September 25, 2015
CapitalPress.com
7
Flat minimum wage invigorates advocates
Pressure for wage floor hike expected to increase in Oregon
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
SALEM — Oregon’s
minimum wage won’t rise
in 2016, which is expected
to save money for farms and
other businesses but also in-
vigorate advocates of a high-
er rate.
Due to stagnant inflation,
as measured by the federal
“consumer price index” for
urban areas, the state’s Bu-
reau of Labor and Industries
will keep the minimum wage
at $9.25 per hour next year.
Both supporters and oppo-
nents of a higher wage floor
believe that the flat rate will
be used as an argument in fa-
vor of a substantial increase.
“It’s a mixed blessing, po-
litically,” said Jenny Dresler,
state public policy director
for the Oregon Farm Bureau.
While it should be good
news for low-income work-
ers that prices aren’t rising
sharply, the unchanged min-
imum wage will likely spur
political action, said Steve
Buckstein, senior policy an-
alyst for the Cascade Policy
Institute, a free market think
tank.
“It probably will increase
pressure in the legislature, or
through a ballot initiative, to
raise the minimum wage next
year,” he said. “Both efforts
will be bolstered political-
ly by the fact the minimum
wage is staying flat.”
Proponents say the un-
changed rate is based on a
nationwide measurement of
inflation and doesn’t reflect
unique factors, such as in-
creased housing costs, seen
in Portland and elsewhere in
Oregon.
“To bring people out of
poverty, we need at least $15
and in places like Portland,
more than that,” said Jamie
Patridge, chief petitioner for
a 2016 ballot initiative to
raise the minimum wage.
Patridge said he was dis-
appointed by the flat rate but
acknowledged that it will
likely convince people that
the current inflation-based
system is inadequate and per-
suade them to take action at
the ballot box.
“It’s probably positive for
our campaign but negative
for low-wage workers,” he
said. “Workers should not
be living in poverty. Every
worker should be paid a liv-
ing wage.”
The Oregon Center for
Public Policy, a non-profit
that supports increasing the
minimum wage, said the rate
would be $19 per hour if it
had tracked worker produc-
tivity for the past half-cen-
tury.
“We’re seeing growing
support for some action,” Ty-
ler Mac Innis, policy analyst
for OCPP.
To achieve economic
security in Oregon, a sin-
gle adult with a child needs
to earn roughly $45,000-
$51,000 per year, depending
on the region, according to
the group. With the current
minimum wage, a worker
earns $19,240 per year.
“It’s certainly not good
news that it’s staying flat. It
highlights the fact minimum
wage workers need a signifi-
cant increase in the minimum
wage,” said Mac Innis.
Dresler, of the Oregon
Farm Bureau, counters that
farmers in the state compete
against others in the U.S. and
internationally, so a higher
minimum wage puts them at
a disadvantage.
Oregon already has the
second highest minimum
wage in the nation behind
Washington, she said.
“That keeps us less com-
petitive than it does our
neighbors” in the Midwest
and South, Dresler said.
Farms in Oregon are cur-
rently highly diverse, but a
major hike in the minimum
wage would likely convince
growers to transition to crops
that are less labor intensive,
she said. “That would be one
of the reactions to that sort of
increase.”
Other types of companies
will have to raise prices, lay
off workers or reduce ben-
efits to cope with a higher
minimum wage — or they’ll
simply go out of business,
said Buckstein of the Cas-
cade Policy Institute.
“There are always unin-
tended consequences,” he
said. “There’s no magic pot
of money that businesses
have to pay more wages.”
OSU breeding network Irrigation district to wrap
connects farmers, chefs season at 60 percent used
By DAN WHEAT
Chefs provide
input on desirable
vegetable
attributes
Capital Press
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
AURORA, Ore. — In con-
sidering the ideal vegetable, a
farmer will often desire differ-
ent attributes than a chef.
Yields and disease resis-
tance are generally top of
mind for the farmer, while the
chef may focus on flavor and
appearance.
The Culinary Breeding
Network, managed by Ore-
gon State University, aims to
help plant breeders bridge this
divide by getting farmers and
chefs to communicate what
they’re looking for in a veg-
etable.
“There’s a lot of power
in bringing these people into
the same room together,”
said Lane Selman, an OSU
agricultural researcher who
helped start the network.
The network organizes
events such as the upcoming
vegetable variety showcase,
scheduled for Sept. 28 in
Portland, where the partici-
pants from various sectors of
the food industry can compare
notes on new cultivars.
“A lot of it is focused on
flavor and culinary applica-
tions,” said Timothy Wastell,
a chef who consults for the
network.
The network was spawned
in 2009, after breeder Frank
Morton of Wild Garden Seed
released open-pollinated new
pepper varieties to replace a
popular hybrid cultivar that
was discontinued.
Seed companies frequent-
ly drop hybrid vegetable va-
rieties if they don’t generate
enough sales, even if the cul-
tivars are important to some
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Participants at a recent Oregon State University vegetable trial field
day examine new tomato varieties. The Culinary Breeding Net-
work, which is managed by OSU, aims to connect chefs, farmers
and breeders to zero in on desirable vegetable traits.
growers, said Selman.
Open pollination allows
farmers to save seed, as
they’re not dependent on the
two parent cultivars used to
produce hybrids.
When Morton developed
several new pepper varieties,
chefs tended to prefer those
without a sunken stem, as it
eases cutting in a busy kitchen
environment.
“These are things plant
breeders don’t necessarily
think about,” said Wastell.
