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This year’s Hay Kings tell how they won
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.
Candidate to lead US land agency: No advocate of transfers
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.
We Went Through All The Cyber Monday Deals, And Here Are The Ones You Should Care About
Water year off to a good start in Eastern Oregon, SW Idaho
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.
Nursery association honors government, agency backers
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.”
Growing cranberries in Oregon - Oregon Natural Resources Report
Oregon Natural Resources Report
Oregon Natural Resources Report
Oregon cranberries are often blended with berries from other states to make the juice, but that market alone does not bring the state's growers a competitive price or differentiation. Finding untapped markets with value-added cranberry products appears ...
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 ...
Refugees thank adoptive North Dakota city by feeding hungry
Rising demand for organics prompts OSU research
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.
Wolves’ return to Oregon brings conflict and opportunity
PORTLAND (AP) — Wolves were once so plentiful in the abundant forests that would become Oregon that the earliest settlers gathered from far and wide to discuss how to kill them.
Those “wolf meetings” in the 1840s, spawned by a common interest, eventually led to the formation of the Oregon territory, the precursor for statehood in 1859.
Today, Oregon’s statehood is secure, but the future of its wolf population once more hangs in the balance. Wolves have returned after decades, and this time, humans are having a much more contentious discussion about what to do with them.
It’s a political debate playing out against the backdrop of a rapidly growing wolf population, a jump in wolf poaching and demands from ranchers and hunters who say the predators are decimating herds and spooking big game.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission will vote in January on whether to revise the state’s wolf management plan, which could eventually open the door for a wolf hunt for the first time since bounty hunting wiped out wolves in the state 70 years ago. Idaho, which has a much larger population of the animals, allows wolf hunting.
Conservationists worry the plan will erode recent progress, particularly given a rash of unsolved poaching cases and an uptick in state-sanctioned wolf killings in response to wolf attacks on livestock. They are adamantly opposed to wolf hunting and say the population is a long way from supporting it.
The species lost its endangered status under Oregon law two years ago — when the population hit 81 wolves — and is no longer federally protected in the eastern third of the state. Wolves, which were wiped out in the continental U.S. in all but a slice of Minnesota, also are rebounding in other Western states, prompting similar debates about human co-existence.
Oregon wildlife officials have killed or authorized the killing of 14 wolves since 2009, including 10 in the past two years, and 12 more have been poached, including eight since 2015, according to state wildlife officials.
“When we had zero wolves 10 years ago, and now when we have 112 wolves, that’s certainly a success story — but we’re not done,” said Rob Klavins, a field representative with Oregon Wild, a conservation organization. “Can you imagine if there were only 81 known elk in the state of Oregon, or if there were 81 salmon? We wouldn’t think of delisting them.”
Early explorers noted wolves were “exceedingly numerous” in what would become Oregon, and the so-called wolf meetings that led to the region’s first civic government established a bounty for wolves in 1843 that paid $3 per hide. The state later took over the bounty and offered $20 per wolf in 1913 — the equivalent of nearly $500 today.
The last bounty payment was recorded in 1947, and the wolf vanished from Oregon for decades.
In the mid-1990s, wolves were reintroduced to central Idaho, and in 1999, a lone wolf wandered into northeastern Oregon. It was trapped and returned to Idaho.
Two more were found dead in Oregon in 2000. But the first definitive proof wolves had returned to the state came in 2007, when a wolf was found shot to death. The following year, a wolf nicknamed Sophie by conservationists gave birth to the first litter of pups born in Oregon in decades.
Last year, state biologists counted 112 wolves in the northeastern and southwestern corners of the state — and they believe that is an undercount.
Wolf conflicts with ranchers have risen and, for the first time, an elk hunter this month reported killing a wolf in self-defense.
That wolf was previously unknown to biologists, and the case has become a flashpoint in the fight over wolves. A local prosecutor declined to press charges, prompting 18 conservation groups to petition Gov. Kate Brown to intervene without success.
Ranchers who run cattle and sheep in northeastern Oregon also believe there are more wolves than officially documented - and say they are paying the price.
Wallowa County rancher Todd Nash, head of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association’s wolf committee, estimates he’s lost $50,000 in dead calves and in herds that are underweight from being too spooked to graze properly.
The state requires ranchers to prove wolves have killed two animals or killed one and attempted to kill three others before it will consider killing a wolf to protect livestock. The ranchers also must show they have tried other deterrents, such as special fencing and flashing lights.
The state killed four wolves this summer and authorized a rancher to kill one more, but Nash said it’s almost impossible to prove most cases because the wolves eat the carcasses or drag them away. Ranchers in his area are fed up because the bulk of Oregon’s wolves live in just a few remote counties where he says abundant cattle make easy prey.
Killing a few wolves “does nothing but infuriate the conservation folks, and it doesn’t serve to placate the ranchers because they know it’s not going to do any good,” Nash said.
Yet the fact that Oregonians are debating when and how to kill wolves at all is incredible given the predators didn’t exist here a decade ago, said Derek Broman, carnivore coordinator with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife.
As the point person on the upcoming wolf management plan, he hears from dozens of competing interests on what to do with wolves.
“It wasn’t all that long ago that people were worried about wolves blinking out and there just being a handful of them,” Broman said.
“Wolves are so contentious, and there’s a lot of baggage that comes with them — but there’s also a lot of interest, which is nice.”
Housing projects on Oregon farmland hinge on ‘vested rights’
The fate of two housing subdivisions planned in farm zones in Oregon’s Yamhill County depends on the landowners’ “vested rights” in the unfinished projects.
