A new wildlife services report on the number of cackling Canada geese wintering in the Willamette Valley and the Lower Columbia River areas of Oregon and Washington shows the population surpasses the goal set for the migratory birds and may trigger a revision of management plans.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2014 report estimates 281,300 cacklers spend the winter in the two states, where they cause considerable agricultural damage, especially to grain and grass seed fields. The 2013 estimate was 312,200. Year-to-year population fluctuations are common; the wildlife service has set a population goal of 250,000 geese.

Crop damage from geese has been a concern for decades. Farmers argue they are essentially feeding the birds and absorbing damage for the sake of maintaining the population for hunters or nature lovers elsewhere. But the latest report hopefully will open the door to discussions of a longer hunting season or more opportunities to haze geese out of fields, said Roger Beyer, executive director of the Oregon Seed Council.

However, the situation is complicated by migratory bird treaties and compacts involving Native American tribes, the U.S., Canada and the states of Oregon, Washington, Alaska and California, Beyer said. “It’s a long slow process,” he said.

The Oregon Farm Bureau’s wildlife committee will be discussing cacklers – and wolves and Greater sage-grouse – at the bureau’s annual convention next week in Salishan. Wildlife officials have been invited to discuss the population report.

A 1997 report by the Oregon Department of Agriculture estimated annual crop and livestock damage by wildlife at $147 million, with more than $100 million attributed to deer and elk. Damage from geese was estimated at $14.9 million.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon election officials began tallying 1.5 million ballots by hand Tuesday, kicking off an automatic recount of a ballot measure that would require labels on genetically modified foods.

Workers have until Dec. 12 to finish the recount, though some of the smaller counties expect to wrap up quickly. The first tally showed Measure 92 was defeated by less than a tenth of a percentage point — 812 votes — following the most expensive campaign in state history. Advocates on both sides of the issue spent nearly $30 million combined.

The recount is conducted by four-person “counting boards” appointed by the county clerk. The counters must be registered Oregon voters, and no two of them can be members of the same political party.

One voter for and one against are allowed to observe, and officials with both campaigns said they had observers.

“Our intent is to make sure that every valid ballot is counted,” said Sandeep Kaushik, a spokesman for the measure’s proponents.

The observers monitor the count and call into campaign officials if they spot problems, Kaushik said.

“As far as we can tell at this point, things appear to be going smoothly,” said Dana Bieber, a spokeswoman for the No on 2 Coalition.

Their level of access varies from county to county, with some counties requiring observers to watch on a television screen or from a window while others allow them to be close to the counting board, he said.

The initiative would have required manufacturers, retailers and suppliers to label raw or packaged foods produced entirely or partially by genetic engineering.

If the defeat holds, Oregon will be the fourth state in the West that has failed to pass a GMO labeling measure. A similar proposal was defeated this year in Colorado, which joined Washington state and California in opposing labeling initiatives.

There’s little science that says genetically engineered foods are unsafe, and agribusinesses fear mandatory labels would spook consumers. Most of the nation’s corn and soybeans are genetically engineered to resist pests and herbicides. Labeling proponents say there’s too much that’s unknown about GMOs, and consumers have a right to know what’s in their food.

In 22 statewide recounts around the U.S. since 2000, the average shift was only 0.03 percentage point, according to FairVote, a Maryland-based advocacy group. Five of them produced a shift that would be large enough to alter the outcome of Oregon’s measure.

Landowners in seven more Eastern Oregon counties will have the opportunity to sign voluntary greater sage grouse conservation plans that will shield them from additional regulations if the bird is listed under the Endangered Species Act next year.

The draft agreement announced Dec. 2 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Portland is significant because it potentially covers 2.3 million acres — the majority of greater sage grouse habitat in Oregon.

Soil and Water Conservation Districts in Baker, Crook, Deschutes, Grant, Lake, southern Union and Malheur counties developed what’s called a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances, or CCAA, with the wildlife service. The announcement opens a 30-day public comment period before final action can be taken.

The agreement is modeled after one adopted in Harney County in May. Under CCAAs, ranchers and other landowners agree to manage their range in a way that benefits sage-grouse. In return, they are assured of protection from additional regulations for 30 years, even if sage grouse are listed as threatened or endangered. The bird is a candidate species for listing; the wildlife service will decide by September 2015 whether to give it ESA protection.

The Harney County SWCD agreement has enrolled 30 landowners and 280,000 acres.

Ranchers involved in the agreements have described the requirements as common-sense. They include marking fences to avoid bird strikes, putting escape ramps in water troughs and removing juniper trees that soak up water and crowd out sage and native grasses. The latter work improves grazing conditions for cattle as well. Last May one Southeast Oregon rancher described the exchange as, “What’s good for the bird is good for the herd.”

