A new study based on dozens of interviews at farmers’ markets across Oregon finds the state’s Farm Direct Marketing Law, which took effect in 2012, is working as advocates hoped, providing new revenue streams for small farms while reducing food waste.

The law sought to clarify licensing and food safety requirements for direct-to-consumer sales at venues such as farmers’ markets and farm stands. In Oregon, about 12 percent of farms engage in direct-to-consumer marketing — more than double the national rate — with $53 million in sales from an estimated 4,252 farms in 2015, according to the USDA.

Part of the law establishes provisions for “cottage foods,” or homemade value-added products such as jellies, canned fruit, pickled vegetables and relishes, using farm-grown produce. Under the rules, farmers can sell these goods direct-to-consumer without a food processor’s license so long as they meet certain labeling requirements and sales don’t exceed $20,000 per year.

Every state except Hawaii and New Jersey has some sort of cottage food laws on the books. Opponents argue that reduced regulatory scrutiny may lead to unsanitary practices that increase foodborne illnesses, though researchers with Oregon State University found no foodborne illness linked to the Farm Direct Marketing Law after its first five years.

Rather, the study, published Sept. 12 in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development, concluded the law has seemingly accomplished exactly what it was designed to do, and “we expect more farmers will take advantage of this opportunity.”

The study was funded in part by a grant from the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture, and led by Lauren Gwin, associate director of the Center for Small Farms & Community Food Systems at OSU.

Researchers visited 20 farmers’ markets during the 2016 season, interviewing 18 farmers and 24 market managers about the Farm Direct Marketing Law. The top two benefits they mentioned were creating new, supplemental income streams and using excess produce to make valuable products such as salsa and preserves, turning potential waste into profit.

One Southern Oregon farmer interviewed for the study said the law was “a huge boon to our farm,” providing an additional $10,000 per year in sales — not enough to afford the flat infrastructure cost it would take to have a facility, “but you know a small amount like $10,000 really helps out our farm for the year.”

Other benefits discussed in the study include the ability for farmers to provide more healthy food choices in isolated, rural communities, and increasing food security in those areas. As one market manager said, “Every product that can be created in a community and sold at the market or a farmstand or CSA is one more thing that can actually be bought there, in rural communities that lack grocery stores.”

When asked how to improve the Farm Direct Marketing Law, farmers mentioned a few barriers mostly around improving public awareness and education about the rules. Others suggested expanding the cottage food exemption to include more products, or increasing the sales cap, and while researchers acknowledged more than half of states with cottage food laws have no limit on sales, “the political feasibility of this in Oregon is uncertain, due to ongoing concern about foodborne illness.”

“Licensed food processors might also object to increased competition from businesses that would be less regulated and have lower compliance costs,” they added.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (AP) — The Bureau of Land Management has a new director in Colorado.

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports Jamie Connell, who previously worked in Colorado, will be returning to the state to serve as the agency’s state director.

Connell currently is serving as the Oregon-Washington state director.

Connell is replacing acting Colorado state director Greg Shoop, who will resume his work as associate state director. The former state director, Ruth Welch, was reassigned by the Department of Interior to the Bureau of Reclamation in 2017.

Connell began her BLM career as a petroleum engineer in Montana. She later served as manager of the BLM’s Glenwood Springs Field Office, now the Colorado River Valley Field Office in Silt.

Connell moved on to positions including serving as manager of the BLM’s Northwest Colorado district, and as state director in Montana.

A federal judge has denied a request from several environmental groups for a preliminary injunction against a 500-acre logging project in Oregon’s Umpqua National Forest.

Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild and Benton Forest Coalition filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service earlier this year for allegedly approving the Quartz project in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

The plaintiffs argued a preliminary injunction blocking timber harvest was warranted because the federal agency hadn’t re-submitted its environmental analysis for public comment after additional red tree vole nests were found in the area.

Red tree voles are a protected species the Forest Service must “survey and manage” under the Northwest Forest Plan, a federal law intended to resolve conflicts between logging and conservation in the region.

The 517-acre Quartz project consists of “matrix” lands, which are designated for multiple forest uses, and includes trees in the range of 90 to 130 years old.

Initially, the Forest Service found only 13 red tree vole nest sites within the project’s boundaries, but amended that estimate to 87 nest sites and later added 70 more due to objections and data from the environmental groups.

Despite these findings, the Forest Service determined the area was “non-high priority” for the species, leading the plaintiffs to claim the agency had “gone out of its way to ensure the existence of red tree voles would not hinder its proposed timber harvest.”

The environmentalists alleged the Forest Service should have re-opened its environmental analysis to public comment both times the nest site estimate was changed.

The agency should also have updated its analysis with information about how revised land management plans on adjacent Bureau of Land Management property would affect the red tree vole, according to the plaintiffs.

U.S. District Judge Michael McShane has now rejected their arguments, ruling that the public comment opportunities on the project were sufficient under NEPA.

“Requiring the FS to open up every additional confirmation of a nest or site in the Quartz area to public comment would likely result in a never-ending process of supplements and further comment,” he said.

Likewise, the agency’s assessment of the new management plan for BLM property was adequate, since “it does not follow that any changes to land use practices on adjacent lands necessarily results in a meaningful impact” to the “non-high priority” designation of the Quartz site, McShane said.

An injunction also isn’t warranted partly because the plaintiffs waited eight months after project approval to file their complaint, he said.

During that time, two timber companies — Rosbo and Swanson Group, who have intervened in the case — signed contracts and otherwise planned to harvest timber, creating “private vested interests,” McShane said.

“Roads have been built. Logging has begun. The defendant intervenors are depending on the lumber to keep their mills open and active now and during the coming months,” he said.

The Quartz project is also intended to reduce wildfire risk in the area, which weighs in favor of the public interest apart from the private economic considerations, he said.

“While the risk of fire is certainly speculative as to the specific area in question, the raging (and massive) months-long fires in Oregon and Northern California the past few summers demonstrate the threat is real,” McShane said.

Threatened winter steelhead will start making their way up the Willamette River to their spawning grounds next month, and half a dozen sea lions are already waiting to eat them at Willamette Falls.

Managers with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife have asked for permission to kill these sea lions to save the fish. They don’t have an answer yet, but thanks to a sea lion shuffle earlier this year, they’re ready to go should they get the approval.

Last year, sea lions at Willamette Falls ate a quarter of a winter steelhead run that was already down to about 500 fish. At that rate, biologists say, the run is at risk of extinction.

Oregon has permission to kill sea lions to protect fish at Bonneville Dam, where 29 sea lions were lethally removed last year. But they don’t have that option at Willamette Falls, about 10 miles south of Portland where the river divides Oregon City from West Linn.

Without authority to kill the sea lions at Willamette Falls, fishery managers got creative.

The state trapped and relocated about a dozen sea lions in two cages on a dock below Willamette Falls between February and April.

In many of those cases, Bryan Wright, who leads ODFW’s marine mammal program, would hide out of sight at dusk until he saw a sea lion jump into the trap. Then, he’d press a button and a heavy cage door would slam shut.

Once the sea lions were trapped, Wright and other wildlife managers shooed them from the dock to a barge to a pickup truck – and then drove them 200 miles away to Newport.

