IONE, Ore. — Wheat harvest is already a busy time of year for Eastern Oregon farmers, but for Virgil and Debbie Morgan, the stress was compounded by an unexpected family emergency.

On June 13, the couple’s daughter-in-law, Larissa, gave birth to a healthy baby girl in El Paso, Texas. However, Larissa developed a rare obstetric disorder known as amniotic fluid embolism, in which amniotic fluid enters the mother’s bloodstream and triggers a serious allergic-like reaction.

For the next two weeks, Larissa was fighting for her life in a medically induced coma. Virgil and Debbie rushed from their farm in Ione to be by Larissa’s side, though Virgil was soon pulled back home to prepare for harvest by himself. Or so he thought.

It was Brent Martin, a neighbor and fellow farmer, who first suggested the community roll up its sleeves and give the Morgans a helping hand. A meeting was held June 29 at the Ione Fire Department, where 16 people organized a team of 12 combines, eight bankout wagons and 20 grain trucks.

Together, they harvested all nine of the family’s wheat fields — 1,600 acres in all — in a single day, working from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, July 16.

“It was really great for them to take a day off and bring everything to my place,” Virgil Morgan said. “We just had a wonderful response.”

Morgan, 68, has been farming outside Ione for 40 years. He also serves as chief of the all-volunteer Ione Rural Fire Protection District.

Melissa LaRue, who works with Morrow County Grain Growers in Ione, was one of the residents who helped plan the harvest-in-a-day. She said the entire party consisted of about 50 workers, all of whom were eager to give back to the Morgans.

“Virgil and Debbie have done so much in our community,” LaRue said. “When someone needs anything in our town, they’re usually the first to step in.”

Harvest is usually a three-week affair on Morgans’ farm. With the job finished, Virgil was able to leave for El Paso Thursday morning to rejoin Larissa on the road to recovery.

Amniotic fluid embolism is rare, occurring at a rate of 1 in every 20,000 childbirths, but can result in potentially life-threatening complications.

After 16 frightening days in intensive care, Virgil said Larissa has since come out of her coma and been transferred to a rehabilitation center where she is undergoing physical therapy. She is once again able to talk, walk with some assistance and hold her new baby, named Natassia.

“Everything is getting better so far,” Virgil said. “She still has a long road to go. We don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

A community fundraiser is scheduled for Sunday, July 30 from 5-7 p.m. at the Ione Legion Hall, according to the Heppner Gazette-Times. Volunteers will be preparing and serving a dinner of pulled pork or chicken sandwiches, baked beans and salad. Plates are $10 for adults and $7 for children.

Virgil Morgan said he still gets emotional thinking about all the community support they’ve received from their neighbors.

“For everyone to come together to help out ... I don’t know how to thank them for it,” he said, choking back tears. “That’s what this community is about.”

ONTARIO, Ore. — A bill passed by the Oregon Legislature this month will create a special economic development region in Eastern Oregon with the goal of helping farmers and businesses here better compete with their counterparts across the Snake River in Idaho.

It also provides $5 million to invest in loans, grants or other projects to encourage workforce and economic development in the region.

A seven-member board created by the legislation will also be tasked with recommending changes to rules and regulations that could help Eastern Oregon businesses compete on a more level playing field with Idaho businesses.

Idaho has a much lower minimum wage than Oregon and businesses in that state enjoy a more favorable business climate when it comes to land-use and other regulations, said Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, the bill’s co-sponsor along with House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland.

He said a major focus of the board would be to help create more value-added agricultural jobs.

The bill is the second major win for the region’s agricultural industry this month.

The Legislature’s recently passed $5.3 billion transportation package includes $26 million for a rail transload facility in Malheur County that is expected to lower transportation costs and speed up delivery times for the region’s farm products.

Bentz said the region’s agricultural industry played a major role in both those successes.

When Oregon legislators were debating whether to significantly increase the state’s minimum wage last year, farmers in the area organized a bus tour to Salem so Malheur County residents could explain to lawmakers how doing that would impact the region given its close proximity to Idaho.

The fact that 50 people took the time to travel 400 miles over icy, snow-covered roads “raised the profile of the area dramatically,” Bentz said.

Then at Bentz’ invitation, Kotek made a three-day trip to Eastern Oregon last June and saw first-hand the challenges farmers and other businesses in the region face.

In an email to Capital Press, Kotek said that while she was in Eastern Oregon last year, “I saw first-hand how local businesses and communities are struggling to compete with the fast-growing metro area across the border.”

The idea for HB 2012 came out of the trip, she said.

When Gov. Kate Brown toured the region in February to get a close look at the damage to dozens of onion packing sheds and hundreds of other structures caused by the harsh winter, she was accompanied by farm industry leaders.

Add all those events up and “it made a huge impression” on lawmakers, said onion grower Paul Skeen, who accompanied Brown and Kotek during their tours of the region.

Eastern Oregon residents have been trying to get Salem’s attention for a long time and this year those efforts paid off to the tune of a $31 million economic development investment for the region, Bentz said.

That didn’t happen by accident and local farmers and other residents have themselves to thank, he said.

“It’s so much opportunity all of a sudden, but it didn’t happen all of a sudden,” Bentz said.

DAYTON, Ore. — It’s 2 p.m., two hours short of quitting time, when the pickup trucks roll in from the vineyards. Workers, all Latino, hop down from the truck beds; 10, now two dozen, 44 in all. They take seats in the shade of the Stoller Vineyards maintenance shop, chatting, laughing, still wearing their field garb: hats, hoods and head scarves to protect from the sun, long sleeves despite the heat, many with pruning shears in holders on their belts.

