SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Two members of Congress — one an Oregon Democrat and the other a California Republican — are pushing to ensure that protections against federal intervention remain for another year for 46 states, Washington DC, Guam and Puerto Rico that allow some form of medical marijuana.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California have sent a letter with the signatures of 64 colleagues to congressional leaders supporting the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer Amendment that prevents federal officials using public funds to enforce federal laws against medical marijuana.

“The provision, which first became law in December 2014, has successfully protected patients, providers, and businesses against federal prosecution, so long as they act within the confines of their state’s medical marijuana laws,” they said in the letter that was sent this week.

It asked Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to include the provision in any final package as they negotiate a fiscal year 2018 appropriations bill to fund the government beyond Dec. 8.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May told congressional leaders in a letter that it would be “unwise” to renew the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer Amendment, saying marijuana is harmful and is banned by federal law.

Blumenauer, in a message to marijuana stakeholders and supporters, said that despite bipartisan support for the provision, the leadership of the House didn’t allow a vote on it or any other marijuana-related amendments. But the Senate Appropriations Committee included the provision in its bill.

“I’m working hard to ensure Rohrabacher-Blumenauer remains in effect to protect individuals in 46 states and thousands of state-legal businesses from federal intervention,” the Oregon congressman said in his message, emailed to The Associated Press by the Oregon Cannabis Business Council.

Blumenauer, in a telephone interview with AP last summer, said Sessions is “out of step” with most members of Congress, who have become more supportive “of ending the failed prohibition on marijuana.”

PORTLAND — Representatives of Oregon agriculture say they are wary of a proposal to reduce the state’s carbon emissions. While farmers could attract new revenue under the system, they could also face higher costs for fuel, electricity and other inputs, they say.

Oregon lawmakers in the House and Senate are currently devising carbon emission “cap-and-invest” bills to be introduced during the 2018 legislative session. The goal is to mitigate climate change by reducing the amount of “greenhouse gases” such as carbon dioxide that gets into the atmosphere.

The basic idea of the legislation is to cap the amount of carbon emissions by certain companies, with the greatest impact falling on those consuming or importing significant amounts of fossil fuels.

Facilities that fall below the cap would earn credits that can be sold to offset the emissions of companies that exceed that level.

“It harnesses market incentives by putting a price on carbon,” said Kristen Sheeran, carbon policy adviser for Oregon Gov. Kate Brown.

The State of Oregon would also sell emission allowances to regulated firms, generating money that will be used for highway improvements and to relieve the effects of higher electricity or natural gas prices, said Sheeran.

“Governor Brown wants to decarbonize the Oregon economy,” she said during the Nov. 30 meeting of the Oregon Board of Agriculture in Portland.

Some of the funds generated by the system would also fund projects that decrease or offset carbon emissions, which would benefit agriculture, she said.

“If people don’t want to do it, they don’t have to participate,” Sheeran said of the role that would be played by farmers and ranchers, who wouldn’t be regulated as emitters under the current proposals.

However, related industries, such as large food processors and pulp mills, would fall under the regulatory scheme.

For farmers, the proposal is concerning because it would raise the cost of doing business for manufacturers of fertilizer, fuel and energy — major inputs in agricultural production.

About 80 percent of Oregon’s farm goods are shipped out of state, so growers here can’t afford to have higher production costs than farmers elsewhere, said Mary Anne Cooper, public policy counsel for the Oregon Farm Bureau.

“It will make Oregon agriculture less competitive,” said Cooper.

Growers could potentially sell carbon credits they earned by turning dairy emissions into energy with anaerobic digesters, for example, or by growing crops that sequester carbon.

In California, though, farmers have often found the paperwork and verification process for generating carbon credits too cumbersome to be worthwhile, she said.

Also, growers who have already invested in reducing carbon emissions with energy efficient equipment and no-till cropping systems would likely not be compensated for past investments.

In effect, the policy would penalize early adopters of technology, Cooper said.

“We’re looking at it as a net loss for agriculture,” she said.

California and British Columbia have already implemented such carbon regulation systems, but there still isn’t enough information available to learn from those experiments, said Jeff Stone, executive director of the Oregon Association of Nurseries.

“We just don’t know its impacts,” he said.

There are opportunities for agriculture, such as investing money in planting trees along roads to absorb carbon, Stone said.