Landowners also agree to maintain contiguous grouse habitat. Fragmentation, wildfire and juniper encroachment are the main reasons for habitat loss in Oregon, according to the wildlife service.

Greater sage grouse inhabit 11 Western states. An endangered species listing could severely hamper ranching, farming, mining, logging and energy development in much of the West. In Oregon, the wildlife service has pushed for collaborative agreements that provide conservation for the bird while minimizing impact on private landowners, state supervisor Paul Henson said in a news release.

The federal government’s decision to spend $55 million on cranberries may dent a global glut, support prices and speed up payments to growers.

The purchase, however, won’t address production continuing to outpace demand, a step the U.S. Department of Agriculture declined to take this year.

“We have a very serious problem,” Long Beach Peninsula cranberry grower Malcolm McPhail said. “You don’t want anyone to have a crop failure. But you’d like to see average crops to keep things in perspective.”

U.S. and Canadian cranberry farmers produced this year a crop expected to be nearly as big as last year’s record harvest of 12 million barrels.

Between this year’s cranberries and fruit still unsold from 2013, the global cranberry supply stands at 16 million barrels (1.6 billion pounds). Demand over the next year is expected to be about 8.2 million barrels, according to the U.S. Cranberry Marketing Committee.

To trim the nearly 100 percent surplus, the USDA announced Nov. 21 it will buy approximately 680,000 barrels of cranberries in the form of juice, sauce and dried berries to distribute to food banks and schools.

The USDA buys cranberries every year, but this purchase will be a record and in addition to the $32 million the agency already planned to spend this year.

The announcement came two days after 22 federal lawmakers in the Congressional Cranberry Caucus wrote Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asking that the agency do what the marketing committee asks of consumers — please buy more cranberries.

The lawmakers — from the country’s five cranberry-producing states, including Washington and Oregon — requested the USDA buy 1 million barrels. Although the purchase will be about two-thirds that amount, it still will be more than all the cranberries grown annually in New Jersey, the third-leading cranberry producer behind Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

“If they did 50,000 barrels, it wouldn’t have much influence, but 680 (thousand) is a lot,” said McPhail, who like most Northwest cranberry growers belongs to the Ocean Spray cooperative.

Cranberry Marketing Committee Executive Director Scott Soares said the USDA has never spent so much on cranberries and that he expects the purchase will moderately influence prices farmers receive.

Still, the cranberry inventory remains far higher than a healthy 40 percent, he said.

“The USDA purchase is a big deal, but it’s not intended to be the silver bullet for all the problems of the industry,” Soares said.

Ocean Spray growers receive payments as the cranberries are sold. Growers won’t receive the final payment for 2013 crops until June 2015, several months later usual. Ocean Spray projects the payments will amount to 45 cents a pound, down from 57 cents the year before.

With the surplus reduced by the USDA, the pool of 2014 cranberries may be exhausted sooner, which means farmers will be paid sooner, McPhail said.

The cranberry surplus has been particularly difficult for independent growers outside the Ocean Spray cooperative.

Independent growers have been receiving 10 to 15 cents a pound for fruit sold for processed products, said independent grower Alan Devlin of Grayland, Wash.

“You can’t grow it for that, at least not in Washington,” he said.

If prices were 30 to 40 cents a pound, “you could be a little more relaxed about the whole thing,” he said.

Devlin said he’s survived by selling about 70 percent of his cranberries to the more lucrative fresh fruit market.

The USDA’s cranberry purchase came a few days before Thanksgiving — the holiday the cranberry industry is trying to become less reliant on.

“It (cranberry consumption) needs to be more of a year-round thing,” Devlin said. “You don’t want to depend on the government for anything.”

The USDA will buy the cranberries under the Section 32 program established during the Depression to support farm prices. The $55 million will come from customs fees the government collects on goods coming into the U.S.

The USDA this year rejected a request by the cranberry industry to control volumes, mandating growers reduce harvests by 15 percent. The USDA said it was concerned the U.S. cranberry industry was conspiring with Canadian growers to hold down supply.

The industry likely will consider again asking the USDA to control volumes to manage the surplus, Soares said.

“We hope not to. We hope the volatility in the market will go away,” he said.

McPhail said renewing the request for volume control may be unnecessary, citing the USDA’s increased buying of cranberries. Also, Wisconsin farmers may slip back to their historical harvests after huge crops the past two years, he said.

Wisconsin produces about two-thirds of the cranberries grown in the U.S.

Cattle ranchers will have plenty to talk about when they gather for the annual Oregon Cattlemen’s Association convention and trade show Dec. 4-6 in Bend.

The convention includes Dec. 4 educational sessions on beef quality assurance training and certification and herd management concepts. Speakers scheduled Dec. 5 include Phil Ward, Oregon director of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency; Dustin Van Liew of the Washington, D.C., lobbyist group Public Lands Council; and Kevin Mannix, a former Oregon legislator and founder of Common Sense for Oregon.