The green and white ¡Salud! Services van before them is a familiar sight by now. It is from Tuality Healthcare, which operates hospitals and clinics west of Portland and for more than 25 years has brought basic medical care to Willamette Valley vineyard workers. The van, staffed by bi-lingual nurses and medical assistants, provides blood pressure and cholesterol checks, vaccinations, treatment and referrals — about 5,000 patient visits annually. “¡Salud!” is like a toast in Spanish, meaning “cheers” or “good health.”

Oregon vineyards recognize a broader translation, and it is the reason they pay for the mobile medical service. The industry raises an average of $700,000 annually — including a record $928,000 in 2016 — with a two-day auction of their best Pinot noir wines.

The vintners’ broader interpretation of ¡Salud! is part of the van’s logo, which shows a kneeling worker tending a grapevine. It includes the slogan, “To Our Health,” because everyone in the industry benefits.

Leda Garside, a registered nurse who manages ¡Salud! Services, is from Costa Rica and counts herself lucky. She came to the U.S. with an American husband, the proper papers and an education. Many of the patients she sees at the mobile clinic lack those advantages, yet they are the “backbone” of Oregon agriculture, she said.

It’s fair to say Garside’s work is widely admired within the wine and medical professions. One vineyard owner described her as “the rock of the whole place.”

Garside said the work is rewarding. Routine blood pressure and cholesterol checks provide early warning of hypertension, cardiovascular problems and diabetes. Flu shots and tetanus vaccinations aid people who routinely work outdoors and handle sharp tools, wire and the soil.

Some workers migrate to jobs depending on what is in season, others juggle two or three jobs, both of which complicate the time and expense of traditional doctor appointments. Some put off seeking help with medical problems, which can become worse with lack of intervention. For others, hospital emergency rooms, open all hours, become the treatment option for even minor injuries or illnesses.

When she was asked to advise and then take over ¡Salud! in 1998, Garside insisted the service had to be holistic to be effective.

“For some workers, this is it,” Garside said of ¡Salud! “Bringing the services to them fills the gap on that.”

Treatment and examinations at the mobile clinic are free. If the patient is referred to a partnering clinic or agency for further care, a stipend is paid to the provider by ¡Salud! on behalf of the patient and the patient is responsible for the balance. Those treated at a facility designated as a federally qualified health center can pay on a sliding fee scale based on income.

¡Salud! partners with Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore., which sends a motorhome to accompany the Tuality Healthcare van. University students and faculty provide vision, dental and physical therapy exams and treatment. Tuality pays Pacific a stipend for its help; the students gain practical experience as they prepare for medical careers. Other partners receiving stipends include community clinics and Medical Teams International.

“We collaborate with other agencies to bring services,” Garside said. “We stretch that dollar until it’s ready to snap.”

Jose Reyna, a physical therapy professor at Pacific University, regularly accompanies the ¡Salud! van each summer. Vineyard workers often have lower back pain from stooping and lifting, and sore wrists and shoulders from repetitive picking or pruning motions are a common ailment. Reyna and his students provide massage and demonstrate stretching techniques.

The wine industry’s financial support for the service shows it is invested in the people who do “very taxing labor,” he said.

“Who else is going to harvest the grapes and tighten the lines?” Reyna asked.

Local solution

A 2014 survey by the National Center for Farmworker Health, based in Texas, showed poverty is “pervasive” among the nation’s 3 million migrant and seasonal agricultural workers. About 30 percent of families reported total family income below national poverty guidelines.

“One of the biggest dichotomies with the agricultural worker population is that despite providing the hard work behind the foods that sustain us, they are a group that receives very few benefits and protections, and are frequently excluded from regulatory labor protections,” the center concluded in a 2017 report.

Access to healthcare is a major problem, with workers hampered in some cases by language or cultural barriers, a lack of money or transportation, low literacy and frequent mobility, according to the farmworker health center.

In the Pacific Northwest and California, agricultural workers had higher rates of asthma, hypertension and obesity than elsewhere. The Midwest had the highest prevalence of diabetes among farmworkers. Tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C, and sexually transmitted diseases are problems to varying degrees nationally.

¡Salud! grew from discussions in the early 1990s between a handful of vineyard owners and Tuality Healthcare doctors who had become acquainted due to a shared interest in fine wine.

Nancy Ponzi, of the pioneering Ponzi Vineyards in Sherwood, Ore., said the idea of a fundraising event percolated and emerged as a commitment to “do something to help our workers, especially the field workers who are at the bottom of the heap in terms of having access to social programs.”

“To my great surprise and pleasure,” Ponzi said, “the wineries were all for that.”

Ponzi said she originally presumed family planning would be one of the most important things the industry could offer Latino workers, but soon learned otherwise.

“This culture does not want to discuss family planning,” she said. “What they need help with is health.”

Then, as now, the vintners heard angry grumbles about health care costs, immigration policies and illegal “aliens” taking “American” jobs. Providing them health care was controversial.

“We were aware it was a political statement at the time,” Ponzi said. “We knew it was political, which was the reason I was happy to see the wine industry step up in spite of possible repercussions.”

Convincing the cautious medical bureaucracy to go along also took some doing. Ponzi said she and the other advocates countered with, “Look, if we can give service to this population and keep them out of the emergency room, that’s a big help to the hospital.”

The industry’s two-day ¡Salud! auction and black tie gala, held in November, provides about 90 percent of the funding needed to staff and pay for Tuality Healthcare’s mobile clinic, the staff’s case management work and partner agency stipends. A “Summertime ¡Salud!” fundraising dinner and tasting has been added as well. It’s on July 27 this year at Stoller Family Estate, tickets are $175 per person.

