4
CapitalPress.com
June 17, 2016
Farm group meets EPA’s fee for What’s Upstream records SW Idaho
Documents to cost
$2,000, agency says
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
A Washington state farm
group last week assured the
Environmental
Protection
Agency that it will pay $2,000
for records related to the
What’s Upstream advocacy
campaign.
Save Family Farming,
whose members include West-
ern Washington diaries under
scrutiny by environmental
groups, wants to know the
depth of EPA’s involvement
and its motives for funding
the campaign, the group’s
attorney, James Tupper,
said.
The campaign to lobby
state lawmakers to set man-
datory buffers between farm
ields and waterways was at
odds with ongoing collabora-
tion by government agencies
and farmers to improve water
quality, he said.
“It’s really alarming that
the EPA, outside that process,
has apparently come up with
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
A Washington farm group has
agreed to pay $2,000 to the
EPA for records related to its
involvement in an advertising
campaign lobbying for more
strict regulations on farmers.
The campaign included this
billboard in Olympia, another in
Bellingham and signs on buses.
its own solution,” he said.
Beginning in 2011, EPA
funded the What’s Upstream
campaign organized by the
Swinomish Indian tribe, Se-
attle lobbying irm Strategies
360 and several environmen-
tal groups.
The partners include the
Western Environmental Law
Center, which has enlisted the
pro bono services of University
of Washington law students to
research possible Clean Water
Act violations at concentrated
animal feeding operations.
Save Family Farming was
formed this year to response to
the threat lawsuits by the West-
ern Environmental Law Center
and to the What’s Upstream
campaign. The Freedom of
Information Act allows agen-
cies to charge for compiling
and copying records. Tupper
said Save Family Farming has
asked the EPA to eventually
waive the $2,000 fee in the
public interest. The group says
it will widely publicize the in-
formation it receives.
The EPA abandoned What’s
Upstream in March after some
federal lawmakers objected to
the campaign’s assertion that
farmers are unregulated pollut-
ers and the apparent use of fed-
eral funds to lobby for a new
state law.
The agency assured law-
makers it was ending the cam-
paign, though the What’s Up-
stream website and Facebook
page remain online.
Already available public
records show the EPA was
kept informed and shared the
organizers’ goal of changing
state law.
The records, however, do
not form a complete picture,
including exactly how much
EPA invested in the project,
though the agency apparently
spent at least $570,000.
The EPA in communica-
tions to Congress has shifted
blame for the campaign to
the Northwest Indian Fisher-
ies Commission for failing to
oversee the tribe’s activities.
The tribe’s chairman, Brian
Cladoosby, told federal law-
makers in a letter that the EPA
was “intimately involved” and
provided “substantive guid-
ance.”
The EPA has adopted the
position that it won’t make any
more comments about What’s
Upstream, pending an audit by
the agency’s inspector general
on whether the campaign was
a misuse of federal funds.
Tupper noted that the EPA
funded surveys that were lim-
ited to likely Washington state
voters and tested messages that
could be used to build public
support for mandatory buffers.
“The only reason you do
this in a poll is if you’re devel-
oping an initiative campaign,”
he said. “To have federal funds
spent to test messages for a
new rule, that’s something that
should be pretty alarming.”
Western
Environmental
Law Center attorney Andrea
Rodgers Harris said Wednes-
day she has enlisted the pro
bono services of UW law stu-
dents for many projects.
“They have a responsibility
to engage as lawyers to pro-
tect the public and protect our
common public resources,”
she said. ‘We need more peo-
ple working on this issue.”
She declined to discuss
what the students found or
whether the law center will ile
new lawsuits.
Save Family Farming’s
director, Gerald Baron, said
dairy farmers are conident that
they’re following regulations,
but are nevertheless concerned
about being sued, particularly
after a federal judge in Eastern
Washington ruled improperly
handled cow manure could vi-
olate the Resource Conserva-
tion and Recovery Act.
