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CapitalPress.com
August 21, 2015
Oregon
Experts offer
pesticide alternatives
in fight against SWD
Oregon State Fair prepares
for its 150th anniversary
By ZANE SPARLING
Capital Press
SALEM — Spokesman
Dan Cox has a message for
prospective attendees of this
year’s Oregon State Fair: It’ll
be fun.
“Fun is the No. 1 thing we
have to offer Oregonians,” he
said.
In honor of the fair’s 150th
anniversary, general admission
tickets will cost just $1.50 for
kids and adults on the event’s
opening day, Friday, Aug. 28.
A fireworks display will be
held nightly.
For agriculture fans, the
fair’s biggest draw may well be
the return of the Western Dairy
Expo, and Jersey breeders are
having their Western National
in Salem, and expect to bring
about 200 head of cattle to the
fair, according to Dairy Super-
intendent Paul Lindow.
Farmers will exhibit more
than 100 Holsteins and 65 spe-
cialty breeds, including Brown
Swiss, Guernsey, Milking Short-
horn and Ayrshire. All six breeds
will compete for the title of Su-
preme Overall Champion, and
the winning cow’s owner will
take home a $750 grand prize.
Lindow, whose family has
exhibited at the state fair since
1923, said families should re-
member that an expo is not the
same thing as a petting zoo.
“If people ask, most exhib-
itors don’t have a problem with
petting,” he said. “There will
also be six animals in individual
stalls. If they want to be petted,
they’ll stick their head out and
let you. There are some pretty
friendly animals in there.”
In the same vein, all dogs are
welcome at the fair, except in
the concert venue and livestock
barn. Dog Town — a showcase
of canine competition, agility
and health and training expertise
— has been relocated to a more
central area this year.
“I haven’t seen a comment
on cats,” said Cox, the spokes-
person.
Musical performances will
be held on 10 out of the 11
days, including four country
acts, a faith group and Portland
alternative rock band Ever-
clear. About 6,000 seats will be
available on a first come-first
served basis at no extra charge
for each performance at the
L.B. Day amphitheater.
VIP reserved seating is avail-
able for $25 to $35, depending
on the show. So far, tickets for
comedian Gabriel “Fluffy” Igle-
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Zane Sparling/Capital Press
Workers dig up a tree root in preparation for the Oregon State Fair,
which opens Friday, Aug. 28. More than 400 temporary workers
were hired to staff the fair for its 150th anniversary.
sias have been the most popular,
according to Cox.
At 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 5,
the Fair’s Historic Horse Sta-
dium will host a special perfor-
mance of the BlackPearl Friesian
Dance Troupe, a choreographed
horse show set to music, The
stadium was resurfaced early in
2015 to improve the footing.
Gerry Frank’s Chocolate
Layer Cake Competition, which
is itself celebrating its 56th anni-
versary, has been moved to the
Creative Living Stage in Colum-
bia Hall at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 6
Frank takes at least one bite
out of every cake and keeps up
a steady stream of entertaining
commentary, according to Cox.
He also keeps a bottle of Pep-
to-Bismol by his side, in case of
emergencies.
“I think for folks who live
in urban areas.… it’s a great
opportunity to appreciate the
ag role, which maybe doesn’t
get its due,” Cox said. “If
someone misses out on this
part of the story and Oregon’s
history, then they’re really
missing out.”
Land board moves ahead on Elliott Forest sale
By HILLARY BORRUD
Capital Bureau
SALEM — The Oregon
State Land Board voted unani-
mously Aug. 13 to move ahead
with a plan to sell the Elliott
State Forest to a buyer who will
agree to conservation and job
creation mandates.
The goal is to sever the con-
nection between the forest and
a state trust fund that provides
money for K-12 public educa-
tion. Currently, the state has a
mandate to raise revenue from
timber sales from the forest for
schools. However, the listing
of endangered species in the
forest and subsequent environ-
mental lawsuits forced the state
to scale back timber harvests in
recent years, to the point where
the state lost money on the op-
eration.
Under the plan the State
Land Board approved Thursday,
the state could select a buyer by
December 2016 and close on the
sale by December 2017.
Department of State Lands
director Mary Abrams during
the State Land Board meeting
Thursday in Salem that the new
plan has the potential to resolve
in 26 months an issue “that has
frustrated the board, as trustees,
for almost two decades.” The
state could extend the deadline
by one more year if necessary
to finalize financing for a deal,
Abrams said. The land board is
composed of the governor, sec-
retary of state and state treasurer.