Ponzi said the program could be adopted by other ag sectors, such as the nursery industry, but so far it hasn’t been replicated. She said the workforce deserves support.

“We respect what they do,” she said. “This is not charity. It’s an obligation to protect these workers and their families.”

Geoff Horning, who directed Oregon Aglink for the past 11 years, has been chosen CEO of Oregon Hazelnut Industries, which represents one of the state’s fastest growing agricultural sectors.

“Mom always said I was a little nuts, and I suppose that is official now,” Horning joked in an email announcing the change.

Horning starts Sept. 1. He replaces Polly Owen, who is retiring and applauds her replacement.

“I’m good with it,” said Owen, who will stay on for a time to help Horning transition into the position. She said hazelnut growers and processors did a national search and called Horning a “wonderful” choice.

He will be introduced Aug. 2 at the Nut Growers Society Summer Tour. The event includes an orchard tour in the Tangent area followed by hazelnut oriented trade show and luncheon at the Linn County Expo Center in Albany.

Horning is an Oregon native and a graduate of Linfield College. Before joining Oregon Aglink, a private non-profit that promotes agriculture and attempts to bridge the urban-rural divide with programs and events, he managed trade shows and publications for the Oregon Association of Nurseries.

In taking the hazelnut position, Horning joins a segment of Oregon agriculture that has grown dramatically in the past two decades and potentially could become more of an international player. Oregon produces an estimated 99 percent of U.S. hazelnuts and appears poised to grab a larger share of the world market from Turkey, by far the largest production area.

Horning cautioned that he faces a “huge learning curve” in his new job but hopes to help position the industry “to be what it should be on the international scale.” Oregon produces 3 to 5 percent of the world’s hazelnuts but the majority of production is of in-shell nuts, which are popular as a snack in markets such as China. Industry observers have mused for years about adding value by increasing kernel production; shelled, dry-roasted Oregon hazelnuts sell for $7.99 a pound in stores such as Trader Joe’s.

Conversations with growers and processors made it clear “an opportunity does present itself,” Horning said. He called hazelnuts “one of the most exciting segments of Oregon agriculture.”

“I don’t have big agenda to come in and change everything,” he said. “It’s fair to say the hazelnut industry is going through immense growth.”

A long-running Oregon land use question — under what conditions can farmland be rezoned for other economic uses — returns to Columbia County northwest of Portland with an Aug. 2 public hearing before the county commissioners.

At issue is an expansion plan for Port Westward, an industrial park owned by the Port of St. Helens. The park was an ammunition depot during World War II and includes 4,000 feet of deepwater frontage along the Columbia River. The facility now has a 1,250 foot dock, a pair of electrical generating plants, a 1.3 million-barrel tank farm and a biomass refinery, according to a summary by the state Land Use Board of Appeals, or LUBA.

In a proposal first filed in 2013, the port seeks to rezone 786 acres of adjacent farmland to allow additional industrial development. Mint grower Mike Seely, who farms next door to the site and whose business has expanded to include candy production, opposes the idea. Columbia Riverkeeper, an environmental group based in Hood River, sides with Seely, who could not be reached for comment.

The opponents say additional industrial development could harm water quality and wildlife habitat and interfere with farm operations through dust, noise, increased traffic and train crossings that would delay farm vehicles.

Environmentalists are chiefly concerned the property will be used by coal trains and crude oil trains, and the risk of water and air pollution, derailment and fiery explosions. Global Partners LP operates the ethanol plant on the property and has shipped crude oil from the facility in the past. Additional development might include a future methanol plant, according to LUBA documents.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture raised a couple of concerns in a letter to the county from Jim Johnson, the department’s land use and water planning coordinator.

Johnson said industrial development could harm mint and blueberry production in the area. The land proposed for rezoning is primarily Class 2 and Class 3 soils, and is considered high value farmland, he said.

“Farmers do not lightly decide to develop any perennial crop, as it represents a long term commitment to the subject land and required agricultural infrastructure,” Johnson wrote.

He said dust or contaminants from industries might force farmers to wash their mint and blueberries, which would add cost, create wastewater disposal issues and perhaps promote mold growth on mint. Contaminants from off-site could jeopardize organic certification, he said.

The case has bounced back and forth through the land-use appeals process, with LUBA ultimately siding with Seely, the farmer, and Columbia Riverkeeper on a couple points and remanding the case to the county, which had approved the port’s plan.

The port’s revised proposal is the subject of the Aug. 2 public hearing. The three-member Board of County Commissioners could vote on the proposal at that time or, more likely, continue the hearing to a later date for more testimony and deliberation.

The port’s revised proposal reduced the area to be rezoned to 786 acres, down from the 837 acres approved by the county in 2014. It also would allow only industrial businesses that require access to a deep-water port, and calls for a review of other unused industrial land in the area.

Port officials did not return a call seeking additional information.

County Commissioner Alex Tardif said the board has to balance potential economic growth with the cost of converting farmland and reducing food production.

“What will the long term consequences be?” he asked. “Maybe it make sense for the here and now, but what will the long term viability of the county be?”

The Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association is calling for an investigation of actions by fisheries managers they say were fatal to federally protected juvenile salmon and steelhead in the Columbia-Snake river system.

The irrigators claim that in the spring of 2015, those managers compromised juvenile fish survival and the subsequent return of adults by allowing the fish to remain in the Lower Snake River during extremely poor river conditions — low flows and high temperatures — rather than barging them downstream in the Army Corps of Engineers’ transportation program.

In their July 10 request, the irrigators asked the inspectors general of the Army Corps and the Department of Commerce National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to investigate the issue.

