10 CapitalPress.com
June 3, 2016
N. Calif. rice growers wrap up near-normal planting season
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
Courtesy of NAWG
Chandler Goule is the new
CEO of the National Associa-
tion of Wheat Growers.
Wheat
growers
organization
names
new CEO
The National Association
of Wheat Growers has cho-
sen a new chief executive
officer.
Chandler Goule, current-
ly senior vice president of
programs for the National
Farmers Union, will take
over as the new CEO for
NAWG on July 5, the orga-
nization announced.
Goule will also become
executive director of the
National Wheat Foundation.
“The U.S. wheat indus-
try is poised to reach new
heights in both production
and quality,” Goule said
in a NAWG press release.
“I am thrilled and honored
to have this opportunity to
work alongside our nation-
al wheat grower leaders
in positioning NAWG and
NWF as pre-eminent wheat
advocacy and educational
organizations as we begin
to develop strategy for mak-
ing wheat a major player in
the drafting of the next farm
bill.”
NAWG conducted a na-
tionwide search for a new
CEO to fill the vacancy
left by Jim Palmer, who an-
nounced in April his inten-
tion to step down to spend
more time with family and
on his Missouri farm.
“With our industry at a
critical juncture, we know
that with Chandler’s guid-
ance, NAWG will be in a
great position to advocate
on behalf of all wheat farm-
ers,” NAWG president Gor-
don Stoner said in the press
release.
Goule holds degrees from
Texas A&M and George
Washington
University,
and was a subcommittee
staff director for the House
Agriculture Committee be-
fore moving to the National
Farmers Union in 2009 as
vice president of govern-
ment relations, according
to the NAWG press release.
He was appointed senior
vice president of NFU pro-
grams in 2014.
Online
http://bit.ly/1U9nJX7
WILLIAMS, Calif. —
Rice growers in Northern
California are wrapping
up what turned out to be a
near-normal planting season,
as spring rains enabled them
to boost acreage.
After the big storms
in March, the state’s rice
acreage will likely end up
near 500,000, said Charley
Mathews, a Marysville, Ca-
lif., grower and USA Rice
Federation executive com-
mittee member.
That’s up significantly
from the National Agricul-
tural Statistics Service’s pre-
diction in early March that
growers would seed rice on
427,000 acres, only 1 per-
cent more than the acreage
seeded last year.
“Everything changed in
about a two-week period,”
Mathews said.
The early estimate was
based on a survey of grow-
ers before the March rains
materialized, Mathews said.
Though many Northern
California growers are get-
ting their full allocations of
surface water this year, re-
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
A rice field near Williams, Calif., is prepared for planting in late April. Spring rains have given most
growers in the Sacramento Valley the water they needed for a near-normal planting season.
duced prices and lingering
uncertainty among water
suppliers caused farmers to
initially be conservative in
their planting plans.
However, thanks to the
advent of improved rainfall
and recovering reservoirs
across the region, farmers
now say they’re back to
planting more of a normal
crop this season, the Califor-
nia Farm Bureau Federation
reports.
The plantings come even
though a global surplus in
rice is still weighing down
prices and California farm-
ers are facing more compe-
tition from farmers in other
parts of the world growing
medium-grain rice, the Farm
Bureau notes.
Rice averaged $376.05
per metric ton in April, up
slightly from $370.48 in
March but down signifi-
cantly from a peak of more
than $600 per metric ton in
2011 and 2012, according to
the Index Mundi online data
portal.
The near-normal plant-
ings follow drought-di-
minished seasons in 2014
and 2015, when growers
in the Golden State plant-
ed 431,000 acres and about
370,000 acres, respectively,
according to NASS.
Growers
encountered
occasional showers during
this year’s planting, but they
didn’t put the season signifi-
cantly behind schedule.
“Rain during the spring-
time is spotty as some ar-
eas get more than others,”
Mathews said. “I think
we’ll harvest on time.
We’re a little later than last
year planting-wise, but de-
pending on what the sum-
mer does I think we’ll be
fine.”
Workers paid
in blueberry
wage case
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
Courtesy of Idaho Power Co.
Idaho Power Co. crews maintain a cloud seeding generator in the mountains above Garden Valley, Idaho. The Idaho Water Resource
Board and the state’s irrigators are stepping up their contributions to the utility’s program.
Irrigators step up cloud seeding support
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
BOISE — Idaho water
managers have stepped up
funding to help Idaho Pow-
er Co. continue building a
cloud seeding program that’s
already been credited with
making sizable contributions
to the state’s mountain snow-
pack.
The program releases
silver iodide into the at-
mosphere, either from 53
remotely operated ground-
based generators or from
three leased aircraft, to serve
as additional ice nuclei in the
clouds and enhance precipita-
tion. Idaho Power estimates
additional snowpack result-
ing from the program, which
it started in 2003, yields an
average of 800,000 acre-feet
of water — which is roughly
half the volume of the Amer-
ican Falls Reservoir and gen-
erates enough hydro-power
to supply 17,000 homes.
