Jake Gibbs, a forester with more than 20 years of experience, has been chosen as the next president and CEO of Starker Forests, the venerable family timber company based in Corvallis, Ore.

Gibbs began work May 22 and will take over as president and CEO on July 15, when the company’s board of directors meets. Gibbs comes to Starker from another family business, Lone Rock Timber Management in Roseburg, Ore., which was involved in a controversial proposal to purchase the Elliott State Forest.

Gibbs began as a tree planter, gained silviculture and logging experience and in 2016 was listed as Lone Rock’s external affairs director.

In a message to Starker employees, Gibbs said he is “excited and humbled” to be selected to lead the company. “I’m not an OSU grad, but don’t hold that against me,” he said. Starker Forests is heavily involved in community affairs and is a major supporter of Oregon State University’s forestry program, including the annual Starker Lecture series.

Gibbs replaces Bond Starker, who announced his retirement pending the selection of a replacement. The company was founded by his grandfather, T.J. Starker, who taught forestry at OSU and purchased timberland in the area.

Oregon wheat farmers, like their counterparts in Washington and Idaho, are using additional fungicide treatments to stave off stripe rust this year.

Christina Hagerty, a plant pathologist with Oregon State University’s Columbia Basin Agricultural Research Center near Pendleton, said a heavier than normal snowfall and extended periods of cold and rain from fall to spring resulted in conditions ideal for diseases.

She said the season is shaping up to have higher than average stripe rust infections, and the weather conditions also were conducive to development of snow mold and wheat mosaic virus, which Oregon growers usually don’t see.

The situation is part of a conundrum faced by North Central and Eastern Oregon’s dryland wheat producers in particular. In Pendleton, 9.14 inches of rain has fallen since January — 3 inches more than normal, according to the National Weather Service.

Additional precipitation in a region that gets by on 8 to 20 inches of rain per year is always welcome, but can come with a cost.

“The conditions that lead to good, strong, healthy plants often overlap with conditions that lead to good, strong, healthy pathogens,” Hagerty said. A lack of moisture limits plant growth, but it also keeps pathogens in check, she said.

“I have heard folks with far more experience than me say that big rust years often have the highest yields,” she said.

Christopher Mundt, a plant pathology professor who supervised Hagerty’s Ph.D. work at OSU, said he sometimes jokes that stripe rust emergence is a good sign. “That means they’ve got enough water to have a good crop,” he said.

He said growers were able to see stripe rust developing last fall.

“Rust got established really early,” he said. “It’s a pathogen that has a very high reproductive rate, it goes through multiple generations of reproduction. Anytime it starts early, there’s more chance for buildup.”

Disease-resistant varieties developed by wheat breeders kept stripe rust at bay for years, but new strains have spread, Mundt said.

Snow mold is more of a problem in colder areas such as Eastern Washington, he said. It can form when snow falls on wet ground and keeps it at 32 degrees for extended periods. In Oregon it’s rare, and plants often can shake off and grow out of initial damage.

Dry, hot weather can shut down stripe rust, especially in wheat varieties bred to have high temperature, adult plant resistance. Otherwise, fungicide applications are effective, but costly, the researchers said.

“Growers are out there looking for it,” Mundt said. “They’ve picked up the lesson that you can’t let rust get away from them.”

“It’s very expensive,” Hagerty said. “These are decisions our producers don’t take lightly, and our research and extension personnel spend a lot of time thinking about and understanding that cost tradeoff.”

Reduced wheat prices “make those decisions that much more challenging,” she said.

Hagerty said producers who use fungicide properly, following label directions, shouldn’t have a problem.

“Our customers know they can count on high quality Oregon wheat to be on label,” she said. “As long as you’re on label, you’re good to go on that.”

RICHLAND, Wash. — Generic promotions for maraschino cherries will continue this year but the outlook beyond that is doubtful as fewer processors make maraschinos and don’t want to pay for common promotions.

