LIVESTOCK & HORSE SPECIAL SECTION INSIDE

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2016
VOLUME 89, NUMBER 49
WWW.CAPITALPRESS.COM
$2.00
FALLING NUMBERS
“It’s a fi nancially
devastating problem when
it happens to growers.”
FALLING INCOMES
Andrew Ross, a professor
of crop and soil science
and food science at Oregon
State University, bakes
bread in his laboratory. Re-
searchers have been looking
for a better wheat quality test than the falling
number test. “If it were an easy problem to
solve, then it would have been solved,” he says.
Courtesy of OSU
Uncertainties of test
perplex NW wheat industry
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
P
ALOUSE, Wash. — For Jake Cloninger, the numbers
didn’t add up.
At one grain elevator, his soft white wheat showed a
falling number of 315, well above the industry standard of
300 for test results.
At another elevator, his wheat tested at 240, meaning he would
receive a lower price per bushel because it was damaged by sprout-
ing.
The grain samples came out of the same 278-acre wheat fi eld,
he said.
Cloninger retrieved his sample and had it tested again. The test
result was 50 points higher.
“And it was out of the same 1-gallon bag,” Cloninger said.
Overall, the lowest score Cloninger received from that single
fi eld was 204, and the highest score was 315.
“And it was everything in between, in the same fi eld,” he said.
Cloninger, 38, is in his fi fth year of farming. This was his fi rst
After drought hit his
crop last year, Palouse,
Wash., wheat farmer
Jake Cloninger was
hoping this year’s crop
would make up for it.
Instead, low falling
number test results
have reduced the prices
he has received.
Turn to NUMBERS, Page 12
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Judge blocks rule expanding overtime pay
Capital Press
A federal judge’s ruling
in Texas is saving employers
nationwide, including West
Coast agricultural employers,
labor costs by stopping an
Obama administration rule in-
creasing the number of work-
ers eligible for overtime pay.
The Obama DOL rule, re-
leased in May, was set to go
into effect Dec. 1 and would
have nearly doubled the
threshold at which executive,
administrative and profession-
al employees are exempt from
overtime pay from $23,660
to $47,476. An estimated 4.2
million workers were to be
“It’s a big victory for small business owners.”
Dan Fazio, director and CEO of WAFLA
newly eligible for time-and-a-
half wages for each hour they
worked beyond 40 hours in a
week.
The rule would have re-
quired employers to treat
employees as hourly workers
unless the employee was re-
ceiving at least $47,476 per
year and fi ling a managerial
or professional role.
U.S. District Court Judge
Amos Mazzant ruled the new
salary level and an automatic
updating mechanism lacked
statutory authority.
Business groups and 22
states challenged the over-
time expansion, saying Con-
gress never intended to set
any salary threshold for the
exemptions nor to allow the
threshold to be raised every
three years as the DOL rule
required.
Dan Fazio, director and
CEO of WAFLA, formerly the
Washington Farm Labor As-
sociation in Olympia, Wash.,
said the incoming Trump ad-
ministration’s Department of
Labor is likely to overturn the
overtime rule.
However, while Trump has
said he wants to reduce reg-
ulations on businesses, it is
not clear where he stands on
the overtime rule. President
Turn to PAY, Page 12
New EPA grant tightens oversight to prevent another What’s Upstream
Tribes to get $25M
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
The Environmental Pro-
tection Agency has awarded
Western Washington tribes
another $25 million for Puget
Sound projects, but with stron-
ger instructions to collaborate
with others, a response to con-
gressional complaints that one
tribe misspent EPA funds to
malign farmers.
The new grant to the
20-tribe Northwest Indian
Fisheries Commission extends
for fi ve years a federal program
that fi nanced What’s Upstream,
a media campaign directed by
the Swinomish Indian tribe
portraying farmers as careless
and unregulated polluters.
EPA staff members had con-
cerns about the project’s tone
and accuracy, but the EPA’s
Northwest
administrator,
Turn to GRANT, Page 12
A What’s Upstream
billboard shows cows in
a stream. The federal
Environmental Protection
Agency has awarded a
new $25 million grant to
Indian tribes in Wash-
ington.
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
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