The state lost approximately
$5 million on the Elliott State
Forest over the last two years,
and state officials expect the for-
est will continue to operate with
an annual deficit of $500,000 to
$1 million indefinitely under the
status quo.
Environmental groups and
individuals said during testi-
mony Thursday they want the
Elliott State Forest to remain in
public ownership, whether that
means the federal government
or a state agency. The state faces
the challenge of finding a buyer
who can pay fair market value
for the 84,000 acres in the Elliott
forest, which is required because
of the connection to the state
school fund.
“We’re actually going to be
asking for three appraisals and
then a review appraisal to ensure
we come up with a number that
is truly defensible,” Abrams said
of the property value.
Jim Green, deputy executive
director of the Oregon School
Boards Association, told the
State Land Board members they
were “actually in violation of
your fiduciary responsibility”
because the forest is currently
losing money from the school
fund. “You have a role as the
trustees of the common school
fund to ensure you get the high-
est value for the common school
fund going forward.”
The protocol the land board
approved on Thursday will re-
quire any buyer of the forest to
purchase the entire property and
allow public access for hiking,
fishing, hunting and other recre-
ation on at least 50 percent of the
land. The buyer will also have to
protect older timber stands in 25
percent of the forestland from
harvest, and ensure at least 40
direct and indirect jobs are creat-
ed annually over the next decade
from logging, reforestation, rec-
reation or other activities.
Finally, the buyer must main-
tain 120-foot stream buffers in
all areas with salmon, steelhead
or bull trout and areas upstream.
Potential buyers now have
14 months to formulate pro-
posals, although they must no-
tify the state of their interest by
Dec. 15. Environmental groups
said during testimony Thursday
they hope to raise money from
a combination of private and
public sources to purchase the
forest, then possibly transfer it to
a public owner. A bill that would
have established a state system
to protect trust land such as the
Elliott State Forest, House Bill
3474, died in committee earlier
this year but some people said
they hope lawmakers to revive
the proposal in 2016.
Seth Barnes, director of
forest policy for the Oregon
Forest Industries Council, said
the land board should con-
sider that the timber industry
remains an important part of
the economy in the southwest
region of the state.
“I was just encouraging
them to keep in mind the tim-
ber revenue jobs that come off
these properties are incred-
ibly important to Oregon,”
Barnes said after the meeting.
Barnes said the plan approved
Thursday could reduce annual
timber harvests on the Elliott
State Forest from 40 million
board feet down to 20 million,
and each 1 million board feet
of timber harvested directly
creates approximately 11 jobs.
Josh Laughlin, interim exec-
utive director of Eugene-based
Cascadia Wildlands, said the
group wants the state to require
that any buyer allow public ac-
cess to the entire forestland.
“We support you working
with land trust organizations and
other organizations to make the
common school fund whole,”
Laughlin said, but he added
that Oregonians want to keep
the forest in public ownership.
Concerns about the contin-
ued efficacy of pesticides are
leading farmers to look for al-
ternatives in their fight against
the spotted wing drosophila,
expert say.
New weapons are needed
due to worries that the insect
will eventually develop a tol-
erance to commonly-used pes-
ticides, said Amy Dreves, an
Oregon State University Exten-
sion entomologist specializing
in integrated pest management.
“People are looking for
what else is out there,” she said.
Dreves was recently joined
by experts from Washington
State University and the Na-
tional Research Council of
Italy in discussing biological
controls for the invasive fruit
fly during an Aug. 4 workshop
organized by the Northwest
Center for Alternatives to Pes-
ticides in Eugene, Ore.
Aside from pesticide resis-
tance, farmers are also cautious
about traces of insecticides that
can affect their ability to export
crops, known as maximum
residue levels, said Beverly
Gerdeman, an entomology re-
search associate at WSU.
“It gives other countries
a great deal of power about
what’s brought into their coun-
try,” she said.
Growers are currently con-
fident they can control the
fly with regular applications
of organophosphates and py-
rethroids, but spotted wing
drosophila has disrupted the
biologically-based “integrated
pest management” approach
to managing insects, Gerde-
man said.
“Right now, we have no
such thing as IPM for spotted
wing drosophila,” she said.
Even so, experts are devel-
oping ways to reduce their reli-
ance on chemicals in suppress-
ing the fruit fly.
“My mission is to find ways
to tackle this beast,” Dreves
said. “There’s hope out there.
There are things happening.”
The flies thrive in humid
conditions, which farmers can
reduce by using drip irrigation
instead of overhead sprinklers,
she said. “They are not sun
baskers.”