In response to Capital Press inquiries, the agencies stated they have received the request and are reviewing it. 

The irrigators said the managers deviated from the legally required “spread the risk” policy under the Endangered Species Act biological opinion on fish management in the river system.

The policy boils down to leaving half of the juvenile fish in the river and transporting the other half downriver to below the Bonneville Dam when river conditions threaten successful migration.

In 2015, managers transported only 13 percent of the juvenile fish — the lowest percentage on record dating back to 1993.

The policy has been in place for decades and was upheld in U.S. District Court in 2005.

“It’s there to protect fish. It’s a tool to ensure survival,” said Darryll Olsen, board representative of the irrigators association and a regional planning and resource economics consultant.

Severe conditions existed in 2015, and managers should have been maximizing the juvenile transportation program, he said.

Fish managers knew by April 1 that river conditions were potentially lethal, and NOAA Fisheries twice requested an early start date for transporting juvenile fish. Those requests were rejected, and there’s no administrative record showing why, he said.

By the time transport started a month later, 60 percent of the chinook and 50 percent of the steelhead had already tried to migrate, he said.

“It was just raw stupidity,” he said.

The debacle is rooted in a larger problem — endless ESA litigation by environmental groups and the state of Oregon. Over the past 25 years, those groups have filed multiple legal actions challenging the validity of the biological opinion guiding hydropower operations, he said.

The irrigators association — which consists of private pumpers, municipalities and food processors — has been involved in that litigation as a defendant intervenor since 1992. The litigation has jeopardized water rights and led to higher power costs, with the Bonneville Power Administration spending $17 billion of rate-payers’ money to mitigate for fish, he said.

The situation is out of control, and the litigation needs to stop, he said.

The 2015 transport failure “demonstrates how insane this has all become … they are so enthralled with trying to do natural river conditions and spill, they’re killing the fish,” he said.

The irrigators association is urging the Department of the Interior to intervene.

The ESA statute provides for executive action to convene an ESA committee — or God Squad — to determine what’s to be done. It would set reasonable boundaries for hydro-system operations that would end the cycle of repeated litigation, Olsen said.

“It’s a way to bring closure to a situation that’s out of control,” he said.

The God Squad would consist of representatives from federal agencies and Northwest governors. It would establish a federal mitigation plan for hydro-project operations under the ESA that would be subject to judicial review but not subject to litigation.

ONTARIO, Ore. — Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. is reporting significant progress in eliminating genetically engineered creeping bentgrass plants from Malheur and Jefferson counties in Oregon.

“We’re making a tremendous dent in the population of bentgrass right now,” said Danielle Posch, a senior research specialist with Scotts.

She was hired by Scotts in March to coordinate efforts to control the plant with local farmers, ranchers and irrigation districts.

The creeping bentgrass was genetically engineered by Scotts and Monsanto Corp. to withstand applications of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer, which makes it hard to kill.

It took root in Malheur and Jefferson counties after escaping field trials in 2003 and some farmers worry the plants could clog irrigation ditches and affect shipments of crops to nations that don’t accept traces of genetically modified organisms.

Malheur County farmer Dan Andersen said Scotts is making real progress in controlling the plant.

“They’re doing a good job of staying right on top of it,” said Andersen, co-chairman of a working group of farmers, irrigation district representatives and others that was created in Malheur County to coordinate with Scotts in its continuing efforts to try to control the plant.

East Oregon farmer Bruce Corn, a member of the Owyhee Irrigation District’s board of directors, agrees.

He said he used to have several of the plants on his property “but it’s really hard to find one on my place now. There’s definite progress. I think so far Scotts is doing a pretty good job on it.”

Andersen is not overly hopeful the plant will ever be eradicated from the area, “but I think we’ll be able to get to a point where it’s minor and very manageable,” he said. “But we’re still going to have to be vigilant keeping an eye out for it and not letting our guard down.”

Posch said efforts to fight the plant were provided a significant boost earlier this year when EPA approved a special local need label for Reckon, an herbicide that is effective in controlling the bentgrass.

The special label will allow growers and irrigation districts to spray glufosinate, the active ingredient in Reckon and the most effective herbicide for killing the bentgrass, over water during the growing season.

That chemical previously could only be used over waterways, such as canals, during a short period before the beginning of the growing season or after canals were dry.

The plants weren’t growing during those times which made it harder to kill them because they didn’t take up the chemical, Posch said.

Being able to use Reckon over waterways during the entire year is a game-changer in efforts to combat the GE creeping bentgrass, Posch said.

“In my opinion, it’s a godsend,” Andersen said.

Scotts has also started a voucher program that provides growers with the plant on their property with free, 2.5-gallon containers of Reckon.

For more information about that program, contact Posch by email at danielle.posch@scotts.com.

Chad DelCurto parked his pickup beside the road winding the Snake River canyon, surveying the jagged green edge of Oregon where his cattle grazed. This is where he lost them.

There’s ample feed and room to wander on these remote and rugged stretches of public land. But there’s added risk to open range: harsh weather, disease, rustlers, predators.

“This is the reality — this is outside, all natural, grass-fattened beef,” he said.

DelCurto dresses in denim from neck to ankle, with mud-splattered black on his boots and hat. He’s been ranching all his life, and he’s teaching his 9-year-old son to do the same.

Last year, DelCurto claimed he lost 41 calves and 11 cows out here in Baker County. Each calf could be worth over $700, the cows almost twice that.

He blames wolves. Alerts from state wildlife officials showed them in the area. He said the landscape showed some scat and tracks. And he could sense it in his cattle.

