12 CapitalPress.com
December 9, 2016
Problems arise often when city dwellers move to countryside
DISPUTES from Page 1
“You should feel blessed to
have neighbors that are good,”
he said.
Often, problems arise when
city dwellers move to the coun-
tryside expecting idyllic peace,
only to have their aesthetic
tastes offended by neighbors
who don’t mow their grass or
who populate their yard with
rusted pickup trucks on blocks,
Hunnicutt said.
Escalating confl icts
The confl ict often escalates
when the offended landowner
recruits a government agency
to retaliate against the neigh-
bor, sometimes on regulatory
grounds unrelated to the un-
derlying problem, he said.
“The county gets called
and the state gets called. They
march in, and rather than use
diplomacy, go in with guns
blazing and make it even
worse,” Hunnicutt said.
At that point, lawyers are
often hired, battle lines are
drawn, and the time-consum-
ing and expensive process of
litigation begins, said Marti
Dane, executive director of
the Six Rivers Dispute Reso-
lution Center in Hood River,
Ore.
“If that’s the preferred
method, we end up getting
ourselves into trouble,” Dane
said.
Free mediators
She said there is an alter-
native way to put the pieces
back together, though it’s of-
ten overlooked as tensions
increase: using a third-party
mediator.
Dane’s organization is
home to the USDA’s Certi-
fi ed Agricultural Mediation
Program for Oregon, which
is aimed at resolving common
rural problems.
Last year, more than 4,000
disputes across the U.S. were
referred to it and similar pro-
grams.
Cost-wise, mediation has
USDA agricultural
mediation cases, 2015
Neighbor vs. Neighbor
(New cases by financial year)
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Of the 4,052 new cases ...
Capital Press
Several confl icts among neighbors have
risen to prominence over the years, in some
cases ending with high-level legal rulings.
Following are some of the cases that Capital
Press has covered:
• A straw-compressing facility run by
farmer John Gilmour near Albany, Ore.,
drew objections from neighbors who com-
plained about noise and traffi c hazards.
The dispute ended up in court, with the
Oregon Court of Appeals siding with Gilm-
our earlier this year.
The court found that straw-compressing
is allowed outright on farmland, and is not
a form of processing that requires a county
conditional use permit.
• Another straw-compressing operation,
owned by Jesse Bounds of Junction City,
Ore., was accused of violating wetlands law
by Oregon Department of State Lands.
Bounds said he’s disagreed with a neigh-
bor over a ditch that fl ows through both their
properties, and suspects the dispute led to the
complaint to state regulators.
After he tried rebuilding two barns that
burned down earlier this year, DSL notifi ed
Bounds that his property was a wetland that
he was impermissibly fi lling in.
The confl ict is expected to come up be-
fore state lawmakers in 2017 with proposed
bills that would exempt Bounds from the
wetland designation.
a big advantage over litiga-
tion: It’s free, as long as the
disputes relate to certain is-
sues, such as boundary dis-
agreements, problems with
non-farm neighbors, wetland
determinations, grazing on
public land and internal farm
family confl icts, among oth-
ers.
People are often reluctant
to seek mediation, seeing it as
a form of “giving up” or com-
promising, Dane said.
“It’s much more of a for-
mal process, much more
sophisticated than people
thought it was,” she said.
A common misconception
about mediation is that the
... 3,450 cases were
settled, or 85.1%
Mateusz Perkowski
John Gilmour, a farmer who operates a
straw-compressing facility near Albany, Ore.,
was involved in a dispute with several neighbors
who complained of noise and traffi c hazards.
• A psychiatrist from
La Grande, Ore., Dr. Joel
Rice, grew frustrated with
cattle trampling his prop-
erty and shot and killed
seven cows owned by
neighbors.
Joel Rice
Although he repaid
the neighbors $47,500
for lost property value, Rice pleaded
guilty in 2014 to several counts of an-
imal abuse and was sentenced to two
days in jail, two years probation, 369
hours of community service and a $1,600
fine.
antagonists are forced to face
each other to hash out their
differences.
In reality, a mediator gen-
erally interviews each party
separately and extensive-
ly, learning the nuances of
the confl ict. Everything that
the mediator learns remains
confi dential and the informa-
tion is not disclosed to either
neighbor.
It’s not even necessary for
both parties to immediate-
ly agree to mediation — one
landowner can request it, then
the mediator decides how to
approach the neighbor.
“I may go a month before
I dare put them in the same
room together,” said Gary
Linkous, an attorney and me-
diator for the USDA program.
Objectivity counts
Mediation works for the
simple reason that the media-
tor doesn’t have any feelings
invested in the dispute, Link-
ous said.
They’re able to look at the
dispute objectively and devise
proposed solutions that the
antagonists are too angry or
defensive to consider.
“Emotionally, people get
adversarial pretty quickly,” he
said. “What you’re trying to
do is defuse the thing.”
Neighbor confl icts often
NOTE: 41 states participated in USDA’s
Certified Agricultural Mediation Program
as of FY2015.
Source: USDA CAMP
Capital Press graphic
center on practical problems
— such as one landowner
who cut hay that blocked an-
other’s irrigation ditch — that
could have practical solutions,
Linkous said.
Lawsuits, instead, focus on
monetary damages and legal
theories that seldom actually
pan out in court, he said.
“The reality is 90 per-
cent-plus settle anyhow,”
Linkous said. “Why not work
on it sooner and not spend all
that money, if you can?”
Unlike attorneys, who
strategically consider what
information to reveal, media-
tors are able to see the bottom
line and underlying agenda of
both sides while also main-
taining secrecy, said Dane.
Mediation can help people
realize that a solution is possi-
ble where neither side has to
be defeated, she said. “If you
can stop wanting the other
person to be wrong, then you
can make a lot more progress
toward creative solutions and
less regulation.”
