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/

Though the locations are less than 30 miles apart, supporters of competing sites for a Willamette Valley intermodal facility claim stark differences between the two.

Containers of agricultural goods would be unloaded from trucks at the Oregon facility, then loaded onto trains bound for major shipping ports along Washington’s Puget Sound.

Lawmakers approved funding for the project in 2017 with the intent of having trucks hauling containers avoid Portland traffic snarls on their way to port.

The choice between two Oregon towns — Brooks and Millersburg — will now be up to the state’s transportation regulators, who must decide which site will receive up to $25 million in taxpayer dollars.

Proponents of each location recently submitted their final proposals to the Oregon Department of Transportation, which has about four months to pass on its findings to the Oregon Transportation Commission, which oversees the agency and will make the ultimate choice.

Selecting which project to fund will involve a multi-step process, with ODOT, the Business Oregon economic development agency and a third-party reviewer all submitting recommendations to the commission, which doesn’t face a decision deadline.

“It’s a look whether it’s going to be sustainable, operatable over the long term,” said Erik Havig, planning manager at ODOT, noting that the applicants may be asked to supply additional data.

“It’s possible one gets it, or neither one,” he said.

The Oregon Port of Willamette, which proposed the facility be built on undeveloped farmland in Brooks, argues that its closer proximity to Portland is an advantage because the site is more likely to draw import containers bound for the metropolitan area.

Wherever it’s located, the facility will need to attract imports to make empty containers available to exporters, who otherwise may have to bear the cost of repositioning empties from elsewhere.

Ocean carriers own the containers and often have policies against releasing them to intermodal facilities farther than 200 miles inland, said Kevin Mannix, the Oregon Port of Willamette’s executive director.

“They don’t like losing control, so they like to have a relationship with businesses that are importing and exporting,” he said.

Brooks is within 185 miles of rail docks at the Port of Tacoma, while Millersburg is about 215 miles away, putting it “outside the zone of opportunity,” Mannix said.

The Linn Economic Development Group, which wants to site the facility in Millerburg, acknowledges in its proposal that some shippers in the northern Willamette Valley would be willing to truck goods to Brooks, but not as far south as Millersburg.

“By being able to capture additional volume originating in Yamhill and Clackamas counties, the Brooks location may observe an 11 percent higher volume of containers,” the application said.

However, because shipping goods by rail becomes more cost-effective over longer distances, and because trucks will be kept off Oregon highways for a higher number of miles, the total economic benefit of locating the facility farther south in Millersburg is greater, according to the Linn Economic Development Group.

“If the State’s goal is to maximize public benefits to residents through reduced pollution, highway wear and tear, and fewer accidents, then the optimal location would be Millersburg, followed closely by Eugene,” the report said.

The Millersburg location has the added benefit of already being zoned for industrial development, as it was formerly a paper mill, said Greg Smith, LEDC’s project manager.

The Millerburg proposal recognizes that the number of containers imported to the facility is likely to be far surpassed by the demand for empties.

However, the partnership with Northwest Container Services, which operates an intermodal facility in Portland, will help resolve that problem, Smith said.

“Whether you’re in Brooks or Millersburg or Eugene, that’s an issue you’re going to have to work on,” he said.

While forecasters are predicting a record-high Oregon hazelnut crop in 2018, a newly published study suggests the industry might not be where it is today if growers did not use fungicides to manage a cankerous plant disease known as Eastern Filbert Blight.

The disease was first discovered north of Vancouver, Wash., in 1970, and by 1998 it had spread to the Mid-Willamette Valley where 99 percent of all U.S. commercial hazelnuts are grown.

Once a tree is infected with Eastern Filbert Blight, the disease can only be removed by pruning. Fungicides are also recommended to protect healthy plant tissue, though at the time growers wondered whether it made economic sense to spray mature orchards versus pruning alone.

Researchers at Oregon State University launched a 12-year trial from 2004 to 2015 to determine whether the annual cost of spraying fungicides was worth the financial return through sustained hazelnut production. The answer, they found, was a resounding yes.

“Fungicide use in hazelnuts not only limited (Eastern Filbert Blight) development but also protected future yield loss and gross financial returns,” the study concluded, adding that growers who spray fungicides annually should be able to recoup those costs after just a few years of finding the disease in their orchards.

Eastern Filbert Blight is a fungal disease in hazelnut trees that causes cankers in infected branches, where spores grow and are dispersed by rain. Trees usually decline in productivity slowly at first, then rapidly after 5 to 10 years.

Jay Pscheidt, a professor with the OSU Department of Botany and Plant Pathology and lead author on the study, said fungicides will not stop the disease, but does slow down its development. That is especially important as growers make the transition from susceptible hazelnut cultivars to newer varieties that are more disease-resistant, but need time to mature.

“It is the bridge between our susceptible cultivars and our resistant cultivars,” Pscheidt said.

Though hazelnut growers have planted nearly 40,000 acres of resistant trees, Pscheidt said about 30,000 acres of the old, susceptible orchards are still producing nuts, and the industry needs to maintain them until the younger blocks have a chance to grow up.

“We’re doing that with fungicides,” he said.

The OSU study was conducted at a 1-acre trial orchard at the university’s experimental field in Corvallis. Past research was limited to younger trees, Pscheidt said, and growers were eager to find out if fungicides could be effective in larger, more mature orchards.

“All of our research results were mostly on these little trees that we could cover really well,” Pscheidt said. “But it’s not like a mature orchard that’s 20 feet up, and you’re using an air blast sprayer.”

Researchers divided the orchard into 12 blocks of nine trees — eight Ennis trees, susceptible to Eastern Filbert Blight, and one Butler tree — giving each block three different treatments both with and without fungicides. Over the 12-year period from 2004 to 2015, total gross returns for non-treated trees were $30,150 per acre, while returns on trees treated with fungicide ranged between $33,804 and $35,972 per acre.

That means growers stand to make up to $4,274 more per acre more using fungicides to combat Eastern Filbert Blight than by simply pruning. More importantly, without fungicides, Pscheidt said mature hazelnut orchards may have died off faster than breeders can come up with new disease-resistant varieties, which may have stalled or even crippled the industry.

“If we didn’t have fungicides, we may not have had an industry,” Pscheidt said. “We still would have come up with resistant cultivars, but it would have been a real hard time between then and now.”

Another 30 participants are set to take part in the Resource Education and Agricultural Leadership program, better known as REAL Oregon.

