May 6, 2016
CapitalPress.com
3
What’s Upstream fi nally makes impression on Wash. lawmakers
Senator: ‘Total
waste of money’
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
A campaign funded by the
U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency to sway Washington
legislators apparently went
unnoticed during the 2016 ses-
sion, but it’s getting unfl atter-
ing attention now.
The chairmen of the Senate
and House agriculture com-
mittees Tuesday criticized the
What’s Upstream advocacy
campaign, saying it reinforced
negative views of the EPA as
an overreaching agency.
“If they truly did agree to
this lobbying, someone with
the EPA needs to be held ac-
countable, not just a slap on
the wrist, but held accountable
for violating the law,” said
House Agriculture Committee
Chairman Brian Blake, D-Ab-
erdeen.
What’s Upstream has an-
gered some federal lawmakers,
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Washington House Agriculture
Committee Chairman Brian
Blake says U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency offi cials
should be held accountable if
they broke the law in supporting
the What’s Upstream advocacy
campaign directed at state
lawmakers.
who allege the EPA has broken
laws related to lobbying and
unauthorized spending.
The campaign, however,
was ostensibly directed at state
lawmakers. The campaign’s
lead organizer, the Swinom-
ish Indian tribe, set a goal of
changing state water-pollution
35,000
On average, there were more than 28,000 food manufactur-
ing jobs statewide in 2015, up 3.7 percent from 2014.
25,000
Source: Oregon Employment Dept.
Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
20,000
2009
2012
2015
Oregon’s food processing
companies lead statewide
manufacturing revival
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
Oregon’s food process-
ing jobs reached an all-
time high in 2015 and led a
statewide manufacturing re-
bound that outpaced the rest
of the country, according to
a new report.
Josh Lehner, an econo-
mist with the state Office
of Economic Analysis who
tracks trends, said other
states have regained only
one-third of the manufac-
turing jobs they lost in the
recession.
“Then there’s Oregon,”
Lehner wrote in his most
recent post, “Oregon Man-
ufacturing in Perspective.”
Oregon has regained
nearly two-thirds of its lost
manufacturing jobs, and is
adding jobs at a 4 percent
annual rate in recent years,
Lehner said.
Food processing has been
a persistent bright spot in the
state economy. It was the
only Oregon manufacturing
sector that didn’t leak jobs
during the recession, and the
only one to reach an all-time
high during the recovery.
Lehner said Oregon
counted 28,019 food manu-
facturing jobs in 2015, with
an average wage of $39,463.
More than a quarter of the
jobs, 7,553, were in frozen
food processing such as is
done at plants operated by
NORPAC Foods Inc.
Lehner said Oregon food
processing probably does
well for a couple reasons.
The state’s producers and
plants are geographical-
ly centered between major
markets, and the state grows
a wide variety of crops.
“The mix we have local-
ly is doing really well,” he
said.
In his post, Lehner not-
Online
To see the report, go to http://
bit.ly/24nYP0U
“I’d like to see what
the (jobs) graph looks
like in three to fi ve
years. I don’t see
agricultural production
dwindling, but there
will not necessarily be
more jobs.”
Geoff Horning, executive
director of Oregon Aglink
ed some caution. He said
the strong U.S. dollar and
slower global economy may
tamp down food processing
and other manufacturing
gains. Also, outside high-
tech, manufacturing no
longer pays wages that are
substantially above other
sectors, he said.
Geoff Horning, executive
director of Oregon Aglink,
formerly the Agri-Business
Council of Oregon, said
the food manufacturing job
numbers drive home the im-
portant role of agriculture in
the state’s economy.
But Horning said a cou-
ple factors cloud the hori-
zon. The increase in Ore-
gon’s minimum wage will
make production more cost-
ly, and labor is hard to find
these days, he said. Auto-
mation may become more
prevalent.
“I’d like to see what the
(jobs) graph looks like in
three to five years,” he said.
“I don’t see agricultural
production dwindling, but
there will not necessarily be
more jobs.”
Grass Expertise
closure Commission spokes-
woman Lori Anderson said
groups that organize grass-
roots lobbying must register
if they spend at least $700 in
a month or $1,400 over three
months.
What’s Upstream did not
register. “We haven’t heard
about them before now,” An-
derson said Wednesday.
The Swinomish tribe hired
a Seattle public relations fi rm
in 2012 and formed a partner-
ship with several environmen-
tal groups. The campaign was
begun by 2013, according to
EPA records, but apparently
had little impact.
Longview Rep. Dean Tak-
ko, the top-ranking Democrat
on the Senate Agriculture
Committee, took his fi rst
look at the website Tuesday.
“It looks like someone went
out of their way to make
farmers look like bad guys,”
he said. “If you want to see
water that color (brown),
wait until a good rain, espe-
cially on this (west) side of
the mountains.”
Capital Press
22,136
2006
“I don’t know if they were
working on the What’s Up-
stream campaign at that point.
I hadn’t heard of that until
much more recently. But,
yeah, it would tie with what
the goals are of protecting the
salmon,” Stanford said.
The bill was referred to the
House Agriculture Committee,
and Blake declined to give it a
hearing.
