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CapitalPress.com
August 26, 2016
Wheat
Gary Polson, left, and his
sister-in-law, Diane Polson,
right, combine wheat on the
hilly terrain of the family farm
north of Waterville, Wash., on
Aug. 18. They are counting on
good yields to offset quality
and price issues.
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
WHEAT HARVEST
A FAMILY SHOW
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
W
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Gary Polson, center, with his son, Max, and sister-in-law, Diane,
were assisted by three hired hands during wheat harvest.
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Two combines cross a fallow ield on way to wheat harvest near
Waterville, Wash., on Aug. 18. Chelan Butte in background.
quality brings less money and
with prices already low, it’s
a concern. Polson said he’s
heard of one grower docked
25 cents per bushel.
Polson hopes to earn at
least an adequate return with
volume. With good yields
they’ll exceed 200,000 bush-
els this year.
Normally, the Polsons’
yields run 50 to 60 bushels
per acre but this year they’re
65 to 68 and as high as 70.
“It’s not a bin buster, but
for how dry it was last fall
(during seeding), we’re total-
ly blessed,” he said.
Still it’s not a “go forward
inancial year.” There won’t
be money for extras.
The Polson brothers are
farming land farmed by their
father, Elton, who died eight
years ago.
Lynn, 63, had irst dibs on
farming. Gary did it part-time
while he and his wife, Lauren,
worked other jobs. They’ve
been farming full-time for 19
years and depended on the
direct payment federal sub-
sidy. It was a little less than
25 percent of his farm income
and was based on production.
It helped for years that wheat
prices were below $4 per
bushel.
Congress ended the subsi-
dies with the 2014 Farm Bill.
Polson was ine when pric-
es were $7 to $8 per bushel.
Now it’s not as good.
“Last year we did OK,
selling for $6. I didn’t like
it then but sure would now.
It beats the $4.23 afternoon
cash market today in Water-
ville,” he said.
This year their harvest
began Aug. 3 and likely will
inish Aug. 27. The brothers
and Gary’s son, Max, and
hired hand Elijah Weber drive
combine. Lynn’s wife, Diane,
took his place when he turned
to seeding the fallow half of
their acreage for next year’s
crop.
Terry Cox and Bob Olin
drive trucks hauling wheat
to Central Washington Grain
Growers silos in Waterville.
The cooperative typically
handles 13.5 million bush-
els (340,000 metric tons)
of wheat grown in Doug-
las, Okanogan and parts of
Grant and Lincoln counties.
It’s mostly soft white winter
wheat and 80 to 85 percent of
it typically is exported to Asia
and the Middle East.
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Despite challenges,
family stays in the
field to feed world
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
CONDON, Ore. — It’s
a limited pallet this time of
year in the Columbia Plateau
counties. Blue sky above
brown fallow, with com-
bines of John Deere green or
Case IH red moving in slow,
shrinking circuits around
golden wheat ields.
It’s an empty landscape,
most ways you look. Few
buildings and no trafic. And
in that emptiness, you can lose
track of the broader world.
The wheat kernels tumbling
into the hopper on Chuck
Greenield’s combine are the
reminder of the connection.
From Gilliam County, Ore.,
with fewer than 2,000 peo-
ple, it will go to lour mills in
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan
and the Philippines.
“Feed the world,” Green-
ield says.
It is a diminished group of
farmers who can make a liv-
ing doing that. Greenield’s
employer, Marc Pryor, said
the county had about 150
wheat farmers in the 1970s.
Now he estimates the num-
ber is in the teens. It’s a clas-
sic example of the economy
of scale: Like most crops,
wheat’s narrow proit mar-
gin makes it critical to spread
input, equipment and labor
costs over more acreage, and
it forced many farmers to get
bigger or get out.
In 1950, Oregon had
34,000 farms of one to 49
acres. Now it’s down to
21,800 in that size category.
The state lost 8 percent of
its farmers between the 2007
Census of Agriculture to the
next one in 2012.
The weather, crop diseas-
es, equipment breakdowns
and the market don’t care.