Pruning the canopy of crops,
such as caneberries, can im-
prove aeration to the detriment
of the spotted wing drosophila,
she said. Researchers are still
examining the best pruning
techniques to avoid harming
the crop.
“If you prune, you’re reduc-
ing your humidity and habitat,
but if you prune too much,
you’re reducing your yields,”
she said.
Thoroughly harvesting ear-
ly season fruit will eliminate
refuges from which the spe-
cies can launch new offensives
against mid- and late-season
crops, Dreves said.
“That becomes the breeding
source for the next harvest,”
she said.
It’s possible that cultivating
or raking the soil between crop
rows will help remove or de-
stroy the debris where the flies
can fester, she said.
“We’ve got to think of
some ground applications,”
Dreves said.
Similarly, farmers can try
to limit spotted wing dro-
sophila populations in nearby
sites where they lay eggs on
wild-growing plants such as
Himalayan blackberry, dog-
wood and honeysuckle, she
said.
Placing a large number of
traps within those “non-crop
egg-laying sites” can kill the in-
sects and steer them away from
marketable fruit, but if farmers
opt to remove the plants, they
should replace them with flow-
ering species, she said.
Parasitic wasps that feed
on the fruit flies also require
flowers for nectar and pollen,
Dreves said.
Emilio Guerrieri, an en-
tomologist with the National
Research Council of Italy,
said he’s identified 10 types
of parasitic insects that spe-
cifically prey on spotted wing
drosophila in China, where the
pest originates. Another 9 have
been found in South Korea.
However, this method of
control is complicated by reg-
ulatory hurdles, he said. “It’s
virtually impossible to take
anything alive out of China.”
Spotted wing drosophila
is also susceptible to existing
“generalist” predators that eat
other insects, but these often
appear once populations are
high, said Gerdeman.
It may be possible to build
up the numbers of these pred-
ators by releasing non-pest in-
sects before spotted wing dro-
sophila becomes a problem,
she said. “There are a lot of
things out there to help us out.”
In some cases, farmers are
netting their crops after bloom
to prevent the insects from in-
filtrating fruit, while others
use special vacuums to collect
the flies.
Those options are expen-
sive, though, and may not pen-
cil out financially for all grow-
ing systems.
Vacuuming does provide a
“real time” sample of what in-
sects are in the field, regardless
of whether they’re attracted to
the bait in a trap, said Gerde-
man.
“It does not work with at-
tractivity at all,” she said. “It’s
more of an indiscriminate.”
Regularly setting lures and
traps to monitor fly populations
allows growers to identify “hot
spots” in their fields and eval-
uate how well treatments are
working, Dreves said.
Oregon Farm Bureau seeks calendar photo submissions
scape — anything that depicts
the beauty, culture, enjoyment,
technology or tradition of fam-
ily farming and ranching in all
parts of Oregon.
“With summer harvest in
full swing, farmers markets
bursting with agricultural
bounty, and many county fairs
and on-farm festivals going on,
August is a great time to cap-
ture scenes of Oregon agricul-
ture,” said Anne Marie Moss,
communications director for
the Oregon Farm Bureau.
High-resolution, horizon-
tal-format images — both
close-ups and panoramic views
— are needed of all types of ag-
riculture in all seasons. Subject
ideas include farmers markets;
county fair scenes; close-ups
of fruits, vegetables, flowers,
farm animals, crops in the field;
planting and/or harvesting
shots; portraits of farmers,
ranchers, farm families; and
farm scenes in all seasons.
Photographers with imag-
es selected for month pages in
Oregon’s Bounty will receive a
photo credit in the 2016 calen-
dar and copies of the calendar.
There is no limit to the
number of photos that can be
submitted.
Photographers can email
their digital photo(s) to
annemarie@oregonfb.org or
put the image(s) on a CD and
send it via postal mail to Anne
Marie Moss, Oregon Farm
Bureau, 1320 Capitol St. NE,
Suite 200, Salem, OR 97301.
Photo criteria and contest
rules are available at http://
www.oregonfb.org/calendar/.
For more information,
contact Moss at annemarie@
oregonfb.org, 503.399.1701.
ROP-34-2-1/#7
SALEM — The Oregon
Farm Bureau is seeking photos
for its 2016 Oregon’s Bounty
calendar.
The deadline for entries is
Sept. 15.
The award-winning calen-
dar celebrates all aspects of
Oregon agriculture: products,
people, planting/harvest, land-
34-4/#4X