Lorane, Ore. — Christina del Campo said she has two babies: her two-year-old son, Quincy, and her farm, Oaksong Farm. The one-acre farm was established last year in the spring, and del Campo said she’s enjoyed the challenge of raising her son with the farm.

Already, he knows the names of the crops and other items around the farm, and doesn’t understand why his friends don’t have food in their backyard, del Campo said.

“I really like when Quincy goes out and picks carrots in the morning, is munching on cucumbers or obsessed with tomatoes,” she said. “He’ll eat basil. What kid does that? He’s a huge part of why I wanted a farm.”

Oaksong Farm is certified organic because del Campo’s background was environmental studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz, where she worked on the college’s organic farm. 

“I learned so much about conventional versus organic agriculture,” she said. “It’s what we’re putting in our bodies and giving to others. I often joke that I can understand why someone’s conventional. I’ve just learned to embrace the weeds.”

After her time at the university, del Campo went into the Peace Corps as a Natural Resource Management Volunteer and helped farmers in their fields. She interned at the Dawn Institute in Northern California, managed Morning Star Farm on Orcas Island, Wash., tended olives in Spain and planted coffee in Hawaii.

“There are probably three to four times a week that I think of something another farmer has told me,” she said.

Although the Spain and Hawaii experiences were interesting opportunities for her, del Campo said they weren’t relevant to what she wanted to do because she knew she wanted to farm in the Pacific Northwest.

Oaksong Farm produces predominately vegetables, flowers and herbs. Del Campo’s mother, who is retiring to work on the farm full-time, also creates a value-added aspect by making preserves and sourdough bread. The family owns turkeys, but at this point the meat is raised for the family members for themselves — excluding del Campo, as she’s vegetarian — but in the future could be expanded to sell to customers as well.

Del Campo sells her produce at Oaksong’s farmstand as well as at farmers’ markets. She sells the flowers to local wineries, Iris and Silvan Ridge.

One of the more rewarding aspects for del Campo has been meeting all the customers.

“If they try something new and like it, or when the people at the farmstead are locals and tell me I’m filling a need in the community,” she said. “They’ve said, ‘We’re grateful you’re here.’”

As a beginner farmer, del Campo said the first five years will be experimenting with which products grow and sell the best. One of the biggest challenges she faces is that underneath her soil is clay, and there is excess water that bogs down the plants; next fall she aims to replant the beds downhill to correct that.

For del Campo, having the experience of farming is an important skillset that she wants to instill in her son through the farm.

“It’s important to have real life skills,” she said. “If it’s the end of the world, can you survive? He’ll be able to say, ‘I can kill animals to eat and grow my own food.’ I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve always admired hands-on, practical skills.”

PORTLAND — Pear harvest is underway in all four growing regions of the Pacific Northwest, and Pear Bureau Northwest is forecasting a larger fresh crop than it did in June.

The new estimate is 20.2 million, 44-pound boxes, up from 18.9 million. If the new forecast holds it will be the fourth largest crop in history and the largest organic crop with organics making up 2 million boxes or 10 percent of the crop.

“After last year’s very small crop our growers are pleased to have a full crop of great quality pears to meet growing consumer demand,” said Kevin Moffitt, the Pear Bureau president in Portland.

“Retailers have a strong opportunity for pear category growth in the produce department this season and we are prepared to provide them with individual category analysis, consumer insights and effective promotions to drive pear sales,” Moffitt said.

Picking will continue through September in the Wenatchee, Yakima, Hood River and Medford districts.

The new estimate is for 9.9 million boxes of Green d’Anjou, 5.3 million boxes of Bartlett, 3.2 million boxes of Bosc, 1 million boxes of Red d’Anjou and other varieties rounding out the balance.

The Pear Bureau’s international promotions focus on Mexico, Central America, India, the Middle East and Asia.

To combat increased competition overseas, the bureau is initiating one- to two-month promotional agreements with key retailers to increase shelf space and improve space and location of USA pears in stores.

PORTLAND — An Oregon judge has sided with a controversial dairy’s remedies for violating a settlement deal over wastewater management.

Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Kelly Skye agreed on Aug. 30 to a proposal by Lost Valley Farm of Boardman, Ore., to increase storage space in its manure lagoons by recycling its wastewater.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture had requested that the facility be required to scrape manure from dairy barns rather than wash it away, which the agency argued would be accomplished more simply and quickly.

“We think it’s achievable on a short timeline,” said Nina Engländer, an attorney representing Oregon’s farm regulators.

Elizabeth Howard, the dairy’s attorney, argued that scraping barns would create manure piles with the potential for further water quality problems.

“There are a lot of opportunities there for incidental discharges,” she said. “We don’t want to be going backwards. We don’t want to be having more discharges.”

A week earlier, the judge found the dairy’s owner, Greg te Velde, in contempt of court for violating a judgment requiring the facility to maintain at least 75 acre feet of manure storage capacity at the site.

However, Skye did not agree to ODA’s request to sanction the dairy by halting all wastewater production, effectively putting it out of business.

Aside from allowing the dairy to recycle wastewater, the judge also agreed with its proposal to install multiple flow meters to measure wastewater production.

The dairy will also be required to install a weather station at the site, among other conditions.

The judge warned te Velde that the consequences would be harsher if the wastewater recycling doesn’t create enough storage in manure lagoons, results in leaks or causes other issues.

“If I allow it to do it your way, I’m probably going to be harder on you,” she said.

The dairy has until Oct. 5 to switch to recycling wastewater and to have a plan for installing flow meters.

It must also have at least 75 acre-feet of storage capacity in its lagoons by Nov. 6 or face the possibility of a reduction in its herd size.

“We can’t just allow this to go out of compliance all winter,” Skye said.

