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April 22, 2016
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O ur V iew
EPA funds water quality campaign to mislead public
T
he controversy over
the Environmental
Protection Agency’s role
in an advertising and social
media campaign to influence
Washington state pollution-
control laws continues to grow.
More members of Congress
are asking the EPA to explain
what it knew about What’s
Upstream, the campaign launched
by the Northwest Indian Fisheries
Commission and Swinomish
Indian tribe using funding from
an EPA grant.
The campaign’s goal was to
convince Washingtonians to press
for increased regulation to protect
their water.
Oh, there’s trouble, they say a
la Professor Harold Hill, terrible,
terrible trouble.
Just one problem.
Washingtonians don’t think they
have a water quality problem,
according to a survey conducted
by a public relations firm for the
tribe.
“Water quality is not a top-
of-mind concern for most
Washingtonians and their
opinions on this issue are
malleable,” stated a memo from
Strategies 360 to a tribe official.
“There is no clearly defined
problem in people’s minds, as
most do not perceive a problem
with existing water quality.”
So Strategies 360 developed
a marketing plan to build
public support for a “regulatory
remedy,” setting farmers up as the
patsy.
The campaign developed
a website and social media
accounts, and erected two
billboards that feature a
photograph of three cows
standing in a stream.
Now it turns out the photos
used in the campaign don’t depict
Washington cows standing in
Washington streams. No, three of
these cows are on an Amish farm
and others are across the Atlantic
in England.
“When you look at the
imagery, it’s a very clear that
it’s a sophisticated attempt to
create outrage against farmers,”
said Gerald Baron, director
of Save Family Farming, an
advocacy group in northwestern
Washington. “It’s designed to
create a real ‘yuck’ factor and
blame farmers.”
Chris Wilke, director of Puget
Soundkeeper, one of several
environmental groups connected
to What’s Upstream, defended
the content, including the
images.
“There are fish dying, cows
in streams and cows crapping
near streams and areas with zero
riparian buffers. Regardless of
where the photos are sourced,
they do tell a story,” he said.
So did the Brothers Grimm.
To recap: The public didn’t
perceive that there’s a problem
with water quality, so campaign
backers needed to gin up imagery
and a fall guy that would move
the public to demand increased
regulations. They just couldn’t
find real examples in Washington
that would illustrate what they
say is a persistent and dangerous
problem.
It’s happening, they say, but it
was just easier to illustrate it with
stock photographs of out-of-state
Amish cows and animals in Great
Britain.
For the campaign’s backers,
the ends justify the means. It
seems a bit slippery to us, and
should raise questions for the
people of Washington.
Farmers do more
than feed the world
By KATIE HEGER
For the Capital Press
W
Rik Dalvit/For the Capital Press
O ur V iew
W. Oregon plan attacked from all sides
I
n the 21st century, government
agencies follow a step-by-
step protocol for any resource
management plans they put together.
It goes something like this:
• Talk about the plan.
• Write the plan.
• Show the plan to people.
• Change the plan to reflect what
people said.
• Get sued by special interest
groups.
• Defend the plan in court.
• Rewrite the plan according to
what the judge decides.
This protocol appears to be in
play as the U.S. Bureau of Land
Management puts together its Western
Oregon Resource Management Plan
and Final Environmental Impact
Statement. The plan will guide BLM
leaders in the decades to come as they
try to manage the 2.5 million-acre
legal mine field of forests and other
public land in the western portion of
the state.
Included are the Coos Bay,
Eugene, Medford, Roseburg and
Salem BLM districts, and the
Klamath Falls field office of the
Lakeview District.
Neither the timber industry nor the
conservation industry like the plan,
which, by our lights, offers hope that
some level of balance may ultimately
be achieved.
Complicating the plan is the
legal requirement to protect the
northern spotted owl, which is listed
as threatened under the federal
Endangered Species Act. Because the
owls like old-growth forests, their
presence can limit the amount of
timber that can be cut.
The timber industry, however,
is right to want to talk about more
logging, since the barred owl, an
aggressive cousin, appears to threaten
the spotted owl more than cutting
trees.
The conservation industry
objects that the plan somehow offers
the timber industry too much, an
argument that can best be described
as laughable. About 75 percent of the
land in the plan bans logging.
Conservationists further argue that
not cutting timber would somehow
reinvigorate the region’s economy
— again revealing a robust sense of
humor.
We have already seen what not
cutting timber does to the region’s
economy, and it isn’t reinvigorating.
Counties that receive a portion of
the money from timber harvests on
former Oregon & California Railroad
land are especially unhappy. They
have been financially struggling since
the logging there was first stopped.
Some have teetered on the verge of
collapse. About 80 percent of the
land covered by the new BLM plan is
O&C land.
The counties had hoped the plan
would allow more logging as a
means of re-inflating a financial life
raft.
Our hope is that all of the groups
will give their lawyers the day
off and, if they have problems that
deserve discussion, sit at a table and
work them out with BLM’s managers
in a way that accomplishes the goals
of adequately protecting the resources
and offering sufficient timber to
improve the region’s economy.
We may be naive, but we believe
such a resolution can be achieved.
