July 8, 2016
CapitalPress.com
5
USDA buys up more surplus cranberries
Large inventory
remains,
depressing prices
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
The U.S. Department of
Agriculture will spend $27.5
million on cranberry concen-
trate, buying a fraction of the
surplus berries that are sup-
pressing prices.
The purchase of the val-
ue-added product will soak up
30 million pounds, or 300,000
barrels, of cranberries, accord-
ing to the industry’s Cranberry
Marketing Committee, which
announced the purchase in a
press release June 29.
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Workers drag cranberries in from a bog during a harvest Sept. 23,
2015, on the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington. The U.S. De-
partment of Agriculture will spend $27.5 million to soak up surplus
cranberries and support prices.
“We’re pleased to hear that.
Certainly when you have an
inventory of 7 million barrels,
it’s nice to have some help
getting rid of that,” Washing-
ton cranberry grower Malcolm
McPhail said July 1.
Total U.S. production in
2015 was about 8.4 million
barrels, according to the USDA
National Agricultural Statistics
Service.
The cranberry surplus has
hovered around 90 percent in
recent years, swelled partly by
a bumper crop of nearly 9 mil-
lion barrels in 2013. Farmers
have seen prices fall every year
since 2009.
The average price growers
received in 2014 was $30.90
per 100-pound barrel. The
USDA was due to issue a re-
port later this week on the 2015
crop.
“Any sale of cranberries
helps our growers,” Ocean
Spray cooperative spokes-
woman Kellyanne Dignan said.
“From our perspective, we ap-
preciate the USDA’s attention
to the cranberry industry.”
The USDA purchases sur-
plus food to stabilize prices
under a program created during
the Depression. The govern-
ment distributes the food to
schools and charities.
The USDA has been a reg-
ular customer for cranberry
farmers. The purchases includ-
ed buying 680,000 barrels for
$55 million around Thanksgiv-
ing 2014. A bipartisan group
of federal lawmakers from the
fi ve cranberry-producing states
lobbied for the purchase.
“We are grateful for the con-
tinued support of the USDA
and appreciate the positive
impact that this bonus buy has
on our industry,” the marketing
committee’s executive director,
Michelle Hogan, said in a writ-
ten statement.
A Massachusetts task force
in mid-June made several rec-
ommendations to help that
state’s cranberry growers.
The recommendations in-
cluded providing grants, tax
credits and low-interest loans
to farmers to renovate bogs and
increase yields.
Other
recommendations
called for programs to pay
farmers to convert bogs to wet-
lands to reduce production.
Cranberries are the top farm
crop in Massachusetts, the
country’s second-leading cran-
berry producer.
Washington, the fi fth-lead-
ing cranberry state after No.
3 New Jersey and No. 4 Or-
egon, has 1,700 acres planted
to cranberries. “I think ev-
erybody is hanging in there,”
McPhail said.
Ukraine and Romania hungry for U.S. agricultural investment
Oregon ag director
Katy Coba returns
from trade mission
U.S. ag exports to Ukraine and Romania
$81.3 million: Up 59% from 2014
354
321
Ukraine
Romania
282
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Bureau
194
174
155
96
94
69
215
72
BELARUS
POLAND
$75.3 million:
Down 52%
from 2014
(Millions of dollars)
Ukraine and Romania are
hungry for U.S. investment in
grain storage, irrigation and
other agricultural infrastruc-
ture, said Oregon Department
of Agriculture Director Katy
Coba.
Major U.S. companies are
best poised to immediately
take advantage of opportuni-
ties in Ukraine and Romania
due to their expertise working
in foreign nations, said Coba,
who recently returned from a
trade mission to the two coun-
tries.
In the future, though, there
may be greater openings for
Area in detail
Kiev
D
Lviv
SLOVAKIA
’07
’08
Source: USDA FAS
’09
ROMANIA
55
47
’11
Kharkiv
R iv
er
51
Odessa
Sea of
Azov
’12
’13
’14
Bucharest
2015
BULGARIA
Sevastopol
Black
Sea
N
100 miles
Source: CIA World Factbook
The USDA led a trade
mission of state agriculture
offi cials and agribusiness rep-
resentatives to Ukraine and
Romania on June 13-17, after
which Coba visited Croatia
with her two daughters.