The organization announced its second class on Oct. 5, including professionals in production agriculture, timber, agribusiness and state government. They will attend five monthly training sessions across the state, learning about the diversity of agriculture and natural resources in order to become better leaders and advocates for their industries.

REAL Oregon started in 2017, and is a collaboration between industry and other groups to create new leaders who will represent the agriculture and natural resource communities. It is modeled after a similar program in Idaho, which is now entering its 39th year.

Bill Buhrig, agronomist for Simplot Food Group in Ontario, Ore. and REAL Oregon board chairman, said participants for Class 2 were selected from a pool of well-qualified and diverse candidates touching all corners of the state.

“We had a great response to the program in its second year,” Buhrig said.

Class 2 will begin in November and end with a graduation ceremony in March 2019. The group will travel for training sessions in Ontario, Roseburg, Newport, Boardman and Salem, experiencing a wide range of Oregon’s geography and economy while building skills in communication, conflict resolution, media relations, public speaking, networking, board governance and public policy work.

Greg Addington, REAL Oregon executive director, said he is excited to watch the new group grow as leaders.

“This class will build on the solid foundation established by Class 1,” Addington said. “We are beginning to fulfill the vision of building a solid network of agriculture and natural resource leaders who will benefit the state for many years to come.”

REAL Oregon Class 2 members include:

Northwest/Willamette Valley: Jace Anderson, Anderson Land & Cattle, Sublimity; Liz Beeles, Oregon Department of Agriculture, Salem; Becky Berger, Berger International, Hillsboro; Kirk Burkholder, Burkholder Farms, Albany; Lance Christianson, Port Blakely U.S. Forestry, Molalla; Ayreann Colombo, Aquila Consulting Group, Portland; Jacqueline Duyck Jones, Larry Duyck Farms, Banks; Katie Glaser, Glaser Farms, Lebanon; Mallory Phelan, Oregon AgLink, Albany; Amber Pritchard, Harvest Capital Company, Sandy; Shane Ruddell, Ruddell Farms, Sweet Home; Anna Scharf, Scharf Farms, Amity; Abisha Stone, Strategic Economic Development Corp., Salem; Gilbert Uribe Valdez, ODA, Salem; Christina Walsh, Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences, Eugene; Dylan Wells, Autumn Harvest Inc., Woodburn; Karen Withers, AgCultured Consulting, Turner; Denis Sather, OSU, Corvallis; Lily Xu, Energy Trust of Oregon, Portland.

Eastern/High Desert: Angela Allum Smit, Vale Veterinary Clinic, Vale; Shon Rae, Central Oregon Irrigation District, Bend; Marie Cain, Threemile Canyon Farms, Boardman; Shannon Hoehna, SH Consulting, Weston; Amber McCollough, Green Diamond Resource Company, Klamath Falls; Robin Pickard, Athena Income Tax Service, Athena; Beau Reynolds, Northwest Farm Credit Services, Pendleton.

Coastal/Southern: Mark Garrigues, GreenWood Resources Inc., Seaside; Megan Huber, Northwest Farm Credit Services, Central Point; Jeff Minster, Starker Forests Inc., Blodgett; Joe Newton, Lone Rock Resources, Roseburg.

The Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences will on Nov. 6 present range scientist Dustin Johnson with its Award for Excellence in Extension Education.

The presentation will be during the college’s faculty and staff awards luncheon, which begins at noon Pacific at the Memorial Union Building Horizon Room on the OSU campus in Corvallis.

Johnson is based at the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Burns. His expertise is in rangeland ecology and management, rangeland monitoring and invasive plant ecology and management, according to an OSU Extension news release. His primary applied research program centers on improving the efficiency and sustainability of ranchers industry in Eastern Oregon.

His efforts include training and assisting ranchers as well as public land management agency partners in developing and maintaining cooperative rangeland and grazing monitoring programs, engaging with diverse stakeholders to develop collaborative approaches to addressing complex natural resource and wildlife management issues, and developing science-based tools and strategies for functional restoration of rangelands and wetlands degraded by invasive plants, OSU Extension said.

Johnson has been with OSU Extension since July 2007. He is responsible for managing programs related to discovery and extension of science-based information related to agriculture and natural resources in Harney County. He also serves as co-county leader with OSU Extension, primarily providing budgetary oversight and program direction for the extension program in the county.

He previously worked for USDA Agricultural Research Service as a rangeland research technician and for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as a rangeland management specialist. He holds a master’s degree from OSU in rangeland ecology and management.

Construction of a controversial 73-acre solar farm and apiary will proceed in Oregon’s Clackamas County after farmland conservationists struck a settlement deal with the developer.

Earlier this year, the 1,000 Friends of Oregon nonprofit challenged the project’s approval before the state’s Land Use Board of Appeals after Clackamas County determined the development wouldn’t preclude commercial agriculture because beehives would be kept on the property.

Normally, conditional use permits limit solar arrays on farmland to 12 acres, but in this case, a county hearings officer found the panels would displace fewer than 12 acres due to the honeybee forage growing beneath them.

Under the settlement, 1,000 Friends of Oregon has agreed to withdraw the objection as long as the developer, Pacific Northwest Solar LLC, agreed to conduct a study of the how the dual use works, said Damien Hall, the company’s attorney.

The solar company also agreed not to oppose temporary rules implemented by Oregon’s Land Conservation and Development Commission, which clarify solar sites can’t occupy more than 12 acres without an exception to the statewide goal of preserving farmland, said Meriel Darzen, attorney for 1,000 Friends of Oregon.

There’s no data in Oregon about co-locating an apiary with solar panels, so the facility served as a good opportunity for a pilot project, she said. “We think it’s an interesting concept.”

Meanwhile, LCDC has convened an advisory committee to examine whether to make the temporary rules permanent and whether to otherwise update Oregon’s land use regulations for solar facilities.

Solar facilities on Oregon farmland have increasingly been stirring controversy in recent years, with critics fearing that multiple 12-acre projects are being sited close together to sidestep regulations for larger projects.

“Cumulative impact is a big issue for the agricultural community,” said Jim Johnson, land use specialist with the Oregon Department of Agriculture, during the committee’s first meeting on Oct. 4 in McMinnville, Ore.

The landscape for solar developments is different now than in 2010, when a previous rules advisory committee on solar regulations was held and much of the attention was focused on Central and Eastern Oregon, rather than the Willamette Valley, said Jon Jinings, community services specialist with the Department of Land Conservation and Development.