“You got up in there and tried to move them, could tell they’d been spooked,” DelCurto said. “I can’t prove it because there’s no carcasses, but I know damn good and well the wolves had a big part in it.”

So DelCurto filed for state-funded compensation for the losses, just as he did for nine missing cattle the year before.

But here’s the issue: There hasn’t been a confirmed wolf kill of livestock in Baker County since 2012. And according to state biologists, there are only three known resident wolves in the county. Given that, a wolf-related loss of that size, with no carcass to show, would be unheard of.

Despite all that, the Baker County wolf compensation board approved DelCurto’s claim. That left one state official with the dilemma of whether to deny the rancher compensation or approve loosely documented claim so large it would have decimated the state program’s budget.

Ever since wolves’ return in the West, states have experimented with some form of compensation for ranchers, with mixed results.

Since 2012, Oregon has kicked in money for ranchers to hire range riders and purchase radios and fence lining, called fladry, to deter wolves. The state has also compensated livestock operators for both confirmed or unconfirmed losses of cattle, sheep or working dogs. It’s a well-regarded program that provides some relief for ranchers feeling the added strain of a returned predator: even some of the wolf-advocate groups who clash with ranchers say it was necessary.

But an EarthFix examination found the state has made a questionable pattern of payments that contradicts established knowledge of the state’s wolf population.

The investigation also found state and county officials do not take all the necessary steps to confirm claims of missing livestock and ensure a limited money pool flows toward legitimate claims of wolf kills. That can mean less money to prevent wolf conflicts, and less money for documented losses.

With no consistent system for verifying unfound livestock losses, the state has little way of knowing for sure whether it’s denying some ranchers their due compensation or paying out claims it shouldn’t.

Chart the payments year over year, and a pattern emerges.

Since 2012, payments for missing cattle have increased when actual confirmed losses did not. Experts say those rates should track together.

“There is no possible biological or ecological explanation for this,” said Luigi Boitani, an international expert on wolves who reviewed the data. In 2010, the University of Rome professor uncovered problems with wolf compensation in his home country of Italy.

“Small variations are understandable but the huge variation in the last few years has no justification,” Boitani said. “The rate of confirmed deaths and missing livestock should track together.”

Roblyn Brown, acting wolf coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, had a similar assessment: “I don’t know of a biological explanation for why claims for missing livestock have gone up.”

Others, like the Oregon Department of Agriculture, which administers the compensation program, say the change could be attributed to awareness: more and more ranchers discovering and utilizing these compensation programs.

Map the payments and another pattern emerges that confounds wolf biologists.

Since 2012 the state of Oregon has paid a total of over $150,000 to compensate ranchers for over 380 livestock and sheep. All of it has gone to three Northeast Oregon counties: Wallowa, Umatilla, and Baker.

Umatilla and Wallowa have large known wolf populations, and a history of confirmed depredations. Baker County has little of either, yet ranchers there have received more money than anywhere else in the state, at $65,000.

Brown had no explanation for this, either.

“We would expect wolf-caused missing livestock to be more likely in areas where we have seen confirmed depredations, and have high wolf density,” Brown said.

In total, payments for livestock losses in Eastern Oregon have far surpassed what state officials had projected based on data from other states.

The government might not believe Delcurto’s numbers, but he doesn’t believe the government’s either. 

He searched by horseback, trudging up ridges of snow. He searched by helicopter. Still, he couldn’t find his missing cattle.

“A foot of snow and you’re not cutting any tracks,” DelCurto said. “At that point, you start counting up and cutting your losses.”

He turned out about 350 head of cattle, including pregnant cows to give birth on the open range. DeClurto has done it many times. Usually, he said, more of them come back.

“That just doesn’t happen,” he said. “You don’t go to grass and have them die.”

Fellow ranchers near Halfway reported a combined 21 livestock missing that year they say were wolf-related.

There’s a reason ranchers expect to be compensated for losses, even without proof wolves are to blame: You try finding a cow carcass in 10,000 acres of wilderness.

“It’s just damn rugged and steep. Trying to find a corpse or something like that is like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” DelCurto said.

If you could take the flight DelCurto did, you would see what he means.

It is not the open pasture you might picture for cattle ranching. An hour soaring over Northeast Baker County reveals miles of dense timber and canyons.

But even discovering the remains of a cow thought to have been preyed upon by wolves doesn’t always mean much to cattlemen. Some no longer bother to report wolf kills to ODFW, they say, because they are unsatisfied with the response. Ranchers in Eastern Oregon have complained to the state that dead livestock investigations are too slow and allow the deterioration of evidence that could implicate wolves.

“We’re losing it. You’ve lost a lot of it,” Todd Nash of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association told ODFW commissioners at a meeting in May. “Most of these aren’t called in in Wallowa County anymore. You have to backtrack into talking ranchers into participating again.”

There are at least 112 wolves statewide, mostly scattered across Wallowa, Umatilla and Union counties further north. There’s also a population further southwest, in the Klamath area.

The state’s best data show three wolves known to be residing in Baker County.

DelCurto disagrees. So does his neighbor, Dean Tucker, the cow boss at Pine Valley Ranch in Halfway.

“When the Department of (Fish and) Wildlife tells the public there’s only X number of wolves running around, they’re full of s--t,” Tucker said.

Last year, Pine Valley Ranch reported five cattle missing because of wolves. The year before, it was seven.

“There’s a hell of a lot more wolves than what they tell us,” Tucker said.

Brian Ratliff, the local ODFW biologist, said the state’s wolf population likely is higher than the official minimum estimates, but not by much. And there are wolves, like the Snake River Pack, for which the agency can only make educated guesses of their whereabouts.

