November 13, 2015
CapitalPress.com
15
S. Idaho farmers experiment with cover crops
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
BURLEY, Idaho — Trying
their hand at growing cover
crops and no-till farming, pro-
ducers in southcentral Idaho
list a host of objectives —
from improving soil health to
improving their bottom line.
Some of their practices are
reaping benefits, others hold
promise and yet others need
work, the growers told par-
ticipants in a cover crop tour
hosted by the Minidoka, East
Cassia and West Cassia Soil
and Water Conservation dis-
tricts on Nov. 4.
Regardless of the level of
initial success, the growers
agreed experimenting in their
fields is worth the effort, say-
ing cover crops and no-till
will become increasingly im-
portant in agriculture.
Justin Hunter, who serves
on the board of the Minido-
ka conservation district and
farms near Hazelton, said he
had thrown out purple top
turnip seed before but growth
was spotty. This is the first
year he’s really trying a cov-
er crop, planting a six-way
blend of clover, peas, oats,
cabbage, turnips, and radish
on 67 acres.
“I feel there’s going to be
a lot of good come from this,”
he said.
He’s looking for better wa-
ter-holding capacity in the soil
to lower crop stress between
irrigations, as well as better
protection from the wind for
both the soil and young sugar
beet plants.
Additionally,
Hunter
hopes to improve soil health,
increase organic matter, re-
duce tillage, reduce fertilizer
inputs, have a manageable
residue, and create forage in-
come, he said.
Organic material from the
broadcasted turnip seed crop
he tried last year helped with
wind stress this year. He’s us-
ing a no-till drill to plant this
year’s mix helped to achieve a
better, more uniformed stand
— although the peas were
a little thin and the clover
was either planted too light
or shaded by other plants, he
said.
The seed cost him $35 an
acre. The cover crop will be
grazed by sheep and disked
this fall then the field will be
sown to sugar beets in the
spring, he said.
A little further east,
Schaeffer Farms manager Bri-
Schaeffer Farms manager Brian Kossman, (in the beanie), board
member of the Minidoka Soil and Water Conservation District, talks
to participants in a crop cover tour hosted by the Minidoka, East
Cassia and West Cassia Soil and Water Conservation districts
near Paul, Idaho, on Nov. 4.
Photos by Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press
NRCS soil conservationist Dinah Reaney and Justin Hunter, Minidoka Soil and Water Conservation
District board member, examine plant roots in a field near Hazelton, Idaho, where Hunter is experi-
menting with cover crops. The stop was part of a cover crop tour hosted by the Minidoka, East Cassia
and West Cassia Soil and Water Conservation districts on Nov. 4.
an Kossman has a 115-acre
experimental field dedicated
to trying out no-till practices
and cover cropping.
He’s had hits and misses
with no-till drilling into resi-
due but sees value and oppor-
tunity in the cropping system,
he said.
This year, he blew on a
four-way cover crop mix of
oats, peas, radish, and clover
($21 an acre) into malt bar-
ley stubble and harrowed it
in. There was an issue with
volunteer grain and the pea
seed didn’t get the moisture it
needed to germinate, but the
crop did well overall. In the
future, he’ll spray the volun-
teer grain and drill the seed,
he said.
Sheep will graze the field
this fall, and it will be planted
to silage corn in the spring, he
said.
Direct seeding sugar beets
into residue produced a great
crop this year, higher yield
and sugar than average. But
he doesn’t know if that can be
repeated. Corn and malt bar-
ley direct seeded have been
equal in yield and quality to
conventional crops, he said.
Moving forward
The experimental prac-
tices have never been about
trying to see if the farm can
get better crops than conven-
tional agricultural, it’s about
seeing if the system is pos-
sible in the operation, Koss-
man said.
Farmers have been direct
seeding corn and soybeans in
the Midwest for decades. The
challenge here is in raising
different crops, particularly
sugar beets and potatoes, he
said.