The association’s annual business meeting will be held Dec. 6.

The convention is at The Riverhouse in Bend. To see the full agenda, visit http://orcattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Convention-Agenda-102114.pdf.

Kendall Derby rolls into Portland in a tan GM Sierra pickup truck, pulling a flatbed trailer full of hope and bother. It’s a load of landscape timbers Derby cut from gnarly western juniper trees, and he drove 170 miles from Fossil, the emptiest spot in rural Oregon’s bare economy, to sell them in the city of hipsters.

Derby, 53, is burly, bearded, holds a rangeland ecology degree from Oregon State University and runs a two-man sawmill called In the Sticks. He said a guy should be able to make a living milling the juniper that cattle ranchers and government agencies want removed from the landscape.

He wants to believe that. But the saw should be whining, the kiln should be humming and the phone should be ringing with orders and offers. Instead, the only sound is the wind gently flapping the plastic covering stacks of sawn timbers.

Winter’s coming on and he doesn’t have a juniper log deck to cut.

“One of the things that haunts me is, everybody that has tried juniper has gone under,” Derby said.

“Part of it is just hanging in there.” he said. “I come close to the edge pretty regularly.”

There is potential for a cascading economic and environmental impact that goes beyond Derby, a load of juniper and a struggling sawmill.

In much of the rural West, juniper sucks up water, crowds out sage and native grasses and provides perches for hawks and other predators. It’s an pervasive presence. Oregon alone has an estimated 9 million acres of juniper.

Wildlife biologists have identified the juniper infestation as one of the problems afflicting greater sage grouse, which is a candidate for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2015.

If there is a market for juniper products, the thinking goes, ranchers and other landowners will cut more of it, which will improve habitat for greater sage grouse. In turn, that might keep the bird off the endangered species list. Which would be good for cattle ranchers, farmers, miners and energy developers in 11 Western states, who worry deeply about the restrictions and regulations that come with the ESA.

But that’s national issue stuff. The rise or fall of Derby’s juniper sawmill is a big concern locally. Wheeler County is Oregon’s least populated county, with more square miles, 1,713, than people, 1,430. Fossil, the county seat, has 475 people.

The county’s economy was knocked flat when the Kinzua mill closed in the late 1970s and hasn’t gotten back up.

The situation is such that June Rollins, owner of the Kountry Kafe in Fossil, has an informal arrangement with RJ’s, the restaurant across the street. Kountry Kafe serves breakfast and lunch, RJ’s serves lunch and dinner. That way, they split the trade between them.

Derby has one employee helping him. A couple jobs in Wheeler County, former county Judge Jeanne Burch said, are the equivalent of a couple hundred in Portland.

“Two jobs won’t turn the economy around, but it makes an impact,” said Burch, who was judge for 18 years. “Every dollar goes to the grocery store, to the gas station, to the restaurants.”

Selling juniper makes sense, she said. People in the county admire Derby for what he’s doing and wish him well, she said.

“It’s a bright way to go if he can just hang in there,” Burch said.

Ryan Temple, president of Sustainable Northwest Wood, arrives on a blue Salsa bicycle as Derby’s trailer is being unloaded,

The business, in Portland’s inner east side warehouse area, is a specialty lumber yard. It’s a for-profit spinoff of Sustainable Northwest, a non-profit that mediates environmental and rural economic concerns.

Sustainable Northwest Woods is the organization’s effort to “walk the talk,” Temple said. The business buys wood from 45 small Pacific Northwest mills such as Derby’s and sells to people looking for unusual decking, butcher block, fences, flooring, timbers, posts and other items.

Temple acknowledges the difficulty Derby and other rural producers face in reaching consumers.

“The reality of it is, the purchasing power exists in dense urban areas,” he said.

In October, Sustainable Northwest received a $65,000 USDA grant to certify western juniper’s structural characteristics. The testing will be done by Oregon State University and West Coast Lumber Inspection Bureau. Certification is necessary to get broader use of juniper.

But even without certification, demand is not the problem.

Tamra Rooney, operations director for Sustainable Northwest Wood, said juniper sales are growing at 50 percent a year and will approach $500,000 in 2014. “We can sell juniper all day long,” she said.

Organic vineyards want juniper posts at the end of their rows of grapes, because juniper is naturally rot-resistant and doesn’t have to be treated with preservatives. Derby is filling an order of 800 posts for a new organic vineyard.

Meanwhile, parks departments and transportation divisions want juniper for signposts, guardrails and trail beams. The University of Washington ordered juniper timbers for a retaining wall.

The most unusual application may be in Sweden, where a distiller ages gin in barrels made from juniper staves cut by Derby.

Derby believes a lack of logging infrastructure is holding back the juniper market. Two other small Oregon mills cut juniper, but they’re also struggling to get logs.

