people to take the course, creating more opportunities for innovation, and interacting with students who are less inclined to speak in a traditional classroom setting.

“I really enjoy it. I get a much better understanding of where my students are at. The people who are in a campus course who don’t talk, online they have no problem shooting me an email or putting it on the discussion board,” he said. “I get a lot more interaction from my students, especially ones I wouldn’t hear otherwise.”

An online platform also allows for students to apply what they learn not just to Oregon soils, but to the soils where they live.

“Students who come to take classes on campus at OSU learn about geology, soil, rivers, ag here in the Willamette Valley and surrounding area, which is not necessarily where they end up applying that learning,” Mobley said. “In the online crop and soil science, environmental science and sustainability classes, the students examine and study the soils under their homes, where their drinking water comes from (and) what the air quality issues are in their town.”

A rancher in northeast Oregon’s Wallowa County requested the state Department of Fish and Wildlife use lethal control against the Harl Butte wolfpack, which has attacked calves six times in the past year.

An ODFW spokeswoman said the department received the request Friday afternoon and will make a decision in the coming days. The request came after ODFW confirmed a calf found dead July 26 had been killed by wolves.

The calf was estimated to have weighed 400 to 500 pounds but had been mostly consumed by the time the carcass was discovered. Only the skeleton and hide were left. An ODFW investigator estimated the calf was killed July 20-22.

Data from a GPS tracking collar showed a wolf designated OR-50 was within 200 yards of the carcass four times from July 21 to 25. Bite marks on the carcass and fresh wolf tracks in the area contributed to the confirmation.

ODFW has confirmed six attacks on calves by the Harl Butte pack between July 15, 2016 and July 22, 2017. In addition to the calf found dead most recently, another calf was found alive July 21 with multiple bite marks, including one wound that was 4 inches long and 3 inches wide. That attack was estimated to have occurred about a week earlier. Both occurred on public land grazing allotments.

The Harl Butte pack also was blamed for killing a calf on private pasture in April.

Killing wolves is not a simple process, however. Under Oregon’s management rules, ODFW may authorize “lethal take” if there have been two confirmed livestock depredations by wolves in the area, or one confirmed depredation followed by three attempted attacks, which can include “testing or stalking,” department spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said in an email.

However, the person requesting lethal control must document that non-lethal protection has been unsuccessful, and the producer must show nothing was done that attracted wolf-livestock conflict and that he or she has complied with laws and conditions of any harassment or take permit.

ODFW may authorize lethal control to be done by its staff, by authorized agents or by USDA’s Wildlife Services.

Despite concerns of water pollution and contamination, the agencies responsible for permitting a 30,000-cow dairy farm in Morrow County will not be reconsidering their decision.

Lost Valley Farm, located on a portion of what used to be the Boardman Tree Farm, was issued a controversial wastewater handling permit March 31 from the Oregon Department of Agriculture and Department of Environmental Quality, which together administer the state’s confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

Opponents of the dairy filed what’s known as a petition for reconsideration, asking regulators to take a closer look at whether the permit does enough to protect surface water and groundwater sources. On July 25, ODA and DEQ issued a 10-page order denying the request and potentially setting the state for a future lawsuit.

Ivan Maluski, policy director for Friends of Family Farmers in Salem, issued a statement saying attorneys are reviewing the order. He said there is a “clear indication that Oregon has a broken system for CAFO permitting,” while specifically criticizing ODA, DEQ and Gov. Kate Brown.

“These mega-operations pollute the air with no environmental oversight, they put our limited groundwater at risk, and though Oregon has lost nearly 40 percent of our dairy farms over the past decade with small and mid-sized farms getting hit the hardest, the governor and her agencies are bending over backward to open the door for out-of-state factory farms like Lost Valley,” Maluski said.

Lost Valley Farm is owned by Greg te Velde, a California dairyman who has been milking cows in Oregon since 2002. He used to run Willow Creek Dairy on land leased from Threemile Canyon Farms before relocating and expanding his business, which sells milk to Tillamook Cheese at the Port of Morrow.

In the lead-up to permitting, ODA and DEQ were flooded with 4,200 public comments, mostly in opposition to Lost Valley. The campaign was spearheaded by a coalition of environmental, animal rights and small farms groups including Friends of Family Farmers, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Columbia Riverkeeper, Food & Water Watch, Humane Oregon, Humane Society of the United States, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility and Oregon Rural Action.

They argue that Lost Valley — which at full capacity is expected to generate 187 million gallons of wastewater and manure annually — poses a significant risk of groundwater and surface water contamination, while also exacerbating elevated levels of groundwater nitrates in the lower Umatilla Basin.

Regulators have insisted their permit for Lost Valley is the most protective of any to date, requiring 11 groundwater monitoring wells and a minimum of three annual inspections.

Te Velde has also defended the farm’s management practices. Wastewater is stored in lagoons on site and then mixed at specific agronomic rates with irrigation to help grow feed crops for the cows. Monitoring wells are supposed to ensure the soil is not being overloaded with the nitrogen-rich water.

Lost Valley has been operating for several months now, so far bringing in 16,000 total animals with 8,700 being milking cows. The dairy expects to gradually build its full herd of 30,000 animals over the next several years.

SUTHERLIN, Ore. — Agriculture and industrial arts teachers recently went back to school to better prepare themselves to teach their incoming students.

Teachers from around Oregon and a couple from Washington state participated in a weeklong Shop Management Seminar in early July at Sutherlin High School. The purpose of the eight-hour-per-day, five-day workshop was for new or inexperienced teachers in metals or woods to learn how to effectively use new technology and how to teach career and technical education classes back in their school shops. A couple graduate students from Oregon State University also attended and participated.

The workshop was organized through Oregon State University and the Oregon Ag Teachers Association, and was facilitated by Sutherlin High teachers Wes Crawford in the metals shop and Josh Gary in the woods shop with help from local industry representatives and Umpqua Community College welding instructors.

Sparks flew in the metals shop and sawdust fell in the wood shop as the participants got their own hands-on experience.

“This workshop is an opportunity to prepare teachers to be better shop teachers when they go back to their schools,” Crawford said. “It’s a chance for teachers to learn skills they haven’t learned before, and then learning how to teach those skills to their kids.”

There were 20 participants in the metals workshop and 15 in the woods shop. The workshop gave them the chance to network and share ideas and projects, but also to make items such as brackets and shelves, picture frames, jewelry boxes and birdhouses that they can later use as examples when their students are working on similar projects.

“It’s a changing world out there,” said Ben Kercher, the ag sciences and technology teacher at the Glide, Ore., High School. “Many businesses are using computer cutting. When new technology is purchased such as computer cutting devices, we need to learn how to use them and how to safely teach kids how to use them.”

