January 22, 2016
CapitalPress.com
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Idaho
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Crop protection industry needs to speak up, CropLife leader says
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Online
Capital Press
TWIN FALLS, Idaho —
The benefits of modern crop
protection are proven and sub-
stantial, and with continued in-
novation production agriculture
can meet the growing demand
for food created by a global
population expected to reach
9 billion by 2050, an industry
leader says.
Agrochemicals
enable
farmers to grow a safe, abun-
dant and affordable supply
of food, fiber and renewable
fuels. But the crop protection
industry faces many challeng-
es, including questionable pol-
icies resulting from a barrage
of information that creates
public confusion and distrust,
CropLife America President
and CEO Jay Vroom told the
Far West Agribusiness Asso-
For more information on ag
advocacy, go to tellmemore.
croplifeamerica.org or fooddi-
alogues.com
Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press
Jay Vroom, right, president and CEO of CropLife America, chats
with Jim Fitzgerald, executive director of Far West Agribuisiness
Association, at the close of the trade association’s winter confer-
ence in Twin Falls on Thursday, Jan. 14.
ciation winter conference on
Jan. 14.
CropLife America is a crop
protection industry trade asso-
ciation.
While crop advisers already
do a lot to educate people on
the safe use of crop protection
products, they need to do even
more to make a difference in
the public policy arena, Vroom
said.
“You need to be ambassa-
dors, and an audience of one is
the minimum,” he said.
An important cross-over
point happened globally in
2012, illustrating a shift from
subsistence farming and a
growing dependence on agri-
culture, he said.
“It was the first year in his-
tory over half of us lived in ur-
ban settings … we are going to
depend on the farmers left be-
hind all over the planet to sup-
port us,” he said.
The extra income luring
people to urban areas, even if
they make $2 a day and live in a
slum, is spent on food, he said.
“The growing population is
very complex and very huge,
and it’s on us” to feed that pop-
ulation, he said.
Thanks to rapidly advancing
technology, farmers are able to
deliver nutrients to crops in a
much more precise manner,
increasing yields and quality
while protecting the environ-
ment, he said.
Corn yields, for example,
have skyrocketed from 138
bushels per acre in 1994 to 171
bushels per acre in 2014, push-
ing U.S. corn production from
about 6 billion bushels a year
to more than 14 billion bushels,
he said.
That increase represents 20
million virtual acres thanks to
modern technology at roughly
the same time 23 million acres
of farmland — the size of In-
diana — was lost to develop-
ment, he said.
The sales of agrochemi-
cals and seed is a $100 billion
global industry, with chemical
sales at $63.2 billion and seed
sales at $40.5 billion in 2014.
In 2013, the sale of biotech seed
exceeded sales of conventional
seed for the first time, he said.
“We crossed that line, and
we’re never going back,” he
said.
In addition, gene silencing is
on the horizon, he said.
“It’s really exciting stuff.
What we have to do is figure
out how to be better at com-
municating the safety than we
were on biotechnology,” he
said.
With further advances in
technology, U.S. corn produc-
tion is on track to hit 23 billion
to 24 billion bushels by 2053,
he said.
Monsanto hiring in Idaho, Report finds cost of raising Idaho spuds up
despite cutbacks elsewhere
dollar for what their production
By JOHN O’CONNELL
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
SODA SPRINGS, Idaho
— Officials with Monsanto
say their company’s locations
in the Northwest likely won’t
be hard hit by planned lay-
offs, driven by a slowdown in
product sales.
The St. Louis-based agri-
cultural company announced
on Jan. 6 its board of direc-
tors had approved the final
details of a plan to cut 3,600
positions globally in order
to save $500 million an-
nually by the end of Fiscal
Year 2018. With sales slow-
ing and commodity prices
down, Monsanto announced
last June it would seek to cut
costs, said Christi Dixon, a
spokeswoman based at the
corporate headquarters.
Dixon said the company
disclosed plans to cut 2,600
positions in October to save
up to $300 million per year,
and announced plans to cut
another 1,000 positions in
January.
“When complete, we ex-
pect the changes will enable
us to transform and innovate
the way we work, resulting in
a more agile and focused or-
ganization,” Dixon said.
Monsanto has five facili-
ties in Idaho, including a plant
in Soda Springs that refines
phosphate for making Round-
up herbicide, a new Wheat
Technology Center and a
Seminis Vegetable Seeds,
Inc., facility in Filer, and veg-
etable seed plants in Nampa
and Payette. The company
also has a vegetable seed plant
in Morton, Wash.
Dixon said the company
has avoided offering specific
details on “changes or reduc-
tions by function or region”
because its plans are still
evolving.