“We have some experience under our belt now,” he said.

A couple other developments have recently occurred on the legal front regarding solar facilities on farmland.

In Yamhill County, the state’s Land Use Board of Appeals has upheld the county’s denial of a conditional use permit for a 12-acre project that was opposed by the owners of a nearby vineyard.

In its Oct. 3 opinion, LUBA rejected claims by the developer, Yamhill Creek Solar LLC, that a county commissioner was biased against the project and that the county improperly weighed land use goals and policies when analyzing the proposal, among other claims.

“Given the deferential review we must apply to the county’s interpretative and evidentiary judgments, and the inherently subjective nature of evaluating whether the proposed use is consistent with a broad range of comprehensive plan goals and policies, the county’s ultimate conclusion that the balance of the applicable goals and policies weigh against the proposed use is not reversible on appeal,” the ruling said.

In Jackson County, a ruling that struck down the approval of an 80-acre solar project near Medford will be reviewed by the Oregon Supreme Court.

In 2017, the county was found by LUBA to have improperly granted the project an exception to Oregon’s goal of preserving farmland, which was upheld by the Oregon Court of Appeals on different legal grounds in May.

On Oct. 4, Oregon’s highest court accepted a petition to review eight questions of law regarding solar land use regulations and has scheduled oral arguments for March 5 in Salem, Ore.

PORTLAND — Wastewater problems at a controversial Oregon dairy have persisted despite a federal trustee taking control of the operation last month, state farm regulators said during a hearing Friday.

Lost Valley Farm of Boardman, Ore., has repeatedly run into trouble with the Oregon Department of Agriculture since the facility began operating last year.

The financial problems of its owner, Greg te Velde, led him to file for bankruptcy protection to prevent creditors from auctioning off the dairy’s herd to make money available for debt repayment.

On Sept. 13, a bankruptcy judge ordered a U.S. trustee, Randy Sugarman, to take control of the dairy due to te Velde’s spending company money on gambling and otherwise failing to properly account for funds and loans.

The change in operators occurred shortly before te Velde faced a court-ordered Oct. 5 deadline to begin bringing the facility into regulatory compliance with wastewater rules.

Nina Englander, an attorney representing ODA in legal proceedings against te Velde, said in a circuit court hearing Friday she recognized the transition in operators explains some of the continued problems at the dairy but the state government wants to avoid future lapses.

Notably, wastewater recently overtopped one manure lagoon at the facility while the wind sprayed wastewater from another one, she said.

A pipe on the property was also found by ODA inspectors to be “spewing liquid manure” when the facility was being flushed, Englander said.

“I offer that as an example of the systemic problems going on,” she said.

The dairy must empty enough wastewater from its lagoons to make 75 acre-feet of storage capacity available by Nov. 13.

However, there were recently only 26 acre-feet of capacity in the lagoons, down from 47 acre-feet in August, Englander said.

Elizabeth Howard, an attorney representing the dairy operator, said that despite the setbacks, the facility had made “substantial progress” in meeting a remedies order issued by Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Kelly Skye. The judge issued that order in August when te Velde was found to be in contempt of court for violating an earlier settlement deal with ODA.

The dairy has completed the switch to using recycled water — which is intended to reduce its generation of wastewater — and plans to soon begin applying manure from the lagoons to about 1,500 acres once the current crops are harvested, Howard said.

The manure application is contingent on soil tests and approval from ODA to ensure the field’s nutrients remain at a level that can agronomically be absorbed by crops.

Emptying the lagoons will be necessary to install the steel gauges required by the court’s remedies order, she said.

The dairy had also hit a “bump in the road” regarding the installation of water flow meters at the facility because it was difficult to figure out the exact sources of water and where it flowed, Howard said.

A water dye test that “turned it green and blue” has resolved that issue and flow meters will likely be installed within about a month, she said.

The facility expects to have a digital weather station installed by Nov. 13 and a new manager — Joel Edmonds, a dairy nutrient and management consultant — was recently hired to run the dairy, Howard said.

Getting the dairy into regulatory compliance is the top priority of the federal trustee, Randy Sugarman, she said.

“We’re going to do what needs to be done, period,” said Sugarman, who is a longtime certified public accountant with experience in agriculture.

Howard said the trustee does not plan to challenge whether the court-ordered remedies sanction for te Velde applies to him even though it’s “a gray area of the law.”

WALLOWA, Ore. — A conservation easement in the heart of Wallowa County farmland is being managed to grow large white tail buck deer for big game hunting — and philanthropy.

Landowner Woody Wolfe said he’s managed the river bottom to grow big white tail bucks for several years and with a handful of Land Owner Preference elk, buck and doe tags issued through Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, he has a few tags to share.

“In 2016 the largest white tail buck in the state was taken off my property by a neighbor,” Wolfe said.

At the time, Wolfe said, the buck ranked fifth in the Oregon black powder record book.

Chad Garrett has guided hunts on the Wolfe Ranch for several years and is well familiar with the Wallowa mid-valley land with views of the surrounding mountains.

“Woody has a lot of trophy game on his place,” Garrett said.

As he’s become known around the county, Garrett said he’s been asked to help local clubs and nonprofits raise money through hunt raffles, allowable under Oregon state gaming laws.

When Wolfe was approached by Wallowa County Center for Wellness for a donation he looked for advice from staff at The Nature Conservancy’s Zumwalt Prairie Preserve that offers raffle hunt opportunities to local nonprofits. Then he turned to Garrett for help.

With a website and a PayPal account 100 tickets were sold at $100 apiece in six days. Garrett was paid for his effort, Wolfe said, and $8,500 went to the Center.

According to Garrett, the winner of that raffle was a man looking to kill his first white tail buck to qualify for the Super Slam of North American Big Game — the legal taking of all 29 of the traditionally recognized species of big game animals native to North America.

Wolfe said the experience got him thinking. With such a rapid response to the first raffle, what other worthy causes could he support by raffling some of his Land Owner Preference tags?

“If I could raise that money that with one tag or two, I thought about what cause do I feel is the most valuable to me?” Wolfe said.

The answer was a scholarship for a Wallowa County high school graduate pursuing a degree in agriculture at Oregon State University. As a sixth-generation Wallowa County farmer, agriculture is close to Wolfe’s heart.

“I think an education can facilitate people who want to go into agriculture, whether in ag service or production,” Wolfe said. “Ag is what has paid me back for the efforts I put forth — if it is a passion for someone else, I want to help create a return for that passion.”

