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Oregon expects to issue new industrial hemp licenses this winter
The Oregon Department of Agriculture expects to resume issuing licenses to grow industrial hemp in 2016 by the end of February, but some problems continue to dog the new crop.
The state issued 11 hemp licenses in 2015 before cutting off the process in August. Nine of the licensees planted a crop and three harvested a product, said Lindsay Eng, ODA’s program manager. But the crops of two other growers, one in Grants Pass and one in Bend, are embargoed because the plants exceeded the .3 percent THC limit required under state law, Eng said. The crops will have to be destroyed or remediated in some way, she said, perhaps by using the plant stalks without the flowers or seeds.
Industrial hemp is related to marijuana, but doesn’t contain nearly the level of THC, the chemical compound that makes pot users high.
Instead, advocates say industrial hemp fiber and oil can be used to make clothing, food, rope, cosmetics, plastics and other products. They’ve long said hemp could replace cotton or petroleum in some uses.
Ag researchers say some conventional farmers might eventually be interested in growing hemp as a rotational crop, but for now the market appears to involve small-scale farmers who want to process hemp themselves to make lotions or other products.
Eng said details in Oregon’s hemp law may need tweaking by the Legislature when it meets in February. A section requiring 2.5-acre hemp plots causes some growers problems, as does a requirement that the plants be directly seeded instead of started in greenhouse pots. In addition, it’s hard to obtain seed, Eng said. Canada is the most common source.
Oregon State University has asked the federal Drug Enforcement Agency for permission to import hemp seed and conduct basic crop research. Jay Stratton Noller, head of OSU’s Department of Crop and Soil Science, said he anticipates the DEA will approve the request and test plots could be planted in April. Three to five years of experiments would be necessary for OSU to produce useful data for growers, he said.
Researchers are starting from scratch because hemp germ plasm had to be destroyed in the 1970s when the federal controlled substances act classified hemp the same as pot and other drugs, Noller said.
Noller said hemp was a viable crop in the past and is grown around the world. In the U.S., the first American flag was made of hemp, Noller said.
“In terms of the number of uses, it obviously buoys a lot of people’s optimism,” he said. “Farmers are always looking for an alternative crop: One, for rotation, and two, for the alternative markets.
“The enthusiasm is not hyperbolic,” he said.
The Oregon Legislature legalized hemp cultivation in 2009, but the law wasn’t implemented because the U.S. Department of Justice classified hemp the same as marijuana. The federal classification remains, but the justice department has said it won’t interfere with hemp production in states that have adopted a robust regulatory system. Industrial hemp was included in the November 2014 Oregon ballot measure that legalized recreational marijuana use, possession and cultivation, and the state issued the first hemp licenses as a result.
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Okanogan Farm Bureau leader: Treatment of Hammonds ‘outrageous, hypocritical’
OKANOGAN, Wash. — It’s “outrageous and hypocritical” that the federal government imprisoned two Oregon ranchers for a backburn that got away from them and burned a little over 100 acres of public land while federal and state agencies backburned thousands of acres of private land in Okanogan County last summer and were not held accountable, the president of the Okanogan County Farm Bureau says.
“My definition of homeland security is America’s ability to feed itself. There is nothing more important. America has to stop the war on agriculture,” said Nicole Kuchenbuch, 36, Okanogan County Farm Bureau president.
“If this nation’s farmers and ranchers are forced out of business, America has succeeded in staging her own famine,” Kuchenbuch said.
“The media tendency is to turn things into racial or socio-economic issues and vilify ranchers as a bunch of ignorant honkies. It’s important to realize the American government is oppressive to all colors of people and everyone just wants to be free, healthy and prosperous,” she said.
Incidents like ranchers and militia occupying a seasonally closed national wildlife refuge near Burns, Ore., happen when people feel so “abused” by government that “they feel they have no other choice,” Kuchenbuch said.
“I don’t agree with having a standoff, but they captured the attention of the United States,” she said.
The re-sentencing of Harney County, Ore., ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond to five years in prison is just one of many examples throughout ranching areas of the West in the last several decades of the heavy handedness of federal agencies in acquiring more land and squeezing out ranches to satisfy environmentalists who want a national park from the Yukon to Yellowstone, Kuchenbuch said.
It’s not coincidence that agencies have bought many Okanogan County ranches and that there have been problems between the government and ranchers in Nevada and other Western states, she said.
