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CapitalPress.com
March 27, 2015
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approved by members of the
Capital Press Editorial Board.
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the opinions of the authors but
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Opinion
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Publisher
Editor
Managing Editor
Mike O’Brien
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
O ur V iew
Attack ads reflect poorly on perpetrators
W
e live in a era of attack ads.
They have for years been
the weapon of choice in
politics, and for the past couple of
years that tactic has worked its way
into the discussion about, of all things,
food.
The first iteration of the tactic
came in the guise of the precautionary
principle, a seemingly innocuous
statement that says, If we can’t prove
it’s safe then we should avoid it. As a
personal philosophy, that’s fine. If a
person has doubts about the safety of
something — say, driving in Seattle
traffic — then please don’t. But as
public policy, that principle doesn’t
hold up. If everyone were forced
to stop driving in Seattle because
of the fears of a few, then public
transportation would be flooded,
people couldn’t get to work, and
the economy would be damaged.
All because a few people don’t feel
comfortable driving.
When that principle was applied
to food, activists and others played
on the fears of the public, offering
flimsy arguments such as “Well, we
just aren’t sure about that....” Well-
meaning members of the public
picked up on that and decided,
without any scientific proof, which
foods were OK and which weren’t.
The campaign to label genetically
modified ingredients in foods has
taken that implied shrug and turned
it into a jihad against GMOs and
Monsanto. The attacks are targeted
specifically at one or two types of
GMO crops, which have been around
for more than a decade with zero
impact on public health. Worse yet,
all other GMOs have been caught in
the crossfire. In fact, ask some GMO
labeling activists about other GMOs, as
we did during a public forum last fall
in Portland, and they don’t know much
about them and don’t seem to care.
In the meantime, anti-GMO rallies
target Monsanto almost exclusively,
using unfounded fears to promote an
emotional argument.
In the last couple of years,
attack ads have mutated to smear
not just GMOs but anyone who
doesn’t produce food the way that
the sponsors prescribe. Chipotle, a
fast-food chain, was one of the first to
produce advertisements that attacked
conventional farming, implying that
all farms are evil factories — unless,
of course, that burrito comes from
Chipotle.
Chipotle is more than welcome
to promote itself and what it does
or doesn’t allow in the food it sells.
However, it’s not welcome to paint all
farmers with the broadest of brushes
in what can be most charitably be
described as cheap shots.
It’s one thing for a fast-food
company to attack farmers, but it’s
quite another for farmers to attack
other farmers.
That’s the most recent
development in the food wars. An
organization called Organic Only,
whose members are among the largest
organic growers and processors in the
world, has produced an online video
called “New MacDonald” in which
kids in a school production portray
non-organic farmers as haz-mat-suited
maniacs spraying pesticides on their
crops, shooting their livestock full of
hormones and other mean and nasty
things.
By the end of the commercial,
every non-organic farmer has been
smeared.
Organic Only or any other group
of corporations and cooperatives
are certainly welcome to promote
themselves, but attacking other
farmers with misleading and
inaccurate advertising is totally out of
bounds.
It reminds us of the old political
advertising credo: If you don’t have
anything good to say about yourself,
attack the other guy.
We support all forms of agriculture
— organic, conventional, large,
small. If it involves growing food and
fiber, we support it. Growing food
to nourish a planet that supports 7
billion people — and counting — is
serious business. Humanity depends
on agriculture.
But it’s demeaning and childish
for one group of farmers to needlessly
attack another group. We presume that
Organic Only’s members are better
than that.
Why support Klamath
deals? Our world needs food
By PATRICK O’TOOLE
and DAN KEPPEN
Rik Dalvit/For the Capital Press
O ur V iew
More water storage needed across West
F
or the most part, hydrologists are
painting a pretty grim picture of
this season’s water situation in
California and the Pacific Northwest.
California faces its fourth year of
drought. Many farmers there face cutoffs
amounting to 80 percent or more of their
water.
In the Cascades, all but the highest
peaks are devoid of snow. Farmers in the
Owyhee Basin can expect no more than a
third of their normal allocation. A drought
emergency has already been declared in
Oregon’s Malheur and Lake counties,
with others expected.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has
declared drought emergencies on the
Olympic Peninsula; the eastside of the
central Cascade mountains, including
Yakima and Wenatchee; and the Walla
Walla region.