He said his agency is almost surely under-counting the number of cattle and sheep killed by wolves, too, though he can’t say by how many.

“You could not find 100 percent of livestock depredations. You could not do it,” Ratliff said, referring to the forested landscapes where DelCurto and Tucker turn out cattle. “It’s too broken, it’s too rough.”

In 2003, a research team from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tackled the question of how many are missed. That often-cited study estimated for every livestock carcass you find killed by a wolf in rough country like this, there are seven more out there you don’t find.

Baker County’s payments fly in the face of that. For one proven depredation there, ranchers have been compensated for 85 missing cattle.

Other counties have much lower rates. In Umatilla County, the rate is just over one in seven. In Wallowa County, more cattle were confirmed dead from wolves than were claimed missing.

Most Western states have some form of wolf compensation, an attempt to help ranchers with the added costs and stress from a predator they didn’t want and felt was forced on them by people who don’t bear the burden.

But payments for dead livestock don’t cut it, many say.

Kelly Birkmaier, who ranches in Oregon’s Wallowa County, said wolves have killed her cattle, injured them, spooked them and caused them to run through fences. The cost of all that adds up.

Harassment from wolves stresses cattle in ways that can reduce their weight gain or pregnancy rates, according to ranchers and others in the livestock industry. Beyond that, wolves can render cattle dogs useless, because cattle begin to associate them with wolves.

“Is this something we can keep doing? At this point in time, yes, it seems to still be working. But the added hardship and the added labor from the wolves make it challenging,” Birkmaier said.

Ranchers take pride in their cattle, she said, and when something out of their control threatens that, “it is very hard, mentally, on you.”

For many years, the pro-wolf group Defenders of Wildlife compensated ranchers for losses as an attempt to increase tolerance for the predators, said Suzanne Stone, the organization’s Northwest representative. As wolves became more established, they stopped and states began creating their own, she said.

Idaho no longer compensates for missing livestock anymore, only for government-confirmed losses. When Idaho did compensate for missing livestock several years ago, its program was plagued by complaints about fraudulent claims.

“They would give compensation to their friends, sometimes they would compensate themselves,” said Stone, who is based in Boise, Idaho. “It was very loosely run. It would run out of money super quick, and people were only compensated for pennies on the dollar.”

Wyoming pays for missing cattle, but only if there’s also a confirmed kill. Using the ratio in the Fish and Wildlife study, Wyoming compensates for up to 7 missing cattle for each confirmed loss.

Washington recently began paying for indirect wolf losses, including missing animals, weight loss and reduced pregnancy rates. So far only two ranchers have used it since 2015. Its process is long and involved — each file for a livestock producer’s claim is over 50 pages of documentation. In Oregon, sometime’s it’s only two or three pages.

In Oregon, ranchers submit their claims through county boards, made up of county commissioners, ranchers, business members and wolf advocates.

When Oregon established its local-focused program, Stone said it had the potential to become the best in the country. The plan was to try it for a year or two, she said, and then re-evaluate to see if the right people are being compensated.

“I don’t think that the program’s been evaluated, at all,” she said. “And that really is an important step, so that you can make sure that it’s transparent, honest and sustainable.”

Last year, the claim from Baker County was so large it raised questions at the Department of Agriculture.

Mike Durgan sat on Baker County’s compensation board at the time, when it approved a request of payment for 73 missing animals — 52 of which were DelCurto’s. Durgan quit, fed up with the county’s lack of due diligence.

“Baker County’s was not believable,” he said. “It was baffling to me how we let that slide by.”

He said unverified claims discredit a good program for honest ranchers.

“Some of the most anger I got was from other ranchers,” he said. “They realize something like this impacts them in a negative way.”

After the state started raising questions, Durgan said the board simply asked for less money, rather than trying to find the right number. Ultimately, Baker County received a total $16,125, still more than any other county. That included paying DelCurto for 12 missing cattle.

“I will say that the committee here, we started off with some missteps,” said Mark Bennett, a Baker County commissioner and rancher who sits on the compensation board.

Bennett said the county didn’t want to set a bar so high no rancher could clear it.

“We didn’t have a clear picture for our producers, what all was required,” Bennett said. “Some of them could come up with some really decent documentation, and some it was weak.”

Across Oregon these requests are supposed to document ranchers used techniques to prevent wolf damage. They’re supposed to document that all other potential factors for the loss besides wolves have been ruled out.

State and county records show some do not, and the amount of evidence varies widely from claim to claim. Counties and ranchers are under no obligation to consult with ODFW, the state’s authority on wolf populations, about missing livestock.

Missing livestock compensation requests also rely extensively on documents detailing cattle counts at the start and end of grazing season, as well as estimates of historical losses. But the state has no standard for what evidence suffices, meaning not all ranchers are held to the same standard.

Claims that sailed through the process left one worker at the Department of Agriculture, Jason Barber, doing the job meant for several county compensation boards. In the past two years, Barber has raised questions about claims in Umatilla, Wallowa and Baker counties that were submitted without supporting documentation.

The result is a system with spotty evidence and large gray areas, meaning legitimate claims could be denied and questionable ones could be paid.

In one case, the state paid nearly $1,500 for a confirmed wolf kill, only to realize it wasn’t one more than a year later. The county was allowed to simply move the funds to the “missing livestock” category.

Last year, the state approved Wallowa County’s grant application despite the fact that its compensation board never met to approve the request. Under deadline, a county commissioner sent the application to ODA without going through the process required by statute.

