February 19, 2016
CapitalPress.com
Businessman hopes to regain control of nursery
Bob Terry’s Fisher
Farms was seized
by bank in 2015
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Despite losing control of
his nursery company last year,
Bob Terry isn’t eager to exit the
industry.
In fact, Terry said he hopes
to regain ownership of Fisher
Farms, a nursery in Gaston,
Ore., which he ran for nearly
20 years before his lender, Ra-
bobank, seized the operation in
2015 as collateral for debt.
“I’m not the typical 70-year
old,” he said. “Bob Terry is not
going to sit on the front porch
and whittle whistles.”
Management of the nursery
was turned over to a receiver-
ship irm, Global Ventures, Inc.,
which was appointed to recoup
as much as possible of the $16
million that Rabobank claims
it’s owed by Fisher Farms.
Though a stipulated court
agreement prevents him from
becoming involved in the
company’s management until
mid-2016, Terry said he wants
to take an operational role —
potentially with the backing of
investors — once that provision
expires.
“I took it from a small farm
to a large business,” he said.
WSDA to
host open
houses on
gypsy moths
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
The Washington State De-
partment of Agriculture will
host open houses around West-
ern Washington to explain why
it will attack gypsy moths by
spraying pesticides over cities.
WSDA will wage an aerial
campaign in the spring against
leaf-eating gypsy moths in
Seattle, Tacoma, Kent, Gig
Harbor, Lacey, Nisqually and
Vancouver. The department
plans to spray a total of 10,450
acres, including 130 acres in
the densely populated Seattle
neighborhood, Capitol Hill.
WSDA has routinely
sprayed since 1979 to eradi-
cate gypsy moths, a scourge in
Eastern and Great Lakes states
and a threat to the Christmas
tree, nursery and timber indus-
tries.
The department has not
sprayed in Seattle since 2006,
when a pesticide application
encountered protests and with-
stood a court challenge.
The Oregon Department of
Agriculture plans to spay 8,674
acres in North Portland to erad-
icate gypsy moths.
Egg masses attached to the
personal belongings of new
residents moving from infected
states could potentially intro-
duce gypsy moths to the North-
west.
WSDA typically sprays an
area three times over several
weeks to kill emerging caterpil-
lars. At the open houses, WSDA
staff members will show maps
and have material on the pesti-
cide Bacillius thuringiensis var.
kurstaki, commonly known as
Btk.
WSDA last summer trapped
42 gypsy moths, the most since
2006. Some 22 European gyp-
sy moths were caught on Cap-
itol Hill.
WSDA will spray the oth-
er areas because Asian gypsy
moths were detected. Asian
gypsy moths are considered
more dangerous to plants be-
cause females can ly, while
European gypsy moth females
are lightless.
Asian gypsy moths had
not been found in Washington
since 1999.
Each open house will be
5:30 to 7 p.m. The dates and
places are:
• Feb. 23, Kent Memorial
Park, 850 N. Central Ave., Kent
• Feb. 24, Miller Community
Center, 330 19th Ave. E., Seattle
• March 1, Vancouver Public
Library, 901 C St.
• March 3, Olympia View Ele-
mentary School, 1330 Horne St.
N.E., Olympia
• March 10, Fabulich Center,
3600 Port of Tacoma Road, Ta-
coma.
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Bob Terry, who ran Fisher Farms for roughly 20 years before his bank put the nursery into receivership
in 2015, hopes to regain control of the company. Terry also serves on the Board of Commissioners for
Oregon’s Washington County.
The inancial pitfalls of the
nursery industry are nothing
new for Terry, who was intro-
duced to the industry in the late
1980s when he was recruited
as a turnaround expert for the
ailing Oregon Garden Products
nursery.
Though he came into the
business with practically no ex-
perience with plants, he was in-
trigued enough by the industry
to buy his own nursery, Fisher
Farms, in 1996. For the past
ive years, he’s also served on
the Washington County Board
of Commissioners.
Terry said he’s proud of his
company’s accomplishments:
It’s one of a handful of plant
producers certiied by USDA
for overseas exports and owns
numerous licenses for plant
varieties. At its peak size, the
company produced nursery
stock across 250 acres in Gas-
ton, Sherwood and Dayton.
According to court records,
Fisher Farms took out an oper-
ating line of credit from Rabo-
bank in 2011 for $10.5 million,
using the nursery’s assets as
collateral. That line of credit
was extended several times,
with the last extension ending
Dec. 31, 2014.
Ownership of the nurs-
ery’s real estate was conveyed
in 2011 under a forbearance
agreement to a subsidiary of
Rabobank, which sold off all
the sites except for the Gaston
location.
Fisher Farms then began
renting that land back from
Rabobank’s subsidiary to con-
tinue production, but the lender
claims that by 2015 the nursery
defaulted on the lease.
According to court records,
the nursery failed to repay its
loans and in June 2015 the bank
petitioned the court to appoint a
receiver to take over the nurs-
ery’s inventory, equipment and
accounts, which served as col-
lateral. At that time, Rabobank
asserted that Fisher Farms debt
had grown to more than $15
million.
The receiver, Global Ven-
tures, later reported that the
company had debts of $15.9
million and assets of $7.1 mil-
lion.
It also ired the nursery’s
operations manager for “lack
of proper inventory controls
and a willful act of insubordi-
nation.” Global Ventures said
that Fisher Farms was missing
more than 200,000 plants in its
inventory, which it attributed
not to theft but to a lack of pa-
perwork maintenance.
Terry obrects to this charac-
terization, countering that the
company meticulously tracked
its inventory, including phys-
ically taking stock of plants
twice a year.
Global Ventures’ executives
terminated the operations man-
ager for knowing more than they
did, not because any plants were
actually missing, Terry said.
Terry also claims that his
company owed slightly less than
$15 million, but the amount was
inlated by expenses incurred by
the Global Ventures.
“The receiver likes to make it
look worse than it is, because it
makes them look good,” he said.
Mark Boyd, president and
CEO of Global Ventures, said
that, as a court-appointed receiv-
er, it wouldn’t be appropriate for
him to comment on the situa-
tion. An attorney representing
Rabobank, Joe VanLeuven, said
5
the bank could not comment
about a borrower due to coni-
dentiality laws.
Fisher Farms sustained loss-
es of $2.4 million in 2013, less
than $1 million in 2014 and
more than $1 million during the
irst half of 2015, according to a
receiver’s report. By late 2015,
Global Ventures claimed that the
nursery had generated a proit of
roughly $1 million.
The losses were caused by
a plunge in demand for nurs-
ery stock following the housing
meltdown, which the nursery
industry began to feel as early
as 2007, said Terry.
Financial problems were
widespread in the nursery in-
dustry after the inancial crisis,
said Bob Boyle, senior vice
president at Northwest Farm
Credit Services, who said he
could not comment on Fisher
Farms in particular.
“It went through a very bru-
tal cycle,” Boyle said.
Even so, Terry contends that
his fortunes were improving in
2015 and the company would
have generated a strong proit
in 2016.
He attributed Rabobank’s
decision to place Fisher Farms
into receivership to the Neth-
erlands-based company’s own
inancial quandaries related
to turmoil in the eurozone,
which prompted it to divest
nursery assets, he said.
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