Oregon State had the capabilities of teaching technological classes on its Corvallis campus until a few years ago when its antiquated building was torn down. A new, modern facility is not ready yet so for the second year, Crawford and Gary have been the hosts of a workshop at Sutherlin High.

Ian Fisher and Duane Thompson, the welding instructors at UCC, Shane Hagberg of We Repair Welders, a Douglas County, Ore., business, Cameron Burks of Airgas in Roseburg, Ore., and a handful of Sutherlin High students who are advanced in metals and woods helped out at various times at the workshop.

Josh Stewart, the director of teacher education in agriculture at Oregon State, said he was impressed with what he saw and experienced at the workshop.

“The value of the professional development these teachers are getting here is probably unmatched,” Stewart said. “In a short amount of time, they get to put their hands on equipment, use it and learn how to teach about it to their students. By doing it themselves, they’ll better understand any problems students might have later.

“Wes and Josh may not consider themselves teacher educators, but that is what they are doing here,” he added. “They’re good at teaching these teachers how to teach in these classes.”

Gary said that with the recent passing of Measure 98 by the Oregon State Legislature, there will be more funding for career technical education, resulting in more shop classes being offered at Oregon high schools. He said teachers need to be better prepared for those classes.

Brian Agee, the shop teacher at the Yoncalla, Ore., High School, said he is drawing on the expertise of the instructors in the workshop. He explained Yoncalla had had no career and technical education classes for several years until reinstating them during the last school year. Agee said about 95 of Yoncalla’s 135 students in seventh through 12th grades participated in at least one of those classes.

“This type of workshop is invaluable in growing the program at Yoncalla,” Agee said of the opportunity to learn as a teacher. “This is where tomorrow’s technicians will come from so as teachers there is no substitute for getting in and putting your hands on stuff to become better teachers. To watch students blossom and grow in these areas, to me that is exciting.”

In this workshop, it was the teachers who were given the opportunity to learn in the shop classrooms.

MONITOR, Wash. — It’s a relatively cool 80 degrees at mid-morning as the Kamen and Hanna families head into Crazy Larry’s Blueberry Farm on what will be a 95-degree day.

Owner Larry Rawls demonstrates how to roll blueberries off the bush with his thumbs into his cupped hands.

Jason and Courtney Hanna, of DeKalb, Ill., are visiting his sister, Bridget Kamen, and her husband of Wenatchee. It’s a treat to come pick, Courtney says, because she doesn’t know of any blueberry farms in Illinois.

Rawls’ 1.75-acre U-pick blueberry farm, in Monitor about five miles northwest of Wenatchee, is one end of the spectrum of Washington’s growing blueberry industry. The other end is large commercial producers like Zirkle Fruit Co., Yakima, a tree fruit leader that branched into blueberries.

Consumer awareness of health benefits of blueberries is driving continuing demand, and pushing production in Washington, Oregon, Michigan and Georgia.

Washington surpassed Georgia to become national leader in 2015. Washington held the title in 2016, at 120 million pounds, and is forecast to keep it this year.

Oregon was a close second in 2016 but is expected to place third this year, behind Michigan, said Alan Schreiber, executive director of the Washington State Blueberry Commission in Pasco.

“It’s more accurate to think of Oregon and Washington as a common growing region,” Schreiber said.

The two states are similar in attributes making them a strong force in the industry, he said.

For one, they have a longer production window than most growing regions. Washington picking starts in mid-June and ends in October when the only other region still picking is British Columbia.

Washington has a greater capacity than most states to divert fresh blueberries to processing since its industry began on the west side of the state where disease is greater and it was easier to make money by processing, Schreiber said.

Another benefit is the dry climate of the eastern sides of both states which basically eliminates disease.

Several Oregon fresh packers procure blueberries from Washington, the blueberry commissions of the two states coordinate research and are planning a joint trade mission to Vietnam this fall, Schreiber said.

“Several people on my board have financial ties with Oregon guys. There’s a lot of inter-connectivity,” he said.

It’s not all rosy. Small commercial producers have a hard time competing and one potentially large player, Stemilt Growers, Wenatchee, got in and then got out.

Teri Miller, co-owner of Miller Orchards and fruit stand in Peshastin and a founder of Cascade Farm Lands, an agri-tourism group in the Wenatchee Valley, said blueberries have peaked. Small growers in the valley tried and quit because they couldn’t make enough money, she said.

“Blueberries are very labor intensive and all of ag is short on labor,” she said.

“Economic pressures of scale exist in blueberries like they do in apples and potatoes and wheat. Particularly in the fresh market, it’s hard to be a small, blueberry grower,” Schreiber said.

While Washington’s utilized blueberry production increased 15 percent from 2015 to 2016, its value of utilized production dropped 36 percent from $146.8 million to $94 million, according to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Schreiber said that’s probably partly because as supply increases, prices go down.

USDA stats bear that out. The average price per pound in Washington was $1.47 in 2015 and dropped to .78 in 2016.

NORPAC Foods, the farmer-owned food processing cooperative based in Salem, Ore., has a new chief financial officer.

He is Richard Munekiyo, who for seven years was senior director of finance and an interim chief financial officer at the dairy cooperative Darigold in Seattle.

“Richard will be a tremendous asset to NORPAC at an exciting juncture in our business,” Sean Campbell, president and CEO of NORPAC, said in a press release. “He’s a trusted adviser with a proven track record of leading high-performing financial functions for complex and changing businesses. His expertise will be invaluable as we move forward on our quest for continued growth, innovation and operational excellence.”

Campbell and Munekiyo have worked closely in the past, and have “a real rapport and great respect for on another,” said Amy Wood, a NORPAC spokeswoman. “(Campbell) sees Rich as a key asset to continue NORPAC’s growth.”

Before joining NORPAC in 2016, Campbell was at Darigold for 10 years, most recently as senior vice president of consumer products.

Wood said that Campbell had reached out to Munekiyo and was “proactive to seek a CFO with progressive leadership skills.”

NORPAC is owned by more than 200 family farmers in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, and provides frozen vegetables, fruit, soups and other value-added products to the food service, retail, club store, remanufacture and export market segments, according to its website.

HELIX, Ore. — Sitting in the cab of a John Deere tractor overlooking golden hills of wheat, Kuper Bracher waited patiently Tuesday morning and watched as a pair of combine harvesters passed slowly in the distance.

This is the second year that Bracher, 13, has worked wheat harvest at the family farm north of Helix. His job is to drive the bank-out wagon, ferrying loads of grain from combines out in the field to delivery trucks bound for the storage elevator.