Two Baker County men who have worked on the issue say large-scale juniper logging doesn’t appear feasible. Josh Uriarte, who splits time between the local Soil and Water Conservation District and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Logan McCrae, with the state Department of Forestry, say juniper is difficult to cut and de-limb.

Mechanized faller-buncher machines would make logging more efficient, but don’t do well cutting gnarly juniper, the men say. In addition, larger juniper trees usually grow at higher elevations, which are difficult to reach. A lack of roads in rangeland means logging trucks can’t get to where the trees are.

Many ranchers and land management agencies are cutting juniper, but are either letting them lie or burning them, Uriarte and McCrae said.

Derby, the juniper mill operator, acknowledges the difficulties cause him some sleepless nights. But he hasn’t fallen off the edge yet. For now, he’s an “artisan sawyer,” as he jokes, hauling loads to Portland.

“I don’t expect it to be easy,” he said, “but I expect it to be possible.”

SALEM — Oregon is on its way to creating a registry of government-owned drones, but uncertainty about federal regulations for the unmanned aircraft means any state registry for privately held drones could be more than a year away.

The Oregon Department of Aviation plans to deliver a report to lawmakers early next month on the feasibility of a state registry for private drones, and a lawmaker who reviewed a draft of the document said he expects the state will recommend against pursuing such a registry in 2015.

“There’s no need in being too anxious, because federal law is going to pre-empt state (law),” said Rep. John Huffman, R-The Dalles, who sponsored a 2013 bill to regulate governments’ use of drones in Oregon.

Government agencies can currently obtain federal permits to use drones and the Federal Aviation Administration treats the small, recreational versions of the aircraft the same as model airplanes, said Collins Hemingway, president of the board of directors for the nonprofit Soar Oregon, which is dedicated to developing the industry.

That leaves out commercial drones, which the FAA has not authorized to operate in U.S. airspace outside of specific test ranges. The FAA expects to unveil a proposal to regulate small, commercial unmanned aircraft by the end of the year, and Hemingway said the federal agency might create its own drone registration system.

“If so, the state could end up having a registry but use the federal (identification) numbers,” Hemingway said. “That could be the simplest thing to do, if the state feels it needs to register them at all.”

The Oregon government drone registry was included in a 2013 bill that also established regulations on use of the aircraft by law enforcement and other government agencies. In addition to the registry, House Bill 2710 called for annual reports on government drone activity. The requirement to register government drones takes effect in January 2016.

The Oregon Department of Aviation was supposed to deliver its report on the status of federal regulation of drones and whether the state should create a private drone registry to the legislature by Nov. 1. Mitch Swecker, director of the Department of Aviation, said he provided a draft of the report to the office of Gov. John Kitzhaber for feedback, and he expects the report will be ready by the time lawmakers meet for three days of committee sessions starting Dec. 8.

The slow pace of federal regulation of unmanned aircraft systems or UAS has not dampened enthusiasm for the industry among some state lawmakers, who see it as a way to add more well-paying jobs.

The FAA approved three drone test sites in Oregon almost a year ago, as part of an effort requested by the U.S. Congress to safely integrate the vehicles into airspace. That could help convince lawmakers to approve potentially millions of dollars in 2015 to help boost development of the test sites in Tillamook, Warm Springs and Pendleton.

Soar Oregon received an $882,000 state economic development grant in the current biennium, and the group asked for $3.5 million in the two-year budget cycle that will begin in July 2015. Business Oregon, the state economic development agency, included the Soar Oregon request in the budget proposal it submitted to the governor, communications and marketing manager Nathan Buehler wrote in an email.

Huffman said he has already observed the economic impact of the unmanned aircraft industry in the Columbia River Gorge because his constituents include some of the approximately 850 people who work just north in Bingen, Washington, at the drone company Insitu Inc.

Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, said the three federal test ranges need help to build the infrastructure for drone testing.

“If we are thoughtful and careful about what we do, we could easily turn Oregon into the silicon sky, just as we turned it into the silicon forest,” said Johnson, who spent 20 years in the commercial aviation industry.

BANDON — For as far back as she can remember, Carol Waxham’s Langlois gallery Raincoast Arts has been a work in progress. But then the same could be said for the artist herself and the woven c…

A tight supply will lift soft white wheat prices in the coming months, Northwest wheat marketing experts say.

According to USDA Agricultural Marketing Services, soft white wheat prices were mostly $7.19 per bushel, ranging from $6.96 per bushel to $7.36 per bushel.

Ty Jessup, merchandiser for Central Washington Grain Growers in Waterville, Wash., and industry representative for the Washington Grain Commission, expects soft white wheat prices to remain at the same level.

Moving into the winter, the market will turn its attention to next year’s crop, Jessup said. Prices will adjust according to the outlook.

