Lawmakers are under more pressure to act after a wildfire season that was particularly harrowing. Nearly 9 million acres – an area about the size of New Jersey and Connecticut combined – burned. Intense smoke hit many of the West’s major cities, including Denver, the San Francisco Bay Area and Portland.

The devastating California wine country fire, which killed 43 and destroyed nearly 9,000 homes and other buildings, competed for national attention with the hurricanes that hit Houston, Florida and Puerto Rico.

“What’s made it different this year is that it’s now clear that the fires are bigger and hotter and more powerful,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon. He’s a central figure in the congressional fight over wildfire funding and forest policy.

Decades of suppressing fire has left Western forests choked with dense stands of smaller trees and brush. Combine that with hotter, drier weather driven by climate change and it’s produced a crisis as real as the flooding in Houston.

And here’s what’s making the problem worse: The U.S. Forest Service now spends more than half its budget fighting fires, up from just 16 percent in 1995. That means it is running out of money to work on fire prevention, particularly in the wildfire-prone communities where some 120 million Americans now live.

Wyden has fought for years to offload the cost of fighting big fires from the Forest Service onto the nation’s disaster agencies. That would put it more in line with how the U.S. handles hurricanes and earthquakes.

“The big fires ought to be treated for what they are, which are natural disasters,” Wyden said. “And you don’t raid the prevention fund to put them out.”

The Democratic senator’s so-called “wildfire funding fix” has gained wide support in Congress. But Republicans say it’s not enough. They insist Forest Service funding be tied to what they see as the real solution: A return to robust commercial logging on federal lands.

“I tell people I think we’ve loved our trees to death, and we’ve swung the pendulum way too far on trying to preserve timber instead of conserve timber,” said Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Arkansas. “You know, preservation is what you do with art in a museum.”

Westerman, the only trained forester in Congress, is chief sponsor of the Resilient Federal Forests Act.

That measure, which passed the House on a 232-188 vote on Nov. 1, would override many of the environmental restrictions that dramatically shrunk federal timber harvests. Westerman says that more intensively managed forests are less likely to face catastrophic burns.

One of his chief allies is Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, who adds that more logging helps reduce fuel loads while boosting the Forest Service budget.

“When the country changed and said, ‘We’re not going to do that anymore. We’re not going to engage in active harvests,’ you lost that revenue stream that used to pay for those things,” Walden said. “I’d like to see us get back partially.”

Similar bills died in the Senate in past years as Democrats sided with environmental groups. This year, Republicans control both chambers and the White House. But they can’t overcome a Senate filibuster. Democrats say the crisis is too big to get hung up fighting over environmental laws.

“Why go to the timber wars of the past if we have the solutions sitting right in front of us,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon.

He noted that the Forest Service has a backlog of 1.6 million acres of thinning projects in Oregon that’s already cleared environmental reviews. The agency just keeps having to put off the work as it spends more money fighting fires.

Mark Webb, a former Grant County commissioner in eastern Oregon now involved in forest restoration efforts, has an on-the-ground appreciation of that. 

He said the 2015 Canyon Creek fire, which destroyed 43 homes and consumed 110,000 acres, came after the Forest Service wasn’t able to afford all of the thinning work planned for the area.

“It wouldn’t have done near the damage if we had been able to implement those treatments,” said Webb, who heads the Blue Mountains Forest Partners. That group works to develop broad agreement on forest restoration projects, and Webb said there is a lot of work that can be done without changing environmental laws. 

Randi Spivak, public lands director for of the Center for Biological Diversity, is fighting the Westerman bill. She said past commercial logging has already contributed to the growing wildfire risk.

“National Service lands were heavily logged,” Spivak said, “so we have changed these forests tremendously because of commercial timber production, taking out the large fire-resistant trees.”

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, whose agency oversees the Forest Service, has been an ally of Wyden in trying to get a permanent wildfire funding fix. 

“I do think the momentum this year is greater than it has been in the past,” said Perdue, adding that forcing the Forest Service to borrow from prevention programs to pay for fighting fires is no way to run an agency.

There are also several attempts at a compromise. For example, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, has authored a bill that includes provisions sought by both the timber industry and environmentalists.