However, these possibilities must be studied more thoroughly, he said.

For example, it’s too early to know exactly how much carbon is “sequestered” through the production, sale and planting of Japanese maples or rhododendrons, Stone said.

“It needs to be part of the conversation,” he said.

Another issue is ensuring the cap-and-invest system would not drive emitting industries from Oregon to other states, which would hurt the economy without reducing emissions.

To this end, the government would probably offer free or discounted emission allowances to companies that are prone to flee, said Sheeran.

“We will provide some sort of differential treatment under the cap,” she said.

HERMISTON, Ore. — Heading into its second year at the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center, the Hermiston Farm Fair continues to add new lectures and seminars highlighting previously overlooked aspects of Columbia Basin agriculture.

Historically speaking, the Farm Fair has focused on the latest and greatest developments in potato production — the signature crop supported by Oregon State University’s Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

The 44th annual event, however, introduced a number of new presentations Thursday covering topics such as organic crops, precision irrigation and pollinators.

Phil Hamm, station director at HAREC, said he did not know the exact attendance, but estimated it was in the hundreds.

“What we’re trying to do is (reach) as many of our stakeholders as possible in our region,” Hamm said.

Last year’s move to EOTEC from the Hermiston Conference Center has certainly helped, Hamm said, providing a larger venue to bring in more presenters and hold more sessions. This year’s trade show featured 48 different vendors, including multiple farm suppliers, Energy Trust of Oregon and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency.

Attendees filled the room for a morning seminar on pollinators, which discussed the importance of bees and bee habitat in agricultural systems. Andony Melathopoulos, with OSU’s Pollinator Health Extension Program, said Oregon is home to more species of bees than there are east of the Mississippi River.

“It’s a hotbed of diversity,” Melathopoulos said. “People are just amazed by them.”

Melathopoulos went on to explain how farmers can treat their crops for weeds and pests while taking care not to harm pollinators. He ran through a litany of available products, demonstrating how to properly read labels and determine if and when a grower should apply certain chemicals in the field.

“Without a doubt, pollination is very important for the production of many crops,” Melathopoulos said. “I hope people came out of this session knowing pest control is possible and compatible with pollinators.”

For the first time, the Hermiston Farm Fair also organized a seminar dedicated specifically to growing organic crops. It takes three years before a farm can be certified organic, and growers must adapt to a very strict set of approved standards.

Local organic production is on the rise, said Alexandra Stone, a former organic farmer and cropping system specialist for OSU. In eastern Washington, Stone said organic sales grew sixfold at the farm gate between 2005 and 2015, from $100 million to $600 million.

“There’s already a lot of organic production out here,” she said.

Yet demand for organics is still outpacing production in the U.S., with imports exceeding exports by $1.1 billion, Stone said. With that in mind, she led a survey among 20 farmers in the room to determine what they want and need from the university to tap into the organic marketplace.

Of those polled, 79 percent said they expect demand for organics will continue to increase, yet 40 percent said they did not have the tools to control pests and disease. The vast majority of farmers said they would benefit from some kind of technical training through OSU, with more than half favoring a hybrid online undergraduate and professional development certificate program.

Later in the afternoon, Clinton Shock with the OSU Malheur Experiment Station detailed how precision irrigation can optimize yields and save farmers money, all while protecting the environment.

“We really want high and stable production of horticulture and crops,” Shock said. “Precision irrigation is really the key.”

Shock said researchers are working to determine a set of criteria known as the soil-water tension for different crops, which essentially describes the amount of energy a plant must expend to suck up water in the ground. If the tension is too high, a plant may shut down. If the tension is too low, water may leach away nutrients, leading to waste.

But if a grower knows the soil property, Shock said they can find the sweet spot. That means healthier crops for less money. Plus, as a side benefit, he said the more efficiently nitrogen is used, the more it protects groundwater quality.

“A lot of the public thinks growers are not innovative, or stuck in the mud,” Shock said. “That just isn’t so.”

The Hermiston Farm Fair will continue Friday at 8 a.m. at EOTEC before coming to a close at noon.

Oregon State University’s veterinary hospital resumed normal operations Nov. 29, ending a three-week quarantine instituted as it treated a horse with a contagious and potentially deadly neurotropic illness.