“So, now we’re transferring the animal from the barge to the truck,” Wright explained from behind the wheel of a pickup truck as a team of workers banged on the walls of the barge with poles. “Usually you have to use a little bit of noise, tapping the stick, prodding them a little bit.”

The sea lions weren’t exactly eager to hop into a cage on the back of a truck, and Wright wasn’t exactly thrilled to be behind the wheel.

“It’s not something anybody does every day,” he said. “You have this 400- to 600-pound sea lion in the back, and nobody really knows, you know, driving by what we have back there. The first time I did it I was a bit white knuckled for the whole trip.”

Sea lions swim right back

Even as he was releasing these sea lions, Wright knew it was just a matter of time before they swam right back.

One sea lion made the 230-mile trip in just four days. Another one swam back and got trapped a second time, so he got two trips to the coast. Shaun Clements, a fisheries manager with ODFW, said clearly driving the sea lions to the coast was not a solution to the problem. But it is one of their only options for protecting the fish while they wait for approval to kill the sea lions.

“In the meantime, we felt we had to do something because the run is so poor and the sea lion population is getting bigger,” he said.

For every day the relocated sea lions weren’t at Willamette Falls, the agency estimates it saved two to three fish from getting eaten. Multiply that by 10 for each of the sea lions they moved, Clements said, and the number of fish that weren’t eaten by sea lions starts to add up.

“We did save some steelhead from predation,” Clements said. “Sixty days of two fish each a day, that’s 120 fish. That’s something”

Plus, he said, now they have the traps and the barge system ready to go to lethally remove sea lions should they get permission from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Trucking sea lions and salmon

But killing sea lions won’t solve all the problems these fish are facing.

The salmon and steelhead that do make it over the falls – without getting eaten by sea lions — still have twelve dams standing in the way of their spawning grounds.

None of those dams have fish ladders — a stair step-like series of pools that allows fish to make their way up and around a river’s towering dam.

“So right now what you see in essence is a huge roadblock for these fish in both directions,” said Jennifer Fairbrother with the Native Fish Society, an environmental group that sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over dam management in the Willamette River Basin. “The big nut to crack is how do we help these fish get around the dams both as they go downstream as juveniles and as they come back to spawn?”

Right now, dam managers have to help adult fish get around the dams by collecting them in a holding tank that drains into a truck. The truck drives the fish around the dam and dumps them out upstream.

Sea lions aren’t the only wildlife getting trucked around Oregon. More than half the salmon in the Willamette River Basin – tens of thousands of fish – get driven around dams every year. It’s the only way they’ll make it.

The dams were built for flood control, and dam managers say they’re too tall for regular fish ladders and spillways.

“In a perfect world, we’d have a ladder where we didn’t have to trap and handle fish,” said Greg Taylor, fisheries biologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “Everybody wants that. But it’s not a tool that’s available to us at this point. It’s not there.”

While dam managers puzzle over better options, sea lions are eating more and more of the fish downstream.

Clements says the only option left is to kill the sea lions to save the fish – before it’s too late.

“It’s a pretty simple equation for the winter steelhead right now,” he said. “Their numbers are so low. They’re losing so many here at the falls, that if we don’t do this they’re going to go extinct.”

ODFW is expecting a decision on its application to lethally remove sea lions from Willamette Falls by the end the year.

Oregon farm regulators have issued a fine of more than $187,000 to a controversial Oregon dairy, citing more than 220 violations of its wastewater permit between last December and late August.

Among the alleged violations by Lost Valley Farm of Boardman, Ore., are unauthorized manure discharges, storing too much manure in lagoons, repeatedly applying manure to fields without first installing required soil moisture sensors and keeping excessive numbers of mature cattle.

The dairy has until early November to challenge the civil penalties issued by the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s confined animal feeding program before an administrative judge.

“It is the largest CAFO penalty we’ve ever issued,” said Wym Matthews, the program manager.

None of the violations were that severe on their own, but they added up over time, he said. “The same thing happened continually without repair.”

Lost Valley Farm was recently put under new management after its owner, Greg te Velde, lost control of the facility’s operations in bankruptcy proceedings and the reins were handed to a federal trustee. Two other dairies, both in California, were also put under the trustee’s control.

ODA expects to proceed with its revocation of the dairy’s confined animal feeding operation permit even if the trustee, accountant Randy Sugarman, cleans up the facility’s act, said Matthews.

“Our unwavering aim is to revoke this permit. Whoever’s name is on it, we’re going to revoke it,” Matthews said at an Oct. 11 meeting of the CAFO advisory committee in Salem, Ore.

Lost Valley Farm is challenging the revocation of its CAFO permit through an administrative process, and a hearing on the matter is scheduled for Nov. 13.

Even if the dairy is brought into regulatory compliance, its past actions — such as manure lagoon overflows — warrant the revocation, and the ODA has lost all trust in te Velde’s management, Matthews said.

Even if the facility operated properly over the short term, the agency has no confidence that te Velde could keep up the compliance, he said.

The ODA anticipates arguing in bankruptcy court that its revocation of Lost Valley’s permit isn’t subject to the “automatic stay” that protects the company against adverse creditor actions under the bankruptcy process, Matthews said.

“Do you allow a facility to continue to violate state and federal laws?” he said.

While the facility does have some design flaws, ODA believes the wastewater problems were fundamentally caused by improper operations, he said.

If the dairy is eventually sold to repay te Velde’s creditors, the new owner would have to apply for a new CAFO permit, Matthews said.

A semi-trailer truck hauling 28 head of cattle crashed Tuesday afternoon on Interstate 84 in northeast Oregon, killing the driver and shutting down the highway while authorities attempted to round up several loose animals.

Five cows were also killed in the rollover — three instantly and two more were euthanized due to injuries, according to Oregon State Police Capt. Tim Fox.

The driver, who was pronounced dead at the scene, was not immediately identified.

The state police reported the truck flipped after it struck a guardrail heading west on I-84 in Union County, about two miles west of North Powder. No other vehicles were involved in the wreck.

The Oregon Department of Transportation shut down the highway eastbound between Pendleton and Baker City and westbound from Baker City to La Grande. The eastbound lanes have since been opened.

This story will be updated when more information becomes available.

Federal and state energy regulators will hold back-to-back meetings in Portland on Tuesday for a proposal to reclassify some of the high-level nuclear waste at the Hanford Site in Washington.

The proposal has major implications for the nuclear waste that remains in Hanford’s storage tanks.

In recent years, the U.S. Department of Energy has been working to retrieve the nuclear waste left in storage tanks, and in one area known as C-Farm, they’ve removed as much as they can get.

“But there is some amount they were not able to get,” said Jeff Burright, nuclear waste remediation specialist with the Oregon Department of Energy. “And that equates to approximately 70,000 gallons of waste.”

The Energy Department wants to downgrade that remainder to “low-level radioactive waste,” so they can leave it in place and fill the tanks with grout. The area would then be sealed off to prevent the waste from migrating.

It’s the first step in a long closure process for about 10 percent of the storage tanks on the site. But the Oregon Department of Energy has raised concerns that federal officials are moving too quickly. The state has filed public comments asking federal officials to do additional reviews before making any decisions.