Barber, director of Internal Services and Consumer Protection at the Department of Agriculture, said the agency is working to improve the program and plans to create a checklist that counties can use “to make sure everything is kosher as far as what’s in statute, what’s in rule.”

The state also has been unable to prove that ranchers are using the wolf-deterrent materials it’s paid for ranchers to use, including fladry fence lining and radio boxes. The Agriculture Department didn’t collect some counties’ annual reports until EarthFix filed a public records request for them.

State-purchased fladry often sits in storage, as locals officials and ranchers say it is ineffective in the most problematic areas for wolf conflict.

To deter wolves, Baker County used the money to hire a range rider whom ranchers said they never saw. That left officials considering new ways to verify his time spent on the range.

Verifying the proper use of these funds has gained importance as wolves spread and more counties draw from the same pool of money — just over $210,000 this year. Already, the state has too little money to fund the requests it gets.

Dennis Sheehy saw this coming. The longtime rancher is the father of Oregon’s compensation plan.

As the sun set over Wallowa County, the cows mooed and cold air crept in over the Diamond Prairie Ranch. Sheehy was just finishing a long day of branding, and was facing another one in the morning.

“All of this was thought about when we put it together,” said Sheehy, who devised the first draft of the compensation plan with a fellow rancher in 2010. It was adopted by the Legislature a year later.

“What it’s based on is trust within the livestock industry here,” he said. “There may be some people that do or do not have the same set of integrity and honor, you might say, about that.”

As for a claim of 41 calves, like DelCurto’s? It all depends.

“That might be a little extreme, but then another guy that I really do trust, they lost 16 or 17,” he said.

Wolves are not the biggest threat, Sheehy said. At least to his ranch, they’re just another problem that takes incremental bites into his operation’s bottom line, along with drought, weather and cattle prices.

A few years ago, prices spiked and Oregon’s cattle industry surpassed $900 million in total value, making it the state’s top agricultural industry. Prices have fallen since.

“You’re going to see people going out of business,” he said, if prices stay low, and predators are just one more thing to tip the scale.

“Low prices, you get the wolves eating on you, lose two or three calves, it could be a little more serious,” he said.

Sheehy said compensation has done its job: Lessen the blow to ranchers. But wolf territory is expanding in Oregon, and Sheehy doubts state leaders would fund a statewide compensation program.

He now wonders what will become of what he started.

Oregon State University’s agricultural research and extension programs stand to lose the equivalent of 17 positions under a budget recently approved by state lawmakers.

However, the outlook is much improved from earlier this year, when a budget proposed by Gov. Kate Brown would have resulted in an even sharper reduction of research and extension positions, according to university leaders.

The Legislature approved a 4.7 percent increase, to $66 million, for OSU’s agricultural experiment stations and a 4.6 percent increase, to $47.7 million, for the OSU Extension Service in the 2017-2019 biennium.

Due to the increasing cost of salaries and benefits, though, each program would need an increase of 7.9 percent just to maintain current service levels.

The equivalent of 17 positions must be cut due to the funding gap, but the university doesn’t expect to lay off researchers or extension agents. Rather, positions will be left vacant as people retire or change jobs, said Dan Arp, dean of the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences.

“We will be able to manage this with the normal attrition,” Arp said.

In early 2017, when the state government was facing a $1.8 billion budget shortfall, Brown recommended keeping OSU’s agricultural research and extension budgets flat.

Under that scenario, OSU would have probably been forced to lay people off, said Arp. “It would have been difficult to manage that by attrition alone.”

In OSU’s 2015-2017 budget, the agricultural research and extension programs received a hefty funding boost that allowed for hiring new faculty dedicated to several priorities: working landscapes, water, value-added products, workforce development and food safety.

Those “priority” researchers and extension agents won’t be affected by the reduction in positions, said Scott Reed, director of OSU’s Extension Service.

“This is not a last in, first out budget management thing,” Reed said.

Losing the equivalent of 17 positions is nonetheless a hindrance for OSU, particularly since researchers bring in additional money from grants, said Arp.

“Fewer positions, fewer people out there leveraging dollars,” he said.

Similarly, as there are fewer extension agents, those who remain employed by OSU must cover larger service areas and are spread more thinly across the state, said Reed.

Fortunately, voters in 26 counties have approved tax districts that raise funds for extension through modest property tax increases, he said. “That’s because of the support of the citizens of the state.”

In the 2017 legislative session, OSU also secured the authority to sell $9 million in bonds to help pay for a new 27,000-square-foot Fermentation Sciences and Research Center on the edge of its campus in Corvallis.

The university can only sell those bonds once it raises a matching $9 million in matching funds.

The Tillamook County Creamery Association has already pledged $1.5 million to the new building, which will feature dairy, wine and beer fermentation plants as well as joint cold storage and retail facilities.

Construction of the center is expected to begin within a year and a half.

ONTARIO, Ore. — Onion thrips were late to arrive in the Treasure Valley of Idaho and Oregon this year, delayed by a harsh winter and wet spring.

But temperatures have been well above normal this month and the onion pest’s population is exploding as a result. The average high temperature in Ontario has exceeded 100 degrees eight times in July already.

“The heat’s making things explode,” said Nyssa grower Paul Skeen, president of the Malheur County Onion Growers Association.

Onion thrips can cause feeding damage and they are also a vector for the Iris Yellow Spot Virus, which can significantly reduce yields of the bulb onions grown in the region.

“They were a little late getting in but they have made up for it,” said Stuart Reitz, an Oregon State University cropping systems extension agent in Ontario. “With these higher temperatures, the populations are really going crazy. We’re starting to see a lot higher numbers.”

Virus pressure is just starting and has been detected in a few commercial fields recently, Reitz said.