The ODA had wanted the dairy to stop producing all wastewater if it doesn’t live up to the remedies, since the agency is “at the end of its rope.”

“A big hammer has historically been necessary to get any movement,” said Englander.

However, the judge said she preferred to scale down the herd size so the dairy could demonstrate its methods are effective at improving wastewater management.

Lost Valley Farm has repeatedly been cited by ODA for spills and other violations of its “confined animal feeding operation” permit since it began operating in April 2017.

The agency fined the dairy more than $10,000 and sought a temporary restraining order to shut the facility down, resulting in the settlement deal over wastewater in March.

The ODA then sought a contempt of court order for te Velde, arguing he had willfully disregarded the agreement.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon State Police have suspended the law enforcement credentials of the Oregon Humane Society’s animal abuse officers, pending an investigation into allegations of mishandled evidence and improper investigative practices.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports a letter earlier this month from State Police to the society states the organization’s law enforcement officers are being investigated for alleged “mishandling and improper storage of evidence” and alleged “improper investigative techniques.” The details of the allegations weren’t immediately available.

The organization said in a statement Wednesday that its leaders “take concerns and complaints very seriously,” and they are “committed to conducting a thorough review of any complaint.”

The organization has employed two officers in past years funded by donations to the organization. A spokeswoman says only one officer is currently employed.

A new pair of wolves in the White River Unit south of Mount Hood has produced at least two new pups this year, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The pups were photographed Aug. 10 by a remote camera on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, marking the first time wolves have reproduced in Oregon’s northern Cascade Mountains since the species returned to the state in 2009.

Wolves living in the area west of highways 395, 78 and 95 are listed as a federally endangered species, and are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. ODFW removed wolves from the state endangered species list for Eastern Oregon in 2015.

Environmental groups celebrated the news Thursday as another step forward for wolves after they were extirpated from the state decades ago. Josh Laughlin, executive director of Cascadia Wildlands, said the development is also a “stark reminder that we need to ensure strong state and federal protections remain in place for recovering wolves so they can continue to re-occupy their historic territories across Oregon.”

By the end of 2017, Oregon had a minimum known population of 124 wolves, mostly concentrated in the northeast corner of the state.

Ranchers, who have been impacted by wolves preying on their livestock, will meet Thursday with conservationists to find common ground toward management practices as ODFW works to update its Wolf Conservation and Management Plan.

The meeting, scheduled for 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 3561 Klindt Drive in The Dalles, is open to the public. Deb Nudelman, a professional mediator with Kearns & West in Portland, will moderate the discussion.

ROSEBURG, Ore. — Peggy and Alton Clark felt very comfortable surrounded by dairy cows and calves at the 2018 Douglas County Fair in early August.

The dairy scene has been part of the couple’s life for many decades. They have been co-leaders of the Umpqua 4-H Dairy Club for 15 years and have been co-superintendents of the dairy division at the county fair since 1982.

Peggy Clark, 75, celebrated her 65th year in dairy and at the fair this year. As a 10-year-old member of the same club — Umpqua 4-H Dairy Club — that she now helps lead, Peggy showed Daisy, a Jersey heifer, at the 1953 fair. Alton Clark has been involved since the couple’s engagement following their 1961 graduation from Oakland High School.

“I think it was just the experience of 4-H that kept me coming back,” said Peggy who was born and raised in the Umpqua area 15 miles northwest of Roseburg. “We milked cows, my dad sold cream to Umpqua Dairy (in Roseburg) so dairy was an obvious choice for me as a project.

“I continued on with it because I enjoyed it so much as a 4-H member,” she added. “When I was too old for 4-H, I didn’t want to be done.”

Peggy said she remembers doing well with her dairy animals at fair during her teenage years. One year, her family brought 13 head — cows, calves and a yearling — to show at the fair.

“I remember being champion dairy showman,” she said.

Delmar Murphy, Peggy’s father, was both the dairy and sheep superintendent at the fair for many years. During Peggy’s college years at Oregon College of Education (now Western Oregon University) in Monmouth, she was home during the summer and helped her father with his superintendent duties at the fair.

Peggy graduated from OCE in 1964 and then taught for 34 years in the Sutherlin, Ore., School District. Alton was an insurance adjustor. The couple helped Murphy at the fair for years and became the dairy superintendent when he retired.

The Clarks live in the Umpqua area on a donation land claim that had been secured by earlier family members in 1851. They raise a few dairy animals that are available for kids to care for and to show or for kids who need a last-minute replacement to show because their own animal has come down with some issue.

“Kids learn a lot of responsibility when raising an animal,” Peggy said. “They learn how to handle themselves and their animal. They learn to make good decisions.

“They have to learn to keep records on the animals, track the lineage, keep receipts for feed, the income off calves sold and health records that include vaccinations, any diseases, dehorning…”

“Most of the kids are eager to learn,” Alton said. “They listen when it comes to learning how to take care of an animal.”

Through the years the Umpqua 4-H Dairy Club’s membership has ranged from seven to 16, drawing kids from all over central Douglas County. Peggy and Alton’s three children each had dairy projects during their youth and since then three grandchildren have had animals in the club. Grandson Nic Freeman is the only member of the family to be in the club this year.

The Clarks explained that a couple reasons why kids like dairy animals is because most of the animals don’t go to slaughter when sold and they’re easy to handle and train for show. For many years, decades ago, the 4-H dairy heifers were kept by families and were a milk source.

“It’s good to get kids involved in something and to keep them there,” Alton said. “4-H does that. A heifer project is a two-year project.”

The Clarks have gotten involved and stayed in 4-H themselves. They’ve been happy to welcome some second-generation family members to the dairy club and figure they may stay with it long enough to help lead some third generation members.