“We believe they are systematically squeezing us out. They use every means possible. Direct buyouts, conservation easements, fire, sage grouse and wolves. The Endangered Species Act. Sometimes they pay 10 times the market value and every parcel sold jeopardizes those left,” Kuchenbuch said.
“We do not trust that they will leave people alone, as witnessed with the Hammond family,” she said.
A couple dozen ranches have been burned out by wildfires that burned more than 1 million acres of Okanogan County in the past two summers. State and federal grazing allotments cover 50 to 80 percent of that, Jack Field, executive vice president of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association, has said. Ranchers are hard-pressed to find grazing land. One-third of 600,000 acres burned in the Okanogan, Tunk Block and North Star fires in 2015 was caused by agency backburning, Okanogan County Commissioner Jim DeTro has said.
Ranches in several parts of the county lost private timber, grazing grounds, hay, barns and equipment to agency backburning that ranchers opposed.
Kuchenbuch, her husband, Casey, and her father, Rod Haeberle, fought a fire alongside firefighters on their ranch last summer and begged them not to backburn 1,000 acres of their private land.
The agency did it anyway to protect homes but jeopardizing people and livestock and destroying Haeberle Ranch timber, miles of fencing, the family’s mountain cabin and a set of corrals.
“We were told afterward that there is no restitution for our losses,” Kuchenbuch said.
Backburning is so touchy that agencies don’t talk about it on their radios, rather commands are given in person, she said.
The homes could have been protected had the USFS allowed the Kuchenbuchs and Gebbers Farms to continue building a firebreak from private ranch land onto USFS property, she said. But the agency never fought the fire offensively, only defended homes, she said.
Protecting towns was the priority and fire resources were spread so thin that rural residents were left to fend for themselves in many places, she said.
When that happens, they don’t have time to wonder whether a backburn they do or other efforts are legal, she said.
“We are forced to defend ourselves in any manner we know. If the Hammonds (in Oregon) are arson-terrorists, then so were a whole lot of people up here including the agencies and civilians who did whatever they needed to save their property,” she said.
“It’s hypocritical for the government to employ the same practices they convicted the Hammonds of,” she said. The Hammonds, who have already served sentences in jail, should be pardoned, she said.
“The law needs to be fixed,” she said. “So they don’t make common citizens into criminals.”
Oregon standoff enters its second week
BURNS, Ore. (AP) — The occupation of national wildlife area by a small, armed group upset over federal land policies stretched into its second week as the mother of the group’s leader asked supporters to send supplies — everything from warm blankets to coffee creamer.
The group that seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon’s high desert country on Jan. 2 planned no media briefings. It was quiet at the entrance to the refuge Sunday.
The leader of the occupation, Ammon Bundy, has repeatedly rejected calls to leave buildings at the refuge despite pleas from the county sheriff, from many local residents and from Oregon’s governor, among others. He has said the group will leave when there is a plan to transfer control of federal land to locals.
So far, the authorities have not moved in to remove Bundy’s group. Ammon Bundy is the son of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 Nevada standoff with the government over grazing rights.
On Saturday, Ammon Bundy’s mother, Carol Bundy, sent an email to supporters asking them to send her son’s group supplies from a list of more than 80 items, including sleeping bags, wool socks, cigarettes, toiletries, food, coffee and “French Vanilla Creamer.”
An Oregon state legislator met with the group on Saturday, despite requests from local officials that he not do so.
Rep. Dallas Heard, a Republican from Roseburg, talked with the group, The Oregonian reported. Heard’s legislative district is in western Oregon, outside the area where the standoff is occurring. Rep. Cliff Bentz, the Republican state representative whose district includes the wildlife refuge, told Heard not to come because it would be “inappropriate.”
Harney County Judge Steven Grasty, another local official, says he too advised Bentz against the visit. Grasty said Bentz and five other out-of-state elected officials from Washington, Idaho and Nevada accompanied Heard. It wasn’t clear who the other elected officials were. Heard did not return a call Sunday from The Associated Press.
Also Saturday a separate group of armed men arrived but left several hours later after occupation leaders told them they weren’t needed.
The Pacific Patriot Network showed up Saturday in a convoy of about 18 vehicles, carrying rifles and handguns and dressed in military attire and bulletproof vests. They said they were there to help with security. They departed the refuge area after LaVoy Finicum said the network’s help was appreciated, but “we want the long guns put away.”
The standoff is the latest flare up of tensions over federal management of Western lands.