Again Wolfe turned to Garrett for help. He set up a website and a PayPal account to facilitate raffle hunts and serves as the guide. After Garrett’s time, Wolfe said each scholarship award will be around $7,500.

This year two raffles are offered to raise money for the scholarship. Garrett said 100 tickets are available for $100 apiece for each hunt. The winner of each of the two raffles will receive a three-day guided hunt and lodging.

Garrett said the first scholarship will be awarded in 2019, but the money will not be available until the winner’s junior year, when he or she declares a major. The winner must also have maintained a 3.0 grade-point average those first two years of college to claim the scholarship.

Tickets are available at www.biggamerafflehunts.com through Jan. 1. The raffle drawing will be held Jan. 10. For more information call Garrett at 503-367-0207.

A former employee of the Santiam Water Control District in Stayton, Ore., will spend two years in prison for embezzling almost $24,000.

Patricia Anne Gilbert, 51, of Turner, pleaded guilty on Oct. 1 to two counts of felony theft in Marion County Circuit Court. She was sentenced to 24 months in prison, as well as $24,231 in fines and restitution.

Gilbert was hired by the district through a temporary agency and worked eight months as an office manager. The district provides municipal water for the city of Stayton, cooling water to NORPAC Foods, a food processing co-op, and irrigation water for 17,000 acres of farmland.

District Manager Brent Stevenson said Gilbert was provided a credit card with a $500 limit for incidental business expenses. She increased the limit without authorization, Stevenson said, and used the card instead for personal use.

Gilbert also stole three district checks, forged the dual signatures and made them out to herself, Stevenson said.

“Definitely, it was a setback. We’re a really small entity,” Stephenson said.

Once Stevenson learned of the embezzlement, he reported it to the Stayton Police Department. Charges against Gilbert were filed March 21. The district was able to recover the entire amount through insurance and bonding.

Looking ahead, Stevenson said the district will review its procedures and will no longer issue a credit card for incidental expenses.

“I’m happy that she’s prosecuted, and that it won’t happen to somebody else,” Stevenson said.

SALEM —Gov. Kate Brown wants to guard against a rollback of federal environmental rules by moving them into state law where the Trump administration couldn’t touch them.

Brown, a Democrat up for reelection next month, proposed legislation Wednesday that would have the state adopt all federal clean air and water standards as of Jan. 19, 2017 — the day before Donald Trump was inaugurated.

“As states, we can take a leadership role in preventing the erosion of core laws that protect our environment,” Brown said in remarks at an event at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry Wednesday. “Together, states must stand up to the Trump administration’s continuous attacks on our health and environment.”

Brown said that the Trump administration has already scaled back some rules that aim to keep the country’s air and water clean.

The administration has repealed or proposed elimination of about 46 regulations, according to Brown’s office, citing the Harvard Environmental Law Program Regulatory Rollback Tracker.

These include fuel efficiency standards and regulations on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. Oregon has one such plant.

The Environmental Protection Agency is also considering aspects of rules adopted in 2016 to require reduced emissions from public landfills. Landfills emit high levels of gases such as methane and carbon dioxide. Nationally, they are the third-largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions.

Eight state attorneys general, including Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, sued the EPA over the proposed rollback in May “on behalf of (Oregon’s) citizens and residents to protect their health and well-being and to protect natural resources held in trust by the state.”

“It is widely assumed that the next wave of rollbacks will be to core safeguards of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act,” according to Brown’s press release.

“Over the past two years Oregonians have witnessed an unprecedented and aggressive attack on clean air standards, clean water standards, and federal efforts to fight climate change,” Brown said. “In Oregon, that rollback stops now.”

Nikki Fisher, a spokeswoman for the governor, said in an email that there would be no expected additional cost to state government as a result.

The announcement comes the morning after the first debate of Brown’s reelection campaign.

Her opponent, state Rep. Knute Buehler, R-Bend, said in response to Brown’s proposal that he too would “defend Oregon and our clean air and clean water.”

“As governor, if the Trump administration attempts to roll back rules that safeguard Oregon’s environment, I will defend Oregon and our clean air and clean water,” Buehler said in a written statement Wednesday. “I have shown this repeatedly by breaking with my party on this important issue. I opposed the president’s decision to remove the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and broke with my party to replace coal energy in Oregon with cleaner renewables like wind and solar.”

Buehler supported 2016 legislation that required Oregon to stop using coal-generated electricity by 2030.He also criticized Brown’s direction of the state Department of Environmental Quality, which regulates air and water.

In February 2017, Brown appointed Richard Whitman director of the agency. The previous director resigned in 2016 over a heavy metal air pollution scandal in Portland.

In January, state auditors found that backlogs in permits and inspections at the agency “endanger the state’s air quality and the health of Oregonians.”

“In addition to talking about federal environmental regulations, I would challenge Governor Brown to fix her own DEQ which has been mired in chaos and turnover, failing to protect and enforce our state laws,” Buehler said.

A spokesman for Brown’s campaign, Christian Gaston, claimed in an email Thursday morning that Buehler was “lying.”

Reporter Claire Withycombe: cwithycombe@eomediagroup.com or 503-385-4903. Withycombe is a reporter for EO Media Group working for the Oregon Capital Bureau, a collaboration of EO Media Group, the Pamplin Media Group, and Salem Reporter.

Grazing restrictions on public lands may have unintended consequences for greater sage grouse, according to a recent study. The imperiled birds depend on habitat on both public and private lands, and much of that habitat can be lost when ranching operations go under.

“We found that as the restrictions to public lands increased, (private) landowners have historically made decisions to alter their land use. Then there’s trigger points where they may sell those lands to higher intensity uses that would be bad for sage grouse,” said David Naugle, study co-author and professor at the University of Montana.

The study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, found that curbing public land grazing by 50 percent could lead to more than 429,000 acres of lost habitat for sage grouse. While that might not sound like a lot, often private ranches provide important habitat for sage grouse to rear their young.

“(Private lands often) have these mesic, or wet, habitats. After the birds have nested in the dry uplands, the little puff balls come out of the eggs, and mama takes them down to these wet habitats. That’s where they find forbs and bugs. That’s how they put on meat and bones and feathers,” Naugle said.

One big threat to sage grouse is habitat fragmentation. That comes in many ways across the 11 western states where the birds roam. Cutting the birds off from prime rearing areas, by selling off ranches, could be a big blow to birds, Naugle said.