Idaho Power engineer-
ing leader Jon Bowling said
heading forward, irrigation
organizations, the Idaho Wa-
ter Resource Board and Ida-
ho Power will each shoulder
roughly a third of the pro-
gram’s cost.
“We wouldn’t want our
customers to bear the full cost
of a program other stakehold-
ers benefit from,” Bowling
said. “I think we’ve had a pret-
ty good reception to the collab-
orative funding mechanism.”
The board contributed
23-7/#5
$500,000 two years ago to
help the program add infra-
structure and followed with
$200,000 last year toward
adding an airplane on a pi-
lot-project basis for cloud
seeding in the Upper Snake
River Basin, said Brain Pat-
ton, Planning Bureau manag-
er with the Idaho Department
of Water Resources. Patton
said the board voted May 20
to increase its Fiscal Year
2017 cloud seeding funding to
$600,000, to be spread across
the Eastern Snake, Boise and
Wood River and Payette ba-
sins.
Idaho Ground Water Ap-
propriators Inc. made its first
commitment to the program
this season, totaling $45,000.
Water District 1, which en-
compasses the Upper Snake
system, contributed $200,000.
It will continue to contribute
to a county-supported program
in Eastern Idaho using man-
ual generators, run by High
Country Resource, Conserva-
tion and Development. Water
District 63, which includes the
Boise River system, and Wood
River water users each contrib-
uted $125,000.
Lyle Swank, watermaster
with Water District 1, said his
district’s contribution toward
Idaho Power’s cloud seeding
program represents 20 percent
of its total budget, but mem-
bers voted to assess themselves
and contribute, nonetheless.
“When we can extract a
little extra moisture from the
atmosphere, that can be really
helpful,” Swank said.
Bowling said Idaho Power
is working with the National
Center for Atmospheric Re-
search to develop a model
guiding operations and pro-
viding a cloud seeding benefit
analysis.
Shaun Parkinson, Idaho
Power’s water resources lead-
er, estimates this winter’s pro-
gram added 11.5 percent extra
snow-water equivalent in the
Payette Basin and 9.4 percent
more moisture in the Boise
Basin as of April 15, plus 4
to 5.4 percent more mois-
ture in the Upper Snake as of
April 1. He anticipates adding
about three more generators to
the program next winter, and
eventually expects to include
a fourth plane.
“It’s a new era in terms of
collaboration and it remains
to be seen who all will come
to the table and join in,” Par-
kinson said.
23-4/#7
KENNEWICK,
Wash.
— The U.S. Department of
Labor has begun handing out
checks to workers in Kenne-
wick covered in a court settle-
ment in a dispute over wages
with Washington blueberry
growers.
The first of more than 1,000
workers received checks May
23 from $385,318 paid by
Blue Mountain Farms LLC in
Walla Walla and its affiliates.
Earlier this year, a federal
judge ordered the defendants
to pay that amount in a con-
sent judgment in favor of
DOL on all counts. DOL is
trying to find all the workers.
DOL filed a lawsuit against
Blue Mountain Farms in 2013
and later expanded it to in-
clude affiliates Great Colum-
bia Berry Farm and Applegate
Orchards that DOL said sup-
ply Blue Mountain’s packing
shed with fruit and are owned
or managed by the same indi-
viduals: Ryan Brock, Shirley
Lott and Brandon Lott.
The suit claimed Blue
Mountain unlawfully shipped
“hot goods” into interstate
commerce in 2013 because
its blueberries were picked
and packed in violation of
minimum wage and overtime
laws.
The complaint also ac-
cused the farm of failing to
properly keep records and of
retaliating against workers by
laying off those who were in-
terviewed by labor inspectors.
Blue Mountain was accused
of blocking DOL inspectors
from entering its property.
DOL threatened to use its
“hot goods” authority to block
shipment of blueberries but
didn’t.
Blue Mountain denied the
allegations against it and said
it tried to cooperate with DOL
but that inspectors reneged on
an agreement to minimize the
disruption of harvest opera-
tions.
In the consent judgment,
Blue Mountain admitted it
systematically violated work-
ers’ rights by not paying min-
imum wage and overtime and
allowing multiple workers to
pick on a single ticket.
“I know the growers in-
volved. I find it hard to be-
lieve that everything DOL
was saying about them was
true,” said Alan Schreiber, ad-
ministrator of the Washington
State Blueberry Commission
in Pasco.
“The family involved are
reputable, good growers. It’s
hard for me to believe any
Washington blueberry grower
is not doing their best to take
care of their workers because
workers are in short supply,”
he said.
“I don’t know the details
or merits, but we’re talking
back wages of about $100 per
worker per year over three
years,” he said.