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FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2016
VOLUME 89, NUMBER 25
WWW.CAPITALPRESS.COM
$2.00
SAVING THROUGH
Farmers reduce expenses
for equipment, personnel
by setting up partnerships
Thinkstock.com
SHARING
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Iowa farmer Ben
Riensche loads
a combine on a
truck to ship back
to Northern Idaho
for use. Riensche
and Idaho farmer
Nate Riggers had
an agreement to
share equipment.
Riggers no longer
shares equipment
with Riensche but
still shares with a
Nebraska farmer.
Capital Press
T
o minimize their expenses, Nezperce, Idaho,
growers Nate and Steve Riggers share combines
with other farmers nearly 1,000 miles away in the
Corn Belt.
The brothers, who operate a diversifi ed farm
in Northern Idaho, estimate that over the years they’ve saved
about 40 percent per machine through the joint ownership of
combines with farmers in Iowa and Nebraska. After harvest-
ing their grain and grass seed crops, they’ve trucked ma-
chines to the Midwest in time to harvest corn and soybeans.
Though commodity prices have ebbed lately, equipment
costs continue on a steady climb. Sharing equipment — a
new combine can cost as much as $400,000 — is becom-
ing increasingly enticing to many growers. Some, such
as the Riggers brothers, even look to other regions of the
country to fi nd a willing partner with a different harvest
schedule.
Agreements have been forged on simple handshakes or
by establishing complex limited liability corporations. An
LLC allows owners to manage while protecting them from
personal liability for the organization’s debt and obliga-
tions.
A lesson learned
The Riggers brothers, who have a non-irrigated farm in
the Camas Prairie, started sharing equipment in 2000, based
on lessons they learned at The Executive Program for Agri-
cultural Producers — a two-week, intensive farm manage-
ment school offered by Texas A&M University.
“You get drilled into your head a lot at TEPAP about us-
ing your assets better,” Nate Riggers said.
Turn to SHARE, Page 12
Courtesy of Ben Riensche
140
Prices paid index for ag machinery and
supplies & repairs, 2007-April 2016
(Index where 2011=100)
“Back when farms
were a lot smaller
and there were a
lot more farms,
trading like this was
commonplace.”
Idaho farmer, Sid Freeman
Machinery
Supplies and repairs
100
105.4
89.1
80
Capital Press
The Washington Depart-
ment of Ecology on Wednes-
day proposed issuing permits
to dairies that could limit fed-
eral lawsuits over groundwa-
ter pollution, creating a reg-
ulatory framework sought by
the dairy industry and fought
by environmental groups.
“We think this is a good
thing,” Washington State
Dairy Federation policy di-
rector Jay Gordon said. “They
(DOE) have done an excellent
job of listening. They really
have.”
The proposal will overhaul
how Washington regulates
the storage and spreading of
manure at dairies and other
concentrated animal feeding
operations, or CAFOS.
Currently, DOE issues pol-
lution discharge permits to
only a small number of CA-
FOS. The permits combine
federal and state laws and
apply only to pollutants dis-
charged to surface water.
DOE alarmed the dairy
industry last year by fl oat-
ing a proposal to apply the
state-federal CAFO permit
Turn to CAFO, Page 12
Though commodity prices have dropped, farm
equipment costs have continued on a steady
rise, prompting many growers to reach creative
arrangements with neighbors — or even growers
from different regions of the country — to share
equipment and maximize its use.
76.4
Source: USDA NASS
John O’Connell and Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
60
2007
’08
’09
Dairies buoyed by ecology’s
stance on CAFO permit
By DON JENKINS
114.2
120
’10
’11
’12
’13
’14
’15
2016
Members of Congress tell
administration to speed
up H-2A applications
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Cows stand behind a fence at
a dairy in Whatcom County.
The Washington Department of
Ecology proposed new rules for
how dairies and other concen-
trated feeding animal opera-
tions store and handle manure.
More than 100 members of
the U.S. House have written
to the Obama administration
in an effort to speed up the
processing of foreign guest-
worker visas.
Reps. Dan Newhouse,
R-Wash.; Suzan DelBene,
D-Wash.; Sanford Bishop Jr.,
D-Ga.; and Elise Stefanik,
R-N.Y., led 98 other House
members in a bipartisan let-
ter to administration offi cials
urging them to adhere to reg-
ulations requiring them to
process H-2A-visa foreign
guestworker applications in a
timely manner.
Administrative
break-
downs in processing are im-
pacting growers’ ability to
hire legal seasonal workers
in time for planting and har-
vest, the members wrote in a
June 10 letter to U.S. Labor
Secretary Thomas Perez and
Leon Rodriguez, director of
Turn to H-2A, Page 12
“Helping Northwest Farmers Find the Right Equipment for the Job”
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