“I think there’s a deal to be had here,” Walden said in an early November interview.

But since then, the Trump administration has come out with its latest disaster relief request, which does not include any wildfire provisions. Several lawmakers have looked at the next disaster-aid legislation as a possible vehicle for dealing with wildfire.

Merkley, who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has also been trying to pump more money into the Forest Service budget to work on forest restoration. But he expressed disappointment at a package drafted by the committee that he says is inadequate.

Anything that Congress does is likely to be just a start.

John Bailey, a professor at Oregon State University’s School of Forestry, said previous generations were wrong to think they could stamp out every wildfire with no consequences.

Bailey said it’s going to take more money, more use of controlled burns and many years to get on top of the problem. 

“Smoke in the air in the interior West,” he said, “is as much a reality as rain during the winter.”

CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. (AP) — The Pittsburgh Penguins will have to try to shake out of their early season funk without goaltender Matt Murray.

When it comes to planning a holiday spread, a salad is often an afterthought. Stately roasts, crowd-pleasing potatoes and sultry pies tend to grab the spotlight, and by the time we think, "Oh, yeah, we should probably have a salad,"…

When it comes to planning a holiday spread, a salad is often an afterthought. Stately roasts, crowd-pleasing potatoes and sultry pies tend to grab the spotlight, and by the time we think, "Oh, yeah, we should probably have a salad,"…

March 21, 1929 – Nov. 23, 2017

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — After almost two decades of work, the government has nearly finished removing radioactive wastes from a first group of underground storage tanks in eastern Washington.

Work began 19 years ago to remove radioactive sludge and salt cake from 16 underground tanks known collectively as the C Tank Farm. The wastes are left over from the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

The U.S. Department of Energy said last week that a contractor is in the final stages of removing waste from tank C-105, a 530,000-gallon capacity tank. That tank has stored radioactive wastes since 1947, and is a suspected leaker.

Hanford was established by the Manhattan Project during World War II and made most of the nation’s plutonium for nuclear weapons.

NEW YORK (AP) — Chobani, the company that helped kick-start the Greek yogurt craze, is shrinking those words on its label as it may expand beyond that food in an increasingly crowded yogurt market.

Farmworker shortages are a mounting concern for Western growers, but Agriculture Capital Management has resigned itself to insufficient labor.

The number of skilled farmworkers is likely to continue dwindling, which is why the investment firm is taking a comprehensive approach to reduce its dependence on them.

“We recognize we’re not going to have the harvest labor in the future and we need to adapt,” said Tom Avinelis, the firm’s principal.

The first step involves planting firm blueberries that ripen uniformly and easily detach from their stem, decreasing damage from machine-harvesting.

Those plants are then carefully pruned to encourage strong canes and upright growth, which also eases mechanical harvesting.

Harvesting machines — which commonly shake bushes to knock off blueberries — are being perfected to avoid losing and injuring the fruit.

Manufacturers are also experimenting with gentler harvest techniques, such as dislodging the berries with blasts of air.

Finally, computerized sorting machines equipped with advanced infrared optics detect bruised or defective fruit, diverting it for processing while the highest-quality blueberries are packed for the fresh market.

“It’s all about systems management to baby that fruit any way we can,” said Avinelis.

Since 2014, the investment firm has bought roughly 4,000 acres of farmland in Oregon and 5,000 acres in California that it’s dedicating to high-value crops.

Most recently, the firm converted a Christmas tree seedling facility near Silverton, Ore., into a fresh blueberry packing plant, with plans to double the building’s footprint by next spring.

Apart from decreasing its reliance on labor, Agriculture Capital Management’s mechanically-oriented approach to blueberry farming addresses another problem: Competition from foreign producers who pay lower wages.

Harvesting blueberries by hand for the fresh market can cost from 65 cents to $1.20 per pound, depending on the season, Avinelis said. To compare, machine-harvesting blueberries delicately enough for this higher-value market costs from 17 cents to 30 cents per pound.

Blueberries grown on Agriculture Capital Management’s own farmland will supply roughly half the capacity of its Silver Mountain Packing Co., so the company expects to help other growers adopt its cultivation practices.