“The movement of waste through the Hanford environment is a very complex process that we’re still trying to fully understand,” Burright said. “Despite their best efforts, there are still uncertainties over very long time scales that could represent future risk.”

Burright said closing the tanks could prevent the future removal of the 70,000 gallons of remaining waste should new technologies emerge. Plus, he said, there may be additional risks stemming from the million gallons of waste that have already leaked or spilled into the ground underneath the tanks on the site. 

The Oregon Department of Energy is holding its own informational meeting on the issue at 6:30 p.m. after the U.S. Department of Energy’s informational meeting from 3-5 p.m. in Portland on Tuesday. Both meetings will be held at the same location, the Eliot Center at the First Unitarian Church, 1226 SW Salmon St.

A state judge has authorized a defunct Oregon beef packer to auction its assets since no buyer has committed to purchase the facility as a package.

On Oct. 15, Lane County Circuit Judge Charles Carlson agreed to a request by Richard Hooper, a court-appointed receiver, to hold an auction for the equipment owned by Bartels Packing of Eugene, Ore.

Earlier this summer, Hooper had notified the court that a “letter of intent” had been submitted by a buyer who planned to keep the slaughterhouse and processing facilities operational.

At this point, however, the prospect of a buyer re-opening Bartels as a “going concern” doesn’t appear viable so the company would prefer to offer its assets for auction as a lot rather than allowing bidders to “cherry pick” items, an attorney for Hooper said at the hearing.

Some of the equipment is computerized and only a few years old, so the auctioneer plans to avoid starting with low minimum bids to achieve the best prices, Hooper said.

An attorney for Chris Bartels, the company’s owner, raised the possibility of certain items fetching the best value if sold separately apart from the auction.

However, the judge said there was “no question” an open auction would be the most effective venue and approved the event, with the provision that it can be called off if a buyer is found for the entire company.

Bartels Packing shut down operations in March and laid off more than 140 employees, citing the loss of a major customer and continuing sales declines.

At the time of its closure, the company had a total debt of $8.3 million — including $4.6 million owed to cattle suppliers and feedlots — with assets worth roughly $14 million.

Apart from owing money to livestock producers, Bartels stopped participating in cattle auctions, where the company was considered an important buyer of local and grassfed cows.

According to court documents, a property lease for the Bartels facilities is expiring early next year, so the auction would most likely take place by mid-December.

In an election year when Oregonians will make weighty decisions on abortion and immigration policy, the ballot measure attracting the most cash has to do with the humble grocery cart. In what amounts to a pre-emptive strike at new taxes on grocery chains — and the farms and factories that supply them — large grocers are dumping millions of dollars into passing Measure 103. “Keep our groceries tax free!” say ads blanketing the airwaves, plastered to websites, waiting at your grocery store’s check stand. The messages are so pervasive, you might think there’s currently a statewide proposal to slap a tax on your supermarket.

There isn’t. Instead, Measure 103 would change the Oregon Constitution, prohibiting lawmakers from imposing a new “tax, fee, or other assessment” on the “sale or distribution” of groceries, if one is proposed in the future. In doing so, it would largely freeze in place the tax structure that grocers and their suppliers operate under today. “There are really only two sides of this measure,” says Joe Gilliam, president of the Northwest Grocery Association, the leading advocate for Measure 103. “Those who want to keep their groceries tax free and those that want to tax groceries and continue to come up with proposals to tax your groceries.”

More On Oregon Ballot Measures: 104 | 105 | 106 In Oregon’s longstanding debate over how to pay for public services, specifically taxing grocery sales isn’t likely to gain any traction. Even states that have a sales tax — a concept Oregonians have repeatedly shot down — typically exempt groceries. “We don’t have a sales tax on groceries,” says Katherine Driessen, a spokeswoman for advocacy group Our Oregon, which has pushed repeatedly for higher corporate taxes in the state. “Certainly nobody’s proposing one. It’s a complete non-starter.” Yet Gilliam and his allies argue other recent proposals would have amounted to a tax on groceries. Most prominent is Measure 97, a 2016 ballot proposal to create a new 2.5 percent tax on corporate sales of more than $25 million. Grocers played an outsized role in convincing voters to resoundingly reject that measure, claiming it was a sales tax in disguise. Measure 103 backers also say proposals for taxes on sugary beverages — including an effort in Multnomah County that was delayed earlier this year — are a looming threat to Oregon grocers. Their proposal would make such taxes impossible. “Most of the folks on the other side of the measure have kind of brought us to this point,” Gilliam says. Gilliam argues Measure 103 is a straight-forward way to make sure that food and beverages are kept out of future conversations about how to pay for public services. (The proposal does not cover sales of grocery store staples that aren’t meant for consumption, such as toilet paper. Alcohol, cannabis products and tobacco are also not included, though e-cigarettes aren’t contemplated by the measure.) But Measure 103’s opponents say it’s far more complicated than that. They say the measure would lock sloppy, confusing language into the state’s constitution, where it will be difficult to fix or remove. And they say the measure could block big grocery chains from paying their fair share for state services in the future. “The very idea that we would risk putting something legally ambiguous into Oregon’s Constitution just doesn’t make any sense at all,” says Becca Uherbelau, executive director of Our Oregon. As a chief opponent to Measure 103, Uherbelau helms a coalition that includes unions, dozens of community and advocacy groups and a list of businesses that includes Nike. The same groups are opposing Measure 104, another anti-tax proposal that would make it harder for the Oregon Legislature to raise new revenue. One of their central arguments against Measure 103: That it’s vague and overbroad. The measure prohibits new taxes on the “sale or distribution of groceries” and goes on to define those terms in a way intended to capture not just grocery stores, but any entity in the grocery supply chain. Our Oregon says that definition creates huge complications. An analysis from the group’s attorney suggests the measure would wind up prohibiting taxes on food sales at hospitals and trucking companies that haul groceries and even preempt changes to bottle deposits in Oregon. It’s not clear those arguments would hold legal weight. The Oregon Department of Justice has said that Measure 103 wouldn’t impact an assessment on hospitals that voters passed in January to fund Medicaid, and wouldn’t affect planned increases to the state’s gas tax for trucking companies that haul groceries. The Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative, which facilitates the Oregon Bottle Bill, says deposits would remain untouched. The measure’s opponents say those opinions won’t be enough to stop lawsuits if Measure 103 passes. Uherbelau believes companies will fight to win protections from taxes under the law. “The fact that we’re arguing over what it covers and what it doesn’t means there will be industries out there that say, ‘Oh it doesn’t cover me,’” she says. “It’ll cost the state of Oregon and local communities hundreds of millions of dollars to litigate these issues.” The best example of this confusion involves restaurants. According to the DOJ, Oregon eateries would be protected from new taxes under the law. Restaurants are even specifically included in the ballot language for the measure, a detail cheered by the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association.

“A meal at a restaurant or from take-out is a regular and increasing part of many Oregonians’ busy schedules,” the group said in a voters’ pamphlet statement. “ORLA supports Measure 103 because it will ensure that such meals remain as affordable as possible without unnecessary and burdensome taxation.” Yet Gilliam insists most Oregon restaurants aren’t included. He points out that a provision in the measure singles out businesses regulated by the Oregon Department of Agriculture, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and several other agencies. That list includes “take-and-bake” pizza places like Papa Murphy’s, Gilliam says, but not most other restaurants. He can’t say why the DOJ and others have reached different conclusions. “We sent a request in to the DOJ saying, ‘How did you get to your interpretation?’ And we have never received a response,” Gilliam says.