Erica McKenzie, professor of large animal internal medicine at OSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said no other horses got sick during the quarantine period. “The college thanks everyone for their patience and assistance during the quarantine period,” McKenzie said in a news release. The horse recovered and was taken home.

The horse became severely ill Nov. 4 at its owner’s property in Coos Bay, Ore., and was taken to OSU’s Lois Bates Acheson Veterinary Teaching Hospital for treatment.

The horse developed a mutated form of Equine Herpes Virus-1, or EHV-1, which is a common sickness in horses. It usually causes minor respiratory problems and is something like a cold is to humans, but in its mutated form the virus attacks the nervous system.

The illness often first shows up as weakness in the hind quarters, with animals stumbling or developing an unusual gait. Other signs include weak tail tone, nasal discharge, fever, and difficulty urinating. Geldings and stallions may be unable to retract their penis. Pregnant mares may abort. In rare cases, EHV-1 can cause blindness and central nervous system damage in alpacas and llamas.

Because the virus is contagious, OSU suspended elective procedures on horses, alpacas and llamas. The virus doesn’t harm humans, but people can spread it to animals after picking it up by hand or clothing contact with sick horses.

A vaccine for EHV-1 can ease symptoms of the common form of the virus, but it does not prevent animals from developing the more serious nervous system illness.

More information about EHV-1 and biosecurity recommendations are available from the American Association of Equine Practitioners at https://aaep.org/guidelines/infectious-disease-control/equine-herpesvirus-resources.

PENDLETON, Ore. — While few people attended Tuesday’s public hearing in Pendleton about proposed regulations for industrial air polluters, one industry in particular was on hand to express its displeasure with Cleaner Air Oregon: food processing.

According to the state employment department, food processing makes up 6 percent of overall employment in Umatilla County and a whopping 28 percent in neighboring Morrow County. Food processors accounted for 3,426 jobs between the two counties in 2016, along with $143 million in combined payroll.

But Craig Smith, director of government affairs for the Northwest Food Processors Association, said those companies face another layer of burdensome regulations under the Cleaner Air Oregon rules, spearheaded by Gov. Kate Brown to lower health risks posed by industrial air emissions.

“We don’t like this rule at all,” Smith said. “It’s way too broad, and the cost of the program will be enormous for very little benefit.”

Smith was one of 14 people who attended the hearing Tuesday at the Pendleton Public Library, and half of those were employees of the Oregon Health Authority and Department of Environmental Quality, which are working to develop the rules. Similar meetings were held Nov. 15 in Medford, Nov. 16 in Coos Bay and Nov. 20 in Corvallis, with future dates scheduled in Portland, Eugene, Salem and The Dalles.

Debbie Radie, vice president of operations at Boardman Foods and chairwoman of the Northwest Food Processors Association Board of Directors, was the only person to testify Tuesday, saying the proposed rules are “poorly designed and unworkable.”

Cleaner Air Oregon was established last year in response to toxic air emissions in 2016 Bullseye Glass in southeast Portland. Yet rather than address sources of emissions that DEQ knows to be an issue, Radie said the agency is targeting companies like hers that are already subject to regulation.

“There is no plan in this rule to identify sources of emissions that are not currently permitted,” Radie said. “The only way this rule will reduce emissions is to force companies to curtail or stop production. The level of uncertainty does not create an environment where businesses and communities thrive.”

The draft rules, released Oct. 20, would require companies to report their use of 600 chemicals, including heavy metals and other air pollutants. Facilities would then need to calculate potential health risks to nearby communities, considering what if any health problems may be caused by short- and long-term exposure.

From there, DEQ may require additional steps — such as a risk reduction plan or conditional permit — to mitigate the risk. Keith Johnson, who serves as special assistant to the director of Cleaner Air Oregon, said the goal is to use health-based standards for reducing harmful air toxics.

“A facility that’s in a remote location would be much less risky than a similar one located in the middle of a city or town,” Johnson explained. “Smaller facilities would likely not be impacted because of low risk and low emissions.”

Out of 2,500 businesses with DEQ air quality permits, Johnson said only the 80 highest-risk facilities would be regulated by the program in the first five years.

But in her testimony, Radie said the rule would not be based on verified science and data, but rather by asking already permitted facilities to submit data that would be entered into a “very crude, inaccurate and misleading formula to determine theoretical risk.”