Rows, stands and bulbs looked great by most accounts at Onion Variety Day, pleasing the Oregon State University Malheur Experiment Station officials who hosted the decades-old event Aug. 28 south of Ontario.

Onions, with their shallow root systems and tendency to sulk if they don’t get just the right amount of water at the right time, can be tough to grow. Good weather and irrigating conditions this year benefited the region’s sizable onion crop — including the 50-plus varieties in the field trials at OSU-Malheur.

Planting was on time and in line with long-term averages in contrast to last year’s late, wet start following heavy snow. This year’s weather also was close to normal, except for May’s higher-than-average number of ideal growing-degree days with low and high temperatures from 50 to 86 degrees, respectively, said Erik Feibert, a research assistant. That made May ideal for onion plant growth.

Conditions stayed mostly average afterward, he said. July heat was considerable but not excessive, “so I think that really pushed things ahead.”

Onions have been maturing on time this year after being late to mature last year following the weather-related planting delays, Feibert said.

Two plantings of Vaquero onions near the Oregon-Idaho border will produce the second-highest total yield and bulb size ever, slightly behind results from 11 years ago, he said. Vaquero is a well-established “long-day” onion that matures toward the end of the season.

Seed companies enter onion varieties in trials at the experiment station, which has been doing the trials for more than 40 years.

Clint Shock, the station’s longtime director, said the research fields this year contain 56 full-season onion varieties plus about eight for transplant and several for early harvest.

Soil conditions were ideal this year, he said. Rain wasn’t sufficient to get onion stands well-established in some locations, but stands have looked good in drip-irrigated fields. Stands can be harder to establish at the experiment station due to its heavy soil that compacts easily, he said, but they look good this year.

Onion growers planning their production strategies generally are best served by looking at how varieties performed over three or four years, rather than focusing on how they look at a given time or compared to a year earlier, Shock said.

“Varieties vary in performance year-to-year,” he said.

Dave Whitwood of Caldwell-based seed producer Crookham Co. liked what he saw in rows of White Cloud onions — one of the earlier maturing long-day varieties — including their nice globe-like shape.

“The White Cloud has performed quite well, as have the whites in general,” he said.

Brent Wilcox attended from New Zealand, where his company, A.S. Wilcox & Sons, is based. Many varieties he saw don’t grow in the Southern Hemisphere.

“The crops look spectacular in terms of size and condition,” he said. He also liked the cultural practices and irrigation approaches he saw.

Onion harvest got underway in mid-August in southeastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho. Shock said it should conclude around the first week of October unless a wet September delays it. Yields have been excellent so far, he said.

Pests and diseases have been kept at bay for the most part, helped by warm conditions in May, and water supply and irrigating conditions have been good, various Onion Variety Day attendees said.

Online

http://www.cropinfo.net/

BEND, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon county is considering stricter marijuana rules that could reduce the amount of county land available for cultivation by more than 75 percent and expand buffer zones between pot grows and schools, national monuments and public land.

Deschutes County commissioners held a hearing Tuesday to get feedback on proposals that would change everything from marijuana production to retail in the rural parts of the Central Oregon county, The Bulletin reported Wednesday.

Residents in rural areas such as Tumalo and Alfalfa largely support the proposed changes because they feel the marijuana industry has drastically changed their community. Marijuana businesses, however, opposed the rules and say they were not adequately represented in the decision-making process.

“It’s so challenging to feel like you don’t have a voice,” Lindsey Pate, cofounder of the Deschutes County cannabis operation Glass House Grown, told the newspaper.

The county finalized its first round of rules on cannabis production in the fall of 2016, creating a regulatory framework in which growers are required to meet a series of restrictions before receiving county approval.

The commission always intended to revisit those rules to gauge how well they were working, and began exploring ways to fine-tune the regulations last fall.

The proposed rules would prohibit marijuana production and processing in parcels of the county’s multiuse agriculture zone, where lots tend to be smaller than those zoned exclusively for farm-use but larger than those zoned for rural residences.

They would also expand the required buffer between marijuana growing operations and schools, national monuments and public land from 1,000 feet to a half-mile and increase the number of places where a buffer would be required.

If approved as they are now, those changes would reduce the amount of land in the county available for marijuana production from nearly 209,000 acres to fewer than 50,000 acres, a reduction of more than 75 percent, Tanya Saltzman, associate planner for Deschutes County, said during the hearing.

The number of available tax lots would drop to 1,218, down from 5,402 under the current rules.

Applicants hoping to grow marijuana would also be required to provide a report on an odor-control system — submitted by an engineer — demonstrating the effectiveness of the system and would require the odor control method to be independently tested.

The rules also provided more restrictions on water use, requiring additional documentation about where water for a proposed grow is coming from. Local rules prohibit outdoor marijuana grows.

“The basic problem that farmers in Deschutes County have with this whole concept is that you’re wasting our precious farmland on something that doesn’t use the soil,” said Liz Dickson, a land use lawyer who has focused on cannabis over the last year and a half.

Still, members of the cannabis industry felt the restrictions punish legal recreational growers for sins committed by black market and medical growers.

“I think cracking down on the good actors is actually part of the problem, not part of the solution,” said Jennifer Clifton, founder of Bend-based Clifton Cannabis Law.

Cleaning out seven miles of ditches isn’t the most enjoyable task on John Scharf’s farm, but it’s not one that can be neglected without consequence.

Unless silt is removed from the ditches on a rolling basis, they’d eventually fill up with dirt. Even before then, the tile lines that drain his fields near Amity, Ore., would clog and water would “blow out” holes in the ground that are hazardous for machinery.

“We don’t do it any more than we have to because it’s expensive, but it’s part of farming,” Sharf said. “We do it annually any year we can afford it, because if you put it off, it gets worse.”