Blake said the bill would
have undermined voluntary
farmland preservation efforts
by imposing uniform-sized
buffers.
“You may get 95 percent
of the benefi t with 10 feet of
buffer. Adding another 90 feet
makes no sense. It’s taking
land out of production with
very little benefi t,” he said.
Efforts to reach Wasserman
were unsuccessful.
By the time the Legisla-
ture convened in January, the
Swinomish tribe already had
spent an estimated $570,000
on the campaign, according to
EPA records.
Washington Public Dis-
By SEAN ELLIS
28,019
(Average annual employment)
in their opinion,” she said.
Visitors to the What’s Up-
stream website were urged
to “take action” by sending a
form letter to state legislators
asking for mandatory 100-foot
buffers between farm fi elds
and waterways.
The link has been removed
from the website. The EPA
previously said the link did not
violate prohibitions on using
federal funds to lobby because
the letter did not take a position
on specifi c pending legislation.
The Swinomish tribe, how-
ever, had been involved in a
proposal presented during the
2016 session to require buffers
on some farmland.
Rep. Derek Stanford,
D-Bothell, introduced a bill to
require property owners partic-
ipating in a voluntary farmland
preservation program to leave
buffers along salmon-bearing
waterways.
Stanford said Tuesday that
he worked for many months
on the proposal with the tribe’s
environmental policy director,
Larry Wasserman.
Idaho sheep video gets 262,000 YouTube views
Oregon food manufacturing jobs
30,000
control laws by this year, ac-
cording to EPA records.
Blake and Senate Agricul-
ture Committee Chairwom-
an Judy Warnick, R-Moses
Lake, said they learned about
the EPA-funded campaign af-
ter the Legislature adjourned
March 10.
“It was a total waste of time
and money if they were trying
to get my attention,” Warnick
said. “The only attention they
got from me was a negative
impression.
“I was angry about how
it was paid for, how it came
about and even more angry
about where the actual picture
of cows came from,” said War-
nick, referring to a What’s Up-
stream billboard photo of cows
in a stream that was taken in
Amish country.
Warnick said she’s met
constituents who see the
EPA-funded campaign as
more evidence government is
hostile toward agriculture.
“To have an agency like
EPA come in and do some-
thing like this is over-the-top,
WILDER, Idaho — A
23-minute video about Ida-
ho sheep has generated a lot
of attention on YouTube and
nobody is quite sure why.
The video has been
viewed more than 262,000
times since it was posted in
June 2013.
It features Wilder sheep
rancher Frank Shirts and
some of his 28,000 ewes and
lambs. Shirts speaks openly
about the love he has for the
job and the challenges he
faces.
Shirts said though he’s
“tickled to death over” the
video’s success, he’s not sur-
prised by it because a lot of
people love sheep.
“It wasn’t me,” he said.
“The people that watched
it won’t even remember my
name. People love seeing
those baby lambs.”
Most of the 58 comments
below the video are posi-
tive, and it has received 568
“likes” and 33 “dislikes.”
Shirts said he’s most hap-
py that the video has shed
some light on some of the
positive aspects of the sheep
industry.
“If it can help our indus-
try, that’s the main thing I’m
happy to see,” he said.
The video was produced
by Steve Stuebner for Life
on the Range, an Idaho
Rangeland Resource Com-
mission educational out-
reach campaign that informs
people about Idaho ranchers.
Stuebner followed Shirts
and his flock for an en-
tire year as the sheep were
moved from the low coun-
try near the Snake River to
higher country in the Boise
and Payette national forests.
“He just walked us
through the whole process
of raising lambs and graz-
ing across public and private
land to the point they are
ready to get shipped to mar-
ket,” Stuebner said.
The 262,000 views is a lot
for a simple farming video,
said Jake Putnam, broadcast
services manager for Idaho
Farm Bureau Federation.
“It just shows the Amer-
ican people are very curi-
ous about where their food
comes,” he said. “They’re
also very curious about
farmers and ranchers and
they like to put names and
faces to their food.”
The Shirts video is one of
30 in the Life on the Range
series and is by far the most
popular, with second place
registering 47,000 views.
Courtesy of Steve Stuebner
Wilder, Idaho, sheep rancher Frank Shirts speaks to a fi lm crew while shooting footage for a video that
has been viewed more than 262,000 times on YouTube.
IRRC Executive Director
Gretchen Hyde said she has
no idea why the Shirts video
is so popular.
She said none of the vid-
eos is scripted.
“It’s really them talking
from the heart, which is the
most effective way to reach
the public,” she said. “I
think that comes through re-
ally well.”
The videos cover a wide
variety of range-related top-
ics, from how to get a BLM
permit to photo monitoring
to how ranchers are taking
care of Idaho’s rangelands
and managing them for mul-
tiple uses.
“We’re letting people
know the positive stories
going on on the rangeland;
the diversity of ranches and
rangeland issues and how
people are individually han-
dling them,” Hyde said.
To view the Shirts video,
search online for, “A year in
the life of raising sheep in
Idaho.” To view the other
videos, go to www.lifeon-
therange.org.
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