Cleaner Air Oregon also factors the cumulative effects of industrial emissions in a given area, which Radie said may cause some companies with minimal emissions to be dragged into a full-blown risk assessment process just by being near an industrial location.

Boardman Foods, an onion processing plant, is located at the Port of Morrow’s East Beach Industrial Park near Boardman, which includes other value-added processors such as Lamb Weston and Tillamook Cheese.

Smith said the added cost of complying with the program might not force food processors to close their doors, but could make them less competitive moving forward.

“That’s a huge deal,” he said. “Right now, there is a lot of investment being made both by the processors and our suppliers.”

The Oregon Legislature is expected to consider a fee structure for Cleaner Air Oregon in the coming session, and the Environmental Quality Commission may decide to adopt all or part of the rule as early as July 2018.

PORTLAND — Solar power development on farmland is increasingly raising alarm, potentially leading to new land use restrictions in two Oregon counties.

A growing “cluster” of solar energy sites in Oregon’s Willamette Valley has prompted Yamhill and Marion county governments to consider barring such development on several higher-quality farmland soil classes, said Jim Johnson, land use specialist with the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

The restrictions would go beyond the current rules established by Oregon’s Land Conservation and Development Commission, which limit solar development on prime farmland to 12 acres.

“We’ve got enough concern for two counties to take this on their own and not wait for LCDC,” Johnson said during a Nov. 28 meeting of the Oregon Board of Agriculture, which advises ODA.

New statewide rules for solar development on farmland are also being considered by LCDC, though the agency is reluctant to announce a time frame for taking action, he said.

If LCDC set a deadline to enact stricter regulations for solar power facilities on farmland, it could result in a “land rush” among developers to seek new sites under the more lenient current rules, Johnson said.

With the upcoming 2018 legislative session, the agency also likely feels that it can’t devote resources to new solar rules in the short term, he said.

Wetlands on farmland are also controversial in Oregon agriculture, with Tillamook County considering a new regulatory approach to such developments.

Oregon lawmakers have allowed Tillamook County to require wetland developments to obtain conditional use permits, whereas conversion of farmland to wetlands is allowed outright elsewhere in the state.

As part of this pilot project, the county may also devise a system to steer wetland development toward certain areas while preserving farmland elsewhere.

Representatives of the agricultural and environmental communities appear to be rethinking their original approach to the problem, said Johnson.

The initial idea was to create a map of areas where wetland development is appropriate, but that concept appears to be falling out of favor, he said.

Tillamook County has some of the best grazing land in the state, so it’s difficult to prioritize certain areas over others, Johnson said.

“It’s just not that clear-cut,” he said.

Instead, stakeholders are moving toward a checklist of factors that would help determine whether a site is appropriate for wetland development on a case-by-case basis, Johnson said.

A potential electrical transmission line in Tillamook County is also worrisome to dairy farmers whose properties it may traverse, he said.

Stray voltage of electricity can be damaging to cattle health, but dairies are also concerned about impediments to aerial spraying and “big gun” field applications of manure, he said.

Short-term rentals of homes through popular online websites such as Airbnb are often blamed for aggravating housing shortages in cities, but the issue is cropping up on farmland as well.

Popular Oregon tourist destinations such as the Hood River Valley and Sauvie Island are increasingly seeing farm dwellings devoted to short-term rentals, Johnson said.

Arguably, such rentals deviate from the approved use of farm dwellings, which are meant to provide housing to farmers and farm workers, not tourists, he said.

While such rentals may encourage agritourism, growers worry about the “tail wagging the dog” — a situation where surrounding agriculture basically provides an excuse for rentals, Johnson said.

The issue has gained enough prominence that it’s likely to spur legislation in 2018 or 2019, he said.

In other board business:

• A year since a state audit criticized the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s backlog of food safety inspections, the agency has reported a major reduction in those overdue inspections.

The backlog has been cut from 2,841 overdue inspections to 739, in part due to an electronic inspection timing system and a reduction of ODA staff time dedicated to federal regulations, according to Alexis Taylor, the agency’s director.

• The board has recommended five farmers to serve on the 12-member commission of the Oregon Agricultural Heritage Program, which is aimed at preserving farmland with easements:

• Doug Krahmer, a blueberry farmer with several operations in Western and Central Oregon.