“Private lands are our interstitial tissue that connects our bigger public lands together — and of course wildlife doesn’t see fence lines,” Naugle said.

Protecting sage grouse has come down to a wide range of partnerships between conservationists, ranchers, politicians and state governments. In 2015, the federal government decided not to add sage grouse to the Endangered Species List, mostly because these partnerships were seen as a new way forward for species conservation.

It’s an idea many conservation groups have signed onto, as is the oft-used phrase, “What’s good for the bird is good for the herd.”

“Supporting ranchers as stewards of (sage grouse) habitat is an important thing for conservationists to focus on,” said Joe Fargione, science director for the Nature Conservancy’s North American region. The group also helped fund this study.

Sage grouse numbers have dwindled from a series of threats. In Oregon and Washington, their habitat has been fragmented by overgrazing. Juniper trees crowd out good mating grounds and serve as perches for birds of prey. Invasive species make the threat of wildfire more real. Elsewhere across the West, resource extraction — like oil and gas drilling and mining — have cut off habitat.

For ranchers, working to protect sage grouse now helps safeguard against potential strict land use regulations in the future, if the birds are ever listed as threatened.

One of the ranchers at the forefront of sage grouse conservation on Oregon’s private land is Tom Sharp. He’s removed juniper trees from his property, dealt with invasive weeds, added water troughs for cattle and wildlife. (He’s said a trail camera even caught a sage grouse jump on the trough and take a sip.)

“I think history will look back and say the sage grouse was really a good thing for ranching — both on public lands and on private lands,” Sharp said.

Sustainable ranching is important, he said, both for the land and to make sure the business is around for generations to come. “Ranching is one of those things that gets into the blood for generation after generation of families,” he said.

And the business is made more difficult when there are grazing restrictions — on public or private land. Often those restrictions come because plants and wildlife have been placed on the Endangered Species List.

“Revenue as a rancher is pretty much a numbers game. The smaller the herd, the smaller the revenue. The larger the herd potential, the larger the income potential. It has a direct correlation between restrictions and economic opportunity here,” Sharp said.

That’s something the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association has also seen. Executive Director Jerome Rosa said, over the years, they have seen more grazing restrictions throughout the American West. Profits are low, beef prices are low, which leads to more ranches turning into developments, he said.

“As more and more of that development happens, there will be less and less areas for the sage grouse to be out on the landscapes,” Rosa said.

Other research David Naugle has focused on shows that where there’s sustainable grazing, there’s often a stable sage grouse population.

“When grazing is done sustainably, it’s the most compatible land use for wildlife,” Naugle said. “It maintains shrub communities, facilitates maintenance and expansion of native bunch grasses — all of the habitat ingredients that critters like sage grouse that are of high conservation concern require.”

Sage grouse are considered an indicator species; their health is indicative of the ecosystem’s bigger picture and the health of the more than 350 other types of wildlife that live there.

One of the states researchers found that could lose the most sage grouse habitat because of grazing restrictions was Washington, which could lose up to 30 percent of its wet habitat with big increases in grazing restrictions. The state has a very low sage grouse population as it is — it’s also more profitable there to be a farmer than a rancher, Naugle said.

“Finding creative ways to put cropland back into sagebrush grazing lands is a top priority (in Washington),” Naugle said.

The other two states that could see the most wet habitat loss, according to the study, are Wyoming and Montana.

The study shows how linked decisions on public and private lands can be, Naugle said. He thinks the future of wildlife conservation is up to public-private partnerships.

“There’s this balancing act between public and private land. How do we do the best thing for wildlife while still maintaining rural communities that provide grazing, which then provide this big open space that all of our wildlife depend on?” Naugle said.

Capital Press

Kirk Davies and his fellow rangeland scientists in southeastern Oregon for years produced studies showing earlier grazing reduces future fire risk while benefiting native plants.

Now they are working to figure out how to apply these lessons on the larger scale that the vast sagebrush steppe landscape often demands.

“With these findings established, now the challenge becomes prioritizing where to apply this in land management,” said Davies, lead rangeland scientist with USDA Agricultural Research Service in Burns, Ore.

Issues inherent in working on the usually large-scale range include coordinating and moving people, equipment and cattle; a limited number of cattle available; and some public opposition to public-lands grazing altogether, let alone as a management tool, he said.

“We are hoping to work with more landscape ecologists, looking at how it applies across the landscape,” Davies said. That would include investigating, long-term, how rangeland plant communities respond to fire whether they are grazed or not, and deriving a grazing approach to suit a location’s unique fire risk — deciding how much to graze and in which season, for example.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management Burns District has used targeted grazing to help reduce fine fuels, particularly annual grasses, District Manager Jeff Rose said. The effort is on a fairly small scale now, but the district is working with ARS to help scale it to a level that will be effective in larger landscapes, he said.

Fires haven’t yet materialized on treated, grazed, areas and it’s hard to predict where a fire will start, Rose said. “There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that it will work,” he said.

Davies and colleagues conducted research for years before publishing a 2009 paper documenting that grazing can help native plants.

“We saw that long-term ungrazed areas, when they were burned, were subsequently invaded by exotic annual grasses,” he said. “We found moderately grazed areas recovered to the native plant community. They didn’t have that invasion and were much better off.”

The 2009 study’s text said in part that even plant communities that aren’t accumulating fire fuels beyond historical levels may need low-severity, fuel-reducing disturbances to improve resilience to more severe disturbances.

Researchers in turn began looking into fire severity.

In ungrazed areas, “we found we had larger and hotter fires, and those fires caused higher mortality of desired native annual bunch grasses,” Davies said. “We also found ungrazed areas were much more likely to ignite with an ignition source and more likely to spread …with higher flame heights and faster-moving fire.”

Even areas that went ungrazed for just one or two years were found to have greater fire risk, he said. Moreover, grazing in the fall or spring ahead of peak summer fire season greatly reduced the risk of severe fire.

Findings from the researchers’ 2010 study included that moderate grazing reduces wildfire risk by decreasing fine fuels available for ignition, and limiting spread by reducing fuel continuity, the text said in part. While moderate grazing makes prescribed burning more difficult, it can help produce a mosaic burn effect that can reduce a fire’s speed and overall size.

