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June 19, 2015 CapitalPress.com 17 French spud growers tour Idaho farms By JOHN O’CONNELL Capital Press ABERDEEN, Idaho — French potato growers said during a tour June 10 of Idaho’s spud industry they consider themselves well positioned to better compete with the U.S. for export market share in South America. The 11 French growers with UNPT, a union representing 80 percent of that country’s 10,000 commercial spud farmers, made several stops, including Eastern Idaho commercial and seed potato farms, the Univer- sity of Idaho’s Aberdeen Re- search & Extension Center and Spudnik Equipment in Black- foot. UNPT President Arnaud Delacour said his growers were intrigued by comments during a recent U.S. potato summit about growing competition John O’Connell/Capital Press Arnaud Delacour, president of a union of French potato growers, wearing the tan suit coat, and other French growers tour the a greenhouse where new potato varieties are developed at the Uni- versity of Idaho’s Aberdeen Research & Extension Center. with European potato produc- ers. Indeed, U.S. Potato Board Chief Marketing Officer John Toaspern predicted in a recent economic forecast that global demand for spud products will Leaf rust found in Willamette Valley Fungicide not likely economical, OSU cereals specialist says continue growing 10 percent per year, but competition will also increase from Europe and China. Delacour said technology and input costs appear to be similar in both France and Ida- ho. He believes the French have a freight advantage in South America, where their ships are already importing a large vol- ume of beef. Furthermore, he said, France has stepped up its frozen production this season based on depressed fresh-mar- ket prices. “We had noticed a new ex- port market in South America, and we have understood that now we are good competition to you,” Delacour said. “If we share the world between the States and Europe, I would say the states are very well placed to supply the Asian market, and in Europe, we are very well placed to supply the South American market.” Panama and Colombia have been among the brightest spots in South America for U.S. spud growers, who have been gaining market share since a 2012 trade agreements began phasing out steep tariffs on potato exports. Farm size was a key differ- ence Delacour noticed during his visit. His own farm in Northern France is typical of a French potato farm, encompassing 600 acres, with about 120 acres per year planted in spuds. By con- trast, he saw U.S. farms covering thousands of acres, with “a few growers managing the market.” As in the U.S., French fresh potato consumption has been flat or declining, and fry consumption is on the rise — though his country doesn’t use the term “french fries.” “All of our fries are pro- cessed in Belgium. We’d bet- ter call that Belgian fries,” Delacour joked. “I’m quite pleased of that (name) any- way. It’s a good product.” The French growers met a White Lily takes PNW wheat national in premium flour line Partnership broadens Shepherd’s Grain’s audience Online By MATTHEW WEAVER Products/Category.aspx?cate- goryId=501 Capital Press By MATTHEW WEAVER familiar face during the tour when they visited Idaho Po- tato Commissioner Ritchie Toevs’ farm in Aberdeen. Toevs was in France meeting with officials and industry officials in late April seeking advice on branding the Idaho name abroad — a concept readily embraced by the mak- ers of products such as Cham- pagne and Roquefort cheese. “We’re just talking to see if Idaho potatoes would be a good geographical indicator, and to see how their system (of protecting geographical brands) works,” Toevs said. IPC President and CEO Frank Muir said there’s been a recent uptick in foreign spud growers visiting Idaho, includ- ing Japanese potato growers who visited in late May and German growers who visited a few months ago.” http: //www.whitelily.com/ Capital Press Willamette Valley farm- ers are advised to check their wheat fields for a fungus that hasn’t typically been seen in the area for more than a de- cade. Oregon State University Extension cereals specialist Mike Flowers recently no- tified growers that leaf rust has been found in several research plots and grow- er fields in the northern and southern regions of the Wil- lamette Valley. Leaf rust is generally a warmer-season rust pathogen that typically arrives later in the season. “We’re seeing it about a month earlier than we would normally see it,” Flowers said. Leaf rust has largely been absent for the last 10 to 15 years, but the relatively un- usually warm and moist weather has allowed it to in- fect earlier, Flowers said. Leaf rust has dark orange pustules that appear in a ran- dom pattern across the leaf, unlike the stripes and bright orange pustules of stripe rust, a more common wheat dis- ease, according to Flowers. Leaf rust has been found on the varieties Bobtail and Cara, which are typically