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July 8, 2016 CapitalPress.com 7 Idaho ag welcomes Little’s run for governor Study: Plastic crates no By SEAN ELLIS Capital Press BOISE — News that Idaho Lt. Gov. Brad Little will run for governor was welcomed by the state’s farm and ranch industry. Little, 62, is a rancher and farmer from Emmett who has been active in the state’s agri- cultural industry his entire life. “We have an excellent re- lationship with Brad,” said Leadore rancher Carl Lufkin. “He’s been an ally of our in- dustry. I certainly am going to support him.” Gov. Butch Otter, who has been Idaho’s governor since 2007 and is also a rancher, has said he will not seek re-elec- tion. Little iled the paperwork necessary to run for governor June 29. Idaho’s next gubernatorial election is in 2018. Little said he iled now because a lot of people around the state have Sean Ellis/Capital Press Idaho Lt. Gov. Brad Little has iled paperwork to run for gov- ernor in 2018. been asking him if he’s run- ning but they couldn’t oficial- ly support him or raise money for his campaign until the pa- perwork was iled. Little served in the Idaho Senate from 2001 to 2009, when he was appointed by Ot- ter as lieutenant governor. He was elected to that position in 2010 and has been re-elected two times since. “Brad has done a good job as lieutenant governor and ... I believe he is an ally for agri- culture,” said Meridian farmer Drew Eggers. “I’m pleased personally that he is running.” A third-generation Idaho rancher, Little owns a ranching and farming operation in Em- mett and the family of his wife, Teresa Soulen, has farmed and ranched in Idaho for almost 150 years. He is a former chairman of the Idaho Wool Growers Asso- ciation. “Brad Little is Idaho agri- culture,” Food Producers of Idaho Executive Director Rick Waitley told Capital Press in an email. “Being a product of a strong Idaho farm and ranch family, the lieutenant gover- nor understands the important value the industry adds to the state.” Waitley said Little as a sen- ator and lieutenant governor has interacted frequently with FPI, which represents most of the state’s farm groups. As past president of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, Little also sees “the value of the industry when our commodities leave the farm,” he said. Little said one of his main priorities as governor would be to seek to lighten the bur- den of federal regulations on Idaho farmers and ranchers. “Federal regulations are a continual challenge to agri- culture,” he said. “We have to make those as painless as pos- sible and push back on a lot of them.” Little said another top goal would be to ensure the state creates the type of economic climate that allows Idahoans from farm as well as non-farm families to remain in or come back to rural communities that depend on agriculture’s economic contribution. “I would love to have my legacy be that families in Ida- ho were able to have their kids stay and come back and thrive here in Idaho,” he said. safer than old wooden boxes for storing onions By SEAN ELLIS Capital Press ONTARIO, Ore. — Plas- tic crates are no more sanitary for storing onions than the old wooden boxes packers in this area have used for decades, ac- cording to a study by Oregon State University researchers. The study results could prove extremely valuable to dry bulb onion growers if new Food and Drug Administration food safety regulations require the use of plastic crates, as some onion growers fear. There are an estimated 1 million wooden boxes used for storing onions in Southwestern Idaho and Eastern Oregon, the largest bulb onion producing re- gion in the country by volume. Replacing them with more expensive plastic crates would be an enormous expense for the region’s onion industry, said Kay Riley, manager of Snake River Produce in Nyssa. If onions were required to be stored in plastic crates instead of wooden boxes, “We’d just quit, I think,” said Riley, the mar- keting order chairman for the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee, “We’d just throw in the towel.” Riley said the wooden crates cost a little more than $60 apiece, while the plastic bins available on the market now cost about $150 apiece. The wooden boxes hold al- most 1,600 pounds of onions, while the smaller plastic bins would hold 900 pounds. “It would be a substantial cost” to switch to plastic con- tainers, said OSU cropping sys- tems extension agent Stuart Re- itz, who conducted the container tests with Clint Shock, director of OSU’s Malheur County re- search station. Because the plastic crates are a different size, some onion packers would have to retro- it their storage facilities to use them, Reitz said. The Food Safety Moderniza- tion Act mandates that produce storage containers be sanitary for