“We see this as investing in the entire blueberry industry,” Avinelis said.

Of the investment firm’s farmland in Oregon, about 1,400 acres are planted to blueberries and the remainder are devoted to hazelnuts.

“We feel both these industries have tremendous potential,” he said.

For now, Agriculture Capital Management is selling its hazelnuts to other packers. Eventually, it will probably build its own facility in line with the firm’s vertically-integrated philosophy, Avinelis said.

There’s a great opportunity to sell more hazelnut kernels domestically. Consumers in the U.S. eat only one-fourth as many hazelnuts per capita as their counterparts in Europe, he said.

The industry should also become less dependent on Chinese consumption of in-shell hazelnuts, he said. “We’ve got to diversify our market.”

In addition to its facility in Oregon, the investment firm owns three citrus packing plants in California, one of which also has the ability to pack peaches, plums, nectarines and pomegranates.

While Agriculture Capital Management is a relatively new venture, Avinelis has more than three decades of experience in the farm industry.

His family’s company, Agricare, also manages extensive farmland in Oregon and California.

Seeing the need to build efficiency through vertical integration — but reluctant to take on massive debt — Avinelis formed Agriculture Capital Management with partners from the finance industry.

Institutional investors contributed an undisclosed sum to several funds upon which Agriculture Capital Management has drawn upon to buy farmland and facilities.

Working with investors is different than borrowing money from banks, as they’re more intensely interested in monitoring details and “key performance indicators,” Avinelis said.

“I think it’s made us better investors in the industry. It forces you to do a better job of financial planning analysis,” he said. “You look at it really analytically.”

WESTON, Ore. — Finding enough workers is getting to be more of a challenge for Michael Lesko at Smith Frozen Foods.

The company, which processes and packages frozen vegetables near Weston, is capable of storing more than 130 million pounds of product on site, including corn, lima beans, onions and carrots. Harvest season typically begins around June 1 and runs through the end of November, when the demand for seasonal labor is at its strongest.

Lesko, director of human resources for Smith Frozen Foods, said the plant has roughly 100 regular employees and typically hires another 200 seasonal workers through harvest. Those positions, however, are becoming more difficult to fill, he said, which has left the plant short up to 10 workers on any given shift over the past year.

“It’s been difficult keeping people, by all means,” Lesko said. “We were looking for people to start in June and work through November, but that’s becoming more and more rare.”

Labor woes are not unique to Smith Frozen Foods — it is an issue that has affected all corners of the agricultural and manufacturing industries, from the farm to the factory. Earlier this year, the Capital Press documented workforce worries from cherry growers in Chelan, Washington, all the way down to Linden, California, while the Oregonian/OregonLive also spoke to orchards in The Dalles and vineyards in the Willamette Valley.

Locally, both AgriNorthwest and Threemile Canyon Farms declined to speak specifically about experiences at their own operations, though Matthew Vickery, land and government affairs director for AgriNorthwest, did acknowledge that labor shortage “is a growing problem for everyone in agriculture.”

Neither the Oregon Department of Agriculture or Department of Labor and Industries keep statistics on the farm labor. Dallas Fridley, region economist for the Columbia River Gorge and Columbia Basin, provided information from the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey, which was last updated in 2013-14.

According to that report, approximately two-thirds of hired farmworkers were born in Mexico, and 80 percent of all farmworkers were Hispanic. Just more than half of farmworkers, or 53 percent, had work authorization, and the vast majority, or 84 percent, were settled in the country.

The reason for the shortage is difficult to prove, Lesko said. Some point to an improved economy in Mexico, while others may finger the country’s failure to adopt a comprehensive immigration policy. For his part, Lesko said he does not see anything happening on a macro-political scale as having much effect on labor at Smith Frozen Foods.

“It is all speculative,” he said. “There’s no one reason that I think it’s a problem.”

In fact, Lesko said the problem has only worsened over the last decade. Smith Frozen Foods has taken a number of steps to fill shifts, such as billboards, radio ads, hiring temporary workers from local staffing agencies and providing bonuses to workers who agree to stay through the end of the season.