The federal government manages most of the land in many Western states, including 53 percent of Oregon. While ranchers and others object to what they say are unfair rules, environmentalists say mining, logging and ranching have run roughshod for decades on public land and left a legacy of pollution for taxpayers to clean up.
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Armed group not ready to end wildlife refuge occupation
BURNS, Ore. (AP) — The leader of an armed group occupying a national wildlife refuge to protest federal land management policies said he and his followers are not ready to leave even though the sheriff and many locals say the group has overstayed its welcome.
On Friday, Ammon Bundy, leader of the group that on Jan. 2 seized the headquarters of the refuge in southeastern Oregon, said: “How long will this go on? We say to you, ‘Not a minute too early.’”
Bundy met Thursday with Harney County Sheriff David Ward, who asked Bundy to heed the will of locals and leave the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Ward also offered to escort Bundy and his group out of the refuge to ensure safe passage.
“We will take that offer,” Bundy said on Friday. “But not yet.”
A few hours later, Ward said via Twitter that because of Bundy’s stance he was calling off plans to have another meeting with him.
“During this morning’s press conference, the people on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge made it clear that they have no intention of honoring the sheriff’s request to leave. Because of that, there are no planned meetings or calls at this time,” Ward said.
But Ward said he is “keeping all options open.”
About the same time, members of another armed group known as the 3% of Idaho began arriving at the bird sanctuary, The Oregonian reported.
“They just keep an eye on everything that is going on to make sure nothing stupid happens,” Bundy told The Oregonian on Friday afternoon outside refuge headquarters.
“If they weren’t here,” Bundy said, referring to the Idaho group, “I’d worry” about a Waco, Texas-style siege by federal officials in the early 1990s.
Spokesmen for the Idaho group said they are there to keep the situation peaceful and reassure the community that it isn’t in danger.
Bundy’s group — calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom — comes from as far away as Arizona and Michigan.
Bundy’s protest at the refuge is a continuation of long-running arguments that federal policies for management of public lands in the West are harming ranchers and other locals. Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who in 2014 was at the center of a tense standoff with federal officials over grazing rights.
Ammon Bundy has been demanding that federal land in Oregon’s Harney County be turned over to local residents to be managed.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Thursday called the occupation of the wildlife refuge “unlawful” and said it had to end.
“It was instigated by outsiders whose tactics we Oregonians don’t agree with. Those individuals illegally occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge need to decamp immediately and be held accountable,” she said.
Federal, state and local law authorities have been closely monitoring the situation at the refuge but have so far taken no action against Bundy and his followers, apparently to avoid a confrontation. Ward has been the most visible law enforcement authority during the occupation, and his strategy so far has been to try to show Bundy that locals oppose the occupation and want them to leave.
Ward got a lot of support during a packed community meeting Wednesday night.
At that meeting, local residents said they sympathized with the armed group’s complaints about federal land management but disagreed with their tactics and called Bundy and his followers to leave.
Bundy initially came to Burns to rally support for two local ranchers who were sentenced to prison on arson charges. The ranchers — Dwight Hammond and his son Steven Hammond — distanced themselves from Bundy’s group and reported to prison Monday.
The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago and served no more than a year. A judge later ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.
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Farmer announces expansion of Boardman brewery
By his own description, Eastern Oregon farmer Craig Coleman doesn’t like to get bored. So in addition to growing blueberries, hay, field corn and cut flowers — not to mention renting ground to a potato farmer – he and several partners decided to open a brewery in Boardman.
“Why not?” he said. “The way I look at things is, if we can do one, why not do 10?”
Ordnance Brewing, named for the ghost town across the highway from the defunct Umatilla Chemical Depot that once housed the deadly agents used in chemical weapons, opened for business around Halloween 2014 and this month announced a major expansion.
The brewery, in the Port of Morrow, will jump production from seven barrels per brewing cycle to 50. For perspective, one barrel equals 31 gallons. The company now produces two or three brews per week, head brewer Logan Mayfield said. Production eventually will increase to six or eight brews per day, he said.
The company will focus on producing four types of beer in cans and bottles: A Rye Pale Ale; an India Pale Ale called FMJ, for Full Metal Jacket; Rivercrest Kolsch, a German-style light lager; and an English-style ale called “Old Craig,” named after Coleman, the farmer. Ordnance will make seasonal beers as well. Mayfield, the brewer, jokingly described some of the company’s offerings as “lawnmower beer,” meaning the type you’d drink after yard work.