less susceptible to stripe rust. When temperatures get hot, stripe rust usually shuts down, Flowers said. Leaf rust doesn’t fare well in cold tem- peratures, but does well in warmer temperatures. “If it gets into irrigated spring wheat fields, it will act a lot like stripe rust,” Flowers said. “It proba- bly won’t be slowed down by warmer temperatures, whereas stripe rust might.” Similar to stripe rust, a heavy infection of leaf rust reduces yield, he said. “We don’t have a very Courtesy Robert Zemetra/Oregon State University Leaf rust appears on a leaf from the wheat variety Cara at Hyslop Research Farm north of Corvallis. Oregon State Univer- sity Extension cereals specialist Mike Flowers is advising the industry to be aware of the fungus, which has been largely absent from the Willamette Val- ley area for the last 15 years. good idea of the suscepti- bility of our varieties to leaf rust, because we generally don’t see it to a point where we can actually take notes on it,” Flowers said. “Gen- erally, when it comes in, it comes in late enough that it doesn’t really cause any economic harm. So it’s not really been worth the time and effort to screen varieties for it.” Most wheat in the Wil- lamette Valley is past flow- ering, so fungicides aren’t likely to be economical. Flowers recommends an ap- plication if fields are heavily infected or have not flow- ered yet. “I don’t think it’s worth controlling, it’s not a heavy enough infection to try con- trolling,” he said. Flowers wants to be sure the industry is aware of the situation and can identify it if it comes up. “I don’t think it’s a big concern,” Flowers said. “There is this pathogen out there they may or may not run across ... this is not something a lot of the younger field men have prob- ably seen.” REARDAN, Wash. — A flour company primarily based in the South is launch- ing a line of premium flours using wheat produced in the Pacific Northwest. White Lily, owned by the J.M. Smucker Company, de- buted its line of flours at an event for food bloggers and travel media at the home of Reardan, Wash., farmer Fred Fleming, co-founder of Shep- herd’s Grain. “We love the passion they have for the land, for the farming, and thought it was a good quality product to put into our premium flours,” said White Lily spokesperson An- drea Lindsley. “They were a perfect fit.” Lindsley said the compa- ny is meeting with retailers through August to gauge in- terest. The goal is to be na- tionwide, she said. Target has committed at least 475 stores. The flours use wheat from Shepherd’s Grain and red or white wine grape seeds from WholeVine Vineyards in Northern California. Shepherd’s Grain, LLC, founded in 2002 by Fleming and farmer Karl Kupers, is a general partnership of rough- ly 34 wheat farmer families from Washington, Idaho Matthew Weaver/Capital Press White Lily spokesperson Andrea Lindsley debuts the company’s new premium flours to food bloggers and travel media June 9 in the outdoor kitchen on Shepherd’s Grain co-founder Fred Fleming’s farm in Reardan, Wash. The new flours will use wheat provided by Shepherd’s Grain, giving it a national audience, said Shepherd’s Grain general manager Mike Moran. and Oregon focusing on di- rect seeding, no-till farming. Twenty-one of the 34 growers will be producing the hard red winter wheat White Lily will use, said Mike Moran, gen- eral manager for Shepherd’s Grain. The flour is being milled in Spokane. Shepherd’s Grain expects to increase the bushels it grows by 10 to 12 percent as a result of the partnership, Mo- ran said. This year, the com- pany is contracting 814,000 bushels, Moran said. A 10 to 12 percent increase would boost that total by 81,400 bushels or 98,000 bushels. Fleming said Smucker and White Lily are working to develop natural, sustainable and local products. They were drawn by Shepherd’s Grain’s certification as a non-GMO wheat flour. Shepherd’s Grain is one, and maybe the only, brand of flour certified as non-GMO in the marketplace, Fleming said, even though there is no GMO wheat cur- rently in the commercial mar- ketplace. “It’s all about traceabili- ty, knowing where your food comes from and having a face behind the food,” Fleming said. “We’re marketing now to the nation as a traceable, local company. It gives us a national presence.” The flour bags include a code. By entering the code on White Lily’s website, custom- ers will be able to see one of the farmers who contributed the wheat in that particular bag of flour. Shepherd’s Grain hopes to reconnect customers with the farmers who provide their food, Moran said. “Partnering with White Lily is allowing us to reach a much broader audience than we reach right now,” he said. “They’re taking us nationally, and also down to a consum- er level, where primarily our interaction right now is busi- ness-to-business.” Washington snowpack officially gone By DAN WHEAT Capital Press Washington’s mountain snowpack officially hit zero June 9 which also was one of