“It’s either fast-paced or it’s really, really slow,” said Bracher, adjusting his camouflage baseball cap. “Right now, it’s going pretty slow.”

Soon enough, Bracher receives a call over the radio and shifts his massive rig into gear. Traversing uneven terrain, he moves carefully into position alongside the closest combine ready to empty its cargo.

The process requires Bracher to keep his head on a swivel, maintaining the right speed and direction so none of the grain winds up spilled. Bracher remembers last year when he accidentally overloaded his wagon, and was forced to collect the spillage with a shovel and 5-gallon bucket.

Now, Bracher says he feels perfectly comfortable operating the wagon’s high-tech controls.

“After a while, it just comes to you,” he said.

Wheat harvest is playing out on farms across Umatilla and Morrow counties, and by most accounts local growers are seeing average to above-average yields thanks to heavy spring rains that finally put the kibosh on a multi-year drought.

The hours may be long, but Bracher — who is preparing to enter seventh grade at Helix School — said he enjoys spending his summers on the farm.

“It’s fun,” he said. “It’s not an ordinary job.”

‘North country’

Bracher’s grandfather, Cliff Bracher, is intimately familiar with the area in and around Helix. He calls it the “north country,” a catch-all name for the sprawling dryland wheat ground north of Pendleton.

Behind the wheel of his pickup, Cliff cruises the gravel roads that lead from one bucolic farm house to the next, reciting names of landowners without missing a beat. The north country is a pretty tight-knit group of family farms, he said, and come harvest time it is not unusual to see three generations out working the fields.

“The most grueling part of the whole harvest is just the long hours,” Cliff said. “We start harvesting at about 7:30 a.m., and we’ll call it quits at about 8:30 p.m.”

At that pace, Cliff said they can usually cut about 125 acres of wheat per day, per combine — and that’s only if the weather conditions don’t turn sour, like they did last Thursday when 40-mph wind gusts blew down Juniper Canyon. Windy conditions not only increase the risk of field fires, but can even blow wheat right out of the truck.

Yields are so far looking good, Cliff said, with some fields likely producing between 80-100 bushels per acre. Combined with soft white wheat prices that have finally clawed their way back above $5 out of Portland, he said most growers will likely wind up breaking even on profit.

“This is a decent wheat crop right here,” he said. “It could have been a crop insurance year.”

Back in Helix, Cliff stops to chat with his son, Randy Bracher, who began his day at 5:30 a.m. spraying fallow fields. Though harvest can be stressful, Randy said it is the culmination of a year’s worth of hard work.

“Personally, this is my vacation,” he said. “If you make sure you have a good crew ... it makes it fun.”

John Thompson, another north country wheat grower who farms around Kings Corner Road, agreed that harvest time is the highlight of their year.

“That’s how we get our bread and butter,” he said.

Improved yields

It certainly helps that this year’s crop was bolstered by favorable weather.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, Oregon wheat production is expected to come in at 43.3 million bushels, which is up 22 percent over 2016. A little more than half the state’s wheat is grown in Umatilla and Morrow counties.

Jason Middleton, region manager for United Grain Corporation in Pendleton, said the combination of increased moisture and cooler temperatures benefited wheat earlier in the growing season as the plants were still filling in their kernels.

Since October of last year, the National Weather Service has recorded 16.82 inches of precipitation in the Pendleton area, which is about 5 inches more than usual.

“Yields have been pretty good,” Middleton said. “It’s been a better crop than it was last year.”

Conditions also helped to delay the start of harvest until about July 10, Middleton said, which is generally a good thing.

“Typically, the later the start, the better yields you’ll have,” he explained.

Protein levels are mostly lower than they were last year, Middleton added. That’s good news for growers who sell overseas to countries like Japan, where customers prefer low-protein wheat to make products like cakes and noodles.

Randy Bracher said farmers are always at the mercy of Mother Nature, but this year things have turned out well across the Pacific Northwest.

“This year, we’ve been blessed,” he said. “Agriculture in general has been pretty dang favorable for growing conditions.”

KLAMATH BASIN, Ore. (AP) — Ryan Hartman is driving from field to field in the Klamath Basin, giving what amounts to a masterclass on how to run logistics for 3,000 acres of farmland.

He troubleshoots equipment at one spot, sets planting depth drills on another a mile away, and farther on, shows a few of his 12 employees where to install an irrigation pipe.

“It’s a pretty good job to have. You get to drive around in this every day — it’s pretty nice scenery,” he says of the big blue sky, the low brown mountains, the marshes and wide open fields outside his truck window.

Hartman has been farming for about eight years on land he leases inside the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuges. He grows grain, alfalfa and potatoes.

Hartman pulls off onto a chocolate dirt road into a giant field. A low dike keeps water from a nearby lake off this farmland.

“These are yellows,” he says, pointing to one part of the potato field. “And from that way up are chippers — a variety for Frito Lay.”

A century ago, this land was under a massive lake that supported migratory birds. Now it supports potatoes and the people who grow them.

Hartman is one of them. But he’s also part of a new generation of farmers who are making agriculture more compatible with wildlife. They’re adopting irrigation methods that provide habitat for waterfowl, help keep chemicals out of the wildlife refuges, and give growers a premium price for their crops. And they’re helping push the entire Klamath Basin toward a more sustainable agricultural system.

If you drink organic Northwest beer, there’s a decent chance you’ve tasted barley from the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges.

Grain production on refuges is relatively common across the country, but the Klamath refuges are the only ones that also allow for row crops like potatoes, onions and horseradish.

These row crops are grown on Tule Lake refuge and no other because it is enshrined in federal law — 1964 legislation called the Kuchel Act (pronounced Key-cull). The Kuchel Act was a compromise bill that stopped refuge land from being stripped away for homesteading, something that had slowly been happening since the land was set aside at the beginning of the 20th century. In return, the farming of grain and row crops was allowed to continue, as long as it supported “proper waterfowl management.”

The interpretation of this provision of the law has since been the subject of debate and litigation in the basin.

Currently about 40 percent, or 37,000 acres, of land on Lower Klamath and Tule Lake refuges are farmed. Around 10 percent of that land is in row crops.

The land is broken down into two separate programs; one involves farming on what are called co-op lands and the other affects growers on so-called lease lands.

The co-op farming is directly designed to provide food for waterfowl. No money exchanges hands. These growers can farm the land for free as long as they agree to leave at least a quarter of that grain standing at the end of the season.

“The co-op fields we have full control over,” says Greg Austin, manager of the Klamath Refuges. The refuges award co-op contracts based on which farmer offers the best deal.

