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4 CapitalPress.com March 6, 2015 Expert: Immigration reform won’t fix labor shortage Broader economic forces are reducing worker supply By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press Shortages of farm labor will likely persist in the long term regardless of possible changes to immigration law, according to an agricultural economist. U.S. immigration policy is often cited as a key factor in the availability of farm work- ers, but larger economic forc- es are reducing the agricultur- al labor pool, said Ed Taylor, a professor at the University of California-Davis who is studying the phenomenon. “Hoping the workers come back is a non-starter,” he said at the recent Oregon Wine Symposium in Portland, Ore. The number of potential Matuesz Perkowski/Capital Press Dan Fazio, executive director of the Washington Farm Labor Association. farm workers is falling due to changes in Mexico that are beyond the control of U.S. lawmakers or immigration regulators, Taylor said. Immigration policy can’t solve the farm labor problem unless there are enough peo- ple to do the work, he said. The birthrate in Mexico is falling fast and has now roughly “converged” with the U.S. average of about two children per woman, Taylor said. Mexico has also invested in schools in recent decades, significantly boosting the years of education received by young people and steering them toward other occupa- tions, he said. “Nothing pulls kids out of farm work like a little bit of schooling,” Taylor said. Rising incomes are strong- ly correlated with a declining share of the workforce in- volved in agriculture, boding for continued labor shortages in agriculture, he said. The problem isn’t limited to U.S. farms: Mexico is al- ready importing workers from Guatemala, Taylor said. While immigration policy changes could help U.S. farm- ers compete, they wouldn’t be enough to overcome the oth- er factors that lead to labor shortages, he said. “Not much here can really change.” Agriculture will have to adapt by increasing mecha- nization and managing labor more efficiently, he said. In the mean time, North- west farmers can still recruit workers by offering a better “package” of working con- ditions than those in other regions, said Dan Fazio, exec- utive director of the Washing- ton Farm Labor Association. Fazio likened farmers fac- ing the labor shortage to hik- ers encountering a bear. “The good news is you don’t have to run faster than the bear,” he said. “You just have to run faster than the other hikers.” With the consistent dearth of farm labor, more farmers will likely consider the fed- eral H-2A guest worker pro- gram as a viable option, Fazio said. More than 100 farms use the H-2A program in Wash- ington, compared to fewer than 20 in Oregon, he said. The discrepancy is due to the longer history of insuf- ficient labor in Washington, which requires further trav- el for migrant workers who spend much of their time in California, Fazio said. U.S. firm buys Canadian GM apple company Apple company builds By DAN WHEAT Capital Press SUMMERLAND, B.C. — A Canadian company that recently won permission from the USDA to propagate and sell the first genetically-modi- fied apple in the United States is being acquired by a U.S. company. Intrexon Corporation of Germantown, Md., a synthet- ic biology leader, is buying Okanagan Specialty Fruits of Summerland for $10 mil- lion in cash, plus $31 million in Intrexon common stock, according to a news release from both companies. Com- pletion of the deal is expect- ed in the first half of this year. Okanagan Specialty Fruits received USDA ap- proval of its Arctic-brand Golden Delicious and Gran- ny Smith apples in early February. The apples have been engineered to silence a gene causing browning when sliced. Neal Carter, president of OSF, will remain with the company, according to the Dan Wheat/Capital Press Neal Carter, president of Okanagan Specialty Fruits in Summer- land, B.C., displays genetically modified Arctic Golden Delicious and Granny Smith apples Dec. 2, 2013, at the Washington State Horticultural Association meeting in Wenatchee, Wash. A U.S. company based in Maryland has announced a deal to purchase the Canadian firm. news release. Carter founded OSF in 1996 and has been devel- oping the apples for years. He believes non-browning and GM apples with oth- er attributes could increase apple consumption and re- turns to growers. He says biotechnology is needed to help agriculture meet an ever-expanding global food demand. SAGE Fact #111 As an employee of the State Highway Depart- ment Sam Boardman brought the concept of highway rest stops to Oregon. One of the first rest stops still stands in Boardman. While supportive of the science, the Washington ap- ple industry opposed dereg- ulation of the GM apples because it believes nega- tive public perception could damage apple sales. Carter has said about 20,000 Arctic apple trees will be planted this spring. That’s only enough for about 15 acres at current, high-density planting stan- dards. More trees will be budded this year for release in 2016 and 2017. Limited commercial fruit is not like- ly until a couple more years after that. An Intrexon spokeswom- an had no comment beyond what was in a news release. In response to emailed ques- tions, Carter said the ac- quisition does not alter the timeline of Arctic apple de- velopment. Combining technical knowledge with Intrexon is important in delivering nov- el traits to tree fruit, Carter said, noting he has more in the works. “Intrexon brings signifi- cant resources and a shared commitment to enabling the development and commer- cialization of foods with enhanced traits to benefit consumers and producers,” he said. Intrexon uses genetic en- gineering to improve yield, quality, nutrition and disease and pest resistance, accord- ing to its website. It