A DOJ spokeswoman also declined to clear up the matter for OPB, saying the agency’s role in writing ballot language for the measure had ended. But it’s worth noting the Oregon Supreme Court upheld ballot language that listed restaurants among the businesses the measure would protect. The factions for and against Measure 103 don’t look all that different from the fight over Measure 97 two years ago. And just as with that battle — the state’s most expensive ballot measure campaign — spending is lopsided. Public sector labor unions have bankrolled much of the more than $670,000 reported raised by the opposition campaign as of Oct. 9. Large grocery chains like Kroger and Albertsons/Safeway have put more than $4 million into backing Measure 103, between landing the proposal on the ballot and trying to sway voters. The American Beverage Association, a foe of sugary drink taxes, has also contributed $1 million. Of course, far smaller organizations have also taken positions on the measure. The Portland-based League of Minority Voters issued a statement in support of Measure 103 in the Oregon voters’ pamphlet. The group’s president, Promise King, says he’s concerned a hypothetical future tax on grocers could shutter grocery stores and impact access to food. He specifically mentioned ethnic groceries some of his group’s constituents rely on. “For us, it was just a no-brainer that we have to defend access to groceries for people that are elderly,” King said. “This is a fence.” The anti-Measure 103 campaign has support from some farms, small markets and restaurants that would be shielded by the proposal. It also has an ally in Tax Fairness Oregon, a Portland-based group that promotes progressive changes to the state’s tax code. Measure 103 “is very poorly written in its definition of what groceries are, and it could include so many different places we collect tax revenue that it’s ridiculous,” says Jody Wiser, the group’s founder. “You’re talking about taking out a huge piece of the economy, and that’s not OK to do that kind of carve out.”

About 30 members of the crew stood in the morning still of the forest as Katie Sauerbrey laid out the plans for the day. Some carried shovels or pickaxes. Others leaned against trucks and peered at maps of the area. All listened intently as she outlined the risks of their operation.

There were 1,000-foot cliffs that fell to the ocean. There were unmarked barbed wire fences. There was a steep drainage full of thorny blackberry bushes.

There would be fire. And they would be the ones to light it.

“With the primary carrier being tall grasses, this thing could move quickly,” she told the group. “We could get some tall flame lengths. Be prepared. Keep your head on a swivel.”

After the briefing, Sauerbrey, a preserve manager with The Nature Conservancy, led the crew — made up of folks from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the Oregon Department of Forestry, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and others — on the mile-long hike out to the 30-acre meadow they planned to burn at Cascade Head, a preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy a few miles north of Lincoln City.

Controlled burns like the one overseen by Sauerbrey are an important part of forest management, one of the tools officials use to try and make a dent in the massive buildup of fuels that has amassed over decades of aggressive wildfire suppression. But controlled burns face obstacles, namely air quality regulations that can limit their effects.

After the last two fire seasons, where portions of the state were inundated with smoke for months on end, officials have begun to ask: might it be wise to endure a small amount of limited smoke in the offseason to mitigate the smoky hellscape that’s become the norm over the last few years?

Tribes in the Pacific Northwest have used fire as a tool to shape the landscape for thousands of years. The touch of flame kept huckleberry and camas fields abundant. In areas where tribes hunted deer and elk, fire created a mat of forage plants on the forest floor, a favorite food for the ungulates. Burned areas recycle nutrients more efficiently and help to control the spread of invasive species.

“Done in a controlled way, as a management tool, as opposed to out of control, fire improves the resources the creator has given us,” said Cheryl Kennedy, chairwoman of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. “This knowledge was instilled in us and we look forward to the day when these practices are as widely used as they should be.”

The tribes used rotating cycles of fires to keep land fresh. Hazelnut stands saw fire at least every 10 years, trees and bushes used for basket weaving were burned every three years or so. The frequency of the burns not only helped the plants grow. It also helped keep the landscape free of dry fuels.

The result would come to be known as the “10 a.m. rule,” which stated that fires should be contained by 10 a.m. the day following their initial report.

In Oregon, where more than half the state is public land, forests today look like nothing nature intended, more dense than at any point in recorded history.

“In some places there are 10 to 100 times more trees per acre,” said Mark Stern, director of forest conservation with The Nature Conservancy.

The change in forests has changed the way fire behaves in them, said John Bailey, a forestry professor at Oregon State University.

“Fire behavior is based on three things: landscape, weather and fuel,” he said. “The topography hasn’t changed, but there are many acres out there that have more fuel than they’ve ever had.”

What followed was decades of aggressive fire suppression leaving forests without the naturally occuring burns that cleared out dry fuels and underbrush. Left unburnt, many forests across the western United States now look as they never have before, brimming with fuel that has accumulated, in some spots, for more than 100 years.

“Fire needs to touch the land once every 10 years,” said David Harrelson, a cultural resources manager with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. “Without it, you leave room for catastrophic fires.”

The way fire is managed across the west changed drastically in the summer of 1910. By August, some 3,000 fires were burning across the west including blazes in the Wallowas, on the eastern flank of Mount Hood, in the Umpqua National Forest and on Huckleberry Mountain, just west of Crater Lake.

Along with increased temperatures from climate change, the buildup of fuels has played a role in dramatic fire seasons across the west during the last few years, which have been both costly and harmful to public health.

In 2018, wildfires from Washington to California to British Columbia blew smoke into the Portland area, causing unhealthy air quality for days on end. In southern Oregon, unhealthy air lasted for months.

In total, the state spent more fighting wildfires in 2018, nearly $515 million, than in any other year.

A problem of this scale, which spans millions of acres across numerous state lines, has no easy solution.

“We need it all. More thinning. More mechanical treatments. More prescribed burning,” Bailey said. “But it needs to be strategic. You want to look for areas that haven’t burned in a long time so, if a wildfire does start there, maybe it will be 5,000 or 10,000 acres instead of 100,000.”

On average, roughly 165,000 acres a year have been treated with controlled burns in Oregon over the last decade. Three times that area — about 470,000 acres a year over the past 10 years — have burned in wildfires. In 2018, wildfires scorched more than 830,000 acres in the state.

Still, there are examples of success. The Millie Fire, which burned nearly 25,000 acres in the Three Sisters Wilderness in 2017, could have been much worse had the area near the town of Sisters not been treated with controlled burns before the wildfire.

In 2017, the Eagle Creek fire scorched nearly 50,000 of Oregon’s most beloved acres in the Columbia River Gorge and rained ash and smoke on the state’s densest population center. That same year, the Chetco Bar fire in southwest Oregon burned for five months and scorched nearly 200,000 acres.

“Firefighters had a path to approach,” Sterns said. “(Controlled burns) not only make fires less likely to grow, they make them safer to fight.”

With fire comes smoke, though, and that’s been the big stumbling block in making wider use of controlled burns. The Oregon Smoke Management Plan, adopted in 1972 to conform with the federal Clean Air Act, essentially prohibits any controlled burn that results in visible smoke in a populated area. Every five years, the plan comes up for review and that process began early in 2017 with a series of five meetings across the state.