Whether a harbinger of summers
to come, or not, the current situation
underscores the need to build more water
storage and to evaluate how existing water
resources are allocated.
It’s been a fairly wet winter throughout
the West. But warm temperatures
prevented a lot of that moisture from
falling as snow in the high country. In
many cases, what fell as snow was later
washed away by warmer rain.
Without storage, that water is lost to
irrigators who depend on the snowpack.
Californians last year approved a
$7.5 billion bond measure that could
fund the construction of more storage in
coming years. We expect any project to
be opposed by environmentalists.
In Oregon, a group of stakeholders is
trying to work out the rules for a plan to
build more storage. Farm interests say
the proposal’s environmental concessions
make it nearly impossible for storage to
pencil out.
A more promising plan, endorsed
again last week by Gov. Kate Brown,
would allow farmers in Umatilla and
Morrow counties access to more water
from the Columbia River.
In Washington, a deal has yet to be
reached to recharge the aquifer on the
state’s eastern edge.
These efforts, and more, are needed
to maintain the viability of Western
agriculture.
Water is a precious resource much in
demand.
We must find ways to get the
most out of every drop through better
conservation and more efficient cropping
methods. But conservation is only part
of the solution. We must be able to store
more of what falls for when it’s most
needed.
To that end, these projects are vital
for farmers who need the water for their
crops. And beyond the commercial
interests of the multi-billion-dollar
Western ag industry, they are vital to the
millions who turn to that industry for
their daily bread.
Readers’ views
Celebrate with
American
Humane
Certification
Americans quietly cele-
brate the nation’s hardworking
farmers and ranchers during
every meal. And National
Agriculture Day on March 18
was a good opportunity to re-
flect and give thanks to those
who raise our food and do it
right. Today U.S. farmers pro-
vide us with perhaps the most
abundant, safe and affordable
food supply in the world —
raising 262 percent more food
than in 1950, while using less
fertilizer, seed and labor. Con-
sumers are grateful for this,
but they also increasingly say
they care that animals used in
agriculture are well-treated —
95 percent, according to a re-
cent poll we conducted.
Farmers have always been
the front-line stewards of ani-
mal welfare but to demonstrate
humane treatment to consum-
ers, many of whom have no
experience on farms, more and
more farmers are turning to
independent, third-party certi-
fication programs such as the
American Humane Certified
program, which now ensures
the welfare of more than 1 bil-
lion U.S. farm animals under
more than 200 scientifically
based standards covering ev-
erything from adequate space
to food and water, lighting,
warmth, clean air and the abil-
ity for animals to be animals.
This National Agriculture
Day, let’s celebrate by look-
ing for humane labeling and
supporting American farmers
who not only put food on our
tables, but do it in a humane
way.
Robin Ganzert, Ph.D.
President and CEO
American Humane
Association
Washington, D.C.
Label college
professors, too
We’re given by the an-
ti-GMO voo-doo crowd to
believe that GMO foods
must “labeled,” that con-
sumers may better make in-
formed choices as to what
they are buying. After all,
informed choice is critically
important, and such labeling
is “harmless.”
So, if we are to abandon
objective evidence as a cri-
teria for implying unproved
harm with scarlet letter “la-
beling,” then no doubt these
same folk would have no ob-
jection to mandatory federal
labels on the demonstrated
political proclivities of each
college professor, so students
(and parents thereof) may
better make informed choic-
es as to what they are buying.
Seems reasonable, given the
immense perceived “poten-
tial” for harm to consumers,
not to mention the horridly
expensive costs, right?
If there is no harm-by-im-
plication in such voo-doo
labeling, what’s not to like
in extending this brilliance
to the selection of those who
are entrusted with objective-
ly teaching our kids? After
all, such labeling is critical-
ly important to an informed
choice, and such labeling is
... harmless.
William Slusher
Riverside, Wash.