“We’re just short,” Lesko said. “We’re constantly looking.”

Labor shortage was a major undertone at the Future Farm Expo earlier this year in Pendleton, where growers met with leaders in cutting-edge technology and automation for agriculture. The three-day showcase featured a variety of trials using equipment such as drones, smartphone apps and even virtual reality.

Lesko said Smith Frozen Foods is automating where it can, though a lot of that tech may not be available or affordable for the plant.

“I don’t see any solution (to labor shortage) on the horizon,” he said.

Fortunately, Lesko said the issue did not affect the size or quality of this year’s harvest at Smith Frozen Foods. Crews have not been forced to bypass fields, and the company has managed to keep up with its orders.

“We haven’t been bypassing fields based on the fact that we can’t harvest the product or process the product,” he said. “We typically try to harvest to what we think our orders are. That hasn’t changed.”

Growers John and Debbie Volle and John Myers have been very pleased with their respective hay seasons this year.

Their efforts and their hay crops were recognized and rewarded Nov. 18 at the 23rd annual Oregon Hay & Forage Association’s Hay King Contest that was held in Lakeview, Ore.

The Volles of Madras, Ore., claimed Hay King honors in the Grass category and then earned Best of Show with their third cutting orchard grass.

Myers of Echo, Ore., had the top entries in Retail Alfalfa, Grass/Legume and Cereal Hay. Gary McManus of Lakeview was also a winner, earning the Hay King label in the Dairy Alfalfa category.

There were 28 hay entries from 13 Oregon growers in this year’s contest. That’s up from last year when there were 19 entries.

Scott Pierson, vice president of the state association and a hay grower in the Silver Lake, Ore., area, and Glenn Shewmaker, an extension forage specialist at the University of Idaho, were the judges.

“I thought the hay quality, especially the grass quality, was really high this year,” Pierson said. “The hay quality has improved every year at the contest.

“It was a really close race in picking the winners,” he explained. “It came down to the color being a factor, and the presence of dust. I just love combining the sensory analysis, putting your hands on it and smelling it, along with the chemical testing.”

John Volle credited “a completely different fertilizer program” and an adjusted pH (a measurement of how acidic water is) in the irrigation water for his hay that received high marks. He said he uses only about half the nitrogen compared to the amount most other growers put on their fields. He said changing the pH resulted in two tons an acre more for an overall increase of 250 tons over the 2016 yield.

All of the Volles’ hay is certified noxious weed seed free.

“I sort of knew it would test well,” Volle said of the bale he entered in the contest. “We’re glad with the results. Both of us work really hard to do the best we can. We have happy customers. They are glad to see we’re doing a good job.”

Myers said having three Hay Kings in the contest was “pretty special.” He said he was confident in his entries, “but you never know until the judges start tearing your hay apart.”

Myers said one key to growing premium hay is good ground preparation, including testing the soil. The hay grower explained that his fields are laser leveled “so our flood irrigation is predictable and repeatable.”

“It’s not a guessing game,” Myers said of irrigating from Butter Creek. “We use our resources extremely well. We waste nothing. Laser leveling helps us preserve and reuse our water resources. We can adjust the flow into our system so we’re not overflowing and wasting many cubic feet of water. Water does not leave our place.”

He added that he is constantly monitoring the humidity and the temperature during the hay season. He said the premium window to bale hay this past summer was from 1 to 4 in the morning. He would swath only what he could then bale that night.

“You can’t sleep when you need to be making bales,” he said. “If you get too many acres down and can’t get it baled that day, then you’re just making sticks and powder.”

Like Volle, Myers said having Hay King winners confirms to customers that they are purchasing the best of hay.

“It assures customers that they are getting as good a product as I can provide,” Myers said.

Pierson said the annual Hay King Contest provides the participants with feedback on how to improve their hay growing operations.

“It drives everybody to be a better hay grower,” he said.

The Lake County Hay & Forage Association was the host of this year’s hay conference and contest. Dan Roberts, that association’s president, thanked the businesses and individuals who donated contest and raffle prizes.