• Woody Wolfe, a farmer and rancher in Wallowa County who has has established two easements.

• Ken Bailey, a farmer who manages 2,500 acres of fruit orchards in the Columbia Gorge.

• Chad Allen, a dairy farmer from Tillamook County who serves on the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association board.

• Lois Loop, a retired USDA employee who produces grass seed, small grains and clover in Polk County, will serve in a position specializing in agricultural water.

The commission’s remaining seven members will be chosen by Oregon State University, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, the Land Conservation and Development Commission and the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board.

HERMISTON, Ore. — Hermiston High School sophomore Jenna Wallace stood Tuesday morning in front of a class of third-graders at West Park Elementary School, unfazed by her sudden role reversal from student to teacher, and enthusiastically launched into a carefully planned lesson about the life cycle of a pumpkin.

It all starts with a seed, Wallace explained, which later grows into a sprout and then a vine. The vine produces bright yellow flowers, which eventually become small green pumpkins and, finally, the big orange pumpkins everyone knows and loves to carve into jack-o’-lanterns at Halloween. The kids followed along by drawing pictures of each life stage on their worksheets, and numbered them one through six in order.

Wallace was joined at the head of the class by fellow HHS students Logan Sinor, Garrett Hills, Maleena Moore, Jayda Hoston, Ellen Jakobsen and Diana Egerer as part of the high school’s annual fall Agriculture in the Classroom tour. More than 50 high-schoolers participated in the event, visiting every elementary school in the Hermiston School District and giving agriculture-themed lessons to 946 first, second and third grade students.

Once the kids finished coloring their perfect pumpkins, Wallace and the rest of the group helped to serve a tasty snack of graham crackers topped with pumpkin pie filling.

“This is something I look forward to each season we do it,” Wallace said. “It’s fun to see their faces light up when we walk in.”

As a statewide nonprofit organization, Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom strives to educate students on the importance of farming and natural resources by providing lesson plans to K-12 teachers that highlight agriculture, while also promoting skills in math, science, history and nutrition.

Jessica Jansen, the group’s executive director, said they are supported through grants and donations from the agricultural community. Their mission is to work with local partners — such as Hermiston FFA — to improve agricultural literacy, provide a basic understanding of farming and help to bridge the urban-rural divide.

“It’s a small portion of Oregonians involved in the actual growing and producing of food and other agricultural products,” Jansen said. “We want students to think of agriculture as an opportunity for them in the future.”

Last school year, Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom reached more than 190,000 students in all 36 counties across the state, according to stats provided by the organization. Jansen said she is always impressed with the level of involvement in Hermiston.

“Hermiston does a fantastic job, and they have an ability to reach so many students with so many elementary schools in the district,” she said.

Brianna Smith, agriculture teacher at HHS, developed Tuesday’s pumpkin lesson through tools provided by Agriculture in the Classroom. She watched from the back of the classroom with a wide grin as her pupils took charge, leading the discussion and calling on kids to answer questions.

“It makes me so proud,” Smith said. “I just get butterflies inside, and I can’t stop smiling.”

Smith, who taught second and third grade at Rocky Heights Elementary before moving to the high school earlier this year, said Agriculture in the Classroom literacy programs are about the only science some of these younger students will receive as teachers are constrained by other required standards.

As for the high school kids, Smith said they too gain valuable educational skills and experience.

“I want them to walk away with just the importance of teaching and advocating for agriculture,” she said.

Smith said HHS will do an Agriculture in the Classroom tour this spring as well for fourth-graders, only this time it will be entirely up to the high-schoolers to plan, prepare and conduct their own lesson plans.

Sinor, a sophomore at HHS, was quick to point out that Hermiston is an agricultural community, and said it is important for kids to understand from an early age where their food comes from and why farmers are so necessary.

“The world wouldn’t survive without agriculture, and it’s important for kids to know how much work it is and how much we need it,” Sinor said.

Hills, a fellow sophomore, said Agriculture in the Classroom allows kids to be creative, while possibly planting a seed for the next generation of agricultural leaders.

“Helping kids to learn about agriculture, it could spark some ideas in their head,” Hills said. “They could help feed the world, and make the world a better place.”

Agriculture in the Classroom is another way, too, to show kids that modern agriculture is more than just sows, cows and plows, Wallace added.