“Anytime you’re threat-
ened with a lawsuit, you don’t
want to be in that position,”
Baron said. “Certainly, it caus-
es sleepless nights.”
France bans U.S. cherries because of insecticide
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
France’s decision to ban
U.S. cherries won’t have a big
commercial impact on U.S.
farmers but nonetheless rais-
es troubling questions about
trade, experts say.
The country is prohibit-
ing cherry imports from any
nation that allows growers
to spray dimethoate, an in-
secticide the French suspect
of threatening human health,
according to USDA’s Foreign
Agricultural Service.
In terms of the impact
on the U.S. cherry market,
France’s decision is largely
irrelevant, said B.J. Thurlby,
president of the Northwest
Cherry Growers industry
group.
“It’s absolutely not some-
thing we’re sitting here wor-
ried about,” Thurlby said.
Last year, France bought
less than $500,000 worth of
U.S. cherries, down from
the most recent peak of $2.7
million in 2011, according to
USDA trade data.
To compare, Canada and
South Korea — the largest
buyers of U.S. cherries —
each imported more than
$100 million worth of the
crop in 2015.
“France is a very small
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
A worker dumps cherries from his picking bucket into a bin at a Washington orchard in this Capital
Press ile photo. France has banned U.S. cherries, which won’t have major sales impacts but has
troubling trade implications, experts say.
market for U.S. cherries,
especially from the Paciic
Northwest,” said Mark Pow-
ers, executive vice president
of the Northwest Horticultural
Council.
Even so, the bigger con-
cern is whether France’s de-
cision will have trade policy
impacts, Powers said.
Under normal trade rules,
countries establish maximum
residue limits for pesticides
and allow the importation of
crops as long as they fall be-
low those thresholds, he said.
In the case of dimetho-
ate, Northwest cherry grow-
ers rarely use the insecticide
and it wouldn’t likely have
residues on fruit headed to
France, Powers said.
Nonetheless, France has
prohibited all cherry imports
from the U.S. simply because
the insecticide can legally be
used within its borders.
“France appears to have
taken a very aggressive po-
sition in terms of banning
By ERIC MORTENSON
In agriculture, nothing is certain. Your interest rate should be.
We offer competitive interest rates for
your agricultural financing needs:
• FSA Preferred Lender
• Amortizations
up to 25 years
CONTACT: Kevin Arrien, or Joe Lodge
at Joyce Capital, Inc.
Agricultural Loan Agents
(208) 338-1560 • Boise, ID
joe@arrien.biz
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
BOISE — The southwest-
ern Idaho water supply outlook
is still good for 2016, but Boise
River low levels have dipped
recently. That means some ir-
rigation districts could have
to start using water they have
stored in reservoirs earlier than
planned.
Pioneer Irrigation Dis-
trict has a full supply of res-
ervoir storage water for its
5,800 patrons this year, said
manager Mark Zirschky. But
water lowing out of the res-
ervoirs will start exceeding
the amount lowing in within
a few days.
That means the district
will stop getting by on natu-
ral low from the Boise River
soon and will have to start us-
ing water stored in reservoirs
about a month earlier than
normal.
“Things will start tighten-
ing up and we’ll start using
storage water in the next couple
of weeks,” Zirschky said.
A string of warm days early
in the season caused demand to
surge quickly, he said.
“The Pioneer system is
maxed right now,” Zirschky
said. “Demand is 100 percent
now, which is odd for this time
of year.”
But an above-average
snowpack year means the dis-
trict started off with a good
supply of water. Zirschky said
2016 is shaping up to be a lot
like 2015, which was a normal
water year. That means water
lowed through the system until
early October.
As long as the area doesn’t
have an extremely hot summer,
“I think we should be as good
as last year,” he said. “If tem-
peratures would be kind to us,
that would help a lot.”
Irrigators who depend on
water from the Weiser River
Basin face much better pros-
pects in 2016 than they did in
2015, when the Weiser River
system stopped delivering wa-
ter at the end of August, well
ahead of its normal mid-Octo-
ber shutoff date.