Next year’s hay conference and contest will be held in the Albany/Corvallis area during the third week of November and will be a joint session with the Oregon Forage & Grassland Council.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A candidate to lead an agency that oversees public lands totaling one-eighth of the U.S. says environmentalists mischaracterize her as an advocate of signing those landscapes over to state and local governments and private interests when in fact she’s got no opinion on the issue.

Cheyenne attorney Karen Budd-Falen and others drew dozens of protesters when she addressed a recent land-use forum in western Montana. The protesters spoke out against the small but growing movement in the West to wrest control of public lands from federal agencies.

A land-transfer advocate invited Budd-Falen to the Ravalli County event Nov. 18 but her legal work has nothing to do with the topic, Budd-Falen said.

“It’s not an issue that I was dealing with. But people just assumed that,” Budd-Falen told The Associated Press in an interview Monday.

Budd-Falen apparently is or has been among those under consideration to direct the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the Interior Department agency that oversees some 386,000 square miles of mostly arid land concentrated in a dozen Western states.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke interviewed her for the job in March, she said.

Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift declined to say whether Budd-Falen was still a candidate or when somebody might be nominated for the director job, which has been vacant since January. Still, many environmentalists have been calling Budd-Falen too extreme.

Her legal advocacy has laid the groundwork for those who now want the federal government to relinquish public land, said Greg Zimmerman, deputy director of the Denver-based environmental group Center for Western Priorities.

“She may say she has no opinion on it but her career has been spent propping up that ideology,” Zimmerman said Tuesday.

Budd-Falen and her husband, Frank Falen, have a firm with four other attorneys in a house in downtown Cheyenne. The practice focuses largely on ranchers and property rights — anything from easements to oil and gas leases and how to comply with government regulations.

“I do a lot of just simply regulation-explaining to private industries. There are tons of regulations out there. They are hard to comply with. And it’s not that a lot of my clients don’t want to comply. It’s how do you fill out this massive amount of paperwork to put in a water tank?”

Not water tanks but Budd-Falen’s work helping local officials write land-use plans have made her a lightning-rod candidate to lead the BLM. The plans spell out local priorities for the BLM, U.S. Forest Service and other government agencies to keep in mind in counties where federal land covers a lot of ground — perhaps half or more of the total land area.

A recently approved Crook County, Oregon, land-use plan that Budd-Falen consulted on, for example, calls for the federal government to recognize the economic importance of logging, ranching, farming and mining.

Environmentalists and sportsmen’s groups worry the plans are a slippery slope toward federal land takeovers, especially as President Donald Trump’s Interior Department looks to reduce the size of national monuments in Utah and perhaps elsewhere.

Local land-use plans can’t legally assert such control, Budd-Falen said.

“It’s not veto power. The local government can’t mandate that you cut a tree here or you graze cows there. You can’t do that. But the local government can say here’s this overall national policy, this is how it’s going to impact my people in my county,” Budd-Falen said.

Budd-Falen declined to “even venture a guess” whether wholesale transfers of federal land would help local communities, adding it’s also not her area of legal expertise.

Budd-Falen’s clients in the 1990s included Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher on trial for a 2014 confrontation with federal officials over grazing fees. Budd-Falen grew up on a ranch in western Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin — an area known for world-class trout fishing and some of the nation’s biggest gas fields — and said she went to law school at the University of Wyoming knowing she would represent ranchers.

Today, she said, too many government officials have a say in small-scale decisions affecting federal grazing allotments they’ve never seen in person.

Her father used to invite local BLM and Forest Service officials over when they were considering minor, local changes. They’d drink coffee, look at maps and argue but make decisions quickly, she recalled.

“I think that’s a better way to manage than we’re going to have a million rules from Washington that may or may not apply, and so we’re going to give all these people who have all these political ideas a say,” Budd-Falen said.

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BOISE — Snowpack levels in southwestern Idaho and Eastern Oregon basins are well above normal, a good sign for the thousands of farmers in the region that depend on those basins to provide the water they need for their crops.

The amount of water carried over in area reservoirs after the 2017 water year that will be available for irrigators in 2018 is also significantly higher than normal.