If that proves to be the case it would
be unique in an era when lawsuits
are seen as a first resort for resolving
nearly every dispute.
e’re probably all
familiar with the
phrase, “Farmers
feed the world.” And, yes,
farmers truly do feed the
world. Some from a very
small-scale farm to pro-
vide for their own family
or neighbors and others for
larger markets near and far,
but the phrase itself has
started to irritate me. It is
just so cliché and doesn’t
nearly cover all that agricul-
ture is about. On our family
farm, we do so much more
than feed the world.
Now, let me explain.
Yes, my farm grows crops
and some of those crops
are made into food prod-
ucts such as bread, tofu, soy
milk, wheat cereal flakes
and refried beans. But that
is not all. Much of our crops
are used to make things like
ink, insulation, crayons, car-
pet, livestock feed and etha-
nol. Not all of what is grown
on my farm and many other
farms solely provides a com-
modity that is used as food
— food that is used to feed
a growing population here
in my small rural town and
places all over the world.
So what do we do on our
farm besides grow food,
livestock feed, soybeans
for insulation and crayons,
and corn for ethanol? We
analyze the soil looking for
its specific nutrient values;
we enrich our knowledge
base by attending classes;
we shovel and scoop; we
climb and sweep; we plan
and evaluate; we repair; we
research new seeds available
and weed issues; we plant
and harvest, and nurture and
protect the plants that grow
in our fields. We make deci-
sions every minute of every
day to be sustainable and
leave this third-generation
farm better for the upcoming
generations.
On our farm we draw
out an outline, perhaps one
would say the frame of a
puzzle with the squiggly
lines defining interior piec-
es. Each one of those inte-
rior pieces is a plot of land
we farm. Then we identify
Readers’ views
Sorting out the
buy-local study’s
winners, losers
Your issue of April 8,
2016, reports that a mathe-
matical model of commodity
exchange developed by Uni-
versity of Idaho economists
demonstrates that regional
specialization and trade leads
to greater efficiency and thus
prompts the conclusion that
the buy-local food movement
is a bad idea.
While the model may be
accurate, the conclusion is
certainly wrong on grounds
of fairness and the looming
climate catastrophe we now
face.
By its nature, a model
that examines the efficiency
of exchange within an eco-
nomic system must take that
system’s structure as given,
the results reflect the exist-
ing distribution of wealth,
income and power; the mod-
el has no tools to assess the
fairness or desirability of the
outcome.
With economic theories
of trade, it can be shown that
while there are always losers
and winners from trading, it
is often the case that the gains
of the winners are greater than
the losses of the losers, so that
the winners could afford to
compensate the losers and still
retain a margin; some traders
would be better off and none
worse off.
When specialization takes
place, it is producers who
specialize and trade, and we
should expect to find that the
largest, best capitalized, most
nimble producers in a special-
Guest
comment
Katie Heger
soil types and nutrient lev-
els in various places on each
field, layering one level of
information onto the base of
the puzzle, piece by piece.
Then we take the available
seed varieties, match them
to the soil type, weed and
disease pressure, and any in-
sect issues. (And yes, we do
use some seed that has been
researched and developed
to be resistant to pests and
weed controls to meet our
needs, raise a healthy crop
and attempt to minimize
applications of substances
aiding in growing healthy
plants. These genetically
modified seeds are one of
many tools we use to grow
healthy crops.)
We then transfer all the
information into a comput-
er program, called Precision
Farming software, in our
planter and seeder to plant
the seeds. We also use that
information in the sprayer to
care for plants as they grow.
We can monitor how
much seed is planted, how
far apart the seeds are plant-
ed, how much fertilizer and
exactly where it is placed,
and adjust these setting as
we go. That means that we
can take a map and data from
the past years, analyze it and
know that certain parts of a
field grow a smaller amount
of crop than another. We
then can adjust how much
seed and nutrients we place
in those areas.
The future of farming is
much more than planting a
few seeds to feed the world.
It is technology, ongoing
training, sharing our story,
protecting our rights and
preserving our resources for
generations to come.
Katie Heger, a dedicated
advocate for agriculture,
blogs at hegerfamilyfarms.
wordpress.com and shares at
Heger Farms on Facebook.
Katie and her husband farm
corn, soybeans and wheat in
central North Dakota. Cour-
tesy of the American Farm
Bureau Federation.
Letters policy
izing region do most of it, at
the expense of the smaller,
less nimble.
But the U.S. economic sys-
tem lacks effective political
and regulatory mechanisms to
enforce compensation to the
losers, so the rich (agriculture
included) get richer and the
poor get poorer. This is the
central theme of the current
presidential contest, ask ei-
ther Donald Trump or Bernie
Sanders.
Every ton of food moved
an additional mile by truck,
train or container ship is an
explicit commitment to not
doing enough to avert our im-
pending climate catastrophe.
The dollar cost of shipping is
not the true cost, but the burn-
ing of fossil fuels required to
do it. The true cost of shipping
apples to Florida in exchange
for oranges to Washington
is the certainty that one day
Florida will be too wet (or un-
der water) to produce oranges
and Washington will be too
hot and dry (or hot and wet) to
produce apples.
Peter M. Gladhart
Dayton, Ore.
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