“I believe we have a very solid product,” said Coleman. “Is it the greatest beer in the world? Probably not, but we make good beer.”
Coleman is Ordnance’s manager; other partners keep the books, own the brewery building, oversee taphouses that serve the company’s beer and have other roles. Coleman hired Mayfield, originally from Ashland, to do the brewing.
Coleman previously farmed with his extended family in the Willamette Valley, but moved to Eastern Oregon to do something different.
“It was time for a change,” he said. “The business was maturing and it’s not as fun as when your hair is on fire.”
He and partners first opened a couple taphouses that served beer, then decided to up their game and make beer themselves.
Ordnance uses some of Coleman’s blueberries in one of its beer, and buys hops from the Willamette Valley and barley from Idaho. Coleman and Mayfield said they’re looking to use more local ingredients as the business develops.
In its promotional material, Ordnance describes itself as “smack dab in a beer desert,” with very few other breweries operating between Hood River and Pendleton.
An industry group, Oregon Craft Beer, said the state had 234 breweries in 72 cities as of July 2015. Of those, 91 are in the Portland metro area, which some in the industry have taken to calling “Beervana.”
Craft beer brewing, like wine before it and hard cider now coming on, has proven to be a hot economic sector in Oregon. Brewers produced 1.6 million barrels in 2014, a 17 percent increase over the previous year. Craft beer made in Oregon now accounts for 20 percent of the beer consumed in the state, according to the industry group.
Coleman, the Ordnance manager, said the business is in “great spot” geographically and market-wise.
“What I’ve found is, the more questions you ask, the more doors open,” he said. “We’ve been lucky. We have great people around us. The opportunities are out there if you’re willing to capitalize on them.”
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Sheriff asks Bundy, followers to leave
BURNS, Ore. (AP) — Three Oregon sheriffs met Thursday with the leader of an armed group occupying a federal wildlife refuge and asked them to leave, after residents made it clear they wanted them to go home.
Harney County Sheriff David Ward said via Twitter that he asked Ammon Bundy to respect the wishes of residents. He said sheriffs from two other counties were with him.
Ward said the two sides planned to talk again Friday.
The Oregonian reported that Ward offered to provide Bundy and his group a safe escort out of the refuge.
“I’m here to offer safe escort out,” the newspaper reported the sheriff telling Bundy. “Go back and kick it around with your folks.”
On Wednesday night, residents attended a community meeting to air their views about the two dozen or so armed men hold up at the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge south of Burns.
Locals said they sympathized with the armed group’s complaints about federal land management policies but disagreed with their tactics.
On Thursday, LaVoy Finicum, a leader of the armed group, told reporters, “We want all people to be safe. We want all law enforcement to be safe. We want our lives to be safe.”
Ward said he hoped residents would put up a united front to peacefully resolve the conflict with the group.
“I’m here today to ask those folks to go home and let us get back to our lives,” Ward said.
Schools were closed following the seizure of the refuge because of safety concerns in the small town in eastern Oregon’s high desert.
The group, calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, says it wants an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land. Participants came from as far away as Arizona and Michigan.
Bundy came to Burns to rally support for two local ranchers who were sentenced to prison on arson charges. The ranchers — Dwight Hammond and his son Steven Hammond — distanced themselves from Bundy’s group and reported to prison on Monday.
The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago and served no more than a year. A judge later ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.
Eastern Oregon farms boost organic acreage
Eastern Oregon farms boost organic acreage
Oregon farm regulators approve dairy expansions
Oregon farm regulators have cleared the expansion of four dairies classified as “confined animal feeding operations” over the objections of vegans and animal welfare proponents.
Earlier this year, five dairies requested that the Oregon Department of Agriculture approved changes to their waste management plans, with four those facilities seeking to increase their herds.
While such requests are usually routine, the expansion proposals attracted the attention of critics who complained the larger dairies will increase pollution, harm air quality, spur more antibiotic usage and lead to animal welfare abuses.
Many of these objections were heard during an ODA public meeting in September 2015, and critics also submitted written comments about the modified plans.
In a response to comments, ODA explained that it’s role is limited to water quality concerns. Complaints about air quality, animal welfare and antibiotic usage are outside its jurisdiction in enforcing the federal Clean Water Act.
“Most of the comments were not pertinent to our permit,” said Wym Matthews, manager of the agency’s CAFO program, noting that this fact probably won’t appease critics. “They probably will not be happy with our response.”