“We’re looking good so far. If it continues, we’re going to have a fairly good year” in 2018, said Tim Page, manager of the Boise Project Board of Control, which provides water to 167,000 acres and five irrigation districts in southwestern Idaho.

In the Boise River basin, snowpack levels were 160 percent of normal as of Nov. 21 and the Boise River system’s reservoirs had 250,000 acre-feet of carryover water, well above normal.

As of this week, there was enough water in the system to equal about 50 percent of the project’s total water right, up from the 36 percent that is typical for this time of year, Page said.

“Things can change quickly but so far it’s looking pretty good,” he said.

Snowpack in the Payette River basin is 207 percent of normal and it’s 188 percent of normal in the Weiser River basin and 191 percent of normal in th Owyhee River basin.

Ron Abramovich, a regional water supply specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, said some snow measuring sites have 20-30 percent of what their typical April 1 peak is.

“Snowpack is off to a good start,” he said.

The Owyhee Reservoir, which provides irrigation water to 118,000 acres in Eastern Oregon and part of Idaho, has 434,000 acre-feet of carryover water, which equals 61 percent of the reservoir’s capacity.

That’s up significantly from 200,000 acre-feet at this time last year and well above the typical 300,000 acre-feet for this time of year, said Owyhee Irrigation District Manager Jay Chamberlin.

Farmers who get their water from the Owyhee Reservoir suffered through several years of drought conditions and reduced water supplies until last year and 2018 is shaping up to be another good year, Chamberlin said.

The excellent start to the water year means the district may have to release water for flood control early next year, “but that’s a good problem to have,” he said. “I’ll take that kind of problem any day over what we had the past several years.”

The Payette River system’s reservoirs have about 450,000 acre-feet of carryover water, which is 71 percent of full capacity and well above the 325,000 acre-feet that could typically be expected this time of year, said watermaster Ron Shurtleff.

“We’re getting a great start and carryover is excellent,” he said. “The Payette River basin could weather a pretty modest winter and still come out fine” for 2018.

Five people, including former state ag Director Katy Coba, received the 2017 Friends of Nurseries awards from the Oregon Association of Nurseries.

The association gives the annual awards to state or federal elected officials or to key government agency personnel who are “solution-oriented, who consider the nursery and greenhouse point of view and who act as a partner, regardless of party affiliation,” executive director Jeff Stone said in a prepared statement.

The association represents more than 800 nursery growers, retailers, suppliers and landscapers. Ornamental horticulture is one of the state’s biggest agricultural sectors, with more than $900 million in annual sales. Almost 75 percent of the industry’s production is shipped out of state.

Friends of Nurseries awards this year went to:

• Coba, the first woman and the longest-serving director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture. She headed ODA from 2003 to 2016, when Gov. Kate Brown appointed her director of the Oregon Department of Administrative Services. Stone called Coba a “key ally” of the nursery industry who worked to maintain domestic and international market access.

• State senators Tim Knopp, R-Bend, and Kathleen Taylor, D-Portland. They served on the Senate Committee on Workforce as it considered labor rules that would affect nursery and greenhouse businesses. Because they listened carefully, the final version of legislation was not harmful to the industry, Stone said.

• State Rep. Ken Helm, D-Beaverton, who Stone described as a “quick study” on issues important to the industry, including trade, water, pesticides and pollinators. Among other assignments, Helm serves on the Natural Resources Subcommittee of the Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee, which during the 2017 session fully funded state nursery programs provided by the Oregon Department of Agriculture and OSU Extension.

• U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, who secured funding in Congress for the final phase of a “smart sprayer” research project that could prove to be “game changing technology” for the industry, Stone said. He also worked to get matching federal grants for research on sudden oak death. Stone said Merkley is always accessible to the industry and a proven partner.

• The nursery association also announced a “New Legislator of the Year” award, presented to state Rep. Karin Power, D-Milwaukie. She serves on the Natural Resources Subcommittee of Ways and Means, which funds agricultural programs, and is vice chair of the House Committee on Energy and Environment, where water and environmental bills are considered. Stone said Power demonstrated a “keen mind” and deserved recognition as a freshman legislator with a balanced perspective. He added Power had shown herself to be “solution oriented and open to the nursery perspective.”