their intended purpose, and Reitz said the onion industry is concerned that could lead to an effort to replace the wooden boxes with plastic crates under the assumption the plastic con- tainers are more sanitary. To test that theory, Reitz and Shock conducted a trial in 2015 using onions grown under both furrow and drip irrigation sys- tems. Onions harvested under both systems were packed into 10 wooden crates and 10 plastic containers, stored for six weeks and then tested for generic E. coli and other potentially harm- ful bacteria. “We haven’t seen any dif- ference in contamination of the onions from the container type,” Reitz said. “There doesn’t seem to be any need to change con- tainer types.” A big reason for that is sim- ply that the onions themselves are not contaminated, Reitz said, something OSU researchers have shown in previous trials. “The containers are not spreading any pathogens to be- gin with because they simply weren’t there from the onions in the irst place,” he said. The plastic crates used in the trial were sterilized with a bleach solution and rinsed with distilled water, then dried in the sun. 31st Annual Capital Press Ag Weekly Courtesy of Almond Board of Calif. An Iron Wolf grinds up a whole almond tree and puts the woody biomass materials back into the soil during a University of California Cooperative Extension-hosted demonstration in Chowchilla, Calif., earlier this year. The UC is researching use of the device as a way to help growers improve their soil quality. Almond board funds UC orchard recycling research Capital Press MODESTO, Calif. — The Almond Board of California is buying into the concept of grinding up whole orchards and putting the biomass ma- terial back into the ground to improve soil quality. The board has given $145,000 to a University of California research team that’s been testing the feasi- bility of “recycling” old or- chards on a test plot in Chow- chilla, Calif., near Fresno. With the grant, UC Co- operative Extension advisor Brent Holtz and others will join USDA researchers in assessing the costs and ben- eits of such projects at sev- eral test sites in the Central Valley, said Carissa Sauer, of Modesto. She is the board’s manager of industry commu- nications. “Should this research provide evidence to support a change in almond farming practices, these recycling efforts could have major impacts on air quality, soil health and overall production eficiency, contributing to the greater sustainability of California almonds,” Sauer told the Capital Press in an email. She said the approach seems to mimic nature “by following the lead of forests across the globe which are fueled by fallen logs and their decomposing tree biomass,” she said. Holtz held a ield day for growers earlier this year to demonstrate a device called the Iron Wolf, which uproots and grinds whole orchard trees and incorporates the woody biomass into the soil. Holtz, who is based in Stockton, Calif., told the gathering that studies he’s been doing since 2003 have shown that whole-orchard chip incorporation treat- ments increased organic matter, soil carbon, nutri- ents and microbial diversity — all to the benefit of new plantings. Recycling old orchards that are being taken out to make room for new ones could come in handy for growers who’ve been look- ing for alternative ways to dispose of biomass after some Central Valley cogen- eration plants have closed in recent years. In addition, growers in recent years have report- ed an increase in problems with salinity in groundwater, which the orchard grind- ing experiments have been shown to alleviate. Among the researchers’ goals is to assess the costs and benefits of different methods of grinding up or- chard biomass and incorpo- rating it into the soil and to determine whether whole-or- chard recycling could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by further sequestering the car- bon stored by almond trees, Sauer said. PEACH LUGS & 1 1 ⁄ 2 QT. CORRAGATED BERRY BASKETS Don’t Miss The Chance to Reach 1000’s of Customers! Take advantage of our guide to the Pacific Northwest and California nursery industry. Our special edition will reach our print and online readers one week before the Farwest Nursery Show which runs Aug. 25th - 27th in Portland, OR. If you are an exhibitor at the show or a provider of equipment or services for the nursery industry, let us deliver your advertising message to the perfect audience. Ad space reservation is Friday, July 22 nd . PO Box 2048 • Salem, OR 97308 (503) 364-4798 (800) 882-6789 503-588-8313 2561 Pringle Rd. SE Salem, OR Call for Pricing. Subject to stock on hand. Fax: (503) 364-2692 or (503) 370-4383 www.capitalpress.com Delivery Available rop-26-4-1/#13 ROP-28-2-1/#7 28-1/#4X By TIM HEARDEN Publishes Friday, August 19 th , 2016 28-1/#4N