Scharf recently spoke at a legislative work group, which is looking at introducing a bill to streamline regulations for ditch cleaning in 2019.

The problem is that under Oregon law, Scharf and other growers are limited to removing 50 cubic yards of material from ditches in areas that have been designated wetlands.

In effect, that cap prevents Scharf from cleaning out all the silt that’s necessary, meaning the backlog of accumulated dirt keeps mounting.

“I don’t want to jeopardize my tile lines,” he said. “If the outlet is plugged, you’ve got a problem.”

While the Department of State Lands, which regulates wetlands, ostensibly allows for the maintenance of agricultural drainage ditches, many are considered “channelized streams” that fall under the agency’s jurisdiction, said Mary Anne Cooper, public policy counsel for the Oregon Farm Bureau.

If those channelized streams are judged to contain “essential salmonid habitat,” even removing 50 cubic yards a year requires a permit from DSL, she said.

In recent years, the Farm Bureau has noticed an uptick of enforcement activities by DSL over ditch maintenance — in one case, pulling blackberries was considered removing vegetation from a waterway, Cooper said.

The increase seems to mostly stem from complaints by neighbors or other state agencies, she said.

Farmers who want to remove more than 50 cubic yards while avoiding regulatory problems can apply for a “general permit” to work in a waterway from DSL, Cooper said. Even then, they’re currently limited to 100 cubic yards of material, which often “does not scratch the surface” of necessary maintenance.

Removing more than 100 cubic yards would require an “individual permit” from the agency, which involves notifying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and clearing steep regulatory hurdles, she said.

“An individual permit is an incredibly complicated process to go through,” Cooper said.

Scharf is conducting a “pilot project” to demonstrate to DSL that more than 100 cubic yards can safely be removed from ditches in the late summer or early fall, but the Farm Bureau hopes to obtain broader relief during next year’s legislative session.

Eric Metz, planning and policy manager for DSL, said the agency is mandated by law to protect the waters of the state, so it tries to avoid, minimize or mitigate work in waterways.

“When we roll it out by the letter, it’s very awkward” when applying permit requirements for ditch cleaning, he said during an Aug. 28 meeting of the legislative work group in Salem, Ore.

The agency feels it’s doing a good job following the letter of the law but it’s not aiming to interfere with farm operations, Metz said. “But we also know there are fish in those ditches, so there’s the dilemma.”

During the meeting, Cooper of the Farm Bureau pointed out that ditch maintenance never occurs in wet conditions and there are environmental benefits to the work.

Growers have been keeping ditches functional for about 100 years, preventing them from filling up, she said. “That habitat won’t exist if we don’t resolve these issues.”

The Forest Service proposed 137 miles of designated off-road trails for summer use. But conservation groups argued they would hurt wildlife and ruin popular hunting grounds. The Oregon Hunters Association was among the plaintiffs.

Bill Littlefield is the outgoing president of the Bend chapter of the Hunters Association and an off-road vehicle owner opposed to the trail system.

“I think the Forest Service can come back with a good plan but they just need a different plan than they proposed,” Littlefield said. “Where they tried to put it and the amount of ground that it covered and the amount of habitat that it impacted, was too large and sensitive of habitat.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Sullivan agreed. She ruled the Forest Service failed to explain how the proposed trail system would affect summer habitat for elk and gray wolf recovery. She also said the agency needed to address road density in a forest that already has hundreds of short OHV routes and illegal trails created by riders.

Sullivan’s preliminary ruling heads to a court in Portland for a final judgment.

More hot and dry weather is expected to hang around the Pacific Northwest, exacerbating drought conditions that have gripped the region.

As of Aug. 23, every corner of Oregon, Washington state and Idaho is experiencing some stage of drought, from “abnormally dry” to “extreme,” according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor.

The result is a summer filled with wildfires belching smoke that has impacted air quality for days at a time, and low stream flows prompting water regulators to curtail deliveries in some basins.

The worst conditions appear to be in western Oregon, which is reeling from a historic lack of rainfall in some areas. The National Weather Service reports the city of Salem had gone 78 straight days without any significant rain as of Wednesday, and will likely break the record of 79 consecutive days set in 1967. Other parts of the region did get a few light showers last weekend and Monday.

Overall, Oregon precipitation is averaging 86 percent of normal, while stream flows are averaging less than 50 percent of normal — ranging from 30 percent in the John Day Basin to almost 80 percent along the South Coast.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has declared a drought emergency in nine counties: Lincoln, Douglas, Klamath, Lake, Harney, Grant, Wheeler, Baker and Morrow. Ken Stahr, surface water program manager for the Oregon Water Resources Department, said he has been surprised by how widespread this year’s drought is.

“I think we saw some of this coming over the winter,” Stahr said, referring to low mountain snowpack and rapid snowmelt in May. “We had kind of a late series of storms where we thought it may help. But by May, it was gone.”

Ivan Gall, administrator for the Field Services Division at OWRD, works with the 21 local watermasters across the state. He said they have largely had to begin regulating water deliveries sooner, curtailing junior users to satisfy senior water rights holders.

“We’ve had to cut deeper into the list of junior users more quickly than compared to normal precipitation years,” Gall said.

It is a similar situation in Washington state, which is also seeing below-average flows in nearly half of all rivers and streams. Temperatures have also averaged about 3 degrees above normal statewide in July, making the period between May and June the fourth-warmest on record.

Jeff Marti, drought coordinator for the Washington Department of Ecology, said the state is going through a significant precipitation deficit, which is being most felt in the west and southwest portions of the state.

“We have some rivers that have been establishing record low flows for this day of the year throughout the summer,” Marti said.

The Department of Ecology has been curtailing water for some 88 users in the Chehalis River Basin since late May and early June. State officials, however, have not gone as far as to declare a drought emergency.