works in health, food, energy, envi- ronment and consumer sec- tors. Intrexon is designing a strategy to combat the soy cyst nematode, a pest which impacts soybean crops lead- ing to significant harvest losses in soybean crops. The Arctic apple is a cost-savings means for the fresh sliced apple business to provide product without fla- vor-altering, anti-browning additives, the news release states. The apple solves both cost-per-serving and quali- ty concerns associated with pre-cut apples, the release states. new facilities for future By DAN WHEAT Capital Press YAKIMA, Wash. — When Washington Fruit & Produce Co. turns 100 years old next year it likely will stand alone as the tree fruit company with the newest packing and cor- porate office facilities of any in the Northwest. In September, the com- pany began building a huge, new apple packing plant on the north edge of Yakima, off River Road between the apple packing plant it built in 2010 and the cherry packing plant it built in 2014. A new corporate office building is going up on the same 40-acre site. The company won’t dis- close its total investment, but in 2010 President Rick Plath said the new apple plant built that year cost $30 million. He said this week the newest plant will cost more than that. When all is done, the three plants, adjoining fruit storage and corporate office will to- tal 840,000 square feet, said Tommy Hanses, operations manager. The company needs the new apple plant to keep up with its growth in orchards, Plath said. A year ago, his nephew, Dan Plath, orchard manager, said the company had been adding 500 acres of orchard per year for eight to nine years with no plans to stop. He would not disclose to- tal acreage. The company still has no plans to slow down orchard expansion but maybe should with lower apple prices this year, Rick Plath said. The company will pack 9 million boxes of apples this year compared to 7 million in 2010, he said. Mountain States Construc- tion Co., Sunnyside, is the gen- eral contractor for the new ap- ple plant. The building should be done by July and then Van Doren Sales of Wenatchee will install a new packing line with the latest high-tech Compac sizer and sorter from New Zea- land. The goal is to have the plant operational in December, Hanses said. The new apple line will be able to run at 100 bins of ap- ples per hour and pack 35,000 boxes per day, the same as the 2010 plant. “That should do us a long time, but that’s what we thought in 2010,” Rick Plath said. The greatest benefit, he said, is in improved quality of packed fruit due to the high- tech sorter. Improved quality is the big benefit, but there’s no way to quantify it, Hanses said. Some fruit crop damaged by November cold snap By SEAN ELLIS Capital Press PARMA, Idaho — Re- searchers are seeing signs that a four-day stretch of record low temperatures in November caused damage to the state’s fruit crop. Researchers at the Universi- ty of Idaho’s Parma experiment station have seen extensive damage in some buds forced to break early in the laboratory. “There is a definite injury to the bud structure itself,” said Mike Kiester, a research assis- tant with the station’s pomology program. “You’re going to see 10-4/#6 some damage this year.” “Normally, you’re going to have a nice, beautiful green bud structure all the way through when you dice it,” Kiester said. “This year, there’s just a brown tint in there that’s off.” Some fruit likely sustained severe damage, though the dam- age varies by location and fruit type, said Parma researcher Es- sie Fallahi, who heads the uni- versity’s pomology program. “What the percentage of the damage is is really hard to say at this point,” Fallahi said. “We are definitely going to have a crop but how much of a crop, we don’t know yet.” He said the extent of the damage won’t be known until May or June. Apples look OK, but peach- es and cherries are a different story, Kiester said. “We’re not worried as much about them,” he said of apples, “but peaches and cherries definitely have some problems.” Some table and wine grapes in the Parma station’s fruit orchard also sustained sig- nificant damage, said research assistant Tom Elias, president of the Snake River Table Grape Association. Chad Henggeler, field man- ager for Henggeler Packing Co. in Fruitland, said the company is highly concerned about its cherries but its apples, peaches and plums look OK. Henggeler is also concerned about the impact the Novem- ber cold had on the company’s 30,000 1-year-old apple root- stock. “Some varieties look better than others but we may have to prune them back significantly and regrow last year’s growth,” he said Several daily low tem- perature records were set in mid-November across the Trea- sure Valley in Southwestern Idaho, where the majority of the state’s fruit crop is grown. The mercury dropped to minus 5 at Parma and the low hovered near zero for four days. The problem for fruit in the region was caused by the sud- denness of the temperature drop, before fruit trees had a chance to build cold hardiness and go into dormancy, Fallahi said. The temperatures were “way too cold because the trees were not acclimated; they were not in dormancy,” he said. Most fruit trees require a cer- tain number of hours between 32 and 45 degrees to go into proper dormancy, Fallahi said, but the region didn’t come close to meeting those needs last No- vember. “We were working out in shirt sleeves and then ... whoosh, the temperature just went down,” Elias said. LEGAL 10-2/#7 10-2/#4X PURSUANT TO ORS CHAPTER 87 Notice is hereby given that the following vehicle will be sold, for cash to the highest bidder, on 3/11/2015. The sale will be held at 10:00 am by SAVEON TRANSPORT 4410 SWEET LANE, SALEM, OR 2009 Acura TL VIN = 19UUA86529A018489 Amount due on lien $3,200.00 Reputed owner(s) Shukri Diriye Shukri Diriye Capitol One Auto Finance Legal-9-2-4/#4