“The challenge for next year’s crop is not knowing what next year’s crop is going to be,” Jessup said, pointing to possible impacts of a recent cold snap. “The hard part about winter weather conditions is we can kill a crop several times, but you don’t ever know the answer until next spring.” Soft white wheat is a little high in protein, but good quality, said Dan Steiner, grain merchandiser for Pendleton Grain Growers and Morrow County Grain Growers. The 2015 crop does not appear to be off to a good start, with dry conditions and late planting affecting development of the root system, he said.

He expects prices will remain steady through the holiday season. But he’s encouraged by USDA reports calling for the second-tightest carryout — the amount of wheat left over from 2014 — since 1988.

“The only year it was tighter than that was the year it went to $16 per bushel,” he said. “No, we’re not going to $16, I don’t think, but we’re going to have really tight carryouts.”

If production problems occur in a major wheat-producing corner of the world, Steiner said, prices could easily reach $8 per bushel.

“This market’s not going to stay down long - it may dip, we may have adjustments of the futures, but right now there’s not any serious downside for any extended period of time,” he said.

Byron Behne, marketing manager for Northwest Grain Growers in Walla Walla, Wash., agrees that a tight supply will likely raise prices in February or March.

“That might be the time period where we start to see some big gains,” Behne said. “With white wheat being the only variety of wheat that’s super tight this year, prices should stay firm and move higher, maybe towards $8 per bushel.”

The world wheat supply is strong enough that Behen also doesn’t foresee $16 wheat.

“Prices are at the highest levels we’ve been since prior to harvest, so if a guy needs money it’s not a bad time to sell some wheat,” Behne said. “But if you don’t have to, I don’t mind sitting on wheat just to see what happens.”

The U.S. Department of Labor said it’s negotiating a possible end to litigation with Oregon blueberry farms the agency accused of “hot goods” labor law violations.

The agency has asked a federal judge to postpone proceedings in its lawsuit against the growers while they try to reach a resolution.

In 2012, the agency claimed that Pan-American Berry Growers and B&G Ditchen paid pickers less than the minimum wage, rendering their blueberries unlawfully harvested “hot goods” that can’t be shipped in interstate commerce.

The farms agreed to pay $220,000 and waive their right to challenge DOL’s findings so the agency would lift the “hot goods” objection, thus preventing their crop from rotting.

Those deals were found to be unlawfully coercive earlier this year by a federal judge who vacated the settlements and re-opened the litigation.

Since then, the legal conflict has escalated. The farmers demanded their money back, plus $150,000 in damages for the shipping delay that hurt fruit quality.

DOL countered that it couldn’t return the money that had already been disbursed to workers and refused to pay damages or attorney fees.

The agency also upped the ante in its complaints against the farms, seeking to add new defendants and additional charges of wrongdoing stretching back further in time.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin was set to hear oral arguments on DOL’s motion to broaden the charges against the farms on Dec. 3 and to accept court briefs regarding the payment of restitution and attorney fees.

The agency has now asked him to postpone that hearing until Jan. 13, 2015 and delay court briefing of the other legal issues.

DOL and the farms “have exchanged proposals for resolution of all the combined cases in this matter” and it may conserve the resources of everyone involved if the proceedings were delayed, the agency said in court documents.

The DOL’s documents claim that Tim Bernasek, the farmers’ attorney, has agreed to postpone the oral arguments and briefings but Capital Press was unable to reach him for confirmation.

NAMPA, Idaho — Farmers alarmed by the FDA’s proposed produce safety rule shouldn’t panic because a number of universities and organizations are preparing to help them wade through the complex proposal, a researcher involved in that effort says.

“It’s OK to hit the ‘huh?’ button but don’t hit the ‘panic’ button because a lot of groups are gearing up to provide the support system in a variety of ways,” said University of California-Davis extension research specialist Trevor Suslow, who focuses on produce quality and safety.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 152-page revised produce safety rule is difficult to understand but it’s a big improvement over the original rule, he said.

“There’s a lot of support that’s being put in place to help growers become familiar with the proposal, understand what it means and understand how to approach it within their operations,” Suslow said.

Speaking to Idaho fruit growers during the Idaho State Horticultural Society’s annual convention Nov. 20, Suslow focused his presentation on a part of the FDA proposal that would set limits on how much bacteria could be present in irrigation water.

Under the original proposal, growers whose water didn’t meet the standards would have to immediately stop using it. The revised rule allows growers whose water doesn’t meet the standards to comply through other means.

That includes establishing an interval from the last day of irrigation until harvest that would allow for potentially dangerous microbes to die off. This “die-off” provision could also apply to the time between harvest and when produce leaves storage.

Because the rate at which bacteria die off on produce is under-researched, Suslow said, he and others will ask the FDA to place that provision in a guidance document rather than the rule itself.

This would allow flexibility as more research in that area is done, he said, because “it would take an extraordinary effort to change once they’re locked in.”

