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10 CapitalPress.com July 31, 2015 Co-op’s huge riverside terminal handles wheat harvest By GEORGE PLAVEN EO Media Group UMATILLA, Ore. — A loaded semi-trailer pulls up to the Pendleton Grain Growers McNary Elevator on the banks of the Nolumbia River, hauling nearly 35 tons of freshly har- vested wheat. The cargo is dumped over a grated pit that drops down into the bowels of the concrete facil- ity. From there, conveyor belts lift the crop 200 feet into large storage silos, ready and avail- able to exporters. With Eastern Oregon’s wheat harvest in full swing, PGG is storing grain at a fast clip to sell overseas. The McNary terminal, located just above McNary Dam in the Port of Umatilla, allows the co-op to blend different va- rieties of wheat into one pack- age for customers, and load the product onto barges. The vast majority of soft white wheat grown in the Pa- cific Northwest is exported to countries in Asia, including Ja- pan and South Korea. Soft white wheat is low in protein, making it ideal for products such as noo- dles and cakes. Umatilla Nounty grows by far the most wheat in Oregon, anywhere from 14 million-22 million bushels per year. PGG usually handles 12 million-13 million bushels through its 1,850 members in Eastern Ore- gon and Washington. Of that total, about 90 per- cent of members’ wheat is shipped out of McNary, said Ja- son Middleton, PGG’s director of grain operations. Built in the 1960s, the terminal is capable of storing 6.6 million bushels at any given time. “It definitely gives us capaci- ty at the river, which is where we want a majority of our wheat to land,” Middleton said. After harvest, Middleton said it is up to the farmer if they want to sell their wheat to the co-op right away, or wait until later in one of PGG’s 14 elevators. The pace of ex- porting is driven by a number of variables in marketing and price, Middleton said. Right now, members are facing a double-whammy of difficulty. Four straight years of hot, dry weather are ex- pected to cut into most yields, while the price of wheat is down 23 percent — at $5.82 per bushel — compared to a year ago. Activity hummed at McNary Thursday afternoon as truck after truck arrived for delivery. The elevator can easily handle up to 300 trucks per day, Mid- dleton said, each carrying ap- proximately 1,150 bushels. Tiny kernels whoosh and rat- tle their way down the pit and up the conveyor system, while su- perintendent Adam Bergstrom mans the controls. He is respon- sible for knowing what type of grain comes in on every truck, and which container it needs to go to avoid accidental mixing. Middleton works with ex- porters to sell a certain pack- age of wheat to Asian millers. Once the deal is signed, it’s up to Bergstrom to make sure that specific product makes it onto the barge. E.J. Harris/EO Media Group The Pendleton Grain Growers McNary Terminal can store 6.6 million bushels of wheat and handles 90 percent of the wheat in Umatilla County, Ore. “What he decides to put on paper, I have to put on an actual barge,” Bergstrom said. Bergstrom is also in charge of worker safety, no small task at such a large elevator. Dust from the grain can potentially be explosive given an ignition source, and working in tight spaces increases the risk of falls. McNary does have a dust mitigation system, Middleton said, to reduce the danger of an explosion. “Once that stuff gets air- borne, it’s like a bomb,” he said. The grain industry has come a long way from its history of wooden elevators, Middleton said, to metal and concrete structures used today. The McNary terminal gives PGG members added strength and durability for storage. “This is like something you’d see down on the Willa- mette that an exporter would operate,” Middleton said. Rick Jacobson, PGG’s gen- eral manager, said McNary Elevator was built with money borrowed from the Farm Nred- it System and is the co-op’s “crown jewel.” “It’s a great story, when you think about what a co-op sys- tem can do,” Jacobson said. E.J. Harris/EO Media Group Gary Brown opens the gate on a grain hopper while working at the Pendleton Grain Growers McNary Terminal on Thursday at the Port of Umatilla. E. Oregon camelina trials look more promising during persistent drought By SEAN ELLIS Capital Press ONTARIO, Ore. — After four straight years of drought conditions in Eastern Oregon, there’s growing interest in camelina, which can be grown without irrigation water. Because water has been scarce, about 20 percent of the farmland in Malheur Nounty has been left fallow the past two years. Namelina won’t make farm- ers much money, but the oilseed crop could help growers cov- er some of the fixed costs they have on their land, said Nlint Shock, director of Oregon State University’s Malheur Nounty experiment station. Growing camelina on farm- land that otherwise would be left fallow would also help keep the ground from eroding, Shock said. “We need to be thinking about what we’re going to do without water,” he said. “This is not a big money maker but it is a way of taking care of your farm ground. Also, consider that the return on the land will be nega- tive without a crop.” If the drought continues, 0% INTEREST FOR 36 MONTHS or 1.9% INTEREST FOR 60 MONTHS! 