Among the stakeholders at those meetings was Carrie Nyssen, senior advocacy director for the American Lung Association, who sometimes felt like the odd person out at the meetings as one of the few who resisted the push to relax regulations.

“It’s a difficult issue for the Lung Association. It’s hard for us to support any policy that puts more smoke in the air,” she said. “But we know there is no option where there’s no smoke and we want to make sure folks in affected communities know when it’s coming, what there options are and where they can go.”

Joining Nyssen on the panels were public health officials, forest collaboratives, environmentalists, timber operators, elected officials and a tribal representative, all of whom aired their differences and forwarded a set of recommendations to state officials.

Among the recommendations: a relaxation of the threshold for smoke intrusions, but also an increase in communication to affected communities so arrangements could be made by those most vulnerable.

The benefits would be multifold, according to Bailey.

“If we proactively and consciously go after this buildup of fuels, it will reduce the amount of fire, the amount of money we spend on fire and the number of fatalities we have,” he said. “All of that equals less smoke in the air.”

State officials are reviewing comments on the proposed changes, which could be approved and put in place as early as January 2019.

SCIO, Ore. — Scio High School hosted the first-of-the-school year Future Natural Resource Leadership of Oregon Career Development Event on Oct. 11, drawing 193 students who competed in competitive activities that included forestry skills, tree and tool identification, first aid procedures, map reading, speeches and job interviews.

FNRL, chartered in 2016 to bridge the gap between classroom training and real world applications, is one of seven Career and Technical Student Leadership Organizations in Oregon. Students from Clatskanie, Corvallis, Knappa, Sabin (Milwaukie), Philomath, Scio, Sweet Home, Tillamook, Waldport and Yoncalla high schools competed in the events.

Rex Lowther, who has been teaching forestry, wood shop and small engine classes at Scio High School since 2004, said he was satisfied with this year’s event.

“As far as I know, Scio’s program started in the 1970s as the Associated Oregon Forestry Clubs and ended in 2008 when they lost their funding,” Lowther said. “A core group of instructors kept the CDEs going until FNRL of Oregon was chartered in 2014 and began chartering chapters in 2016.

“We had several industry volunteers help us on Thursday, which is great because it exposed the kids to different job opportunities. For instance, Jeannie Shuttleworth, a log buyer from Giustina Resources, was our job interviewer and two kids were asked to interview for real with the company,” he said. “The two foresters who were teaching compass and pacing are local and manage a large family tree farm. It is nice to have people who are in the industry support these kids and give them exposure to potential future careers.”

Each high school program is locally controlled and varies by needs of the communities, strengths of the advisers and direction of the local school district. The FNRL is a state Career Technical Student Organization and is basically the leadership portion of the program. The CTSO also hosts different events for students including leadership training and FNRL state convention.

“The primary difference is that our students at the chapter level have the opportunity to grow in their leadership abilities and work and share directly with industry professionals,” Lowther said. “These students gain valuable experience, which gives them opportunities to learn to communicate directly with industry professionals and share what we do not only in our local programs, but also as a statewide organization.

There are 24 students — 18 boys and 6 girls — in Scio High School’s forestry program.

“We are a little down from previous years mainly due to a decline in this year’s school enrollment,” he said. “We’ll be focusing on recruitment for next year to try to bring up the numbers a bit. There is a point of diminishing returns, however, because if we get too big then it limits what we can do as a class overall. The most effective number is 15 per class period.”

Scio High School senior Grant Ortiz, current FNRL president, was also happy to see the event going so well.

“I competed in my first CDE in middle school, so this one will be my eighth,” Ortiz said while waiting to compete in the log rolling contest.”

Scio always hosts the first meet of the season, the next one will be held in Tillamook in two weeks and then we won’t do any more until next spring,” he said. “This year’s event was different for me, though, because it is the first one I’ve participated in a leadership role.”

For more information on FNRL contact Kirk Hutchinson at 503-550-0471 or email him at hutchfnrl@gmail.com

Farmers and ranchers in the Klamath Basin will benefit directly from a massive federal water spending bill that authorizes more than $6 billion to improve the nation’s ports, dams, harbors and other infrastructure.

Tucked into the America’s Water and Infrastructure Act of 2018 is a section that deals specifically with the Klamath Project, a sprawling 200,000-acre irrigation system that serves more than 1,200 family farms and ranches in southern Oregon and northern California.

Congress passed the bill on Oct. 10, which includes up to $10 million annually for the Klamath Project to help agricultural producers withstand water shortages and improve efficiency.

Scott White, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association, said the money could pay for pumping groundwater or idling farmland during drought years — like the basin experienced in 2018 — or project improvements like lining irrigation canals to prevent water loss.

“If we have $10 million to use for addressing (water) supply versus demand on an annual basis, then during good water years we could be using that money for ways to improve our efficiency and make those drought years that much easier,” White said.

The Klamath Project already faces a strain on water supplies to balance the needs of farms with the needs of endangered fish species. Earlier this year, the Klamath Tribes sued the Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to hold more water in Upper Klamath Lake for endangered shortnose and Lost River suckers.

Meanwhile, the Yurok and Hoopa Valley tribes also successfully sued government agencies to send more water down the Klamath River to wash away a salmon-killing parasite known as C. shasta. The lawsuits delayed the start of the 2018 irrigation season by several months, making it harder for farmers and ranchers to know what to plant ahead of time.

White said provisions in the America’s Water and Infrastructure Act were originally part of the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, a $1 billion long-term agreement that would have also included the removal of four dams on the lower Klamath River. The KBRA failed to pass Congress before expiring in 2015.

Three years later, White said they are pleased to see lawmakers take action.

“It’s not going to solve all the issues here, but it’s a good start,” he said.

In addition to the $10 million in drought relief, the bill also makes it easier for farmers to convey groundwater through the Klamath Project canals during water shortages, and instructs Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to recommend ways the basin can reduce electricity costs, which in some cases have ballooned by 2,000 percent over the last decade.

Affordable power is tied directly to project efficiency, White explained. The more electricity costs, the less farmers may use technology designed to conserve water, such as center pivots versus flood irrigation.

“There are many reasons why affordable power is so important for water efficiencies on farm, and on the project,” White said.

Members of Oregon’s congressional delegation also cheered provisions to assist Klamath Basin agriculture, an industry worth about $557 million. Rep. Greg Walden said he was proud to work with his Senate colleagues to get the legislation across the finish line.

“This measure will help ensure our farmers, ranchers, and water users are able to survive this challenging water year and will help prepare us for severe drought conditions we may face in the near future,” said Walden, a Republican.

Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley agreed the bill is a win for the basin’s agricultural economy.

“Through drought, wildfires, and other extreme challenges, Klamath Basin irrigators have shown they’re committed to working collaboratively with the many water stakeholders, and it is imperative that the federal government step up and do all it can to assist,” Merkley said. “This authorization will allow stakeholders to access much-needed resources as they work to address water supply challenges in the region.”

BEND, Ore. (AP) — Officials are taking adoption applications for the more than 60 horses seized from a central Oregon ranch earlier this year.

The Bulletin reports the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office is accepting applications through next week and will hold a lottery to select possible adopters.