“Really, agriculture can branch out to these students as well,” she said. “Anyone can be involved in that.”

BANDON - Several Bandon businesses are holding open houses and customer appreciation days. A few are listed below:

U.S. District Court Judge Anna Brown sentenced defendant Darryl Thorn on Tuesday to a year and a half in federal prison followed by three years supervised release for his role in last year’s occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Following prison time, Brown ordered Thorn be released to a halfway house for up to 90 days.

In March, a jury found Thorn guilty of conspiracy to impede federal officers as well as carrying a firearm in a federal facility. Both are felonies. Brown also found Thorn guilty of two misdemeanors: trespassing and tampering with vehicles and equipment.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ethan Knight asked Brown to sentence Thorn to 27 months in prison. Thorn’s defense attorney, Jay Nelson, asked for a sentence of supervised release.

“Mr. Thorn, this doesn’t get any easier, the more I look at the issue,” Brown said in handing down her sentence.

Prior to his trial, prosecutors offered Thorn a deal: He could plead guilty to trespassing, a misdemeanor, and they would dismiss the other charges. Thorn instead decided to go to trial.

During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence of Thorn holding firearms on the refuge and performing what they described as guard duty from inside a refuge fire tower.

During one video shown at trial, Thorn is seen in the refuge bunkhouse, sitting on a bar stool smoking a cigarette. The video was taken just after police shot and killed occupation spokesman LaVoy Finicium, after he fled police. The remaining occupiers were fearful, trying to decide whether to stay or leave.

“All I see is a bunch of salty motherf------,” Thorn said in the video. “We came here for one reason and that’s to fight.”

Another occupation leader, Blaine Cooper, suggests in the video leaving the refuge in a firetruck and heading for Idaho to regroup. Cooper said they could put five armed people on the truck and “if they try and follow us, lay lead down.”

Thorn is heard disagreeing with the plan.

Prior to Thorn’s sentencing hearing, Nelson provided the judge with a detailed mental health evaluation. While the report wasn’t released publicly, aspects of it were discussed in court.

Nelson described Thorn’s childhood as “appalling” as well as “hard to listen to” and “hard to read.” Several times, he said that Thorn had no one to teach him right from wrong.

Nelson said Thorn suffers from “cognitive issue” and has a history of substance abuse.

Judge Brown said she took those factors into account in handing down her sentence. But she added that while it helped explain his conduct at the refuge, his background did not justify his actions. 

“I’m giving you the benefit, Mr. Thorn, of every favorable inference,” she said, adding that if he had future run-ins with the law, other judges likely wouldn’t be as lenient.

Thorn’s pretrial release was revoked in April after he threatened to hang himself on Facebook and also threatened his then girlfriend.

“This has been a two years of hell,” Thorn said in court Tuesday. “I have a life. I have a family that I would like to get back to ... If you determine you want to impose more time on me, I accept that.”

In handing down her sentence, Brown noted things Thorn did not say.

“I haven’t heard you say you’re sorry for being engaged at the refuge,” Brown said. “I’m not asking you to say those things. I’m just noting what wasn’t said.”

Prior to the start of the hearing, defendant Duane Ehmer, who Brown sentenced to 12 months and one day behind bars, rode his horse Hellboy along the sidewalk outside the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse in downtown Portland in support of Thorn.

“Tell Darryl I love him,” Ehmer said.

Andrew Kohlmetz, the defense attorney for Jason Patrick, relayed the message inside in the courtroom.

“Duane is outside,” Kohlmetz told Thorn in court prior to the hearing. “He says he loves you.”

“Does he have Hellboy out there?” Thorn asked.

Kohlmetz nodded yes.

“Yeah!” Thorn said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BANDON – Health insurance open enrollment ends Dec. 15. Staff at Coast Community Health Center can help South Coast residents check eligibility and apply for private 2018 Health Insurance Marketplace policies. Insurance plans start Jan. 1 for those who sign…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LANGLOIS - The Bandon/Port Orford KOA Journey Campground has earned the prestigious 2018 KOA President’s Award from Kampgrounds of America, the world’s largest system of family friendly, open-to-the-public campgrounds. The award was presented Nov. 17 at KOA’s Annual International Convention…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friends of Nurseries awards this year went to:

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

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

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

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

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

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.