The episode convinced
breeders and OSU that chefs
and retailers should be in-
volved in the variety develop-
ment in an organized manner.
“We started realizing,
‘Wow, this is something miss-
ing,’” Selman said. “We know
what farmers want, but we
don’t know what end users
want.”
Breeders often focus on
developing cultivars that are
“true to type” — that fit the
vegetables traditional char-
acteristics — but these traits
may not necessarily be im-
portant to buyers, she said.
By getting input from
chefs and other end users,
the breeders can incorporate
information that wouldn’t
otherwise be on their radar,
KENNEWICK, Wash. —
Kennewick Irrigation District
will end water deliveries Oct.
11, using about 60 percent of
the water it would use in a
non-drought year.
“Everyone was curtailed.
We had challenges,” said
Chuck Freeman, district man-
ager.
Six times during the sum-
mer the Yakima River was so
low that the district cut off
water to cemeteries, parks and
schools, he said. Cutoffs were
for about a week each time.
Agricultural lands were re-
duced at one point to 3 gallons
per minute per acre, down
from 8 gallons per minute.
Orchards, vineyards and
blueberry fields make up
about 9,000 acres, almost half
the district’s 20,201 acres.
The rest is urban.
In a normal year, the dis-
trict uses 102,674 acre-feet of
water and finishes deliveries
in mid-October.
The district is at the end of
the 175-mile U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation irrigation sys-
tem serving the Yakima Basin
and is fed by five reservoirs in
the Cascade Mountains. It’s a
return-flow district, meaning
all its water comes from op-
erational spills and seepage
from other districts upriver.
That made Freeman
nervous at the start of this
drought year, but now he
concludes that overall things
went fairly well despite some
“big stresses” and “very con-
cerned farmers.”
A lot of fields went fallow
and a lot of water transfers
were made from one grower
to another within the district,
he said.
One grower paid $80,000
in past-due district water bills
to get a water transfer, he
said.
The vast majority of
23,000 city customers com-
plied with reductions, but the
district issued warning notic-
es to 200 who did not, Free-
man said. All of those com-
plied before they were fined,
he said.
Selman said.
Flavor and other attributes
that are important to chefs
don’t conflict with agronomic
qualities because the Culinary
Breeding Network doesn’t
showcase varieties that would
be unappealing to growers,
she said. “I don’t bring the
dogs in.”
Oregon State University is
involved in other cooperative
programs with seed produc-
ers.
The university is paid by
several seed companies to
grow out vegetable varieties
at its North Willamette Re-
search and Extension Center
in Aurora, Ore.
The plots serve as a “learn-
ing farm” for new growers
while providing breeders with
information about how the
cultivars perform at that loca-
tion, said Nick Andrews, small
farms extension agent at OSU.
Unlike a farmer, OSU
doesn’t harvest the vegeta-
bles, which allows seed com-
panies to see how well plants
hold up in the field past matu-
rity, he said.
Seed companies can also
bring their customers to the
location to demonstrate new
varieties, Andrews said. “It’s
a public location.”
Yakima reservoir levels likely to
be half of normal by end of season
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
YAKIMA, Wash. — The
five water reservoirs serving
the Yakima Basin will be hold-
ing somewhere around 50 per-
cent less water than normal at
the end of the irrigation season
in about a month.
As of Sept. 14, the reser-
voirs were 24 percent full,
which was 66.2 percent of av-
erage for this time of year. The
average is based on a 30-year
average from 1981 to 2010,
according to the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation in Yakima.
The bureau manages the
Yakima Basin Project, which
provides water to 464,000
acres of farmland through ir-
rigation districts in the Kittitas
and Yakima valleys.
The reservoirs store a little
more than 1 million acre-feet of
water when full, which is about
half the water needs of the ba-
sin. The other half comes from
snowpack not retained in the
reservoirs that was very light
this year due to drought.
In July, Quentin Kreuter,
the bureau’s Yakima River op-
erator, said the target was to
end the irrigation season Oct.
20 with 135,000 acre-feet in
storage, down from a normal
250,000 to 300,000.
On Sept. 15, the bureau’s
hydrologist for the Yakima Ba-
sin Project, Chris Lynch, said
it still looks like there will be
close to 135,000 acre-feet left
on Oct. 20.
It could be anywhere from
125,000 to 150,000, depend-
ing on rainfall between now
and then, Lynch said.
A year ago, there was
330,000 acre-feet at the end of
the season and it’s been above
normal — 270,000 acre-feet
— for most of the last five
years, he said.
It usually takes all winter
to fill the reservoirs, and there
is no need to release any water
from them prior to early June
for irrigation. This year irriga-
tion usage began in April be-
cause of the light snowpack.
To start winter recharge from
such a low point is a concern.
“A bird in the hand is al-
ways good and we don’t have
a bird in the hand. I’m not even
sure if we even have one in the
bush,” Lynch said.
Reservoir inflows fell to
25 to 29 percent of average in
July, Kreuter said. Now they
are about 80 percent of aver-
age, given recent rains.
Lynch said one weather
forecaster he relies on be-
lieves rain and snowfall will
be decent this winter, but that
the Climate Prediction Center
of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration
is predicting a greater chance
of warmer than average tem-
peratures and below normal
precipitation for the middle
section of Washington and the
Northwest.
“I don’t know why the cli-
mate center is leaning drier
than normal. A big factor will
be temperatures and where the
freezing level is,” said Scott
Pattee, USDA Natural Re-
sources Conservation Service
water supply specialist for
Washington.
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