But John Anderson, a hu-
man resources official with
Monsanto’s Soda Springs
plant, takes it as a good sign
for his facility that the compa-
ny is currently adding staff.
“We had put in a request
for an additional headcount
last year,” Anderson said.
“After they announced the ad-
ditional layoffs, they told us
we were still OK to go ahead
with the hiring.”
Anderson said Monsanto
added 15 new workers at the
Soda Springs plant in Novem-
ber and December and will be
adding three new employees
in January.
Dixon said Monsanto will
also be adding jobs at some
other U.S. locations “as part
of our transformation.”
“We’re still hiring in areas
where skills are needed,” Dix-
on said.
Anderson said some of
the Soda Springs hires are re-
placing employees who have
retired, but there are also sev-
eral newly created positions.
Anderson explained Monsan-
to is installing high-tech robot
arms to remove molten slag
from the Soda Springs furnac-
es — a process that has been
done manually. He said the
technology is intended to pro-
tect workers from exposure
to the slag, which is loaded
into a pot and poured down
the side of a hill. Following
the change, workers will still
be needed to control the ro-
bot arms, plus new specialists
will have to be hired to repair
them.
Monsanto
spokesman
Trent Clark said the arms in-
corporate advanced technol-
ogy.
“It’s not just safer. We’re
pushing the edge of robotics
with this arm,” Clark said.
Capital Press
POCATELLO, Idaho —
The cost of raising potatoes
in Idaho was generally up in
2015 because growers had to
increase spraying for potato
psyllids and late blight, ac-
cording to a new report.
Paul Patterson, a retired
University of Idaho Exten-
sion economist who authored
the report as a consultant for
the Idaho Potato Commis-
sion, estimated the cost per
hundredweight of producing
fumigated Russet Burbanks at
$7.25 in southwest Idaho, up
3.7 percent; $7.02 in southcen-
tral Idaho, up 1.4 percent and
John O’Connell/Capital Press
Potatoes are hauled from the field during the 2015 harvest in Idaho
Falls. University of Idaho economists say the production costs
increased for most producers because of increased spraying for
potato psyllids and late blight.
$6.73 in Eastern Idaho, down
1.9 percent.
Per-acre production costs,
with fumigation, were up 1.7
percent in southwest Idaho,
2.6 percent in southcentral Ida-
ho and 2.2 percent in Eastern
Idaho.
“Growers in Idaho are only
getting about 75 cents on the
cost is,” Patterson said. His es-
timates factor in costs such as
what growers who own their
land could earn by leasing it.
Patterson was also hired
by United Potato Growers of
America to do production cost
reports for Washington, Wis-
consin and Colorado. He esti-
mated the per-hundredweight
cost of producing fumigated
Burbanks in Washington at
$7.24.
He said the cost of raising
Russet Norkotahs without fu-
migation in Colorado at $7.29
per hundredweight and the
cost of raising fumigated Nor-
kotahs in Wisconsin at $6.96
per hundredweight.
Proposal would codify landmark stock water decision into law
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
BOISE — A bill will be pro-
posed during the 2016 Idaho
Legislature that seeks to codi-
fy into state statute a landmark
Idaho Supreme Court decision
on who owns stock watering
rights on federal land.
After fighting the U.S. Bu-
reau of Land Management in
court for more than a decade,
Owyhee County ranchers Tim
Lowry and Paul Nettleton were
vindicated when the state’s su-
preme court ruled in their favor
in 2007.
The parties filed overlap-
ping claims to
in-stream stock
watering rights
during the Snake
River Basin Ad-
judication. The
Supreme Court
Lowry
unanimous -
ly ruled in the
ranchers’ favor because the fed-
eral government doesn’t own
cows and can’t put the water to
beneficial use.
The BLM argued that be-
cause the federal government
allowed the ranchers to graze
their animals on the land, the
ranchers were agents of the
government, so the government
owned the water rights.
But many ranchers in the
area started grazing on that land
long before the BLM even ex-
isted, said Justice Dan Eismann,
who wrote the court’s decision.
“People did not come West
to be agents of the federal gov-
ernment, so that was easily re-
jected,” he told legislators and
ranchers recently during an
Idaho Farm Bureau Federation
water rights conference.
In this case, “water fights on
federal land are appurtenant to
the person who is watering the
stock,” Eismann said.
Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Mid-
vale, will propose legislation
that codifies the ranchers’ victo-
ry into state law, something the
Utah Legislature did in 2008.
“These people are heroes,”
Utah Farm Bureau CEO Randy
Parker said of Lowry and Net-
tleton during the Farm Bureau
event. “What they’ve done has
underpinned the reality that
these waters are the property
of the state and they are private
property rights that belong to
the individuals.”
Boyle said it’s shameful
that Idaho still hasn’t followed
Utah’s example eight years later.
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