“It’s a right idea,” he said, “I just think it needs to be tweaked and refined quite a bit more.”

Suslow said tests performed by researchers on well, reservoir and canal water in California and Arizona found that 95 percent of the water easily complied with the proposed water quality standards.

But in some places, such as the Treasure Valley area of Southwestern Idaho and Eastern Oregon, where some canal water is reused several times, the water would not meet the standards.

Onion growers in that area have been particularly vocal in their criticism of the proposed rule but they have been encouraged by the “die-off” provision.

The revised rule will allow growers a lot more latitude when it comes to meeting the water quality standards, Oregon State University researcher Clint Shock told the Capital Press.

But he said onion growers are still concerned about a provision of the produce safety rule that would require them to replace the wooden bins they have used for decades with plastic bins.

Replacing the estimated 1 million wooden onion boxes in Idaho and Eastern Oregon with plastic would cost about $200 million, based on estimates by OSU researchers. But OSU’s research showed no traces of E. coli bacteria on onions in wooden boxes that weren’t cleaned.

Despite this data, the FDA chose to retain the provision in its revised rule, Shock said.

“There would be a tremendous expense to replace all the bins, yet there would be no public health benefit,” Shock said.

A tentative agreement to pump more irrigation water from the Columbia River into northeast Oregon farmland could be just weeks away, according to Gov. John Kitzhaber’s natural resources policy director.

But such a plan would still require bipartisan support and funding in the upcoming legislature before local farmers can tap into any new water supplies.

It’s a complex process following months of face-to-face negotiations between conservation groups and the Northeast Oregon Water Association, which is applying for three water rights to significantly expand irrigated agriculture while allowing badly stressed groundwater aquifers to recharge.

If successful, the deal could put thousands of acres of highly productive farmland into full production near Hermiston and Boardman, with potential economic benefits in the billions of dollars.

That’s a lot of zeros and a lot of promise, but forgive Eastern Oregonians if they’ve heard it before. Kitzhaber, who was re-elected in November, has said the effort is a high priority and continues to monitor the Columbia River-Umatilla Solutions Task Force, which he convened in 2012. Yet results are slow to come.

Richard Whitman, who is the governor’s top natural resources adviser, said this time around feels different.

“We are very close to an agreement that will provide significant expansion of irrigation agriculture, with environmental interests on board,” Whitman said.

The difference now, Whitman said, has been the strong organizational commitment of NOWA and constructive talks on both sides of the negotiating table. Representatives of NOWA — including executive director J.R. Cook — have been traveling twice, sometimes three times per week for meetings in Salem, as well as hosting key legislators from across the Cascades.

What NOWA wants in the long run is three water rights adding up to 500 cubic feet per second of water from the Columbia, which it would pump into three critical groundwater areas spanning 40 miles of river from the Port of Morrow to just east of Hermiston.

Cook knew it wouldn’t come easy. The law requires NOWA mitigate the new irrigation with a bucket-for-bucket replacement of water back into the river in order to protect endangered fish runs. And, as history shows, the Umatilla Basin has a poor record of pumping resources dry — the “sins of our fathers,” as Cook has called them.

The keys to finding a solution, Cook said, are vision, patience and incremental gains. NOWA is working with environmental groups to identify projects that can account for the mitigation piece of their proposal, and making sure those benefits are clearly explained to constituents outside their base.

That takes time, but Cook is confident it will pay dividends.

“People start to get it, that this is a much bigger benefit than just our northeast Oregon neck of the woods,” he said. “Just having that dialogue with folks ... it doesn’t mean they’ll agree with everything we propose, but the best part is they understand it and they can make a weighted opinion on it down the road.”

On Nov. 8, members of NOWA and state Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, made the trip to northeast Portland to meet with Sen. Michael Dembrow and about 30 of his constituents, where they discussed water needs and the impacts of local agriculture statewide.

Dembrow, who works with Hansell on the Senate’s Environment and Natural Resources Committee, already visited Eastern Oregon in May for an up-close look at the project area and various ag-based industries. Since then, Cook said the Portland democrat has become an important ally to reaching across the urban-rural divide.

“It’s the best thing we can be doing as a region,” Cook said.

That bipartisan political backing will be important next year when it comes to funding any new water projects. It is likely the governor’s budget will include some resources to help the Columbia River supply start flowing, Whitman said. He declined to get into specifics, but said part of the funding could come from the $10 million Water Supply Development Account created by the legislature in 2013.

Once a concrete proposal is agreed upon, NOWA can move forward with applying for the water right and recruiting new members to join the organization. Membership will help pay for whatever mitigation and infrastructure costs are necessary to pump water onto their property.

“We’re spending significant time and resources trying to pull together a consensus here,” Whitman said.

Though Whitman said they are working on an arrangement that wouldn’t require any new laws, Hansell said he and his partners in Salem will be ready to step up with their support.