However, the agency will impose new conditions on the five dairies, which are located in Tillamook, Marion, Coos and Klamath counties.
In fields where manure is applied, the dairies will have to test soil nutrients annually instead of every five years. Those tests must also specifically check the soil’s nitrate levels, in addition to total nitrogen and phosphorous levels.
Dairies were previously required to only check for total nitrogen and phosphorous, but they must now break out nitrates because federal standards set limits for that particular soluble nutrient in drinking water, said Matthews.
While these conditions will currently apply only to the five dairies that requested waste management plan changes, ODA is in the process of updating its overall Clean Water Act permit for CAFOs, which will require other facilities to also comply with these measures later in 2016, he said.
Friends of Family Farmers, a non-profit group that submitted comments about water quality concerns, is heartened that soil tests will check specifically for nitrates and that samples will now be taken more frequently, which is aimed at preventing excessive nutrient buildup.
“Those were all issues we had flagged. We were making sure they weren’t engaged in a rubber-stamp exercise,” said Ivan Maluski, the group’s policy director. “I think it’s encouraging they included our suggestions.”
Any new regulatory requirements create challenges for dairies, particularly smaller ones without many employees, but producers tend to be agile in meeting such standards, said Tammy Dennee, assistant director of the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association,
As for the controversy over the expansions, Dennee said it’s hard to say whether to expect similar objections in the future.
“Unfortunately, it was much to do about very little,” she said.
Cheers for sheriff who tells armed group to ‘go home’
BURNS, Ore. (AP) — Cheers erupted at a packed community meeting in rural Oregon when a sheriff said it was time for a small, armed group occupying a national wildlife refuge to “pick up and go home.”
The group objecting to federal land policy seized buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday. Authorities have not yet moved to remove the group of roughly two dozen people, some from as far away as Arizona and Michigan. The group also objects to a lengthy prison sentence for two local ranchers convicted of arson.
“I’m here today to ask those folks to go home and let us get back to our lives,” Harney County Sheriff David Ward said Wednesday evening.
Schools were closed following the seizure of the refuge because of safety concerns in this small town in eastern Oregon’s high desert country and tensions have risen. Ward told the hundreds gathered at the meeting he hoped the community would put up a “united front” to peacefully resolve the conflict.
Group leader Ammon Bundy has told reporters they will leave when there’s a plan in place to turn over federal lands to locals.
Several people spoke in support of Bundy and his followers at Wednesday’s meeting.
“They are waking people up,” said 80-year-old Merlin Rupp, a long-time local resident. “They are just making a statement for us, to wake us up.”
Earlier Wednesday the leader of an American Indian tribe that regards the preserve as sacred issued a rebuke to Ammon’s group, saying they are not welcome at the snowy bird sanctuary and must leave.
“The protesters have no right to this land. It belongs to the native people who live here,” Burns Paiute Tribal leader Charlotte Rodrique said.
Bundy is demanding that the refuge be handed over to locals.
Rodrique said she “had to laugh” at the demand, because she knew Bundy was not talking about giving the land to the tribe.
The standoff in rural Oregon is a continuation of a long-running dispute over federal policies covering the use of public lands, including grazing. The federal government controls about half of all land in the West. For example, it owns 53 percent of Oregon, 85 percent of Nevada and 66 percent of Utah, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The Bundy family is among many people in the West who contend local officials could do a better job of managing public lands than the federal government.
The argument is rejected by those who say the U.S. government is better equipped to manage public lands for all those who want to make use of them.
Among those groups are Native Americans.
The Burns Paiute tribe has guaranteed access to the refuge for activities that are important to their culture, including gathering a plant used for making traditional baskets and seeds that are used for making bread. The tribe also hunts and fishes there.
Rodrique said the armed occupiers are “desecrating one of our sacred sites” with their presence at refuge.
Bundy’s group, calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, says it wants an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land after Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, reported back to prison Monday.
The Hammonds are long-time local residents who have distanced themselves from the group Bundy’s group. They were convicted of arson three years ago and served no more than a year. A judge later ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.
At the emotional community meeting Ward, the county sheriff, said he understood the problems some had with the ranchers’ court case. However he said people needed to express but their anger peacefully and lawfully.
“I’ve got my own frustrations, we’ve got visitors in town that have their frustrations, but there’s appropriate ways to work out our differences,” he said.