For the Capital Press
Guest
comment
L
Dan Keppen
ast month, the Family
Farm Alliance board
of directors, by unan-
imous vote, formally sup-
ported the concept captured
in recent Senate legislation
to advance the settlement
agreements developed for the
Klamath River watershed.
The Alliance is a grass-
roots, nonprofit organization
that represents family farm-
ers, ranchers, agricultural
water purveyors and allied
industries in the 17 Western
states. We have long advo-
cated that the best solutions
to the challenges faced by
Western irrigators come from
the ground-up, driven by lo-
cal interests.
The three Klamath Agree-
ments — the Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement, the
Klamath Hydro-Electric Set-
tlement Agreement and the
Upper Klamath Basin Com-
prehensive Agreement — re-
flect an intensive, collabora-
tive effort that has consumed
much of the last decade.
Without these agree-
ments successfully making
it through Congress, local
irrigators face no protection
from enforcement of signifi-
cant tribal water rights, no vi-
able plan for dealing with the
Endangered Species Act is-
sues, and no identifiable path
for working toward target
power rates that are similar
to other Western agricultural
regions.
Our organization views
the Klamath settlement
agreements in a fairly
straightforward way: This
approach provides the best
means of keeping basin fami-
ly farmers and ranchers in the
business of producing food
and fiber for our country and
the world.
The settlement agree-
ments are a unique solution
that advances this critical
need.
What happens or does not
happen for Klamath Basin
irrigators could set a prece-
dent, not only for all Western
family farms and ranches,
but other areas of the country
where agricultural produc-
tion is beset with environ-
mental challenges.
Understandably, the idea
of removing dams is a stick-
ing point for some in the ag-
ricultural community, and the
Alliance does not universally
endorse the removal of dams.
In fact, the Alliance is a lead-
ing proponent of creating
more surface water storage
in the West. Alliance repre-
sentatives have been invited
to testify before congressio-
nal committees several times
to offer up ideas intended to
streamline existing daunting
and expensive permitting
processes. In 2014, the Alli-
ance released a white paper
on the need for new, appro-
priate storage projects, which
was intended to support relat-
ed legislative efforts pushed
in Congress.
Guest
comment
Patrick O’Toole
Thus, the potential im-
pacts and precedents of re-
moving any dam are con-
cerns to us as advocates for
irrigated agriculture.
The Alliance endorses ad-
vancing the Klamath Agree-
ments in Congress because,
overall, they are good for
irrigated agriculture in the
Klamath Basin. We see the
agreements as unique to the
Klamath Basin and its issues
and their dam-removal com-
ponents have no bearing on
other agricultural regions’
decision-making. Moreover,
no irrigation dams or flood
control dams are removed
as part of these settlements.
In this instance, agricultur-
al producers stand to gain
increased water supply re-
liability in exchange for the
expected fish passage bene-
fits associated with removal
of these dams, a measure
supported by the dams’ own-
ers, PacifiCorp.
Our job is to advocate for
approaches that keep farmers
and ranchers in business so
they can continue to feed and
clothe the world. Reliable
water is an essential compo-
nent to this approach in the
West.
To date, the local irriga-
tors who have actually ex-
perienced a threat to their
livelihood and way of life
with water shut-offs, paying
for litigation and Endangered
Species Act pressures want
these agreements in place.
We support their belief that
they provide the most cost-ef-
fective, timely and politically
viable solution.
We are proud to join other
organizations like the Klam-
ath County and Oregon Cat-
tlemen’s Associations and
Farm Bureaus, three Native
American tribes, dozens of
conservation and recreational
groups, the Oregon Water Re-
sources Congress, the Klam-
ath County Chamber of Com-
merce and the City of Klamath
Falls, who took similar care in
making their informed deci-
sions that support legislation
to advance the Klamath Set-
tlement Agreements.
Pat O’Toole, a Wyoming
cattle and sheep rancher,
is president of the Fam-
ily Farm Alliance. He is
a former member of the
Wyoming state legislature
and 2014 recipient of the
prestigious Leopold Conser-
vation Award. Dan Keppen,
of Klamath Falls, Ore., has
over 25 years of experience
in Western water resourc-
es engineering and policy.
He has served as executive
director of the Family Farm
Alliance for 10 years.