There’s also a mentality
issue — veering from what
worked for Dad and loving
the look of a plowed field
fence row to fence row with
no weeds, he said.
“All of us, three or four
years ago wouldn’t have
done this. And I don’t want
to be cavalier; we’ve had our
wrecks,” he said.
But he’s seen distinct
advantages as well. Water
runoff has always been a
problem in the hill area. The
farm operators thought they
noticed a decrease in run-off
following the first cover crop
but after the next cover crop,
it was clear; there was no
run-off, he said.
Considering the invest-
ments in irrigation water,
pivots and pumping, water is
money, he said.
“If you get it to stay where
Farmers Ending Hunger unveils exhibit
By GEORGE PLAVEN
EO Media Group
BOARDMAN, Ore. — By
the time 2015 draws to a close,
Farmers Ending Hunger ex-
pects to donate nearly 4 mil-
lion pounds of fresh, locally
grown food to the Oregon
Food Bank for the year.
That’s a single-year record
and about 1.5 million pounds
more than the organization
managed in 2014, but Exec-
utive Director John Burt said
they can still do more.
“There’s a big hunger issue
in this state,” Burt said. “We
need people to get involved.”
A crowd of 85 people gath-
ered Nov. 7 at the SAGE Cen-
ter in Boardman to celebrate
Farmers Ending Hunger, in-
cluding Portland Mayor Char-
lie Hales and Oregon Food
Bank CEO Susannah Morgan.
The event also doubled as an
unveiling for the new Farmers
Ending Hunger exhibit at the
SAGE Center — Boardman’s
visitor’s center and regional ag-
ricultural museum.
Fred Ziari, president and
CEO of IRZ Consulting in
Hermiston, founded the non-
profit Farmers Ending Hunger
in 2004 after learning Oregon
was, at the time, the nation’s
hungriest state.
Today, 1-in-5 Oregonians
faces food insecurity. Ziari
said he hopes the museum dis-
play will continue to galvanize
Eastern Oregon farmers to
help feed their neighbors.
“Just knowing this was hap-
pening in our own state was a
shock to me,” Ziari said. “This
display will educate permanent-
ly for hundreds of thousands of
people coming through here.”
Farmers Ending Hunger
represents a collaborative effort
between more than 100 farm-
ers, food processors and the
it’s supposed to be, that’s a
pretty big deal,” he said.
Leaving the crop residue
and not working the soil im-
proved the soil’s water-hold-
ing capacity. Direct-seeded
malt barley into corn stubble
this year got up without wa-
ter, so the crop had one less
irrigation, he said.
“Organic matter numbers
haven’t changed yet, but we
think they will,” he said.
Farmers in the Midwest
say it takes three or four
years, but the soil structure
is starting to change, plating
rather than clumping, he said.
“The whole system is be-
coming better,” he said.
Another thing to consider
is the savings in tractor pass-
es, he said.
“We’re always doing
things to make a perfect seed
bed. Everything grows in this
(crop residue). Can we take
out money in groundwork
and help out margins that
way?” he posed.
Custom tractor work
costs $140 per acre. A farmer
could save three or four trac-
tor passes in corn and sugar
beets by direct seeding into
residue, he said.
Mark Hobsen, who farms
southwest of Burley and runs
25 cow-calf pairs, has put in
Associated Press
George Plaven/EO Media Group
Oregon Food Bank to deliver
much-needed meals to families.
On average, about 284,000 res-
idents rely on emergency food
boxes for meals. Of those, 34
percent are children.
Ziari said the organization
was born not out of charity, but
a labor of love. He recognized
Amstad Produce for contrib-
uting 30 tons of potatoes per
month; Hale Farms for con-
tributing 25 tons of onions per
month; and Threemile Canyon
Farms for contributing 25-30
beef cows per month.
Enough wheat has also been
donated for roughly 5 million
pancakes, Ziari said. Much of
that food ends up on the west
side of the state, and Portland
Mayor Hales said he wanted to
thank those growers in person
for their generosity.