Drought conditions are creeping east into Idaho as well. About 70 percent of the state is listed as “abnormally dry,” and the remaining 30 percent is in “moderate drought.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center is calling for an increased likelihood of more unseasonably warm weather across all three states for the next three months, and likely below-average precipitation in most of Oregon and Washington.

The longer drought lingers, the more it will heighten anxiety over reservoir storage heading into next year, Marti said.

“You could have a vast recovery, or there could be some anxiety if we have a sub-par snowpack year,” he said. “You like to have good carryover. It gives you a little cushion heading into next year.”

Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University, said based on forecasts, the Northwest drought will not be easing up soon, and in fact more areas in eastern Washington may actually start developing more severe conditions.

In many ways, Mote said this year is reminiscent of 2015, another drought year amplified by low snow and spring precipitation. Some coastal streams in Oregon have lower flows this year than they did in 2015, Mote said.

“For anything relying on snowpack, that was a difficult year,” Mote said.

Northwest wheat farmers can check online to see how the different wheat varieties fared this year in falling number tests.

USDA Agricultural Research Service molecular geneticist Camille Steber posts the information gleaned from Washington State University cereal variety trials on her website. The tool compares falling number susceptibility and yield, two important factors for farmers deciding which varieties to plant next.

The website shows “which had high falling numbers, which ones also yield well,” Steber said.

Falling number is a test that measures starch damage in wheat that reduces the quality of baked goods and noodles. Grain inspectors measure the time it takes two pins on a falling number test machine to fall through a ground wheat-water slurry, measuring viscosity. The price of grain with a low falling number is discounted because end-use quality is compromised by starch damage.

Farmers were caught off-guard in 2016, when roughly 44 percent of soft white wheat samples and 42 percent of club wheat samples tested below 300, the industry standard. The industry estimates the damage that year cost farmers more than $30 million in lower prices.

Steber hopes the data will help wheat breeders avoid releasing varieties susceptible to falling number.

Scott Steinbacher, regional manager of the Washington State Department of Agriculture grain inspection program, said he’s seeing more samples with falling number above 300 in the Colfax and Spokane offices as harvest progresses.

“The difficult part now is all those (samples with) low falling numbers are being resubmitted to be double-checked. ... it’s hard to tell the difference between an original and a resubmit,” he said.

The harvest rush is winding down in the Spokane office, while the Colfax office has a steady flow of samples coming in.

Falling number this year has been consistent with Steber’s expectations. The enzyme late-maturity alpha amylase, or LMA, caused problems in areas where the wheat flowered earlier. Wheat was in a susceptible window during a cold snap in June, Steber said. Wide fluctuations in temperature can damage wheat during a certain stage of its maturity.

Farmers are having less trouble in areas where the wheat matured later, she said.

“We’re getting problems, but the falling numbers aren’t as extremely low as what we saw in 2016,” she said. Most were in the high 200s, she said.

Steber and Steinbacher are both concerned that recent rain could lead to sprouting on wheat still in the fields. Sprouting can also damage starch and lead to low falling number test results.

“At this point I’m just hoping we don’t get a pre-harvest sprouting problem on top of an LMA problem,” Steber said.

Online

http://steberlab.org/project7599data.php#anchor2018Results

Environmentalists have failed to convince a federal judge that a 2,000-acre thinning project in Northeast Oregon’s Wallowa-Whitman National Forest violated environmental law.

Last year, the Greater Hells Canyon Council and Oregon Wild nonprofits filed a lawsuit challenging the Lostine Public Safety Project, which aims to reduce wildfire and insect problems along roughly 11 miles of the Lostine River.

A U.S. magistrate judge disagreed with the plaintiffs’ contention that the fuel reduction project was improperly excluded from environmental studies under the National Environmental Policy Act and dismissed their other allegations.

Those findings have been upheld by U.S. District Judge Michael Simon, who has ruled in favor of the U.S. Forest Service and Wallowa County — which intervened in the case — by dismissing the lawsuit.

Simon has agreed with the earlier ruling that the federal government properly used a “categorical exclusion” to exempt the project from the usual requirement of preparing an environmental assessment or more in-depth environmental impact statement.

In this case, the agency didn’t have to analyze whether “extraordinary circumstances” called for such studies due to provisions in the 2014 Farm Bill that allowed “categorical exclusions” outright for certain ecologically oriented forest treatments, the ruling said.

Likewise, wildlife and botanical reports associated with the project meet the requirements of the forest plan for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest and didn’t violate the National Forest Management Act by failing to ensure “species viability and recovery,” the ruling said.

The project also complies with the “wild and scenic river” plan for the Lostine River because the Forest Service properly determined its long-term effects would benefit the river’s “outstandingly remarkable values,” according to the judge.

The agency’s collaboration on the project was sufficient under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act as well, the ruling said. “Instead of participating, plaintiffs often objected to how the Project was being developed, rather than providing meaningful, substantive input.”

The U.S.-Mexican preliminary trade agreement won’t erase the 20 percent retaliatory tariff Mexico put on dried cranberries in June, the director of an association of U.S. cranberry handlers said Tuesday.

The tariff responded to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, which remain in place. The deal announced Monday reworked the North American Free Trade Agreement, which imposed no tariffs on cranberries.

“The information we received yesterday was that the agreement (with Mexico) did not address the steel and aluminum issue, and our understanding is the tariff would remain the same,” said Terry Humfeld, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Cranberry Institute.

U.S. cranberries are frequently targeted for retaliatory tariffs. China, Canada and the European Union also have imposed new duties since June. The retaliation strikes at a major crop in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin.

The U.S. exports about $300 million worth of cranberries and cranberry products a year. Roughly $30 million of that is in the form of dried cranberries bound for Mexico. The tariffs come as the cranberry industry is trying to reduce a price-depressing surplus.