“Annually what that best plan looks like changes based on what conditions are like,” says refuge biologist John Vradenburg. “What’s the refuge going to be most lacking in that year?”

Sometimes the refuge wants offers that will leave more grain standing. Sometimes it’s waterfowl habitat that gets prioritized. Sometimes other factors play into the decision.

Lease-land farming, by contrast, is more of an economic venture. It’s managed by the Bureau of Reclamation. Farmers bid on specific fields for five-year leases. Potatoes and onions grow here, but most of the land is in grain production. Farmers don’t have to leave any behind for birds.

All this has turned the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuges into giant laboratories. They test ideas — both for the birds and for the farmers.

One of the most consequential experiments has involved crop irrigation on refuge land — a method that farmers call “flood fallow” and that the refuges have officially labeled as “walking wetlands.” It’s the program that Hartman is taking part in.

The aim is to improve the way agriculture supports habitat for waterfowl. The wildlife refuges have high-priority water rights. But their ability to channel water into wetlands is limited.

The refuges don’t have a formal agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation to deliver that water. And Endangered Species Act protections for imperiled fish in the Klamath Basin have kept water in streams that might otherwise reach the refuges.

Even if those things changed, the highest-priority water rights owned by the refuges are earmarked for crop irrigation, not wildlife.

So wildlife managers figured out that if they could convince farmers to use their agricultural water to periodically flood their fields for extended periods of time, they could provide more habitat for waterfowl.

“We have all these agricultural parcels spread throughout the refuge and they’re helping us bring the wetland conditions that have been lost,” Vradenburg says.

Fourth-generation Klamath Basin farmer Mark Staunton is among those who now flood their fields. When those fields are drained and put back into production, a year’s worth of bird poop and decomposing wetland plants cause crop fertility to skyrocket.

“We’re all the sudden back to production that maybe my great-grandpa would have seen when he first started farming on the lake,” Staunton says.

Staunton’s great-grandfather was one of the first homesteaders in the area. His uncle was the first to work with the wildlife refuges on field flooding about 15 years back.

Not only are farmers finding that the standing water makes the land more fertile, they’re also discovering that it kills off weeds.

Since this practice of flooding fields was first put to use, the program has taken off, triggering a transformation of farming on the refuge.

There’s another trend that’s changing agricultural practices in the Klamath Basin’s wildlife refuges: rising consumer demand for organic produce and grains.

The market has seen double-digit growth since the early 2000s and is currently valued at nearly $40 billion in the United States alone.

In the Klamath Basin, flood-fallow irrigation on the refuges has paved the way. On fields that are flooded for three growing seasons, farmers can immediately have their crops certified as organic — netting them higher prices than they’d get for conventionally grown crops.

In addition, when the Bureau of Reclamation drains fields that had been flooded, it can then offer them to farmers for organic production.

“We believe we’re getting higher and increase bids on the lots that are available for organic,” Green says.

Rob Wilson at the University of California extension office in Tulelake says as growers are seeing success using this system, other farmers off-refuge are jumping on board.

“We’ve seen a substantial increase in organic production. And we’re talking thousands of acres of wheat and small grains, barley, potatoes and many of the forages that are being grown,” Wilson says. “It’s becoming a substantial part of farming in the Klamath Basin.”

Staunton is part of that trend.

“About five years ago our farm was less than 15 percent organic to conventional, and now we’re about 50-50 if not a little bit more,” he says.

About half of the farmland on the Klamath refuges is now either organic or flooded as a wetland. And overall fewer chemicals are being put on ground, which is better for the birds.

Bob Hunter of the environmental group WaterWatch is not convinced.

“Walking wetland system certainly has provided the refuge manager with a tool to make an awful situation a little better than it is,” Hunter says.

It will take far more than a change in the way crops are irrigated to satisfy Hunter and other critics of farming on wildlife refuges.

“Tule Lake Refuge is really two polluted farm ponds and commercial farming,” Hunter says.

WaterWatch is suing the refuge for not phasing out farming in its latest conservation plan. The suit says in examining the potential continued compatibility of agriculture on the refuges, managers only considered its effect on a small subset of waterfowl — the same waterfowl that are known to use agriculture for forage and habitat.

Hunter recommends a springtime drive through the refuge to dispel any notion that it’s a park for wildlife.

“They have silhouettes of painted bald eagles out there to act as scarecrows to keep migrating geese off the fields,” he says. “So here you have a national wildlife refuge that is excluding birds so you won’t adversely impact farming.”

The refuge is attempting to rein in this practice in its new conservation plan. That’s drawn the ire of farmers. Some of them are suing over the conservation plan, saying there are changes to agriculture on the refuges that violate federal laws.

Again and again the situation at the Klamath refuges comes back to water.

Ron Larson is a retired biologist who worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Klamath Basin for 20 years.

“Personally, I think it’s unfortunate that there’s farming on the refuge. But on the other hand, the fact that there is farming on the refuge does provide a guaranteed water supply, at least for Tule Lake” refuge, Larson says. “So it’s kind of a Catch-22 situation, but it is unfortunate.”

Environmental groups say the refuges’ managers could do far more than encourage growers to irrigate crops in ways that benefit wildlife. Instead, they should take steps to ensure the refuges’ water rights are enforced to put more water directly into natural waterfowl habitat.

This is possible under Oregon water law. But the Oregon Water Resources Department says no changes can happen until after all water rights in the Klamath Basin have been certified. This adjudication process likely won’t be finalized for at least 10 years.

Hunter sees promise in changing the purpose of the refuges’ water rights to benefit wildlife. If the refuges truly care about the birds they’re supposed to be protecting, he says, the next great experiment will be phasing out farming altogether on the refuges.

Depending of who you ask, every single hotel and motel room in Central Oregon was booked for two or three years in advance of next month’s total solar eclipse. The Inn at Cross Keys Station in Madras, the town in the middle of the 70-mile wide path of darkness that will sweep from Oregon to South Carolina, has been reserved for the weekend prior to and day of the Aug. 21 event for five years, according to front desk employees.

“I still get calls every day for it,” one of the clerks said.

When a motel in neighboring Prineville unexpectedly had 17 rooms open up, they were nabbed within an hour, said another employee, Adam DeZee.

The state attorney general’s office has had to warn motels not to cancel reservations and reopen them at higher prices.

Farmers in the “path of totality” have opened fields to campers and are hoping to cash in. One who advertised in the Capital Press is asking $35,000 for Aug. 19-21 rental of a 1,000 acre farm with a pond, water slide, trampoline and hookups for 15 RVs.

Another is asking $150 a night for camping space with portable toilets. A third, in Idaho, offers Aug. 19-22 use of a 20-foot fifth-wheel trailer for $1,000.