The Oregon Court of Appeals was recently asked to overturn the county’s approval of the two projects, which involve building 50 homes on nearly 80 acres.
More than a decade after Oregonians voted on significant changes to state land use laws, the legal repercussions continue to be sorted out on the ground.
In 2004, voters approved Measure 37, which required governments to compensate landowners for zoning restrictions imposed after they bought their properties, or to waive those regulations.
Due to the tremendous financial cost of providing compensation, counties predominantly granted waivers to landowners, raising concerns about major conversions of farmland to housing.
The controversy led voters to approve Measure 49 in 2007, which allowed landowners with valid Measure 37 waivers to have three to 10 homes on their property, depending on a variety of conditions.
Those who wanted to develop larger housing subdivisions could only proceed if they were far enough along with the projects to have “vested rights” to complete them.
In the two Yamhill County cases, a state judge ruled that Ralph and Norma Johnson had vested rights to develop homes sites on about 40 acres and that Gordon Cook had vested rights to develop home sites on about 39 acres.
A central question in both cases is whether these landowners could sell the subdivided lots and have other people build the houses, rather than constructing the dwellings themselves.
Friends of Yamhill County, a conservation group, and other critics of the proposed housing developments argue that under the language of Measure 37, waivers of zoning restrictions were not transferable.
During oral arguments on Nov. 21 in Salem, Ore., opponents of the two projects argued that landowners are barred from selling undeveloped parcels, so the “vested rights” findings should be overturned by the Oregon Court of Appeals.
Despite legal uncertainties about Measure 37’s implications at the time, the landowners decided against building the homes themselves, said Ralph Bloemers, attorney for Friends of Yamhill County and other critics.
“They only pursued subdivision. That’s the bed they made for themselves and that has legal consequences,” Bloemers said. “In both cases, they took the risky approach of just selling lots.”
Attorneys for the landowners countered that they’d invested enough in the projects to qualify for vested rights, even if they didn’t plan to build the homes.
One of the criteria used to determine if landowners have proven to have “vested rights” is the amount of money they’d spent on development in comparison to a project’s total cost.
The Johnsons spent $1.2 million subdividing their land, which was found to be a substantial enough portion of the project’s total estimated cost of $15 million to establish vested rights, said Greg Hathaway, their attorney.
“They produced that expert testimony. The county accepted that and the court accepted that,” Hathaway said.
Legal precedents allow landowners who proceed in “good faith” to establish vested rights in a development if it’s interrupted by a change in law, even if the ultimate developer is a third party, said Chip Hudson, the attorney for Gordon Cook.
“They should be protected equitably from having that investment swept away when the law changes,” Hudson said.
Judge: No ‘blanket immunity’ for aspiring pot growers facing lawsuit
Oregon’s “right to farm” law doesn’t provide aspiring marijuana growers with “blanket immunity” from a lawsuit filed by grape-producing neighbors in Yamhill County, a judge has ruled.
Yamhill County Circuit Court Judge John Collins has denied a motion to dismiss a complaint against the marijuana operation planned by Steven and Mary Wagner, and their son Richard.
A nearby vineyard owner, Momtazi Family LLC, claimed the marijuana odors would damage wine grapes with “foul-smelling particles” and sought an injunction against cultivation of the psychoactive crop.
The lawsuit was joined by Harihari and Parvathy Mahesh, neighbors who haven’t yet planted a vineyard but plan to do so.
Last month, the Wagners asked the judge to throw out the lawsuit because there was no evidence that marijuana odors would cross property lines and because the planned marijuana operation wasn’t yet definite.
“You don’t get to file a lawsuit with no facts, sheer conjecture, pure speculation about what will happen,” said Allison Bizzano, their attorney, during oral arguments on Oct. 11 in McMinnville, Ore.
Richard Brown, attorney for the plaintiffs, countered that it’s common to enjoin activities that haven’t yet occurred but that would cause damage.
“If the court allows them to develop the property first, it’s the equivalent of letting them pull the trigger,” Brown said.
Judge Collins sided with the plaintiffs on this issue, ruling that an injunctions can be a preventative remedy meant to “stay the lawless hand before it strikes the blow,” based on a legal precedent from 1914.
“While this language from an old case might be seen as somewhat arcane today, the principle remains: A party may seek injunctive relief not just to halt an ongoing harm, but also to head off that harm if the harm can reasonably be predicted to occur in the reasonably near future,” he said.
The judge also disagreed with the defendants that the case is barred by the “right to farm” law, which prohibits nuisance and trespass lawsuits against common farming practices.
A provision from that law clarifies that it doesn’t protect against lawsuits alleging “damage to commercial agricultural products.”
“Plaintiffs’ vineyard and, more specifically, grapes, certainly fall within this term and plaintiff adequately alleges damage or potential damage to that product,” Collins said.
While the “right to farm” law does not provide blanket immunity against the lawsuit, it can still be raised as an “affirmative defense to be addressed at a later stage in the case,” he said.
Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani organise family Thanksgiving
Oregon cranberry growers don't let competitors bog them down - KTVZ
KTVZ
KTVZ
Oregon cranberries are often blended with berries from other states to make the juice, but that market alone does not bring the state's growers a competitive price or differentiation. Finding untapped markets with value-added cranberry products appears ...
and more »
Oregon cranberry growers don't let competitors bog them down - KTVZ
KTVZ
KTVZ
Oregon cranberries are often blended with berries from other states to make the juice, but that market alone does not bring the state's growers a competitive price or differentiation. Finding untapped markets with value-added cranberry products appears ...
and more »