Their other studies found that dormant-season grazing increased moisture levels to an extent that an area was at risk of fire some two months later into the summer season; and that winter grazing can reduce wildfire size, intensity and spread in shrub areas (both 2015); prefire grazing increases post-fire resistance to exotic annual grass invasion and dominance for decades (2016); and fall and spring grazing — especially spring — decreased ignition probability and a fire’s ability to spread by increasing fine-fuel moisture while decreasing fuel mass and height (2017).

“Essentially we are looking at the effects of grazing on fire risk, behavior and severity, and even post-fire recovery,” Davies said.

He researches rangeland comprehensively, from plants, soils, grazing and fire to weeds, encroaching vegetation — like Western Juniper — and various environmental conditions.

Name: Kirk Davies

Title: Lead rangeland scientist, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Burns, Ore.

Age: 40

Hometown: Princeton, Ore.

Education: Ph.D., rangeland ecology, Oregon State University; dual B.S., rangeland resources, crop & soil science, OSU.

Family: Wife and three children

Southern Oregon winegrowers may be on the hook for millions of dollars worth of unsold grapes after a California winery suddenly canceled contracts with at least 15 different suppliers in the Rogue Valley.

Copper Cane Wines & Provisions, based in the Napa Valley, notified growers as recently as Sept. 28 that it would not buy wine grapes purportedly contaminated by “smoke taint” from this year’s wildfires across the region.

John Pratt, president of the Rogue Valley Winegrowers Association and owner of Celestina Vineyard in Medford, said Copper Cane rejected approximately 2,000 tons of grapes valued at $4 million, leaving the fruit to rot on the vine.

“I think most everybody was stunned,” Pratt said. “It was devastating.”

While the cancellations were ostensibly due to smoke exposure, Pratt said vineyard owners did their own testing and found that the levels of guaiacol and methylguaiacol — compounds released by burning wood that indicate smoke taint in fruit — were below cause for concern.

Though smoky skies lingered over the Rogue Valley this season, Pratt said it was mostly higher up in the atmosphere, and not the dense ground smoke winegrowers normally associated with dangerous smoke taint.

“Everybody feels very strongly that’s just a bogus smokescreen scapegoat reason for rejecting the fruit,” Pratt said.

A representative for Copper Cane did not return messages for comment.

The affected vintners met Sept. 28 in Medford to share information and discuss their options moving forward. Because the cancellations came just before harvest, Pratt said that gives them virtually no time to find new buyers before the fruit becomes overripe.

“A few people said they had found a home for some of the fruit they hadn’t been able to pick for Copper Cane, but most everybody said it was worthless,” Pratt said.

Two wineries in the Willamette Valley are now reaching out to find homes for the stranded grapes. Willamette Valley Vineyards and King Estate Winery recently sent an SOS to see if any fellow wineries can take on extra volume.

Jim Bernau, founder and CEO of Willamette Valley Vineyards in Turner, Ore., said the winery bought an extra 8 tons of Merlot at full contract price, and is willing to put up the money to help others do the same.

“This could break the backs of some of those Southern Oregon growers,” Bernau said.

Willamette Valley Vineyards already buys grapes from Southern Oregon for its Griffin Creek brand. Bernau said they tested this year’s grapes at an independent lab, ETS Laboratories in Newberg, Ore., to check for smoke taint, and results show the fruit is in good shape.

“It doesn’t concern us at all,” Bernau said.

Sam Tannahill, co-founder of A to Z Wineworks in Newberg, also buys 3,000 tons of wine grapes from the Rogue Valley. He said there does appear to be isolated pockets of smoke taint in the region, however the amount seems to be relatively low.

“Certainly, this year was definitely less intense than last year,” Tannahill said. “This is very isolated for us this year.”

Copper Cane is already gaining notoriety in Oregon over allegations of misleading labels that misrepresent the state’s valuable American Viticultural Areas, or AVAs. Industry leaders recently testified about the controversy during Legislative Days before the House Interim Committee on Economic Development and Trade.

Copper Cane denies it is doing anything wrong, and is quick to point out that all its labels have received approval from the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. The winery did provide bottling, transfer and production records for seven wines to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which is looking into whether the labels meet state law.

Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, serves as committee chairwoman, and said they are taking the allegations seriously.

“These appellations are really important to our marketing,” Marsh said. “The labeling issues are pretty critical, because we want to grow our region as a destination. To do that, a destination has to mean something.”

Pratt said the decision by Copper Cane to abruptly cancel its contracts with growers across the valley does seem suspicious. Meanwhile, he said growers are left to defend the quality of their 2018 vintage.

“That’s really important to us,” he said. “I think the main thing that I’m trying to do is to explain, very clearly, that this smoke taint issue is kind of a smokescreen for somebody who wants for other reasons to get out of a contract.”

Oregon’s environmental regulators never finalized a limit on fecal coliform bacteria in Tillamook Bay, which means an oysterman isn’t time-barred from challenging the decision, according to a judge.

Tillamook County Circuit Court Judge Mari Garric Trevino has found the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s director didn’t sign an “issuance memorandaum” for its 2001 “total maximum daily load” for fecal coliform bacteria in the bay or send it to the required people.

Those steps were required for “due process” under the state and federal constitutions, as well as administrative law, which means the TMDL “was never finalized and instead remains a draft order,” the judge said in an Oct. 2 ruling.

Trevino’s ruling is important because oysterman Jesse Hayes has filed a lawsuit challenging DEQ’s standard for fecal coliform bacteria in the bay as too lenient.

Hayes claims the bacterial contamination has restricted or prohibited harvest of oysters from his 600 acres of plats in Tillamook Bay and he seeks stricter controls over alleged dairy pollution in the Tillamook basin.

Last month, an attorney for DEQ argued that Hayes Oyster Co.’s lawsuit should be dismissed on multiple grounds, including because he allegedly missed the deadline to challenge the TMDL by roughly 17 years.

Trevino has decided that since the TMDL was a “draft order,” Hayes’ claim seeking damages for a public nuisance should be dismissed but his attack on the standard itself isn’t time-barred.

“What we’re down to is a direct action against the TMDL,” said Thomas Benke, attorney for the Hayes Oyster Co.

Hayes plans to review his options regarding an appeal of the judge’s dismissal of his damages claim but he respects the judge’s opinion, which effectively gives him the opportunity to modify his complaint and continue with the litigation, Benke said.

“It means we get process,” he said. “Now they have to defend that 17-year-old decision.”

It remains to be seen whether Trevino decides she has the jurisdiction to order DEQ to finalize or modify the TMDL for fecal coliform bacteria, he said.