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See dealer for details and qualifying units. 31-2/#5 more farmers are going to be taking a serious look at cameli- na, said Owyhee Irrigation Dis- trict Manager Jay Nhamberlin. “If this is a trend we’re stuck with for awhile, camelina could be something that brings in some income and protects your soils,” he said. “The whole mind-set of growers needs to change; the traditional things aren’t going to continue to work.” A camelina field trial at the OSU experiment station yielded 1,500 pounds of seed per acre, Shock said. No irrigation water was applied to the field and the crop received 4.17 inches of precipitation between the time it was planted in late January and harvested in late June. With camelina seed current- ly selling for 20 cents a pound, the field would have brought a grower about $300 of income per acre, Shock said. By comparison, onions, the region’s main cash crop, are worth more than $4,800 an acre. The crop wouldn’t fetch nearly as much as onions would, “but if the drought continues, perhaps it may help you to hold the farm together,” said Oregon Courtesy of Clint Shock Monty Saunders, farm foreman of Oregon State University’s Malheur County experiment station, stands in a camelina field near Ontario. The field trial produced 1,500 pounds of seed this year, which would have fetched a grower about $300 per acre of income. farmer Bruce Norn. If camelina is grown on a large scale in this area, farmers would have a buyer in Wil- lamette Biomass Processors, which is near Salem. The company, which crushes camelina into oil and sells the high-protein meal as feed to the beef and poultry industries, cur- rently gets most of its product from Montana and Nanada. “We’d absolutely be inter- ested in buying camelina from Eastern Oregon,” said Tomas Endicott, WBP’s vice president of development. Bill Buhrig, an OSU crop- ping systems extension agent in Ontario, estimates it would cost a farmer in this region about $150 an acre to produce came- lina. Even though the net for camelina would be small com- pared to what farmers can make from some other crops, it would still provide growers a little bit of income, Norn said. “Ground doesn’t just sit there idle without costing any- thing,” he said. Oregon Board of Forestry punts on no-logging buffers Decision on expanding buffers around streams will come in autumn By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press SALEM — The Oregon Board of Forestry has punt- ed its decision whether to expand no-logging buffers around streams to prevent water temperatures from ris- ing after harvest. After hearing testimony from timber and conservation groups on July 23, the board formed a subcommittee that will narrow the range of pos- sible options for consider- ation during a future meeting in September or October. Supporters and opponents of expanding Oregon’s no- cut buffers, currently set at 20 feet from either side of a stream, didn’t seem to have appetite for compromise during the recent hearing. Representatives of envi- ronmental and fishing groups claimed that buffers of 90- 100 feet would not always be adequate for protecting fish, while small woodland own- ers and commercial timber operators said that increasing buffers to 70 feet would be economically devastating. Proponents of enlarging buffers argued that tempera- tures in many of Oregon’s rivers and streams are already elevated and the problem will only grow worse in years to come. Opponents countered that logging only causes minimal, temporary increases in water temperature that don’t justify hundreds in millions of dol- lars in lost revenue for for- estland owners, particularly those who have small parcels. Openings in the forest canopy may actually help fish, as they increase the veg- etation that insects depend on, according to some propo- nents. The legal implications of increasing forestry regula- tions were also discussed. Under Measure 49, a bal- lot initiative passed by Or- egon voters in 2007, state and local governments must either waive new regulations or compensate landowners for lost land value in many circumstances. That would not apply to expanding no-cut buffers because the rule change per- tains to meeting federal wa- ter quality standards, said Richard Whitman, natural resource advisor to Gov. Kate Brown. State regulations that are required by federal law are exempt from Measure 49, he said. Dave Hunnicutt, exec- utive director of the Ore- gonians in Action property rights group, disagreed with this assessment. Measure 49 only exempts state regulations that are mandated by the federal gov- ernment, but not those that would merely cause the state to lose some federal funding, he said. In this case, the buffers ar- en’t required by federal stat- ute and they clearly reduce property values, said Hunni- cutt. “Those are the triggers for a Measure 49 claim,” he said. Hunnicutt said that enact- ing the buffers virtually guar- antees the state will spend hundreds of thousands of dol- lars litigating the issue. Sybil Ackerman, a board member and advisor to phil- anthropic groups, said that any regulations the board does impose must adhere as closely as possible to achiev- ing federal water quality standards rather than meeting other objectives.