Norm Gutzwiler, a Wenatchee grower and president of the National Cherry Growers & Industries Foundation, raised the subject at a Washington State Fruit Commission meeting in Richland on May 17.

There was talk of dissolving NCGIF in the fall and possibly replacing it with a new national cherry association patterned after the U.S. Apple Association. It would discuss issues of fresh and processed cherries and lobby the federal government when needed.

NCGIF was formed in 1948 to lobby against excessive processed cherry imports. It is funded by assessments on growers and donations from processors in Washington, Oregon, California and Michigan. It once had an 18-member board that included growers and all kinds of processors — brine (to make maraschinos), frozen, canned, glazed and juice. But in the last eight to 10 years only briners have been involved with growers and now the briners have dropped out, Gutzwiler said.

The board is now two growers each from Washington, Oregon, California and Michigan, he said.

Seneca Foods Corp. of Marion, N.Y., bought out Diana Fruit of Santa Clara, Calif., and Gray & Co. of Portland with its operations in Oregon and Michigan. A California company is buying out the briner portion of Oregon Cherry Growers in Salem, the largest briner in the Pacific Northwest.

“Some of the new processors haven’t been in the business before and haven’t been interested in joining any industry group. They don’t want to pay the promotions and that makes the future of NCGIF uncertain,” said Dana Branson, a Hood River, Ore., grower and NCGIF administrator until a year ago.

The foundation has averaged $300,000 annually for generic maraschino cherry promotions, depending on crop size, which is a small budget, she said.

Gutzwiler said that level of promotions will continue this year from 2016 assessments and donations but that NCGIF likely will dissolve this fall because growers don’t want to shoulder the whole cost. Assessments would end, he said. The budget once was a 50-50 split between growers and processors, he said.

SALEM — A proposed bill imposing new financial liability on biotech patent holders in Oregon would effectively banish genetically engineered crops from the state, opponents claim.

Under House Bill 2739, biotech patent holders would be liable for triple the economic damages caused by the unwanted presence of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

The bill is now before the House Rules Committee, which is considering an amendment clarifying when landowners can file lawsuits over GMOs on their property and the defenses available to patent holders, among other provisions.

The amendment would also ensure that patent holders cannot transfer liability to farmers who cultivate GMOs, though they could transfer liability to seed companies.

“It’s putting the onus on the producers and people who sell these crops rather that grow them,” said Amy van Saun, an attorney with the Center for Food Safety, a non-profit that supports HB 2739.

By making patent holders liable for unwanted GMO presence — either through cross-pollination or seed dispersal — the bill reduces potential conflicts among farmers, said Elise Higley, executive director of the Our Family Farms Coalition, which supports HB 2739.

“We don’t believe the GE farmer should be held responsible when they follow all the rules,” Higley said during a May 23 legislative hearing.

Biotech crops have “tracer genes” to identify patent holders, eliminating confusion about the source of an unwanted GMO, she said. “There’s no arguing about it. It’s just black and white science.”

Critics of HB 2739 believe the underlying goal of the proposal is to stop production of GMOs in Oregon.

For developers of genetically engineered crops, the risk of lawsuits would likely outweigh the benefits of licensing biotech traits to growers in the state, opponents say.

“If this bill passes, those seed companies may stop selling to Oregon completely,” said Shelly Boshart-Davis, whose family plants genetically engineered alfalfa between rows of hazelnut trees.

Likewise, Oregon State University breeders would be reluctant to use new gene editing techniques due to the financial risks of licensing the resulting crop varieties, said Dan Arp, dean of OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

“As the patent holder, we would be liable for the judgment,” Arp said.

The bill was subject to sharp questioning by several Republican lawmakers, but the committee’s chair, Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland, ended the hearing without any remarks about HB 2739’s future, such as a possible work session.

In April, the House Judiciary Committee moved the bill without recommendation to the House Rules Committee, where it’s not subject to the same legislative deadlines as in other committees.