Nonetheless, the judge’s ruling makes clear that DEQ can’t stand behind the statute of limitations to defend a 17-year-old “compromise” TMDL that Hayes believes is illegal, Benke said.

“This is a positive development for all users of the rivers in Tillamook Bay,” he said. “The big winner here is Tillamook Bay.

Sadie Forzley, a state attorney representing DEQ, said she can’t comment on pending litigation.

POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) — Federal officials are expanding a firefighting air base in eastern Idaho.

Officials say the air base at the Pocatello Regional Airport has become busier than ever, as its traditional service area has spread further into surrounding states such as Wyoming, Oregon and Nevada.

Aviation Officer Robert Barnes says just this Monday, a pair of DC-10 air tankers launched from the air base to help contain a fire in Elko, Nevada.

The Idaho State Journal reports the air base’s increasing importance is prompting the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service to build a third “pit” at the Pocatello air base, where aircraft will refuel and reload flame retardant, within the next couple of years.

Barnes says the third pit will make the base more efficient in the long run.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown is pushing back against Trump administration rollbacks of environmental protections at the federal level. On Wednesday morning she announced legislation that would maintain Oregon’s water and air quality rules at the same level or higher than they were the day before the president took office.

One of the stated goals of the legislation is to protect public health welfare from the adverse effects of pollution and climate change.

With the new legislation, called the Oregon Environmental Protection Act, Brown said she is looking to inspire a national movement of states to oppose what she called the “unprecedented and aggressive attack” on clean air and water.

“If Oregon were to adopt these standards and several states were to follow, it would eliminate any perceived benefit of federal regulatory backsliding,” the governor’s office said in a statement.

The Trump administration has undertaken several actions to overturn or delay environmental laws from taking effect. This ranges from carbon-emissions goals in the Obama-era Clean Power Plan designed to help the United States meet international climate goals to protections for wildlife — and from regulations of pesticides, ozone and mercury to expanding fossil fuel development on public lands.

Brown’s proposed legislation focuses on the federal Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. Both are regulated and enforced at the state level by Oregon agencies such as the Department of Environmental Quality, the Oregon Health Authority and the Water Resources Department. In most instances, the federal laws allow states to establish more stringent environmental protections than required nationally.

“It basically is a clear legislative statement and directive to the relevant agencies and to the Environmental Quality Commission that you will maintain the current standards,” said Lewis and Clark law professor Craig Johnston.

Here, the regulatory agencies would maintain the status quo.

“And you will do whatever is necessary to implement what the Obama administration did at the very end that we have not yet implemented,” he said.

Several of the changes to clean water and air quality laws happened late in Obama’s presidency — so late that Oregon has not yet gone through the administrative processes needed to enforce the new rules. If passed, regulatory agencies would instruct the regulatory agencies to move forward.

The governor’s office said, if passed by the Legislature, the Oregon Environmental Protection Act would maintain Obama-era ozone emission standards, regulate methane and other pollutants from landfills, as well as mercury emissions from the state’s one remaining coal power plant and extend water quality protections to some to the state’s rivers and streams.

The proposed act would solidify a statewide policy opposing the national push towards environmental deregulation. 

Of course, it would have to pass the Democratic-controlled state Legislature first, which has balked at some new environmental legislation in recent years.

“The whole point of this initiative, is that if enough states say, ‘We’re not going to do it,’ then all the sudden the impetus for change at the federal level declines significantly,” Johnston said, pointing to the economic power of states like California and New York, which have opted for stronger environmental standards in the past.

While Brown has joined other West Coast leaders in opposing Trump administration policies on climate change and vehicle emission standards, this kind of legislative proposal could position her in a more prominent leadership role nationally.

Brown is up for re-election in November. Wednesday’s new policy push comes one day after the first gubernatorial debate between her and challengers Republican Knute Buehler and Independent Party candidate Patrick Starnes.

The agreed upon prices are well below last year’s initial level of 96.5 cents per pound.

ELLENSBURG, Wash. — Hay harvest is wrapping up in Washington’s Columbia Basin and in Oregon and while weather and quality have been generally good, the big deal in the export world is loss of sales to China because of higher tariffs.

China had an 8 percent tariff on U.S. hay but added another 25 percent for a total of 33 percent in retaliation to President Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs.

“Volume has dropped significantly since July because of the tariff, down more than half,” said Jeff Calaway, president of Calaway Trading Inc., a major West Coast exporter in Ellensburg.

China buys about 1.2 million metric tons of U.S. hay per year, mainly for dairies. It’s the No. 1 export market for U.S. alfalfa and is barely No. 2 to Japan for all U.S. hay.

But another major West Coast exporter in Ellensburg, Mark Anderson, president of Anderson Hay & Grain Co., said there has not been a large impact in the China market yet because that nation uses a lot of its own hay in summer months. Any impact will be more evident when September through December numbers are compiled, he said.

“Our hope is that some kind of agreement comes together with China in the coming months,” Anderson said.

Calaway said traders he deals with in China are saying China’s summer production is almost gone.

“It’s lower quality and I think there’s a lot of pressure on them. They need hay and have dropped some of the tariffs they imposed (on other products),” he said.

New U.S. trade agreements with Mexico, Canada and South Korea and progress with Europe and Japan also pressures China, Calaway said.

“China will have to come around. It is more dependent on us than we are on them,” he said.

Saudi Arabia continues to be a growth market for U.S. hay, Calaway and Anderson said.

Second-cutting Timothy is done in Eastern Washington, limited third-cutting is finishing in the southern Columbia Basin and alfalfa will soon be done, Anderson said.

Oregon is wrapping up alfalfa in Christmas Valley and Klamath, the latter of which is sold mostly domestically, he said.

The Pacific Southwest will continue with a couple more fall cuttings mostly for domestic market, he said.

“Quality has been nice with a mix of grades produced in all areas,” Anderson said.

Inventory of feeder hay maybe tightening in the PNW as quality has been better from lack of rains, he said.

But quality and color has also been damaged from wildfire smoke preventing hay from drying in a timely fashion, Calaway said. The Pacific Southwest gained export market share over the PNW in recent years due to lower shipping costs. While PSW shipping costs remain lower its prices have increased due to Saudi Arabia demand and drought in New Mexico, Anderson said. That’s allowed the PNW to regain some market share, he said.

Exporters have generally recovered from market losses due to the 2014-2015 work slowdown at West Coast seaports, Anderson said.