the hottest days of the year so far with temperatures around 100 degrees. “We had one site left in the North Cascades with snow but it hit 70 degrees there that day so we knew it wouldn’t last,” said Scott Pattee, water supply specialist of the Wash- ington Snow Survey Office of the USDA Natural Resourc- es Conservation Service in Mount Vernon. Normally, zero snowpack is reached about July 1 but little winter snow and a warm spring sped up snow melt, Pattee said. Snow remains at very high elevations and in glaciers which isn’t calculated, Dan Partridge, state Department of Ecology Water Resource Pro- gram spokesman, wrote in a department blog. Zero snowpack now com- pares with 105 percent of normal on the Olympic Pen- insula and 113 percent of normal in the Lower Yakima Basin a year ago, Partridge wrote. About 84 percent of Washington’s rivers are flow- ing below normal levels, 66 percent are flowing at levels typical less than once a de- cade and 27 percent are at record lows, he wrote. Drawdown of Yakima Basin reservoirs started ear- lier than normal. Keechelus Lake, along Interstate 90 east of Snoqualmie Pass, was at 96,730 acre feet on June 15 which is 61 percent of capac- ity. Kachess Lake was at 86 percent and Cle Elum Lake at 85 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Growers respond to hot psyllid with spray programs By JOHN O’CONNELL Capital Press BOISE — Spud growers throughout Idaho are prepar- ing to implement costly in- secticidal programs follow- ing the recent confirmation of a potato psyllid trapped in a commercial field harbor- ing the bacterium that causes zebra chip disease. Zebra chip, caused by the Liberibacter bacterium and spread by the tiny, winged insects, reduces yields and creates bands in tuber flesh that darken when fried. University of Idaho Ex- tension entomologist Erik Wenninger said the infect- ed psyllid was trapped in an Ada County commercial field, on a sticky card col- lected during the last week of May. It marked the ear- liest confirmation of an in- fected psyllid in a commer- Submitted by Oregon State University Potato psyllids, like the insect pictured above, can spread the Liberibacter bacterium that causes zebra chip disease in potatoes. An infected psyllid has been discovered in an Ada County, Idaho, commercial field. cial field, compared with July 6 last season and mid- June in 2012. Psyllids found in Canyon, Gooding and Owyhee coun- ties have tested negative. Idaho’s psyllid monitoring program detected its first psyllids this season on traps collected May 17. Also in May, three infected psyllids were found on Twin Falls County bittersweet night- shade plants, marking the first time that infected psyl- lids were ever found on the host plant, Wenninger said. The disease first arrived in the Pacific Northwest in 2011, and a larger outbreak followed in 2012, when growers invested heavily in insecticides. Since then, ze- bra chip pressure has been light, and most growers have relaxed their spraying. “We’ve been on a down- ward (zebra chip) trend for the last three years, and it looks like we’re on an up- ward trend this year,” Wen- ninger said. This season’s field scout- ing program includes 13 in- tensive monitoring sites and 75 light monitoring sites. Wenninger is also conduct- ing 21 different insecticidal treatment scenarios at the UI Kimberly Research & Extension Center, using mesh sleeves to trap infect- ed psyllids on potato foli- age. Insecticide trials have been inconclusive thus far, either due to inadequate natural disease pressure or excessive pressure from artificial inoculations. Jeff Miller, with Rupert-based Miller Research, has been invited to address growers about insecticidal programs for zebra chip during the June 22 Southern Idaho Potato Co- operative meeting at the Bur- ley Inn. Miller said growers in the Magic Valley and Eastern Ida- ho may opt to wait until hot psyllids enter fields in their areas, though spraying is ad- visable in Western Idaho. He said Abamectin, for example, is cheap and effec- tive but shouldn’t be used more than twice in a sea- son. Movento is effective but costly, and Midwestern growers warn Pyrethroid in- secticides entice greater psyl- lid egg laying. In Wilder, grower Doug Gross is starting a spraying program he estimates will cost $200 per acre, rough- ly $150 per acre more than he spent on insecticides last year. “We think this is a game changer,” Gross said. “It takes a big chunk out of (our profits) and we’ve already been squeezed down to little or no margin with a pretty high-risk deal.” Declo grower Mark Dar- rington expects to spend $170 per acre on his spraying program. “I don’t believe it’s a se- cret that there’s a great spud crop coming, and of course people don’t want to put themselves in jeopardy by having a substandard crop,” Darrington said. In Eastern Idaho, where zebra chip has posed lit- tle problem to date, grower Ritchey Toevs still plans to implement a $70 per acre spray program.