The horses were seized from a ranch in Terrebonne in March after they were found in poor conditions.

The sheriff’s office plans to conduct background checks on applicants before the lottery draw scheduled for Oct. 26.

The horses will then be available for pick-up at the end of the month.

Any remaining horses will be adopted out in early November.

An herbicide used on soybeans has proven tantalizingly effective against two troublesome weeds in Oregon clover fields, but remains out of reach for farmers.

Despite performing well in killing dock and tiny vetch during field trials, Python — the brand name for flumetsulam — did in some “outlier” cases cause damage to clover foliage.

Those instances of crop injury were enough to dissuade Dow AgroSciences, the herbicide’s manufacturer, from seeking to extend the chemical’s label registration to include clover in the U.S.

Because clover is grown on relatively few acres, the possibility for the company to earn a small profit is negated by the potential for lawsuits, said Bryan Ostlund, administrator of the Oregon Clover Commission.

“Any liability issue becomes magnified,” he said.

Dow AgroSciences did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.

While the Oregon Clover Commission has reached an impasse with Dow, the organization is still hoping to provide farmers with access to Python through another path.

At its Oct. 10 meeting in Salem, Ore., the commission unanimously voted to continue paying a consultant to explore the possibility of extending the herbicide’s federal registration to clover through an entity other than Dow.

One option would be for a smaller chemical company that specializes in niche crops to license the herbicide from Dow, taking on any liability as well as the responsibility of registering Python with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The other possibility is for a “third party registrant” — such as an agronomy company — to perform those functions at the commission’s behest, which isn’t seen as a desirable outcome.

“It gets expensive real fast,” said Ostlund.

Dock and tiny vetch are an expensive problem for clover farmers because no other currently registered herbicides can treat the weeds, said Nicole Anderson, an Oregon State University Extension field crops agent.

“They’re weed species we don’t have any other management tools for,” she said.

Seeds from dock and tiny vetch often don’t get blown out by the combine during harvest, which means they wind up at the seed cleaner, Anderson said.

Buyers have high expectations that clover seed be pure, so they have little tolerance for weed species, she said. “The growers lose a lot of good seed trying to get those levels met.”

Generally, Python achieves good weed control with limited crop injury risk in clover, Anderson said.

In field trials, though, OSU tested the herbicide’s efficacy even during periods that growers normally wouldn’t spray the chemical.

It was during these times that “outlier data points” of crop damage occurred, she said.

Though the label for Python wouldn’t allow the chemical to be sprayed during these periods, Dow nonetheless felt the risk was too great, Anderson said.

The owner of a Napa Valley winery accused by Oregon winemakers of using deceptive labels says he is working with both state and federal investigators, while describing the controversy as a “charade.”

Copper Cane LLC, of Rutherford, Calif., buys grapes from about 50 growers in Oregon to make Pinot noir and rosé wines. Two brands in particular, “The Willametter Journal” and “Elouan,” have raised suspicion among Oregon winemakers that the labels and packaging falsely imply the wines originate in the state’s high-value American Viticultural Areas, or AVAs.

The dispute is now on the radar of Oregon congressional delegates, who sent a letter Oct. 9 to the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau requesting an investigation into Copper Cane’s labels.

But Joe Wagner, who owns and operates the winery, said the agency already visited and began combing through production records weeks ago.

“As far as we see it, we are still doing things the right way,” Wagner told the Capital Press.

A spokesman for the TTB said he cannot comment on any investigation, but said the agency is well aware of the issue.

The Oregon wine industry raised concerns over the labels, which they claim misrepresent their appellation of origin.

Under federal law, if a wine labels itself as coming from a particular viticultural area, such as the Willamette Valley AVA, then 85 percent of the grapes must be from that area. Oregon labeling laws are even stricter, requiring 95 percent.

To protect the integrity of wine regions, labels cannot make any false, ambiguous or misleading statements about the wine’s origin. That is where Oregon winemakers take issue with “The Willametter Journal,” a Pinot noir that mentions “the Willamette region of Oregon’s coastal range” on its label. Industry leaders feel that could wrongly imply the wine comes from the Willamette Valley AVA.

“Elouan” also prominently lists the Willamette Valley, Umpqua Valley and Rogue Valley on its retail cases, all three of which are designated AVAs in Oregon.

Jana McKamey, vice president of government affairs with the Oregon Winegrowers Association, said the industry has long been at the forefront of protecting its wine regions and truth-in-labeling.

“The (industry’s) priority is to assist state and federal regulatory agencies in ensuring all wineries, wherever they are crushing grapes, comply with federal regulations and Oregon’s 41-year-old labeling rules that are designed to protect the integrity of Oregon’s esteemed winegrowing regions,” McKamey said in a statement.

In their joint letter to the TTB Administrator John Manfreda, Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, along with Reps. Peter DeFazio, Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici and Kurt Schrader stated that if any of Copper Cane’s labels are out of compliance the products should be removed from the market.

Wagner, the Copper Cane owner, said he is still awaiting a final decision from the TTB. The winery is also in regular contact with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which asked to review production, transfer and bottling records for seven wines, including “The Willametter Journal” and “Elouan” brands. A spokesman for OLCC said that review is currently in process.

Jim Blumling, vice president of operations for Copper Cane, said the winery is “willing and amenable to working through and coming up with a solution that works for everybody.” Wagner said he feels the Oregon wines are labeled correctly, and references to the Willamette Valley and “Territory of Oregon” are just a fun, fancy way of telling the wines’ story.

“You see this around the world,” Wagner said. “It is the story of the life of the wine.”

Wagner said he was surprised to hear some winemakers were upset, and called the issue a distraction led by a few people with an ax to grind.

“At the end of the day, I assume these guys are going to have some egg on their face,” he said.

Oregon farm regulators plan to shut down a controversial dairy even if the new operator manages to bring the facility into compliance with wastewater regulations.

Lost Valley Farm of Boardman, Ore., was recently put under new management after its owner, Greg te Velde, lost control over the facility’s operations in bankruptcy proceedings and the reins were handed to a federal trustee.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture nonetheless expects to proceed with its revocation of the dairy’s “confined animal feeding operation” permit even if the trustee, accountant Randy Sugarman, cleans up the facility’s act, said Wym Matthews, manager of the agency’s CAFO program.

“Our unwavering aim is to revoke this permit. Whoever’s name is on it, we’re going to revoke it,” Matthews said at an Oct. 11 meeting of the CAFO advisory committee in Salem, Ore.

Lost Valley Farm is challenging the revocation of its CAFO permit through an administrative process, and a hearing on the matter is scheduled for Nov. 13.

Even if the dairy is brought into regulatory compliance, its past actions — such as manure lagoon overflows — warrant the revocation, and the ODA has lost all trust in te Velde’s management, Matthews said.

If the facility operated properly over the short term, the agency has no confidence that te Velde could keep up the compliance, he said.

The ODA anticipates arguing in bankruptcy court that its revocation of Lost Valley’s permit isn’t subject to the “automatic stay” that protects the company against adverse creditor actions under the bankruptcy process, Matthews said.

“Do you allow a facility to continue to violate state and federal laws?” he said.