In Madras alone, with a population of 6,729 and only 325 motel rooms, community business owners anticipate hosting 125,000 to 150,000 eclipse watchers. They’re already telling people to avoid driving to Madras the day of the eclipse, as the roads are likely to be impassable.

Crowds are expected all along the eclipse path. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, or OMSI, sold out an event it is hosting at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem.

The Jefferson County Tourism Group, a private business formed in 2015, organized Oregon SolarFest activities and sold out 5,500 camping spaces at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds and at what it is calling SolarTown, a grass seed field north of town owned by farmer Greg Williams.

Sandy Forman, one of three locals who own the tourism business, said the farmer recently finished combining the grass field, and is keeping it irrigated and mowed so it will be a pleasant camping spot. Shuttles will haul people back and forth to activities in town and at the fairgrounds.

During the eclipse, the moon blocks the sun and casts a narrow band of moving shadow on the earth. Oregon is the first landmass the shadow will touch. Areas will be in darkness for about two minutes, during which time stars will be visible and animals may act odd. Some people believe a solar eclipse is a transformational event.

Forman acknowledged the crowds expected in Madras may stretch the county’s ability to provide services. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said, although at this point it’s probably impossible to find a portable toilet for rent. “I’m going to go with no,” she said.

Forman is partner in the tourism company with J.R. Brooks and Kelly Simmelink. She grew up on a farm in the area and said she spent time changing irrigation pipes, driving tractor, operating a swather and baler and more. The event will attract a lot of people who know nothing about Oregon agriculture, she said, and the area will be able to show some of the specialty crops grown there, such as carrot seed.

“This is a chance to show what Madras is, and what a beautiful area this is,” Forman said. “It’s an opportunity for our community to meet new people from all over the world and learn about this natural phenomenon right here in our backyard.”

Online

Prices and other Oregon SolarFest details: https://www.oregonsolarfest.com

A map of the U.S. eclipse path: http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/maps/whole-us.jpg

Map of the path across Oregon: https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/oregon/

General information about an eclipse: http://eclipsewise.com/

The former Farmers Creamery Cooperative in McMinnville, Ore., will reopen in August as the newest facility operated by the nation’s largest organic dairy cooperative.

The creamery was purchased last fall by Wisconsin-based Organic Valley, which produces organic milk, butter, eggs, cheese, soy and other products. The McMinnville plant will primarily make butter under the Organic Valley label.

The facility will provide 37 jobs and will process milk delivered from 72 member dairies in Oregon and Washington.

Nationally, the Organic Valley cooperative represents more than 1,800 farmers in 36 states and describes saving family farms as its “founding mission.”

The renovated creamery’s grand opening is Saturday, Aug. 12, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the facility, 700 NE Highway 99W, McMinnville. Company spokeswoman Sasha Bernstein said the public is invited. Shuttles will be provided to take people on tours of dairies that will provide milk to the creamery.

The renovation and reopening cap a year of changes for the McMinnville creamery. In July 2016, co-op members accepted an agreement that allowed dairy farmers to apply for membership in the much larger Northwest Dairy Association of Seattle, which includes Darigold. The McMinnville plant then was sold to Organic Valley for an undisclosed price, and it is reopening as a strictly organic operation.

YAKIMA, Wash. — It’s been a stellar Northwest cherry season in terms of weather, fruit quality and sale prices for consumers.

But it’s likely to be the largest crop on record at more than 25 million, 20-pound boxes, making it less than stellar for grower returns.

“It’s been the best cherry weather ever. No rain. It hasn’t been 100 degrees every day and it’s been cool at night. But pricing has not improved,” says Brenda Thomas, president of Orchard View Farms in The Dalles, the largest cherry grower in Oregon.

Wholesale prices averaged $25 to $27 per 18-pound box two weeks ago and have not gotten better, Thomas said. The wholesale average over the past three years was $35 per box, she said.

Early cherries were small, later ones are larger but more volume has not increased profits, she said.

“This year it’s a lot of work for little pay. It’s really at the orchard level. Orchards won’t get the returns they received last year,” she said.

It will be one of the lower-return years for Orchard View Farms growers and most likely throughout the industry, she said.

Retail advertising sales prices typically run $1.99 to $2.99 per pound. Prices this year have been $1.88 per pound and lower.

“It’s been tough the last two to three weeks. Prices are not where we like them to be but where they had to be to move the volume. Retailers for the most part reciprocated to move the crop. Movement has been good,” said Tom Riggan, general manager of Chelan Fresh Marketing.

Fruit has been smaller throughout the season and small fruit doesn’t sell as well as larger, he said.

“Quite a few packers including ourselves are not packing 11.5-row cherries and smaller. They go to the briner,” Riggan said.

As of July 20, 18.5 million, 20-pound boxes of cherries had shipped from Northwest packers. Of that, 10.6 million boxes were shipped in July, according to B.J. Thurlby, president of Northwest Cherry Growers in Yakima, Wash.

Shipments averaged 536,392 per day for the first 20 days of July, a record for that period, Thurlby wrote in a July 21 industry memo.

There’s a chance the season will exceed 25 million boxes, he wrote. The record is 23.4 million in 2014. Northwest cherries have been the No. 1 advertised item in produce, slightly ahead of table grapes, he wrote. Harvest has also begun in Montana.

Riggan said Northwest Cherry Growers, the industry promotional arm, promoted heavily in July.

“They’ve done a good job communicating well with retailers to be very aggressive in July because there’s a lot of opportunity for increased sales,” Riggan said.

Sales will be heaviest in July and may set a record in August and run into September, he said.

There are 6 million to 7 million boxes left to go and prices may increase at the end, he said. That likely will be too late for Orchard View, which will finish its season Aug. 5, Thomas said.

Roger Pepperl, marketing director at Stemilt Growers LLC in Wenatchee, a large cherry shipper, said the company has stayed caught up on shipments, which helps with returns. There have been challenges and benefits with larger fruit getting good prices and smaller fruit selling for less, he said.

“It was a good Rainier season and we’re starting up the hill now (Stemilt Hill south of Wenatchee). We’re optimistic about the last five weeks,” he said.

Higher elevation, later fruit usually sells for higher prices.

ONTARIO, Ore. — Oregon State University researchers are trying to provide onion growers in the Treasure Valley of Idaho and Oregon with another tool to control the weed yellow nutsedge in fields where red and white onions are grown.

The Oregon and Idaho agriculture departments last year issued a special local need label that allows the herbicide Outlook to be applied through drip irrigation systems in fields where Spanish yellow bulb onions are grown.

The herbicide was already approved for surface application in onion fields but it wasn’t previously approved for use in drip systems in yellow onion fields.