The U.S. Census Bureau has yet to release export figures for July, the first full month that retaliatory duties were in place. Humfeld said it’s too early to judge the damage to the industry.

“We believe there is an impact, but don’t have any numbers to back that up, and probably won’t for a few months,” he said.

The European Union, the largest overseas market, imposed a 25 percent tariff on cranberry concentrate and held out the possibility that the tariff eventually will apply to dried cranberries. Canada put a 10 percent tariff on juice. China increased a tariff on dried cranberries to 40 percent from 15 percent.

Bumper crops and flat demand have led to a large surplus. The USDA ordered handlers to divert 15 percent of the 2017 crop from the marketplace to reduce the surplus. The order, however, didn’t apply to about 35 percent of the crop because handlers who took in fewer than 125,000 barrels were exempted, according to figures from the Cranberry Marketing Committee. Each barrel equals 100 pounds.

The committee calculated that the USDA mandate, granted at the industry’s request, diverted 792 barrels, or about 9 percent of the harvest.

The USDA had yet to make a final decision on whether to order a portion of the 2018 crop be diverted. The USDA proposed a 25 percent diversion, with small handlers again being exempted.

The USDA this month forecast that cranberry growers will rebound from a subpar 2017 harvest — not particularly good news for the industry. The USDA predicts the crop in the five top cranberry producing states, which include Oregon and Washington, will be up 3 percent to 8.6 million barrels.

Long Beach, Wash., farmer Malcolm McPhail said he’s continued to grow as many cranberries as he can. “I just do everything the way I always have. That’s the best philosophy,” he said. “You have to do the biggest crop you can. I don’t know how it’s going to sort out.”

A northeast Oregon cattle rancher was reissued a permit to shoot one wolf on a forested grazing allotment near Joseph Creek in Wallowa County where four calves have been killed or injured since June.

The latest attack was confirmed by the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife on Aug. 20. A range rider found the dead 300-pound calf earlier that morning, and investigators later determined wolves were to blame.

The pasture is within an area of known wolf activity in the Chesnimnus Unit, where ODFW counted three wolves at the end of 2017. Chesnimnus wolves also injured three calves in three days between June 12 and June 14, all belonging to RL Cattle Company of Enterprise.

ODFW granted the original permit for RL Cattle to shoot one Chesnimnus wolf on June 21, but no wolves were killed before the permit expired July 10. The permit has been reissued for 30 days and will expire Sept. 24.

Wildlife officials have documented wolves in the area over the past two months, but do not know whether the animals are remnants of the Chesnimnus pack or new wolves that moved into the territory. None of the wolves in question are wearing GPS tracking collars.

The incident further underscores the continuing debate between ranchers and conservationists about how best to manage wolves in Oregon. Groups will gather Thursday for a meeting intended to find common ground on lingering issues in the state Wolf Plan, which is now three years past due for a regular five-year update.

Deb Nudelman, a mediator with Kearns & West in Portland, will moderate the discussion, scheduled for 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 3561 Klindt Drive in The Dalles. The meeting is open to the public, though seating is limited.

The wolf plan was last revised in 2010. Since then, the minimum known wolf population has risen to 124 animals statewide, and Eastern Oregon wolves were removed from the state endangered species list in 2015.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission was supposed to vote on the plan back in January, but indefinitely postponed its decision to try and reach a broader consensus among stakeholders.

Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, said ranchers have three main concerns: fitting more wolves with GPS collars, creating management zones with population targets, and allowing local authorities — such as county sheriffs and veterinarians — to investigate suspected livestock depredations in a more timely manner.

GPS collars will help alert ranchers when wolves are approaching, Rosa said, and make sure they are doing non-lethal activities to haze wolves such as hiring range riders.

“The only way we’ll know that is if there are collars on those wolves, so our guys can go in and do some of the non-lethal measures,” Rosa said. “Without that information, they have no idea until it’s too late.”

According to ODFW, RL Cattle was using non-lethal deterrents when the Chesnimnus wolves attacked, including camping out with the livestock at night, removing injured animals from the pasture and setting up trail cameras to check for wolves in the area.

Management zones could be especially useful in the northeast part of the state, where the vast majority of Oregon wolves reside. Rosa said the wolf density in the region has made it extremely difficult for local ranchers to graze their livestock safely.

As for local control to conduct depredation investigations, Rosa said it often takes ODFW biologists too long to arrive on scene, leaving evidence to deteriorate and lessening the odds it will be confirmed a wolf attack.

“We’ve had that happen many times,” Rosa said. “A lot of it depends on the day of the week. ... By the time a biologist can get out there, it’s really too late to comb through the evidence.”

Rob Klavins, northeast Oregon field coordinator for the environmental group Oregon Wild, agreed it is important for ODFW to make accurate, efficient and transparent rulings on depredations. However, he said if that means allowing decisions to come down to elected politicians and others with a conflict of interest, “we’re going to have a harder time.”

Klavins said the wolf plan must have clear, defensible and enforceable standards for addressing conflicts with livestock.

Klavins said the agency has also weakened parts of the wolf plan in recent years, as it transitioned from Phase I to Phase III, and doubled down on more controversial aspects like killing wolves that have caused conflict and controversy.

“We need a plan based on the best available science informed by 21st century values,” Klavins said. “If we all share the goal of less dead cows, less dead wolves, and less conflict, there’s going to have to be some give and take on both sides. But we’ve been there before and we stand ready to work together to get there again.”

Rosa said he is also looking forward to having a constructive conversation about the plan entering mediation.

“It’s time to move ahead and get this plan finished,” he said.

The Eugene Livestock Auction in Junction City, Ore., narrowly escaped demolition and now has a new owner intent on keeping the business operating.