“It’s something we’ve worked on for many years, and I’ve tried to pick up the mantle and move it forward,” Hansell said. “I believe we will have something that is meaningful out of the next legislature.”

Working under NOWA, Cook said irrigators have a cohesive and clearly defined vision of success. The next step is coming up with a game plan to matches that vision.

“I think we’re doing it right,” Cook said. “We’ve defined success locally. I think the state’s thinking from the top down what their needs and priorities are. Hopefully, we can meet somewhere in the middle.”

A biochar product applied to fields increased red winter wheat yields 26 to 34 percent in preliminary trials and earned a Portland-area company a grant to pursue commercial production.

Walking Point Farms, a veteran-owned agri-tech business based in Tigard, Ore., received $91,000 from Oregon BEST, a non-profit that coordinates funding, research and development of clean-tech enterprises. Walking Point is working with Marion Ag Services of Salem to produce Pro-Pell-It, lime pellets coated with biochar, the charcoal-like substance produced by heating woody biomass such as logging slash.

Biochar is considered a quick fix for depleted soils and up to now has been favored by small, organic operations or home gardeners. It replenishes carbon in the soil, retains water and nutrients, makes soils less acidic and reduces erosion and leaching, Biochar essentially mimics organic matter that fallow wheat fields in Eastern Oregon and Washington lack, said Stephen Machado, a dryland cropping agronomist at Oregon State University’s Columbia Basin Agricultural Research Center in Pendleton. He conducted the preliminary yield research.

“Biochar brings all that back,” Machado said. As an added benefit, “Once you apply it, that’s it,” he said, adding that repeated applications don’t appear to be necessary.

Backers also say biochar application also is a way to sequester carbon that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere.

Walking Point Farms and Marion Ag plan to release the product next spring. It will be the first large-scale commercial marketing of the pellets. Summit Seed Coatings, of Caldwell, Idaho, verified that biochar coating could be done at commercial levels.

Walking Point was founded by Howard Boyte, a Vietnam War Marine veteran who is retired from the Portland Fire Bureau. Chris Tenney, a Marine Corps combat veteran of the Iraq War, is vice president of business development, and William Wallace, an Army veteran who served two tours in Iraq, is chief financial officer. Boyte and Wallace were wounded in action.

Boyte has sold fertilizer in the past, capitalizing on requirements that government agencies buy a certain percentage of material from veteran-owned businesses. The biochar product, he said, has the potential to be a much bigger enterprise but will require investment partners.

“By spring planting we want to be locked, loaded and ready to go” with commercial production,” Boyte said. “Our number one biggest need is money.”

Oregon BEST, which provided the $91,000 grant, has increasingly focused on precision ag ventures, including a Wilsonville company that makes aerial drones for farm data collection. Since it was founded by the 2007 Oregon Legislature, the agency has secured more than $135 million for clean technology research from federal, foundation, and industry investors.

Online

Walking Point Farms http://walkingpointfarms.com

Oregon blueberry farms accused of “hot goods” labor law violations are asking a federal judge not to allow the U.S. Department of Labor to expand the charges against them.

The agency wants to revise the original complaints filed in 2012 against Pan-American Berry Growers and B&G Ditech that accused them of paying pickers less than the minimum wage.

DOL is now asking to change the complaints to include new allegations of wrongdoing in 2010 and 2011 and to add Pan-American’s CEO and three labor contractors as defendants. The agency also wants to charge them with violating the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, in addition to the previous allegations of Fair Labor Standards Act violations.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin will hold oral arguments on the DOL’s motion to amend the complaints during a telephone hearing on Dec. 3.

The farms agreed to pay the DOL $220,000 in 2012 to settle the charges but later convinced a federal judge to overturn the deals because they had been signed under economic duress.

DOL had threatened to block shipments of their fresh blueberries as unlawfully produced “hot goods” unless they agreed to pay alleged back wages and penalties and waive their right to challenge the allegations.

With the settlements invalidated, DOL’s lawsuits against the farms have been re-opened and the agency wants to add the new allegations.

The blueberry farms say it would be unfair to include new allegations about alleged wrongdoing in 2010 and 2011 because they were not investigated by DOL in those years and thus had no reason to maintain records or preserve witness statements from that time.

The proposed new defendants would also be prejudiced by their inclusion in the lawsuit because they were never put on notice about the allegations between 2010 and 2012, even though DOL could have named them in the original complaints, the farms say in a court brief.

“It is one thing to amend a complaint to make limited changes, but another to add parties, add legal theories, and extend the reach of litigation further back in time — when a party could have done so at the inception of the case,” the brief said. “DOL offers no explanation such as recently discovered evidence which might justify the change in course.”

In a response brief, DOL discounts the fact it could have included the allegations in 2012.

Those charges weren’t included in the original complaints because they were part of a “negotiated settlement” that excluded certain allegations, the agency claims.