Now, OSU researchers in Malheur County are conducting a field trial in which Outlook is being applied through a drip system in red and white onions.

If that trial is successful, BASF, which produces Outlook, could apply for a similar special need label for white and red onions, said OSU weed scientist Joel Felix, who is leading the trial.

“We’re satisfied with what we’ve seen so far,” he said of the white and red onion trial.

Felix said a previous yellow onion trial showed that Outlook is much more effective in controlling yellow nutsedge when applied through a drip system compared to surface application.

About 90 percent of the Spanish bulb onions grown in the region are yellows, while the rest are whites and reds. About 60 percent of the 21,000 acres of onions produced here each year are grown on drip systems.

Yellow nutsedge is a common weed in the region. While it is fairly easily managed in other crops, “it has been a challenge managing it in onions,” Felix said. “It has been a devastating weed for onion growers.”

Onion farmer Paul Skeen said the special need label for Outlook in yellow onions is a big help in the fight against yellow nutsedge, and getting a similar label for white and red onions would help the industry even more.

“We’re kind of on a learning curve with (Outlook applied through a drip system) but it really does work well,” he said.

While the results of the red and white onion trial are promising so far, it’s likely that BASF will want one more year of data before applying for a special label for reds and whites, Felix said.

He said that when applying Outlook through a drip system for onions, it’s critical to put the correct amount of the herbicide on the correct field size.

“There can be a devastating reduction in onion size if you apply the wrong rate,” he said. “Make sure the area is calculated correctly.”

It’s also important to dilute the herbicide to the point it can be injected through the drip system for at least 8 hours, he said.

A 250-pound calf found with numerous bites and scrapes was attacked by a wolf, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife investigation confirmed.

A rancher noticed the injuries July 21 while moving cattle on a public grazing allotment in the Harl Butte area of Wallowa County, in northeast Oregon. The cow and calf pair were hauled back to the home ranch. ODFW was notified and investigated the following day.

The calf had multiple bites and scrapes on its back legs, including one open wound that was 4 inches long and 3 inches wide. The size, location and direction of the bites were “consistent with common attack points for wolves,” according to an ODFW report.

The calf was alert and responsive, according to the report. The injuries were estimated to be about seven days old. Tracking collar data showed a wolf designated OR-50 was in the grazing area during the time the attack is thought to have occurred.

SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. — Growers with crop insurance will no longer be penalized for damage to their crop caused by someone else.

The USDA Risk Management Agency is now offering third-party damage and fire exemptions — under certain criteria — for events such as chemical drift caused by a neighbor or a fire caused by a cigarette tossed out the window of a passing car.

“They’re all to some extent unavoidable and they’re also uninsured,” said Ben Thiel, director of the USDA Risk Management Agency office in Spokane Valley, Wash. “They sustained damage, it’s not insurable, there’s no idemnity for these types of damages.”

In the past, the damage went on a farmer’s production history report, which is used to establish crop insurance coverage.

Farmers can now report their production as always, but exclude the acres affected by third-party damage, said Rick Williams, senior risk management specialist.

Such situations are fairly rare, Thiel said, but “for those affected, it’s a huge deal.”

Pacific Northwest grower associations requested the change, Thiel said.

“There’s a lot of things the farmer is dealing with, psychologically and emotionally and financially,” Thiel said. “To have just one more thing being piled onto it — ‘Here I’m getting penalized for something that’s no fault of my own.’”

The farmer is responsible for reporting and providing information about a loss in a timely manner to the crop insurance agent. The changes start with the 2017 crop year, Thiel said.

The program works for any crop under crop insurance nationwide, Thiel said. The agency is educating crop insurance companies about the changes.

The toxic weed tansy ragwort has spread this year around Western Oregon with particularly large populations in Marion and Clackamas counties.

The outbreak is the worst Sam Leininger, WeedWise program manager, has seen in the program’s eight years of operation. WeedWise began in 2008 to “support more effective management of invasive weeds in Clackamas County,” according to its website.

Tansy is dangerous to humans and livestock because of a poisonous alkaloid in the plant’s tissue that causes liver damage when eaten. Signs of poisoning are consistent with liver failure, said Dr. Charles Estill, Oregon State University Extension veterinary agent.

“Horses get jaundiced, lethargic, slow, depressed, stop chewing in the middle of eating and wandering — some die from the wandering, from either walking off a cliff or walking into a pond and drowning,” said Estill.

While grazing animals generally avoid eating tansy, heavily infested pastures or hay contaminated with the weed can make it nearly impossible for the animals to avoid consumption. If tansy is more than 5 percent of the plants in a pasture, it creates an opportunity for toxicity, Estill said.

Young animals are especially susceptible because “they have different physiology or not as much life experience,” he said, as well as being less discriminatory of what they eat.

Tansy can take anywhere from two weeks to six months to kill an animal. No treatment is available.

“(An animal) can ingest it now and die at Christmastime,” Estill said. Most cases are suspected and not confirmed, he said.

There haven’t been any reported cases so far this year of animals killed by tansy consumption, but it is too early in the year to know, said Dr. Morrie Craig, professor of toxicology at Oregon State’s veterinarian research laboratory.

Unlike horses and cattle, sheep have ruminal microbes in their stomach that can eat the alkaloids that the tansy produces. Craig said research is underway to take advantage of these ruminal microbes.

“We’re thinking we’re going to try a way to capsulate ruminal microbes, and make a probiotic out of it that you can give to a cow,” Craig said, “and then it’ll have the microbes in its stomach to break it down.”

Tansy ragwort is identifiable by its flat yellow flowers that cluster at the top of the plant. The stems are green — occasionally with a reddish tinge — and the leaves are ruffled and dark green, according to a report by WeedWise. At maturity, the plant can grow up to 6 feet tall and produce up to 200,000 seeds that remain in the soil for more than 10 years.

The infestation is most likely caused by the cool, wet and mild springs that Oregon has had for the past two years, Leininger said. The conditions have undermined biological controls such as the Cinnabar moth and flea beetle, which during the larval stage eat the roots of the plant. They were introduced from 1960 to 1971 by the Oregon Department of Agriculture. By the mid-1980s cattle deaths by tansy had been reduced by more than 90 percent, a report from the ODA said.

Butler explained that these biological controls work on a cycle with the plant.

“With a crash in the tansy population we have the mirror image of the bio-controls dropping off. Then when the (tansy) comes back there will be a lag time for the fleas to come back,” he said. “People who want to get more bio-controls, we can’t supply anything that’s going to speed up the natural process. It won’t make a significant difference.”

At this point, it’s too late to spray the weeds with herbicide, he said.