Wheat that sold for $7 a bush-
el one year brings $5 the next.
There may be enough rain to
germinate and nourish a dry-
land wheat crop through the
bone-dry summer, and there
may not. “It’s pretty tough
right now,” Pryor says.
He’s 66 and trying to
maintain the farming opera-
tion that lourished under his
father, Earl Pryor, now re-
tired. His stepmother, Laura
Pryor, was the Gilliam Coun-
ty judge for many years. The
family business, now called
Prycor LLC, farms about
3,500 acres. Marc Pryor mon-
itors the farm from Los Ange-
les, where he lives and has a
business, and returns home to
Condon for harvest.
LEGAL
35-1/#7
35-1/#17
ATERVILLE, Wash.
— It’s harvest time
in the high country.
An ocean of golden wheat
is being cut and threshed by
combines working like ants
over miles of the Waterville
Plateau.
At 2,600 to 2,900 feet
above sea level, it’s the high-
est wheat region in the state
and because of that wheat
matures more slowly than
neighboring regions to the
east.
It’s also desert. Farm-
ers struggle with inadequate
moisture to grow what’s truly
dryland wheat.
But this year, a little too
much rain and temperature
luctuations right before har-
vest caused a condition re-
ferred to as falling numbers.
It can involve kernel sprout-
ing and damages starch and
quality.
“I was sitting here fat and
happy with all the rain and
cool weather knowing the
heads were illing but totally
unaware of the falling num-
bers issue,” said Gary Polson,
56, who farms 6,400 acres
of wheat north of Waterville
with his brother, Lynn, and
his son, Max.
Wheat testing lower in
Harvest links farmers
to lour mills of Asia
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Eric Mortenson/Capital Press
Wheat pours from the com-
bine during the harvest in Ore-
gon’s Gilliam County.
Marc Pryor is president of
an engineering forensics busi-
ness, which involves inding
out why materials, products,
structures or components
fail, or don’t work like they
should. Farmers have their
own structural problems.
Some are putting land
into conservation reserves
and making money that way,
Pryor says, but that takes land
out of production and limits
expansion possibilities. Es-
tate taxes can make it dificult
to pass farms along to heirs,
and in some cases the previ-
ous generation still needs to
be supported by the farm’s
revenue. A strong U.S. dollar
can make U.S. wheat more
expensive than competitors’,
crucial to Paciic Northwest
producers whose wheat is ex-
ported.
But to people who ques-
tion the business, Pryor has
a ready answer. “Well, we
produced over six million
pounds of food this year,
what have you done?
“And it’s in our blood,”
Pryor adds. “That’s why
we’re still doing it.”
Chuck Greenield, the
combine driver, talks about
the same thing. He turns 72 in
September and is the Prycor
ield manager. He’s worked
for the family 35 years.
“You’re kind of indepen-
dent, you don’t have to deal
with a lot of people,” he says.
“If you work in a factory,
you’re basically a number.”
He glances over, taking
his eyes off the machine’s
spinning header for a second.
“As far as I’m concerned,
this is a good way of life,” he
says. “It’s not always bad to
sit and listen to the combine.”
His grandson, Justin Wag-
goner, is driving the red Case
IH combine. He went school
to learn welding, but returned
to the wheat ields.
“I didn’t ask him to come
back,” Greenield says. “He’s
got farming in his blood.”
Greenield and his grand-
son circle in to the trucks to
unload. Truck driver Buster
Nation, who says he’s “16
running on 17,” manipulates
an auger transferring wheat
from a smaller truck to a larg-
er one, which will haul the
load to a grain elevator.
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder,
on 8/29/2016. The sale will be
held at 10:00 am by
TRS OREGON INC
1887 ANUNSEN ST NE SALEM, OR
2015 Coachman Trailer
VIN - 5ZT3CH1B1FA310517
Amount due on lien $7,874.37
Reputed owner(s)
SEAN & HEIDI HALVERSON
USAA FEDERAL SAVINGS BANK
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