But snowpack in the basin
was plentiful this year and there
are still snowbanks on some
of the lower mountain peaks,
which is unusual, said Weiser
River watermaster Brandi Hor-
ton.
Growers happy with quality of early berry crops
Joyce Capital, Inc.
• Term agricultural loans
(purchases & refinances)
product even if our cherries
don’t have any residue of di-
methoate,” he said. “If there’s
no residue on the fruit, it still
can’t get into France, and
that’s a major concern.”
The new approach is prob-
lematic because France may
take the same unbending
stance regarding other pesti-
cides or crops, said Powers.
For example, the country
bought more than $137 mil-
lion worth of tree nuts from
the U.S. last year.
Another country may also
emulate France’s position re-
garding pesticide restrictions,
which would also undermine
normal trade rules, he said.
“Once countries start ig-
noring them, that’s when you
start seeing real problems,”
Powers said. “That’s really
the disturbing part, and trade
policy implications are fo-
cused on that.”
Though France’s policy on
the U.S. will be minimal, the
USDA’s Foreign Agricultural
Service expects it could help
countries that don’t use di-
methoate.
The insecticide is con-
sidered effective in killing
the spotted wing drosophila,
which invaded French or-
chards in 2010 and is expect-
ed to cause heavy losses this
year, FAS reports. France had
banned domestic use of di-
methoate, prompting protests
among its farmers who said
the prohibition would beneit
competitors from other na-
tions.
Since French produc-
tion of cherries will be re-
duced, the ban may indi-
rectly help U.S. cherries
penetrate markets where
France traditionally exports
its own crop, such as Britain
and Germany, according to
FAS.
water outlook
bright even
as river lows
decrease
25-1/#17
Capital Press
It’s been a “very strange
season,” but Oregon’s berries
are doing quite well so far,
crop consultant Tom Peerbolt
said.
Record rain over the winter
and unseasonable heat waves
interspersed with stretches of
cool days have posed some
puzzles for Oregon growers
as they harvest crops that have
a combined annual farmgate
value of nearly $200 mil-
lion. Berries, like many other
crops, are about two weeks
earlier than usual due to the
weather swings. In some cas-
es, different types of berries
are coming ready hard on the
heels of other types.
“The earliness of every-
thing has thrown everybody
off center a bit,” Peerbolt said.
“It’s hard on logistics when
everything comes at once. It’s
hard for growers and proces-
sors to handle everything, but
as long as it stays cool they
can hold in the ield longer.”
Peerbolt is co-owner with
his wife, Anna, of Peerbolt
Crop Management in Port-
land. The company consults
on strawberries, raspberries,
blackberries and blueberries,
primarily in Oregon but some
in Washington as well.
As strawberry harvest
wraps up, harvest of Duke,
Bluecrop and Draper blue-
berries is underway and
growers are about 10 days
into raspberry harvest, Peer-
bolt said.
He said the traditional start
of harvest for Marion black-
berries, still Oregon’s premier
type 60 years after it was in-
troduced, has always been the
day after the Fourth of July
holiday. This year, he expects
harvest to begin two weeks
earlier. Harvest of Black Di-
amond and Columbia Star
blackberries, thornless cul-
tivars that may gradually
replace Marions, will begin
sooner still.
Quality is holding up,
however.
Sustainable soil rejuvenation
dramatically increases crop yields
and plant drought tolerance
The naturally occurring chelated minerals that make up EXCELERITE are mined from
an ancient ocean/lakebed located in southeastern Nevada which contains some of the
world’s richest bio-available minerals deposits.
To learn about all of the applications, uses, success stories and how to purchase,
visit our web site: www.excelerite4ag.info or call: 800/920-7507
Parties interested in exploring distributor and/or producers’ representative
opportunities, e-mail your qualifications and/or resume to:
app@us-rem.com or call: 800/920-7507
ROP-32-52-2/#17
Meets USDA Standards
For Organic Production
A PUBLICLY TRADED CORPORATION (OTC: USMN)
ROP-25-2-4/#4