“Spraying won’t do anything. The time to spray is early spring when it’s a rosette, or in fall after the rain,” Butler said.

Mowing the tansy when it’s in full bloom isn’t a solution, either, because it can cause plants to become short-lived perennials, and grow back next year.

However, Butler understands the motivation behind mowing, whether it’s to appease neighbors or make the pastures look better.

WeedWise encourages removing the seed heads and putting them into bags to keep seeds from spreading. If there is a concern about exposure to cattle and horses, Leininger said to remove the tansy from the field.

“Some (people) want to pull it and leave it, but the plant’s potability can increase in its wilt phase,” Leininger said. “You have to understand it’s a big task, but preventing seeding is the ideal scenario.”

Craig said that grazing sheep on tansy-covered pastures could be a way to clean up the weed.

Tansy populations may have increased, but it doesn’t compare to the infestation in the 1970s and 1980s. Butler said that historically the Tillamook Valley at this time would be yellow with tansy, but this year there are few plants.

“We have to look at where there isn’t tansy; that’s the real success story,” Butler said. “It shows areas that are doing quite well and free from tansy. Every year there’s going to be pockets of tansy. It’s frustrating and I understand that, but it’s not the problem it once was.”

To prevent future infestations Leininger recommends spraying in the fall. He said that large-scale operations should apply a broadcast herbicide, but smaller operations can control it with a backpack sprayer.

“We are definitely encouraging people to control it as much as they can,” Leininger said. “It’s not something that any singular entity can take after, it takes a community.”

There are no silver bullets when it comes to tansy, Butler said.

Capital Press

PORTLAND — Rewards totaling $7,500 are offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who shot a bald eagle near Gaston, Ore., in late June.

The eagle was captured by an Oregon State Police trooper June 28 and taken to the Portland Audubon’s wildlife rehabilitation center in Portland. It had been reported injured the previous week but was still able to fly at the point and wasn’t caught. The trooper later returned to the area and caught the eagle after following it through brush, a marsh and into a field. The bird was found near Old Highway 47 and Looking Glass Drive north of Gaston, a small community southwest of Portland.

The male eagle appears to have been shot in its right shoulder. The bird is in a rehabilitation flight cage at the care center; its longterm prognosis is not known at this point, a center spokeswoman said.

Although no longer on the endangered species list, bald eagles remain protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. It’s illegal to hunt, capture, injure or kill them. The crime is punishable by up to a $5,000 fine and a year in jail.

The Animal League Defense Fund has posted a $5,000 reward in the case, and Portland Audubon added $1,500 to the fund. In addition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is offering a $1,000 reward.

Anyone with information should contact USFWS at 503-682-6131 or Oregon State Police at 800-452-7888.

ONTARIO, Ore. — Kochia weeds that are resistant to the Roundup herbicide can now be found in sugar beet fields throughout Malheur County in Eastern Oregon and parts of Canyon County in southwestern Idaho.

Weed scientists worry it’s a matter of time before they’re abundant in sugar beet fields throughout southcentral Idaho as well.

Virtually all of the 180,000 acres of sugar beets grown in the region are genetically engineered to resist applications of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, the popular weed killer produced by Monsanto Corp.

Glyphosate-resistant kochia weeds were first detected in Eastern Oregon and Southern Idaho in 2014 and weed scientists had initially hoped their numbers would remain small.

“In Malheur County in the Treasure Valley, it’s pretty much all over the place,” said Joel Felix, an Oregon State University weed scientist in Ontario. “And we know it’s in Canyon County across the river (in Idaho).”

While glyphosate-tolerant kochia weeds have been found in southcentral Idaho, they aren’t widespread there yet, said Don Morishita, a University of Idaho weed scientist in Kimberly.

However, he added, “I’m waiting for it to start showing up in great numbers here, too. I’m expecting that.”

Felix said kochia is a tumbleweed and he believes some of the glyphosate-tolerant weeds are detaching from fence lines or along field edges and dropping seed as they tumble through sugar beet fields.

“Taking care of fence lines and edges of fields should be a priority to keep kochia from tumbling into fields,” he said.

Idaho and Oregon farmers have been growing GE sugar beets for 12 seasons now and Snake River Sugar Cooperative officials estimate they save Idaho and eastern Oregon growers $22 million a year.

Rupert farmer Duane Grant, chairman of the coop’s board of directors, said kochia weeds are a major challenge in sugar beet production because they are a fierce competitor for sunlight, nutrients and water.

“They must be controlled. If not, they would take the yield in the field below the point anybody would want to grow the crop,” he said. “To the extent kochia is becoming resistant to Roundup, we will as a grower community have to find solutions.”

One solution being developed is an effort by Monsanto and KWS Saat Research, a plant breeding company headquartered in Germany, to develop a genetically engineered sugar beet that is resistant to both glyphosate and dicamba, another popular herbicide.

Incorporating both traits into sugar beets should prevent the proliferation of herbicide-resistant weeds because it’s unlikely a weed would be resistant to both modes of action, a KWS research scientist told sugar beet growers in Idaho in December 2015.

The technology is a couple of years away from being introduced to sugar beet growers, Grant said.

“That really should mitigate the effects of glyphosate resistance in kochia weeds,” he said. “We can hopefully hold them to an economic threshold and persevere until the next set of tools arrive.”

BOISE — Many reservoirs in southwestern Idaho and Eastern Oregon are still close to 90 percent full, despite a brutal July heat spell that has kept high temperatures near or above 100 degrees the entire month.

Irrigators who get their water from the Boise Project Board of Control get by on natural flow in the Boise River until the amount of water leaving the river’s reservoir system exceeds the amount entering.

Then the project starts using water stored in the system’s three reservoirs and sets an allotment for how much water irrigators can receive from the reservoir system. That didn’t happen until July 14 this year, well beyond the normal June time-frame for that switch.

The BPBC set its 2017 allotment at 2.45 acre-feet, which is slightly less than the 2.6 acre-foot allotment in 2016.

However, the project only got by on natural flow until June 15 last year and that means some farmers, such as Drew Eggers of Meridian, will end up receiving all the water they need this year.

Eggers said he used about 3 acre-feet of water for his mint crop before the allotment was set and he probably won’t need to use all the water he is entitled to this year.

“We’re having a good water year,” he said. “I’ll have enough water to finish the crop and water the mint back up after harvest.”

The water outlook is just as good for the 1,800 farms in Eastern Oregon and part of southwestern Idaho that receive their irrigation water from the Owyhee Reservoir.

The reservoir, which supplies water to 118,000 acres, is 86 percent full.