Supply and demand are matching up well this season and generally hay prices have been good in the Pacific Northwest for growers and domestic and export markets, he said.

USDA Market News, Washington and Oregon, out of Moses Lake for Sept. 28 said demand from exporters was light with more interest from dairies and Canadian buyers. High test alfalfa was in short supply. Alfalfa mid-square Supreme averaging $200 per ton and Good $165 per ton. Alfalfa small square Premium $200 and Timothy small square Premium $260.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture is investigating potentially widespread tree damage because of the chemical.

“What we’re trying to get a handle on is, is this occurring in other areas? We are starting to hear about a situation in Eastern Washington,” said Rose Kachadoorian, pesticide program manager with ODA.

In Central Oregon, she said trees were poisoned in at least four locations. ODA has prohibited the use of products with aminocyclopyrachlor until April, and lasting regulation could be established.

Meanwhile, Kachadoorian said ODA will examine paperwork behind years of spraying in the state.

“And that will give us an opportunity to have an investigator go back to some of those areas and take a look — maybe they used it three years ago, are we seeing decline at this point?” Kachadoorian said.

Plans for this in-depth investigation come more than three years since a massive tree die off in Deschutes National Forest was first linked to ODOT spraying. Nearly 1,500 Ponderosa pines near Sisters are standing dead or dying. Some are hundreds of years old. The Forest Service plans to log those trees, rather than risk a dead tree falling on Highway 20.

The right of way around the pines was sprayed with a herbicide called Perspective at least four years in a row until 2015. The tree roots may have absorbed the herbicide and then they died slowly. Kachadoorian said a pesticide investigator looked into the site in 2014. 

“The damage at that point just wasn’t that noticeable, and as time went on the damage became more and more evident,” she said.

ODOT said it has already stopped spraying Perspective, a brand name made by Bayer. But it’s still approved for roadside weed control by federal regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency.

The label for Perspective has long included a warning about tree exposure, and a list of species vulnerable to small amounts of the herbicide, including Ponderosa pines.

ONTARIO, Ore. — Andrews Seed Co., a fixture in Ontario, Ore., for 95 years, has been successful so far in working through a recent oversupply in the alfalfa seed market.

Canadian alfalfa seed production in the past couple of years was high, pushing down prices, Andrews Seed owners Mike and Susan Kurth said. Some of the oversupply occurred in basic, near-generic varieties at lower price points while much of it materialized in genetically modified organism and hybrid categories on the high-priced end.

“We are positioned in the middle, and that is what keeps us relevant,” Mike Kurth said.

Andrews is sticking to its traditional mid-market, non-GMO sweet spot and growing as the alfalfa seed market works through the oversupply.

Meanwhile, a new online presence is boosting sales in various categories.

Andrews is an independent producer of non-GMO public alfalfa seed varieties as well as a line with its own proprietary genetics designed to meet multiple needs. The company sells at wholesale and retail. Customers include national farm supply and regional farm seed dealers, and farmers who buy seed at retail to grow alfalfa hay for their own livestock or to sell. Fertilizer companies, cooperatives and chemical companies — all getting more involved in the seed trade — are among competitors. Some source their products through Andrews.

Keeping production acreage stable has helped get Andrews through the market’s recent challenges, Mike Kurth said. He would not disclose the company’s alfalfa seed acreage but said Andrews is a mid-sized player. It has a stable, longtime group of about 30 contracted growers. A grower’s contract typically runs three years.

He said the company for the 2018 growing season dropped by 3 to 4 percent what it pays its contracted growers, who understood that would help the company competitively sell the seed they grow. This year’s net pricing, including the contract cost reduction, was stable and should remain so over the next two seasons, he said.

“We have achieved stability in the marketplace,” Kurth said. “That puts us in a good place. We are operating at a good level for sustainability.”

Market environments for alfalfa seed have been difficult for the past couple of years in several world regions, publicly traded S&W Seed Co. said in its Sept. 20 earnings report for the fiscal year ended June 30. S&W has major operations in nearby Nampa, Idaho,

Andrews Seed owners, to get through the oversupplied market, became more active. They met new industry contacts and this year increased their internet presence, including starting an online seed store that is increasing its contribution to total revenue, they said.

Much has been learned through connecting with like-minded seed producers, Susan Kurth said.

Non-GMO alfalfa seed advantages, she said, include that it is marketable worldwide — some countries still do not allow GMO seed — and that seeds can be saved for replanting, even by growers who supply Andrews. These growers’ contract is to bring to the company the production from the acres Andrews contracts with them.

“We are strong in our belief that the demand for non-GMO product is going to continue for the foreseeable future,” Mike Kurth said. Some 80 percent of potential customers report they’re pleased Andrews is a non-GMO seed producer, he said.

Industry partners, such as other independent seed producers and distributors, “indicate there is a niche market for non-GMO forage seed. It continues to thrive,” said the Kurths’ son, Joe Kurth, who started the Andrews electronic-commerce offering.

Mike and Susan Kurth in 2003 acquired the business and in 2016 became sole owners after buying out a partner.

The biggest change in the past couple of years was that “we started reaching out to contact as many new potential customers as we could,” Mike Kurth said. That effort helped drive a nearly 20 percent gain in the number of customers — who bought in small and large quantities, and helped Andrews maintain, and then grow, revenues.

Alfalfa and other types of seed sales tend to produce steady, gradual growth in contrast to wider swings in revenue from retail segments, he said.

Online sales continue to increase their contribution to total revenue and generate inquiries leading to future business. The Kurths expect the online segment to keep growing.

Andrews sees more growers incorporating double-cropping strategies and using cover crops to feed soil rather than letting it lie fallow post-harvest. Mike Kurth said the trend means the company sells more and different types of seeds at various times of year.

More growers are learning about and paying attention to soil science, Susan Kurth said. For example, they’re maintaining nitrogen levels in soil by planting legumes like alfalfa, clover and peas.

Andrews also sells various field seeds including grasses and perennials that land management agencies use for reclamation projects.

Andrews Seed, which employs around 20 people and frequently improves its facilities and operations, occupies two Ontario city blocks primarily for seed production, and a block for its garden center and nursery. Mike runs seed production and sales. Susan oversees nursery and retail garden center operations.

“We just continue to maintain a positive outlook for our production because it has been working for us on this level,” Mike Kurth said.

Separately, the popular Garden Answer online video offering is operated by the Kurths’ daughter and son-in-law.

Online

https://andrewsseed.com/