“For that reason the original complaint asserted only a portion of the claims for unpaid wages and violations of labor statutes that were included in the settlement,” DOL said in a court brief.

If all goes well, U.S. blueberry growers could be shipping fresh blueberries to Vietnam and the Philippines by 2016.

“You never know about these things,” said Bryan Ostlund, administrator of the Oregon Blueberry Commission, after returning from a trade mission to the two countries. “But we have a desire. They have a desire. At this point, it appears that we are headed down the same path, and it is in all of our countries’ interest that we move through this as quickly as possible.”

Participants in the 10-day mission, which concluded Nov. 5, included representatives of Oregon and Washington potato commissions, Oregon onions and officials from the Oregon and Washington state departments of agriculture, including Oregon Director Katy Coba and Washington Director Bud Hover.

Ostlund, the mission’s sole blueberry representative, asked if he could participate after learning about the mission last fall.

“It was perfect timing on several fronts,” he said. “I knew that there was interest in the blueberry industry to open those two markets for fresh and frozen and that the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council was working with USDA on an application for access.”

The council subsequently submitted the application in September, Ostlund said.

“I wanted to test the waters and see what the reaction was to allowing blueberries to come in to those countries,” he said.

Ostlund said the mission gave him access he couldn’t have obtained were he traveling strictly with industry members.

“For me to be with these two directors with dignitary status really helped open up access to Philippine and Vietnamese governments,” he said.

Government officials in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Manila expressed keen interest in importing U.S. fresh blueberries, Ostlund said. Consumer interest in Vietnam and the Philippines, meanwhile, rivals that of South Korea, he said, which has become Oregon’s largest export market for fresh blueberries in just three years since gaining access.

“Like in South Korea, they read about blueberries in publications and on the Internet,” he said. “They read about the health benefits, and they want blueberries.”

“The demand for Oregon blueberries continues to be one of our best success stories,” Coba said. “We have seen the same kind of enthusiasm and interest from other Asian markets for our fresh blueberries as we saw in Korea a few years ago.

“It’s exciting to see our industry lead the initiative to pursue other markets like Vietnam and the Philippines, and we hope to gain access in those locations, as well,” Coba said.

Oregon shipped approximately 500,000 pounds of fresh blueberries to Korea in 2012, the first year it gained access, doubled that in 2013 and this year shipped 1.5 million pounds into the market.

Japan, formerly Oregon’s largest export market for fresh blueberries, typically imports just under 1 million pounds of blueberries a year.

Oregon is the only U.S. state allowed to ship fresh blueberries into South Korea. It took 10 years and a combined effort of the Oregon Department of Agriculture, the USDA and the Oregon Blueberry Commission to crack open the market.

Promotional work by the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council and the Oregon Department of Agriculture helped cultivate interest in the market so when it opened, consumer interest was high.

Ostlund is hoping for similar good timing in the Vietnamese and Philippine markets.

“The trick is to get the timing right, so that when you do gain access, you are not starting fresh with trying to build demand,” Ostlund said. “So that when you get the green light, you are already out of the starting blocks and you are ready to go.”

Ostlund doesn’t expect it to be as difficult to gain market access to the Philippines and Vietnam as it was for South Korea, which has domestic blueberry production. Farmers in the Philippines and Vietnam, which have tropical climates, cannot grow blueberries.

“We don’t have those kind of (phytosanitary and competitive) issues with these countries,” Ostlund said.

SUNDAYS

Saturday, Nov. 22

Sundays

SUNDAYS

SALEM — An automatic recount now appears likely for Measure 92, a ballot initiative that would require labeling of food sold in Oregon containing genetically modified organisms.

The latest unofficial count Thursday from the Oregon secretary of state lists 750,989 votes against it, 749,505 for it. The difference of 1,484 is now within the 3,000 that triggers an automatic recount.

Counties have until Tuesday to certify their totals with the secretary of state, who has until Dec. 4 to certify the state results.

Although statewide recounts are rare, they do occur.

In 2000, Randall Edwards beat Gary Bruebaker for the Democratic nomination for state treasurer by 470 votes of more than 300,000 cast. Edwards went on to win two terms as treasurer.

In 1992, Les AuCoin beat Harry Lonsdale for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator by 330 votes of more than 300,000 cast. AuCoin lost to Republican Sen. Bob Packwood.

Edwards and AuCoin led in their initial counts.

State law requires a recount at public expense if the difference is one-fifth of 1 percent of the total votes cast. Recounts also can be requested even if the margin is greater than the automatic trigger, but the individual or organization requesting it must pay unless the election result is reversed.

Spending by both sides on Measure 92 added up to nearly $29 million, shattering the record of $15 million set back in 2007.

Similar measures have gone down in California in 2012, Washington in 2013, and Colorado on Nov. 4.