While the facility does have some design flaws, ODA believes the wastewater problems were fundamentally caused by improper operations, he said.

If the dairy is eventually sold to repay te Velde’s creditors, the new owner would have to apply for a new CAFO permit, Matthews said.

During the CAFO advisory committee’s meeting, Matthews also discussed a planned legislative proposal to raise the maximum fees for CAFO permits.

The last time such an increase was approved by Oregon lawmakers was in 2010, and the costs of implementing the CAFO program have since risen while fees haven’t kept pace, he said.

Currently, 90 percent of the program is paid for with money from the state’s general fund, while 10 percent is funded with CAFO fees, he said.

The agency aims to fund at least one full-time position entirely from fees, but it’s currently about $50,000 short, Matthews said.

Fees for CAFO operations regulated under a “general permit” currently range from $100 to $300 per year, depending on the number of animals at the facility.

For CAFOs with more complex “individual” permits, the current fee cap is about $2,400.

Under the ODA’s legislative proposal, general permit fees would be raised to a maximum of $500 to $3,500, depending on operation size, and up to $10,000 for individual permits.

The maximum fees would be raised substantially to prevent ODA from having to soon return to the Legislature with a similar request, Matthews said.

However, in the short term, the fees for general permit CAFOs would likely be raised to $125 to $840 a year, while the individual permit fee would increase to $5,000.

A new framework for managing wolves that repeatedly prey on livestock may have the support of both Oregon ranchers and conservation groups, if the state can find enough money to pay for it.

The idea came as groups sat down for the second time with a mediator on Tuesday as part of the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife’s effort to update the state’s Wolf Conservation and Management Plan.

Participants include the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon Hunters Association and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, along with Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands, Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity.

The facilitated meetings are designed to find common ground within the contentious wolf plan.

Tuesday’s session revealed a possible breakthrough in how ranchers can peacefully coexist with wolves on the landscape while minimizing attacks on livestock. Though short on specifics, the strategy generally calls for more site-specific wolf protections with an upfront focus on non-lethal deterrents, such as hiring range riders or stringing fladry along fences to haze the predators.

Under the proposal, a wildlife biologist would meet with individual ranchers to discuss which non-lethal tools would be most effective given their location and geography. ODFW already has conflict deterrence plans where wolves are known to be active, but these new agreements would make it even clearer what a rancher ought to be doing to best protect their animals.

If wolves continue to attack livestock and meet the state’s definition of “chronic depredation,” then ranchers who follow the rules can request killing wolves to stop the damage, which is allowed in Phase III of the wolf plan in Eastern Oregon. Wolves remain a federally protected species west of highways 395, 78 and 95.

Todd Nash, a Wallowa County commissioner and member of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, said the proposal would provide much-needed clarity and directions for ranchers to follow when it comes to dealing with problem wolves.

“There should be no dispute whether you did enough non-lethal,” Nash said.

Sean Stevens, executive director of Oregon Wild, said the concept also holds promise for the environmental community because it prioritizes non-lethal measures ahead of conflict.

“Done well and with a lot of goodwill, this could be effective,” Stevens said. “It really does focus on avoiding conflict.”

It remains unclear how such a program would be paid for in the long-term. The group discussed possible funding sources, including the Wolf Depredation Compensation and Financial Assistance Grant Program, which receives money from the Legislature and is administered by the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

During the 2017 legislative session, Rep. Greg Barreto, R-Cove, introduced a bill that would tie compensation directly to the increasing wolf population. That measure could surface again in 2019.

ODFW staff will write specific language for developing site-specific deterrence plans and present it to the work group Nov. 5 during a webinar and conference call. The next in-person meeting is scheduled for Nov. 27 in Pendleton.

Individual group members made it clear they still have lingering concerns over other parts of the Oregon plan. Stevens, with Oregon Wild, took issue with the state’s definition of “chronic depredation” in Phase III of the plan, which is currently defined as two attacks on livestock over any period of time.

ODFW has proposed amending the rule to three attacks on livestock in a 12-month period, but Stevens said even that is too broad.

“We really need to be thinking about an appropriate timeline,” Stevens said.

The group also went back and forth on issues such as radio collars, and whether it is appropriate for local authorities, such as county sheriff’s offices, to participate in wolf-livestock depredation investigations. Those topics will be up for further discussion moving forward.

For the wolf plan to work, Nash said ranchers and rural communities need to buy in. Right now, he said the current plan is broken.

“Producers don’t call in depredations at this point. Most have chosen not work within the context of the plan, because the context of the plan hasn’t worked,” Nash said. “You’ve lost the human tolerance condition among ranchers, in northeast Oregon especially.”

Kevin Blakely, deputy administrator for the ODFW Wildlife Division, said he was encouraged by the progress Tuesday, and believes it could be a foot in the door for more consensus.

“There’s got to be something for everybody on the table,” Blakely said. “I think that’s how you start to get some movement.”

An out-of-state bank is asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Oregon farmers who seek compensation for the lost value of their radish seed.

Northwest Bank of Warren, Pa., had previously alleged the radish seed grown by the farmers served as collateral for a loan to a defunct seed broker.

However, that claim was rejected by a federal judge, who found the bank didn’t have a security interest in the seed, allowing the farmers to sell it.

While the litigation was ongoing, however, the farmers claim the crop lost value and they had to pay for additional storage costs, prompting them to file a complaint seeking $6.7 million in damages.

The lawsuit filed by the Radish Seed Growers Association was put on hold while Northwest Bank sought to convince the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it actually did own the radish seed.

After the 9th Circuit rejected the bank’s arguments, the litigation was reactivated and now the parties have submitted new legal arguments to the court.

Despite its loss in the 9th Circuit, Northwest Bank argues it had reasonably believed that it owned a security interest in the seed, so its earlier lawsuit was not frivolous.

Unless the farmers can show there was no probable cause for the earlier lawsuit, the bank’s claims are protected by the “absolute litigation privilege” that allows parties to make certain allegations in court, according to the bank.

The bank also argues that some of the growers’ claims must fail because the bank didn’t have possession of the seed and because their claims are prohibited by an Oregon law that protects parties pursuing their constitutional rights.

The Radish Seed Growers Association, on the other hand, argues the lawsuit should now proceed because the case has already survived a motion to dismiss by the bank.

There’s no reason to revisit the bank’s arguments as it “could not have lost more clearly or decisively” on appeal, which was the only reason the case was stayed, the farmers claim.

This year’s beet harvest in southern Idaho and eastern Oregon could set record highs for sugar content and yield, thanks in part to good growing conditions and limited disease and insect pressure.

Lab measurement of samples as of early October pegged average sugar content at 17.4 percent, Amalgamated Sugar Co. Communications Specialist Jessica McAnally said. Last year’s average was 16.84 percent.

Boise-based Amalgamated, a grower-owned cooperative, aims for 18 percent average sugar content company-wide, achieved just once previously, she said. The number represents the percentage of sugar in the beet, which contains mostly water.

Average sugar content was expected to move higher barring bad weather, McAnally said. Beets store more sugar in their roots as harvest progresses and air temperatures drop, though heavy rain can prompt the plants to devote more energy to growing and less to producing sugar.

Boise received 0.95 inch of rain Oct. 9, the National Weather Service reported. Some spots in the region received over an inch.