Seventeen percent of Mult-
nomah County’s population is
food insecure, Hales said, or
about 116,000 people.
“You are right on the fore-
front of an issue that profound-
ly affects the people I work
for,” Hales said. “I so value the
substance and the spirit of what
you’re doing.”
Morgan, who has served as
CEO of the Oregon Food Bank
since 2012, emphasized hunger
remains a big challenge in the
state. However, the problem
isn’t that there’s not enough
food, she said, but a matter of
gathering and distributing do-
nations to the hungry.
The Oregon Food Bank
stands ready to partner with
Farmers Ending Hunger into
the future, Morgan said.
“We will not rest until we’ve
eliminated hunger,” she said.
The event ended with a
$10,000 donation to Farmers
Ending Hunger from North-
west Farm Credit Services.
Non-farmers can also donate
the organization’s “Adopt an
Acre” program.
Kenzie
Hansell,
a
fourth-generation farmer with
Hansell Farms, said that with
everybody doing their part,
they can continue to build on
their success.
“As farmers, we have a re-
sponsibility to be stewards of
the land,” Hansell said. “As hu-
mans, we have a responsibility
to take care of one another.”
To learn more about Farm-
ers Ending Hunger or to make
a donation, visit www.farm-
ersendinghunger.com.
Fueling change
John Firth, chairman of
the Minidoka conservation
district, said experimentation
with cover crops and no-till
farming in the local districts
is being fueled by progres-
sive farmers and assisted by a
matching grant from National
Resources Conservation Ser-
vice.
Last year, the three area
conservation districts were
jointly awarded a Conserva-
tion Innovation Grant for a
project to educate landown-
ers on the use of direct seed
farming and cover crops and
provide cover crop seed and
access to equipment, he said.
Total funding for the proj-
ect was nearly $146,000,
allowing the districts to pur-
chase two no-till drills to rent
to producers interested in no-
till farming. Since the drills
arrived in April, about 25
farmers within the Mini-Cas-
sia area have used them to
seed about 2,000 experimen-
tal acres, he said.
Assistance is also available
to offset costs for cover crops
and companion practices
through NCRS’s Soil Health
Initiative established through
Environmental Quality Incen-
tive Programs (EQIP), said
NRCS Soil Conservationist
Dinah Reaney.
In addition, new agrono-
mists are coming on board at
NRCS to assist producers in
implementing no- till farming
practices, she said.
David Mabey, the new
NRCS district conservation-
ist for the Burley and Rupert
field offices, said he is im-
pressed with what’s going on
in the area and the proactive
district boards.
This is how farming is go-
ing to be sustainable and prof-
itable in the future, he said.
Sheepherders protest Dept. of
Labor wage plan as inadequate
By BEN NEARY
John Burt, left, and Fred Ziari unveiled the new Farmers Ending
Hunger exhibit Nov. 7 at the SAGE Center.
cover crops on three fields for
three years and said results
have varied but he’s gaining
experience.
The first year, he planted
too late and the seed didn’t
get enough time for the crop
to take off. Last year, he disk
planted earlier and watered,
which worked well, giving
him about 2 tons of forage
per acre.
When he turned cows into
the cover crop, “it was like
they were going into a super-
market. They were very hap-
py,” he said.
He didn’t have to feed hay
until after Christmas and esti-
mates the feed conversion of
the cover crops amounted to
about nine tons of hay.
This year he used a no-
till drill to plant a six-way
mix of peas, oats, corn, hairy
and common vetch, and rad-
ish and ended up with vol-
unteer barley and cutworm
problems. He plans to direct
seed beans or sugar beets
into the cover crop fields in
the spring. Even though an
earlier trial of direct seeded
beets didn’t yield as well as
conventionally grown beets,
he did save a lot of time and
money, he said.
Aside from providing ad-
ditional forage, planting cov-
er crops does so many good
things for the ground, he said.