That’s quite a switch from many of the previous five years, when the reservoir was almost tapped out at this date and irrigators received as little as a third of their full 4 acre-foot allotment.

“It’s unbelievable,” Owyhee Irrigation District Manager Jay Chamberlin said about the difference. “It’s almost the complete opposite.”

Chamberlin said the reservoir is enjoying one of its top five water supply years in its 82-year history and it’s possible water managers will run water later into October this year to help farmers finish off their crops.

“It will be nice to help them on the tail end because for four or five years, they’ve been short on the tail end,” he said.

Irrigators on the Weiser River system are also sitting good this year in terms of water supply and the system will likely carry over a decent amount of reservoir storage water into next season, said watermaster Brandi Horton.

“It’s definitely one of the better (waster supplies) we’ve seen in several years,” she said.

The Payette River system didn’t enjoy the same type of near-record snowpack that other basins in the region did this winter but its snow pack was above normal and irrigators can expect a good water supply this year, said watermaster Ron Shurtleff.

“We’re in fine shape. We’ll have plenty of water this year,” he said.

When the antiquated milking parlor at the Abiqua Acres dairy became obsolete, the farm’s owners opted not to replace it.

Instead, they installed a new state-of-the art barn equipped with two robots that milk the cows at their convenience.

The machines will allow the farm to eventually expand its milking herd from 90 to 120 cows without having to hire employees, said Darleen Sichley, who runs the farm with her husband, Ben Sichley, and her parents, Alan and Barbara Mann.

“Robotics made a lot more sense than building a parlor and hiring help,” she said.

The Sichleys and Manns operate the dairy entirely themselves, so delegating the milking to robots frees up hours they’d otherwise spend in the milking parlor.

“We get our lives back,” said Ben.

Milk prices have fallen since the family began planning for the project, but they’re confident the robotic milkers will pencil out over the long term by allowing the farm to remain employee-free.

“We’ve always been family-run,” said Darleen.

Dairy farmers’ average “mailbox” price per hundredweight of milk — the amount of the check they get in the mail, minus transportation and other costs — plunged from a peak of nearly $26 in 2014 to a trough of roughly $14 in 2016. The price has since risen to more than $17 per hundredweight.

Despite their leaner earnings, dairy farmers have continued to invest in robotic milkers because of the concern over worker shortages, said Mark Brown, a regional general manager for DeLaval Dairy Service, which makes and sells the machines.

“That’s what’s driving it, more than anything,” Brown said.

DeLaval has seen sales of robotic milkers grow through the milk price slump, though demand would likely be even stronger if the industry was experiencing an economic upswing, he said.

“If milk prices were high, I don’t think we could build them fast enough,” said Brown.

While the lowest-cost milking systems will cost $1 per hundredweight or less to operate — compared to $2 or $3 per hundredweight for robotic milkers — farmers still see the automated systems as worthwhile, said Larry Tranel, an extension dairy specialist at Iowa State University who’s studied the economics of the machines.

Robots aren’t so much more expensive than many conventional milking parlors as to deter dairies from investing in the technology, since farmers are drawn to the reduced dependence on hiring workers, he said.

“They’re trading labor for technology,” Tranel said.

If immigration enforcement gets more strict, dairies also face the prospect of having to pay higher wages to attract U.S.-born employees, said Brian Gould, an agricultural economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“If the dairy industry is going to have to pay more for labor, it’s going to make robotics more attractive,” he said.

Aside from cutting labor, robotic milkers automatically collect data about cattle productivity and other traits that improve dairy management, said Brown of DeLaval Dairy Service.

New features and software are constantly being developed, including infrared cameras that regularly photograph each cow’s body to track how it’s responding to feed rations, he said.

“The machines are designed so that any future technology can be retrofit onto them,” Brown said.

Data analyzed by robotic milking systems can also alert farmers to any developing health problems before they’re readily noticeable, said Bob Russell, director of DeLaval Dairy Service North America.

“All those metrics can help give you an advance indication the cow may be becoming ill,” he said.

Robotic milkers have grown popular enough that cattle breeders are aiming for “robot ready” cows with characteristics such as square, uniform udders that make teats easier for the machine to locate, Brown said.

Manufacturers are trying to build robots that milk cows on rotating “carousels,” which are prized by large dairies for their efficiency.

As of now, though, those robots are still being perfected because it’s tougher for them to milk cows that are moving, said Brown. “It needs to be fast and in motion.”

ONTARIO, Ore. — A planned rail transload facility in Oregon’s Malheur County could reduce transportation costs for onion shippers in the region but, perhaps more importantly, it could also speed up delivery times and open up new markets.

Speeding up the time it takes the Spanish bulb onions grown here to reach markets on the East Coast would be the main advantage of a transload facility, said Eddie Rodriguez, director of sales for Partners Produce, one of 30 onion shippers in the Treasure Valley of Idaho and Oregon.

“Getting our product to the market sooner is the biggest benefit to us,” he said.

Because onions produced here and shipped by rail to the East Coast have to first be trucked West to the nearest transload facility in Wallula, Wash., before beginning their journey East, Washington onion shippers beat their Idaho and Oregon competitors to the market at every turn, Rodriguez said.

“Because we’ll be able to get to the market sooner, that will open up more markets for us,” he said of the planned transload facility, which would be built near Ontario or Nyssa.

The Oregon Legislature’s recently passed $5.3 billion transportation bill includes $26 million for the transload facility, which will allow shipping containers to be transferred between truck and rail.

Freight rates change constantly and are impacted by many factors, but “it is fair to estimate a transload facility (here) would provide an avenue to ship more onion volume via rail out of our growing region at a cost savings versus trucking, and faster than traditional rail service,” said Tiffany Cruickshank, transportation manager for Snake River Produce.

In an email, she told Capital Press that the facility would be “transformational for our area and will ideally allow Snake River Produce and other area shippers to maintain and improve competitiveness, reduce transportation costs and grow business throughout the rail network.”

Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, vice-co-chair of the 14-member committee that put the transportation bill together, told onion growers and shippers last week that the money for the transload facility could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and he said it’s critical for the community to do it right.

He said the facility could benefit a lot of farm commodities grown in the region but that it would focus on the onion industry.

The legislation that provides the $26 million for the facility requires the community to submit a plan to the Oregon Transportation Commission by Jan. 1, 2020, that shows how it intends to spend the money.

One of the most important first steps is for the onion industry to form a committee that can offer significant input on the plan and help guide its formation, Bentz said.

Grant Kitamura, general manager of Murakami Produce, an onion shipper, told Capital Press the onion industry has already formed a group that will meet and begin formulating possible plans for the facility.

“We’re going to get the ball rolling on this and get it done right,” he said.