After 23 years of running the auction, former owner Bruce Anderson wanted to sell the business, but the first three prospective buyers who approached him about the auction yard wanted to convert it to another use, he said.

Anderson said his wife, Kate, who helped run the business, balked at the prospect of shutting it down, so they were both relieved when an employee, Leon Birky, offered to buy the company.

Birky and his wife, Chloe, closed on the sale in mid-August. The price was not disclosed, but county records show the 4-acre property worth more than $1.1 million in real market value.

“They actually did the industry a favor,” said Anderson. “When they heard it was going to be knocked down, they wanted to keep it going.”

Only eight livestock auction yards remain in Oregon after many shut down due to the high cost of compliance with confined animal feeding operation regulations, said Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association.

Livestock auctions must obtain a CAFO permit despite only having animals at the facility once a week, and they often don’t qualify for grants, making for a “very expensive situation,” Rosa said.

Smaller livestock producers tend to rely on auctions to sell their cattle, which makes having a nearby option important because it’s tough for them to drive for hours to a more distant location, he said.

“It’s much more convenient for them to have a local yard to go to,” Rosa said.

Leon Birky, the new owner, said he saw the auction yard as a good investment because it’s a strong local market for feeder cattle, sheep and goats and wanted to keep it as a sales outlet for local livestock producers.

“I’ve been around cattle and livestock most of my life,” said Birky, who worked as a ringman and part-time auctioneer at the facility before buying it.

Birky said the auction yard will continue to be run with honesty and integrity to keep people coming back, and the facility will continue to house a restaurant with “good down-home cooking.”

The couple plans to host an “open house” and feeder sale at the site on Sept. 8.

Aside from rebuilding some pens, fixing some gates and other improvements, the Birkys say they don’t plan on any major changes to the auction yard.

“We want to keep it the same as people are used to,” Chloe Birky said. “I don’t think livestock people really like a lot of change.”

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Vegetarian food-maker Tofurky filed a lawsuit in Missouri on Monday seeking to defend its right to describe its products with meat terminology such as “sausage” and “hot dogs,” as long as the packaging makes clear what the ingredients are.

The Hood River, Oregon-based company and The Good Food Institute, an advocacy and lobbying group for meat alternatives, say a Missouri law set to take effect Tuesday that bars companies from “misrepresenting” products as meat if they’re not from “harvested livestock or poultry” is too vague and could be used to go after a range of vegetarian products that use such terminology. Tofurky says if the law is allowed to stand, it would have to change its packaging.

The Missouri Cattlemen’s Association, which supported the statute, said its concern isn’t with products like Tofurky that make clear they’re from plants. Mike Deering, the group’s executive vice president, said the worry is the emerging science of meat grown by culturing animal cells in a lab, and whether they’ll disclose how they were made once they’re on the market.

As companies push newer meat substitutes, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has also said protecting “beef nomenclature” is a priority. The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, a smaller group, petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture in February to enforce that “beef” and “meat” only be used for animals “born, raised and harvested in the traditional manner.”

Mary Compton, a spokeswoman for Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, said her office will defend the law against Tofurky’s challenge.

Pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie are synonymous with autumn, but as the season draws closer, researchers at Oregon State University are targeting a complex of diseases that have hampered winter squash in recent years.

Winter squash is a $7 million industry in Oregon, with 4,000 acres grown in the Willamette Valley near Corvallis. The crop is a close pumpkin relative used for making fall favorites like “pumpkin” soup, seeds and pie filling.

But farmers began noticing something was infecting their plants, and in some severe cases causing entire fields to wilt and die. Oregon State received a grant from the USDA Western Sustainable Agriculture and Research Education program to study the problem in 2014.

Hannah Rivedal, lead researcher and graduate student studying botany and plant pathology at OSU, said they have honed in on five distinct soil-borne fungi at the root of the trouble — literally — including one species never before found in cucurbits in Oregon.

“We’ve had a couple of years where there have been more significant reductions in yield, and more instances of this disease problem occurring,” Rivedal said. “This is a really complicated problem with multiple pathogens and multiple different environmental factors.”

Between 2014 and 2016, Rivedal surveyed around 60 fields, randomly sampling both healthy and diseased plants. She took thousands of disease cultures, with five species of soil-borne fungus consistently showing up — Fusarium oxysporum, Fusarium solani, Fusarium culmorum, Plectosphaerella cucumerina and Setophoma terrestris.

Setophoma terrestris was unexpected, Rivedal said, since it has never been seen before in squash in Oregon, though it is more widely known in other crops such as onions and garlic. The fungus can cause a disease known as pink root rot, which is exactly what it sounds like, attacking the roots and turning them an unhealthy shade of pink.

“It’s one piece of the puzzle here,” Rivedal said. “These all work together.”

Rivedal, along with OSU faculty Alexandra Stone and Ken Johnson, have published their findings in the journal Plant Disease. The next step, Rivedal said, is to develop a set of recommendations and best practices to help farmers break the disease cycle.

First off, Rivedal said growers should rotate their fields out of squash for at least four years, if possible. As for which rotation crops will work best, she said that has yet to be determined.

“If they plant onions right before squash, the next year they have really bad pink root rot in their field,” Rivedal said. “We’ve been looking into management strategies.”

Another tip is irrigating less at the beginning of the growing season, since damp, humid soil conditions are more conducive to fungi. Because the pathogens are soil-borne, Rivedal said applying chemicals will not help. Any fungicide would need to fumigated.

“All of these things are acting really interestingly here,” she said. “And we think it has a lot to do with the environmental factors and the rotation practices ahead of the squash that we (grow).”

McMINNVILLE, Ore. — Sitting face-to-face with organic dairy farmers from around the Willamette Valley, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley pledged their support for organic agriculture, an industry that Merkley called “an exciting opportunity for our food and our economy.”

