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NURSERY SPECIAL SECTION INSIDE FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 2016 Tight labor supply pushes wages upward By DAN WHEAT Capital Press VOLUME 89, NUMBER 34 WWW.CAPITALPRESS.COM $2.00 NOTHING EASY ABOUT EASEMENTS CASHMERE, Wash. — It was their second day into the Bartlett pear harvest. Pat Burnett and his son, Anthony, watched another carload of pickers roll into their Cash- mere orchard and then roll out. “They come in and look and turn around and leave,” An- thony Burnett said. “If the trees are too big or the fruit too sparse, they Pat don’t like it.” Burnett With a short- age of pickers and high piece-rate wag- es, pickers “aren’t hungry enough” and can afford to be choosy, he said, noting that a fast picker can earn $200 a day. A large apple crop and a deteriorating local workforce is making this one of the tight- est labor years ever for the Central Washington apple and pear harvest, says Mike Gem- pler, executive director of the Washington Growers League in Yakima. “H-2A (the foreign guest- worker program) is generally saving our bacon as an indus- try this year,” Gempler said. Washington growers hired 11,844 H-2A-visa workers in 2015 and the farm labor asso- ciation, WAFLA, has estimat- ed it will increase to 15,000 this year. Large companies use H-2A but it’s harder for smaller growers to follow suit, Gempler said. Growers with good pick- ing and paying competitive rates are doing well in attract- ing labor, but a lot of small- scale growers are struggling to maintain small crews, he said. Wages have surged upward with the $12.69 per hour min- imum wage for H-2A workers becoming the fl oor, he said. Good pickers make the equiv- alent of $15 to $17 per hour on piece rate. Anxiety surrounds conservation easements and making them work By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press R ancher Roger Ediger has no problem giving up the ability to subdivide his nearly 2,700- acre property near Mount Vernon in Eastern Oregon. Development is the biggest threat to agriculture, wildlife and open space, Ediger believes, which is why he decided to place a conservation ease- ment on the land that preserves its current condition in perpetuity. “If we don’t look farther than our own lifespan, then we’ll have nothing,” he said. However, Ediger still faces a dilemma. He is reluctant to have an environmentally oriented land trust or similar entity impose conditions on how he operates the ranch in exchange for “holding” the ease- ment. Since no third party holds the easement, though, it’s possible that a future landowner will simply ignore the prohibition against development if nobody’s there to en- force it. “An easement is only as good as it is enforceable,” said Mike Running, executive director of the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts. Photos by Sean Hart/EO Media Group Roger Ediger’s cows are shown on his Eastern Oregon ranch. BELOW: Roger Ediger is seen on his Eastern Oregon ranch with McClellan Mountain in the background. Turn to EASEMENTS, Page 12 Bonus pay The Burnetts pay $18 per bin with a $5 per bin bonus if a picker stays with them to the end of harvest. That’s up from $18 and a $4 bonus last year. On Aug. 15, their second day of harvest, the Burnetts had seven of their regular crew picking and one other. They’d hoped for a total of 12. With- out more pickers their Bartlett harvest will take a few days longer, stretching to perhaps two weeks. Then there will be Turn to LABOR, Page 11 Farmer seeks $50,911 in Oregon land use dispute Petition requests recovery of attorney fees By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press An Oregon farmer is seek- ing to recover more than $50,000 in attorney fees from his opponents in a lawsuit over his straw-compressing facility. Last month, John Gilmour prevailed in the dispute when the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that straw-compressing operations are allowed outright on land zoned for farming. Several neighbors and two conservation groups had argued that Gilmour’s straw-compress- ing facility engaged in crop pro- cessing and thus was required to obtain a conditional use per- mit from the county, which lim- ited his hours of operation. The appellate court held that such permits aren’t necessary because straw-compressing is a form of crop preparation, not processing, since “straw is un- changed in substance from when it is fi rst baled in the fi eld to when it is packaged for resale.” Gilmour’s attorney has now fi led a petition asking the Ore- gon Court of Appeals to order his opponents to pay $50,911 because their legal position was “not well-founded in law” and they had “no objectively rea- sonable basis” for their legal challenge. He’s also entitled to attorney fees based on Oregon’s “right to farm” law, which prohibits Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press John Gilmour, owner of a straw-compressing facility near Albany, Ore., is in a legal dispute over whether his plant should be allowed outright on land zoned for farming. Several neighbors want him to ob- tain a conditional use permit because they worry about traffi c impacts. nuisance and trespass lawsuits against common farming prac- tices, the petition said. “Petitioners brought this ap- peal in an attempt to harass and delay a working farmer who has neither the time nor resources to defend such a frivolous claim,” the petition said. The neighbors and conser- vation groups were motivated by “substantial animus” toward Gilmour’s farming operation and the associated “truck traffi c, noise, and straw debris.” Suzi Maresh, a neighbor who opposed the facility be- cause she believes it causes traffi c hazards, said she was taken aback by the request for attorney fees. The lawsuit concerned the interpretation of state land use laws, not nuisance and trespass claims over common farming practices, she said. “We were certainly sur- prised because we were under the impression that would not be the case,” Maresh said. 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