A major challenge for U.S.
RUSSIA
CRIMEAN
PENINSULA
Mateusz Perkowski and Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
Oregon farm exports to the
Eastern European countries,
particularly as they need more
high-quality seed, she said.
“If democracry continues
to grow, those are markets for
us to keep our eye on,” Coba
said.
er
MOL.
89
’10
ep
Donetsk
157
SERBIA
2006
ni
UKRAINE
HUNGARY
174
53
Chernobyl
farm exports to the two coun-
tries is transportation — air
freight is expensive, while
ships must take a meandering
route through the Mediter-
ranean and Black seas, she
said.
Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
“It’s quite a truck for our
stuff,” Coba said.
The U.S. shipped $321
million worth of farm goods
to Ukraine in 2013, but that
amount had plummeted more
than 75 percent by last year,
according to USDA trade data.
“The Ukrainian economy
collapsed after the overthrow
of their president in 2014,”
Coba said.
That year, Ukraine’s par-
liament ousted the nation’s
Russian-backed
president,
Viktor Yanukovych, leading
to Russia’s invasion of its
Crimea region and confl icts
along its eastern border.
During the trade mission in
Ukraine, U.S. offi cials toured
a grain facility owned by Ar-
cher Daniels Midland and par-
ticipated in the opening cere-
mony for an oilseed crushing
facility built for nearly $300
million by Bunge.
Ukraine has insuffi cient
infrastructure for irrigation,
storage and processing of
crops, so the nation is looking
for American help to expand
its production capacity, Coba
said.
Wolf delisting lawsuit against Oregon reinstated
By KRISTENA HANSEN
Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. — The
Oregon Court of Appeals has
decided to reconsider a lawsuit
against the state that was dis-
missed a couple months ago
over its decision last year to
remove the gray wolf from the
endangered species list.
It means environmentalists
will have another chance to ar-
gue for an independent, judicial
review of the delisting decision
— as well as challenge the va-
lidity of House Bill 4040, one of
the Legislature’s most contro-
versial new laws this year that
ultimately led to the case’s dis-
missal in late April.
“The issues presented by
this judicial review and by HB
4040 are complex matters of
public importance,” Judge Erika
Hadlock wrote in the court’s de-
cision Tuesday. “Without decid-
ing what, if any, effect HB 4040
has on this judicial review, the
court determines that the issues
of possible mootness and the
validity of HB 4040 are more
Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
A photo taken by trail camera in
February shows wandering wolf
OR-7 for the fi rst time since his
tracking collar quit working in 2015.
appropriately decided by a de-
partment of the court following
full briefi ng.”
The controversy stems from
the Oregon Fish and Wildlife
Commission’s November de-
cision to delist the gray wolf as
endangered, a move aimed at
managing the species’ replenish-
ing population that environmen-
talists say was premature and
based on questionable science.
As environmentalists were
asking the court for a review of
the delisting decision, some Re-
publican lawmakers crafted HB
4040 as a means to block the
case. The idea was that, with the
Legislature’s stamp of approval
that the decision was air-tight
according to law, reviewing that
decision was a moot point and
the case itself, therefore, would
be too.
The bill was blasted by many
residents, conservationists and
Democratic leaders, including
Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio, as
an overreach by the Legislature
into judicial branch matters and
therefore potentially unconstitu-
tional — an argument environ-
mentalists reiterated in court this
week. Oregon Attorney General
Ellen Rosenblum fi led a “notice
of probable mootness” soon after
HB 4040 was signed into law,
prompting the case’s dismissal
on those grounds on April 22.
Nick Cady, attorney for Eu-
gene-based Cascadia Wildlands,
which brought the case along
with Oregon Wild and the
Center for Biological Diversi-
ty, said the case was reconsid-
ered after they challenged the
constitutionality of HB 4040
and the court’s process for
dismissing the suit.
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