Brown and Merkley, both Democrats, visited the Organic Valley creamery in McMinnville on Friday, one year to the month after the plant opened with $350,000 in funding from the state’s Strategic Reserve Fund.

The creamery now has 42 full-time employees and brings in 500,000 pounds of organic milk every day to process into butter and powdered milk. Organic Valley is the nation’s largest organic farming cooperative, with more than 2,000 members in 35 states — including 75 organic dairy farms in Oregon and Washington.

One of those members is Sar-Ben Farms in Saint Paul. Steve Pierson, a fourth-generation family farmer, also serves on the Organic Valley board of directors. He talked about the process of going organic, shifting from a confined feeding operation to a grass-based operation, which helped to improve the health of his cows.

“We felt that herd should have been healthier,” Pierson said, and though it was intimidating to change their production model, “We found that working with Mother Nature, instead of against it, was really better for us.”

Pierson’s daughter, 22-year-old Sara, will become the fifth generation, along with her brothers, to work at Sar-Ben Farms. While Sara Pierson said she originally thought she might be interested in a more traditional 9-to-5 job, she ultimately missed the fast-paced work.

“I really love the way I grew up on the farm,” Pierson said. “I don’t think I could have an office job.”

Organic Valley has been a key partner in helping those dairy farms remain in business, cutting $59 million in milk checks for Oregon members in 2017. The McMinnville creamery is the co-op’s only brick-and-mortar facility outside of Wisconsin.

Brown said she was pleased to see the creamery has created new jobs in the community, and will be talking with Department of Agriculture Director Alexis Taylor on programs to support further growth in organic farming.

Getting into the organic business is no easy task. For dairy farmers, cows can only eat organic feed, cannot be given any additional hormones or antibiotics, and must have at least 120 days to graze on open pasture. For farmers growing their own feed, it takes three years without spraying chemicals before the land can be certified organic.

At the end of the day, Pierson said organic farmers must maintain consumer trust and credibility, which is why they are willing to work with lawmakers on new guidelines and regulations.

“It’s all about integrity, really,” he said. “We need to meet that (customer) expectation.”

Adam Warthesen, who heads government relations for Organic Valley, said the co-op feels “pretty good” about where organics stand in the 2018 Farm Bill, which is scheduled to go to conference committee Sept. 5.

Merkley, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, pointed to several provisions in the Senate’s version of the Farm Bill intended to invest in organics — such as creating permanent mandatory funding for organic research, providing mandatory funding for cost-share programs to help farmers transition to organic practices, and strengthening enforcement tools under the USDA National Organic Program to protect against fraudulent imports.

Last year, the USDA Office of Inspector General issued an audit claiming that the agency could not provide reasonable assurance that the National Organic Program required documents at U.S. ports to verify that labeled organic products, in fact, came from organic sources.

Chris Schreiner, executive director of Oregon Tilth, a nonprofit organization accredited to certify organic farms, said that report served as a call to action.

“The organic label rests on consumer credibility and trust,” Schreiner said. “It’s really our job as certifiers to make sure that integrity is there.”

The USDA Risk Management Agency has agreed to temporarily change its policy to allow farmers in Wasco and Sherman counties that were affected by wildfire to plant cover crops without affecting their crop insurance.

“We will make changes where we modify the definition of summer fallow in a way that will not invalidate their summer-fallow designation, even though they planted a cover crop in the fallow year,” said Ben Thiel, director of the Spokane Regional Office of the agency, in a phone interview on Aug. 22.

The agency changed its policy after hearing concerns from farmers about leaving ground exposed to the elements in the 2019 fallow year and checking with agricultural experts, Thiel said.

“Pretty much the consensus was, yes, this would be a good farming practice and that you would help reduce yield loss for 2020 by planting a cover crop, as long as it is terminated in the spring and doesn’t continue to grow later in the spring and through the summer where it would deplete moisture,” Thiel said.

Normally, growers are restricted from planting cover crops in a fallow year under the USDA summer-fallow crop insurance program. The provision is in place to ensure farmers are optimizing yield potential in crop years, Thiel said.

“Generally, you get better moisture retention if you leave a field fallow every other year, and that will produce a better crop in low rainfall areas, such as Sherman and Wasco counties,” Thiel said.

Brian Tuck, field crops extension agent for Wasco and Sherman counties, said RMA’s decision could be critical in helping protect soil left bare by wildfire from wind and rain erosion. Typically, wheat stubble protects ground in fallow years, he said.

“The stubble is a big deal,” Tuck said. “Having that surface stubble on there provides biomass to the soil for nutrient cycling and is a huge factor in keeping the soil cooler and protecting it from both wind and rain erosion.”

“Now we just have to hope we get some fall rains here” to help establish the cover crops, he said.

He advised growers to check with the Natural Resources Conservation Service and their local Soil and Water Conservation District for cost-sharing opportunities potentially available to help offset the cost of purchasing and planting cover crop seeds.

Three wildfires, the Substation, South Valley and Long Hollow fires, burned approximately 135,000 acres in the two counties in a two-week span beginning in mid-July, just when wheat harvest was kicking off.

The fires cost growers millions of dollars in lost crop, particularly given that growers were looking at above-average yields. “This was looking to be a pretty good year,” Tuck said. “We had some really good rains in some places, so the yields were looking very good.”

Growers with crop insurance are eligible to recoup losses based on average yields.

Also, while prices “haven’t been the greatest,” Tuck said, they are up from the previous three years, with wheat at $5.92 a bushel in Portland on Aug. 23.

Many growers also lost equipment, fencing, structures, pasture and rangeland to the fire, Tuck said, and the fire cost the life of Wasco County farmer John Ruby, 64, who died digging a firebreak to protect a neighbor’s property.