“We haven’t seen much (virus) around the area. Yet. It’s probably coming,” he said.

While the timing of the pest’s appearance in the valley can vary from year to year, they are an annual headache for Treasure Valley onion farmers.

There are no effective biological controls for onion thrips, so that leaves the use of insecticides as growers’ only option to control them, Reitz said.

The thrips problem has only gotten worse for growers over the years, Skeen said.

“When I started farming here 45 years ago, if we sprayed four times in a season, that was a lot,” he said. “Now, it’s not uncommon to spray seven or eight times.”

Onion grower groups in the region are helping fund a field trial overseen by Reitz that seeks solutions to the thrips problem.

One of the main goals of the trial is to help growers find the right mix of insecticide treatments that allows them to spray as little as possible.

Researchers are rotating chemistries and using them at different times of the season to try to find the right combination for thrips control.

It costs between $20 and $100 an acre to spray for thrips, depending on which chemical is used, so reducing the number of times a grower has to spray can save a lot of money, Reitz said.

OSU researchers recommend not overusing any one chemistry to prevent resistance in thrips.

“You have to manage them in the season but you also have to look at the longer term picture and that’s why we’re really stressing rotating chemistries so you don’t have resistance building up,” Reitz said.

OSU researchers recommend not using the same onion thrips insecticide more than two times in a season and have adopted the slogan, “Two sprays and put it away.”

Controlling volunteer onions is also recommended.

“The longer the volunteers are out there, the more virus and thrips they are going to generate,” Reitz said.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal jury in Las Vegas is due to hear openings in the retrial of four men who brought assault-style weapons to a standoff that stopped government agents from rounding up rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle in April 2014.

Trial starts Monday for defendants who maintain they drove from Idaho and Montana to Bunkerville, Nevada, to protest Bureau of Land Management tactics that included agents using dogs and stun guns against Bundy family members.

Prosecutors want jurors to focus on conspiracy, assault on a federal agent, weapon and other charges.

A jury in April found two co-defendants guilty of some charges, but failed to reach verdicts for Scott Drexler, Richard Lovelien, Eric Parker and Steven Stewart.

Trial is expected to take several weeks.

Bundy and other defendants are jailed pending trial later.

PENDLETON, Ore. — Imagine putting on a pair of virtual reality goggles and being able to control a robot that mimics human movements to prune clusters of premium wine grapes.

Sounds futuristic, but the Remote Operated Vineyard Robot, or ROVR, may become an integral tool for U.S. winegrowers sooner rather than later.

Engineers at Digital Harvest, a Virginia-based company specializing in precision agriculture, have spent the last 18 months working to build the ROVR system, which will be on full display during the 2017 Future Farm Expo coming Aug. 15-17 at the Pendleton Convention Center.

The Future Farm Expo is a three-day summit and trade show that invites local agriculture professionals — including growers, consultants and food processors — to meet with high-tech developers and learn how they can use drones and droids to make their operations run more efficiently.

This year’s expo will feature drones capable of flying beyond the pilot’s line of sight, mobile farming apps, advances in irrigation technology and, yes, a live demonstration of ROVR, which was built from scratch at Digital Harvest’s research outpost at the Pendleton Unmanned Aerial Systems Range.

The ROVR has already been tested in vineyards around Echo, seeking to overcome a chronic shortage of manual labor in the wine industry. Using the virtual reality platform, skilled workers can essentially take command of the robot from anywhere in the world — a Chinese office building, for example — potentially opening a global workforce.

Young Kim, CEO of Digital Harvest, said the company tried a number of different tools to operate the ROVR, such as joy sticks and game controllers. However, none were able to duplicate the same level of speed and accuracy from workers in the field.

“By using virtual reality as an operator interface, we not only improved manual dexterity but also opened up the possibility of human workers being able to teleport to work from anywhere,” Kim said in a statement.

The ROVR will be fitted with remote sensors to provide real-time crop data, such as the size of grape clusters and estimated yield, and moves via driverless golf cart, which was donated to the project by Yamaha Unmanned Systems.

Like Digital Harvest, Yamaha has set up shop at the Pendleton UAS Range, where they help to form the backbone of the Oregon UAS Future Farm program. Jeff Lorton, Future Farm manager, said adopting automated technology is key for agriculture moving forward. Future Farm exists to help bridge the connection between Silicon Valley-types working to make those machines a reality, and farmers who can best explain the issues they face.

“The idea is to bring the people who can develop these solutions here, and give them the benefit of agricultural wisdom in the Columbia Basin,” Lorton said.

For three days, the Future Farm Expo helps to facilitate a meeting of those minds.

“The whole goal is to bring these two groups of people together and create an environment where they can learn from each other and form personal relationships,” Lorton said.

Lorton, who also serves as creative director for the Duke Joseph advertising agency in downtown Pendleton, said this year’s Future Farm Expo has assembled perhaps the greatest ever panel of farm automation experts. The event’s keynote speaker is George Kellerman, a founding member of Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory, whose presentation is titled, “How robotics and automation will save farming in the 21st century.”

In order for agriculture to thrive, Lorton said farmers need to be forward-thinking.

“Nationally, we are bleeding off (individual) farm owners every year,” he said. “We have to turn to technology.”

The final day of the Future Farm Expo will also feature a “pancake summit,” where participants can learn more about joining Future Farm and accelerating the development of farm technologies. Lorton said he hopes to see their industries run with the program.

Registration for the Future Farm Expo can be done online at www.futurefarmexpo.tech. The cost is $125 for all three days, though participants can save 25 percent by using the promotional code “earlybird.”