Oregon Natural Resources Report
Growing cranberries in Oregon
Oregon Natural Resources Report
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https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-the-cranberries-on-your-thanksgiving-table-might-be-more-trouble-than-theyre-worth-for-local-growers

Growing cranberries in Oregon  Oregon Natural Resources Report

Natural Resource Report  Oregon Natural Resources Report

Oregon cranberry industry grows with the times. Oregon Department of Agriculture. Growing cranberries on Oregon's south coast is a challenge– not because it ...

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — Maria Modi's journey from South Sudan to a new life in Fargo included a stop at a refugee camp in Cairo. She and her seven siblings know what it is like to be hungry.

With markets continuing to grow by double-digit percentages every year, Scott Lukas sees no end in sight to the rising demand for organic food.

“It is definitely growing significantly,” said Lukas, horticulturist for Oregon State University at the Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center. “Just the general trend in organic produce is very quickly and steadily rising.”

While Lukas cannot explain what exactly is driving that momentum — a lot of it boils down to public perception, he said — the result is an opportunity for farmers to add organic production across the Columbia Basin and fetch premium prices for their crop.

For the first time, growers will have a chance to learn more about how to manage organic acres during the 44th annual Hermiston Farm Fair, with a series of presentations scheduled for 1-5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 30. The session is one of several new additions to this year’s schedule, along with a pollinator workshop, vegetable session and precision irrigation seminar.

Lukas will moderate the organic session, featuring talks on how to manage fertilizer, cover crops and options for local markets. OSU will also conduct a needs assessment to gauge what kind of support growers would like to see from the university.

“I have heard growers expressing interest in organics,” Lukas said. “If there are good research-based techniques for them, they can do it in an economically viable way.”

According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, Oregon had 461 organic farms in 2016 spanning 105,000 acres of cropland. Of that total 121 farms grew organic vegetables racking up $105 million in sales.

Oregon ranks fourth in the country in organic production, behind only California, Washington and Pennsylvania. Nationwide, organic crops earned a whopping $7.6 billion in sales, and Lukas said demand is growing around 10-12 percent per year.

Getting into organic farming, however, is no simple task. It requires extensive documentation to receive certification, and farmers may face a steep learning curve in adopting specific approved practices.

Rules and regulations for organic agriculture are adopted by the National Organic Program, while certification is done through the Oregon Department of Agriculture or groups such as Oregon Tilth. Things like conventional pesticides, synthetic fertilizer and antibiotics are not allowed on organic farms, and farmers need to show that they have not used any unapproved substances for at least three years before they can be certified.

“There’s a lot of farming skill that goes into it,” Lukas said. “That’s what we’re offering.”

The Columbia Basin is a great place for organic farming, Lukas said, because the wide open spaces and dry climate allows growers to control their environments much more easily than other areas. He said organic crops are on the rise locally, including at some of the region’s larger operations.

Threemile Canyon Farms in Morrow County has seen a bump in organic production from 7,500 acres to 8,800 acres this year, and general manager Marty Myers said they are planning for 12,000 next spring. That includes organic potatoes, carrots, onions, sweet corn, peas and blueberries.

“Our customer base is asking for it, and we’ve accommodated that,” Myers said.

The farm also grows organic feed crops to sell to organic dairy operations, including Threemile Canyon’s own Cold Springs Dairy near Hermiston.

Price premiums differ by commodity, but Myers said they generally range from 1.25 to 2 percent greater than conventional crops. But organic farming doesn’t come without its challenges. Myers said yields may be just 65-75 percent of conventional farms, and requires extensive labor to control weeds without chemicals.

“It’s not the answer to low commodity prices, let’s put it that way,” Myers said. “If you are committed, and you have the customer base to support it, you’ll probably do OK. If you are just chasing money, it’s probably not the right thing to do.”

For those eager to get into the business, Lukas said HAREC is dedicated to providing the best management practices for them to be successful.

“As production changes, HAREC will change with it to support the area,” Lukas said.