It improves water infiltra-
tion, breaks up compaction,
reduces nematodes, decreas-
es erosion, and increases or-
ganic matter, he said.
“I just think it’s a real
good thing to do,” he said.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP)
— Some current and former
sheepherders say the U.S. De-
partment of Labor has folded
to pressure from the American
sheep industry by trimming
its proposal to require raises
for thousands of foreign shep-
herds in the West.
The federal government
for decades has endorsed a
program that allows sheep
ranchers to bring in foreign
shepherds to oversee their
herds on the grounds that U.S.
citizens wouldn’t take the
jobs. They are called “H2-A”
workers after the program that
allows them into the country.
Over 2,000 H2-A work-
ers a year participate in the
program. For years, feder-
al regulations have set their
wages in Wyoming and most
other Western states at $750
a month. The workers com-
monly work around the clock,
living in tents or trailers far
from towns, while ranchers
cover their living and travel
expenses.
In response to a lawsuit
from some shepherds, the
U.S. Department of Justice
early this year proposed re-
quiring raises for shepherds
to $2,400 a month by 2020.
Sheep industry officials and
politicians around the West,
including Republican Wyo-
ming Gov. Matt Mead, pro-
tested the proposal, saying it
would put many operators out
of business.
The Labor Department re-
cently released its final rule,
calling for increasing shep-
herd pay up to the federal
minimum wage, currently
$7.25 an hour for a 48-hour
week — over $1,500 a month
— over the next few years.
Egan Reich, spokesman
for the department in Wash-
ington, D.C., recently de-
clined comment on the rule,
saying the agency couldn’t
comment until it goes into ef-
fect later this month.
The Hispanic Affairs
Project, based in Montrose,
Colorado, last week filed an
amended complaint in its
pending lawsuit in U.S. Dis-
trict Court in Washington,
D.C. challenging the Labor
Department rule. The group,
together with two individu-
al shepherds, asserts that the
new federal rule is improper
because it would set the wage
rate for H2-A shepherds be-
low the pay rate below the
$10 to $13 an hour it states
other migrant agricultural
workers are paid.
“This increase is good, but
it’s not enough,” Ricardo Pe-
rez, executive director of the
Hispanic Affairs Project, said
Monday.
“We are very disappointed
that still the new regulation
is not fair, especially when
we know that the workers are
not only working 48 hours a
week, most of the time they
are on call 24 hours, they are
working 7 days a week,” Pe-
rez said.
Alex McBean, a staff at-
torney in the Farm Worker
Unit at Utah Legal Services,
has represented sheepherders
in challenging their working
conditions and pay.
“For sheepherders, it’s not
as favorable as the proposed
rule. But it’s definitely an im-
provement on what they had
before,’ McBean said. “A lot
of sheepherders I’ve spoken
to are excited for the pay in-
crease.”
McBean noted the rule
spells out what sort of work
shepherds who come to the
country on H2A visas may
perform.
“It does allow for some
work at the ranch, but it most-
ly makes it so that they have
to keep to the range, and do-
ing that job that really does
require them to be on call
24 hours a day, seven days a
week,” McBean said. “A lot
of ranchers have used H2A
workers just to do whatever
they needed and haven’t re-
ally been very conscientious
about keeping them in the role
of a sheep herder.”
Jim Magagna, executive
vice president of the Wyo-
ming Stock Growers Associa-
tion, said he would commend
the Department of Labor for
making significant changes to
the proposed rule the agency
released early this year in re-
sponse to public comment.
“That previous draft, had
that been enacted in the form
it was presented, would have
forced countless people I be-
lieve out of the sheep indus-
try,” Magagna said.
“The current rule, while
there may be some challeng-
es, I think is in general work-
able,” Magagna said. “There
are always questions with a
new rule in general on how it
will be implemented, but the
unworkable parts of the draft
rule were amended. It does
still include a significant in-
crease in the wages for sheep-
herders.”