“I’m afraid it will hurt sugar content going forward,” said Mitch Bicandi, a grower near Notus, in southwestern Idaho. “If we got another storm like this in the next week to 10 days, it would be really bad. We hope this is it.”

Before the rain, southwest Idaho beets showed higher sugar content than in the past, he said. “We’re just hoping they will hold.”

Bicandi, who plans to start harvesting Oct. 15, said growers whose harvest was underway Oct. 9 probably were shut down until late Oct. 10. But those who previously felt conditions were too try to dig may have seen some benefit from the rain, which amounted to around a day’s worth of irrigation, he said. Harvest typically wraps up by early November.

Beet growth and sugar production are helped by a long growing season with hot, dry days and cool nights. Disease risk rises when there is too much moisture in foliage.

“We have had an excellent growing season, and while we have seen some disease pressure, it has not been as bad as some years,” McAnally said. “We also have increased quality available in seed varieties available to our growers.”

On the pest and disease front, “overall we are pretty happy,” said Oliver Neher, plant health manager with Amalgamated. The Treasure Valley of southwestern Idaho and southeastern Oregon had a bit more Cercospora Leaf Spot than the company would like, but it was a “very normal” year for powdery mildew and Looper insects, without severe infestations, he said.

McAnally said the approximately 750 growers who comprise Amalgamated parent cooperative Snake River Sugar Co. will produce about 182,000 acres of sugar beets this year, about the same as 2017. Last year’s yield averaged 39.2 tons per acre.

Board President Duane Grant, who co-owns 4-D Farms in Rupert, in south central Idaho, said yield per acre is expected to be up from a year ago by 1.5 to 2 tons per acre, or around 5 percent.

“We believe we are going to set a yield record and a sugar-content record this year,” he said Oct. 9. “That is a credit to our growers, who have agreed to share with each other their cultural practices, reporting them into the company.” Such sharing “lets us learn from each other how to improve our collective crop.”

Nitrogen management is an example.

“Our growers have learned to very carefully analyze the fertility content of the top three or four feet of soil and apply just the right amount of fertilizer to grow the crop, but still allow it to consume available fertilizer and mature in a fertilizer-depleted environment,” Grant said. Beets maturing amid excess fertilizer grow root mass but do not accumulate sugar, he said.

Advances in seed genetics this decade played a major role in increasing the productivity of the plant, and in turn boosting sugar content and yield, he said.

Grant said the 2018 growing season featured a cool start, and a hot summer stretch with high temperatures on the upper end of their historic range — including “quite a few days of extreme temperatures over 100. We were concerned the heat would mineralize a lot of fertilizer in the ground.”

Mineralizing organic nitrogen would create an environment that is too fertile, prompting beets to add mass without accumulating sugar as effectively, he said. This did not happen to the extent beets gained mass and yield while losing quality, though “it did mineralize nitrogen. You could actually see sugar beet fields green up as we moved to the end of July into early August.”

Subsequently, temperatures dropped and wildfire smoke settled over southern Idaho for about three weeks, stopping nitrogen mineralization and allowing beets to mature properly, Grant said.

As for the Oct. 9 rain, he said an inch or more can reduce sugar content as beets soak up water, which also may add to transport and processing costs.

McAnally said early “pre-pile” harvest started Sept. 4 in south-central Idaho, and east in the Upper Snake River region, so Amalgamated plants in Twin Falls and Paul could begin processing the new crop. In southwest Idaho, harvest began on a limited basis Oct. 1 and production at the 500-employee Nampa plant started Oct. 4.

The plants run year-round, and process sugar beets from fall to as late as March or early April.

Online

http://amalgamatedsugar.com/

Oregon Aglink, a statewide organization dedicated to promoting a better public understanding of agriculture, will honor Tom Wimmer, chief operating officer of Marion Ag Service, and the Oregon Dairy Women for their decades of service to the industry at the upcoming Denim and Diamonds dinner auction next month in Salem.

Wimmer will receive Oregon Aglink’s 2018 Agriculturist of the Year award, and the Oregon Dairy Women will receive its 2018 Ag Connection award at the annual Denim and Diamonds dinner and fundraiser on Nov. 16 at the Salem Convention Center. The evening will start with a reception and silent auction at 5 p.m. It will be followed by dinner, the awards presentation and a live auction at 7 p.m.

When he was hired as Marion Ag Service’s bookkeeper nearly four decades ago, Tom Wimmer was only the seventh employee at the three-year-old company.

Today, Wimmer serves as the chief operating officer at the company, which has 120 employees at four locations.

“I learned from the ground up every facet of the business,” said Wimmer.

In its announcement, Oregon Aglink said it is recognizing Wimmer for his “knowledge, work ethic and generosity.”

Wimmer moved to Oregon from Iowa as a young boy when his parents bought a 30-acre beef cattle farm near Woodburn. The ninth of 11 children, he remembers devoting his free time to farm chores to help his mother after their father had passed away.

“We worked pretty hard,” he said. “I loved it. I was deeply embedded in it.”

After graduating from Oregon State University with a degree in agricultural engineering and business management, Wimmer accepted a job with Marion Ag Service in 1979 and has worked there ever since.

His position grew beyond bookkeeping to include dispatching employees and performing other management functions. Over the years, Wimmer has witnessed first-hand the company’s major transformations.

Marion Ag Service converted from the grain business to the fertilizer business because many farmers in the area stopped producing wheat due to low prices.

In 1994, the company took a “big step” in buying St. Paul Feed Supply, which added many new functions to the operation, such as selling liquid and dry fertilizers, returning to the grain business and broadening its base of chemistry sales.

Wimmer has also become familiar with many of the farmers in the region due to the company’s custom work of applying lime to their soil to correct the acidity.

“I know their fields and operations because we’ve had to work on getting people and product to those locations,” he said.

Last year, Marion Ag Service began operating a large new fertilizer facility near Aurora, including formulating and packaging product for national distributors that wanted to get away from manufacturing themselves.

“They don’t have to do a thing, they just have to go out and sell it,” Wimmer said.

“Each challenge is an opportunity if you have the ability to work through the situation,” Wimmer said. “It’s just adapting ourselves to where there’s a need.”

The Ag Connection award is in recognition of the Oregon Dairy Women’s “decades of far-reaching efforts to connect consumers with Oregon dairy production,” according to Oregon Aglink.

“They really have been the face of the Oregon dairy industry for many years,” said Tami Kerr, executive director of the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association, as well as a past president and current member of Oregon Dairy Women.

Many Oregonians encounter the organization’s “Red Barn,” an “icon of the state fair” where volunteers sell ice cream and milk shakes, she said.

“I always say it’s the best quality and the best value at the Oregon State Fair,” Kerr said.

The all-volunteer organization provides scholarships to community college students, the children of dairy families as well as people studying in dairy-related fields.

Financial assistance is also provided to 4-H, FFA, Ag in the Classroom, Ag Fest, the Summer Ag Institute and the Adopt-A-Farmer program.

Since 1959, the nonprofit has been crowning Dairy Princess Ambassadors to travel to classrooms, fairs and other events to educate children about the dairy industry. Last year, the program reached 14,000 people.

Online

www.aglink.org/event/denim-diamonds/