Mediator’s role
Mediators aim to discern
between the neighbors’ actual
interests and their negotiating
positions, said Jack Hebner,
executive director of the Ful-
crum Institute, an organiza-
tion in Spokane that provides
USDA mediation services in
Washington, Idaho and Mon-
tana.
People’s real motivations
can diverge from what they
claim, said Hebner.
For example, someone
who needs to sell his car to
pay for medical care for a sick
child isn’t likely to admit that
fact during sales negotiations,
he said.
Rather, he’s going to act
as if he’s trying to get the best
deal for the vehicle, so as to
avoid losing his bargaining
power, Hebner said.
“In our culture, once you
say what you need, you be-
come vulnerable,” he said.
By having full access to
information, mediators can
easily clear up disputes that
emerge from simple misun-
derstandings, said Gayle Coo-
per, associate director of the
Fulcrum Institute.
One dispute over water
drainage between a private
landowner and a federal
agency was resolved when it
became apparent the govern-
ment hadn’t taken any action
to cause the problem, as the
landowner believed, she said.
“They were operating
from misinformation,” Coo-
per said.
Linkous said he advis-
es parties in mediation to be
open with any documents or
other proof that buttresses
their position.
Such information would
eventually be turned over
during the discovery process
in litigation, but only after the
case had cost more time and
money, he said.
Though Linkous is an at-
torney, he doesn’t provide
legal advice to neighbors in
mediation.
However, if he does en-
counter relevant case law or
regulations that undermine
one side’s position, Linkous
asks the people or their attor-
neys how they plan to deal
with the precedent.
Nature of the crop differentiates alfalfa from other GMOs
GMO from Page 1
Cultivars can be shifted
more quickly with annu-
al crops, he said. “You can
change your mind next year
and do something completely
different than this year.”
Commercialization of ge-
netically modifi ed alfalfa ex-
perienced a substantial setback
after initially being deregulated
by USDA in 2005.
Two years later, a federal
judge blocked new plantings
of a “Roundup Ready” gly-
phosate-resistant variety de-
veloped by Forage Genetics
International and Monsanto.
The USDA took several
years to complete court-ordered
environmental analysis of the
crop, which was again deregu-
lated in 2011.
Genetically
engineered
sugar beets also encountered
legal problems during commer-
cialization, but adoption has
nonetheless shot up to about 99
percent of planted acreage, ac-
cording to USDA.
Alfalfa has particularities
that have hindered greater
adoption of genetically modi-
fi ed varieties, Putnam said.
In the Midwest and North-
east, farmers commonly plant
a mixture of alfalfa, grass and
clover for hay and forage, since
each crop performs differently
in fi elds with varying drainage
conditions, he said.
“Using Roundup Ready
doesn’t make any sense in that
situation,” since glyphosate
would kill the grass and clover,
Putnam said.
Adoption of genetically en-
gineered alfalfa is highest in
Western states, where fi elds are
generally devoted specifi cally
to that crop and biotech culti-
vars comprise up to 60 percent
of newly planted acreage in
some areas, Putnam said.
However, fear of export
market repercussions has
quelled enthusiasm for geneti-
cally engineered alfalfa among
some farmers, he said.
In California’s Imperial Val-
ley, Monsanto and Forage Ge-
netics have disallowed planting
of biotech varieties in contracts
with growers at the urging of
local farm groups.
Alfalfa is often grown for
seed in the Imperial Valley, par-
ticularly non-dormant varieties
that are exported to countries
with hot climates, such as Saudi
Arabia, Mexico and South Afri-
ca, said Putnam.
Exporters fear that gene
fl ow between conventional and
biotech alfalfa will lead to re-
jection of shipments in foreign
markets, he said.
“The export industry is very
sensitive to the presence of ge-
netically engineered crops,”
Putnam said.
Forage Genetics Interna-
tional, which bought the rights
to the crop from Monsanto,
did not respond to requests for
comment from Capital Press.
The Center for Food Safe-
ty, a nonprofi t group that chal-
lenged the commercialization
of genetically engineered alfal-
fa in court, isn’t surprised the
crop hasn’t been adopted more
widely, said Bill Freese, its sci-
ence policy analyst.
Alfalfa grows so thickly
that it suppresses weeds, so
herbicides were seldom used
on the crop before the biotech
varieties were introduced, Fre-
ese said.
Despite the comparatively
low adoption rate, Freese said
his group’s concerns about
genetically engineered alfalfa
were not overblown.
Even though it’s not as per-
vasive as other biotech crops,
genetically modifi ed alfalfa
nonetheless poses a risk for
conventional and organic farm-
ers where it is grown, he said.
The Roundup Ready crop
also perpetuates the problem
of weeds becoming increas-
ingly tolerant of glyphosate,
Freese said. In other crops,
this phenomenon has led bio-
tech developers to create va-
rieties resistant to 2,4-D and
dicamba herbicides.
Livestock purchases
down, feed costs up
INCOME from Page 1
It’s fairly rare to see a de-
cline in production expenses
year over year, and this will be
the second year in a row, Wil-
liamson said. In real terms,
however, those expenses —
nearly $350 billion — are still
relatively high compared with
the 1970s and 1980s.
Livestock purchases are
down but feed costs are up a
little, refl ective of more ani-
mals on farms, he said.
The 2016 forecast predicts:
• Expenses for feed and
livestock purchases combined,
down 6.1 percent.
• Fuel and oil expenses,
down 12.2 percent.
• Interest expenses, down
3.8 percent.
• Net rent expenses, down
1.6 percent.
Labor costs, however, are
forecast to increase 5.4 per-
cent.
Government direct pay-
ments also help to offset the
decline in cash receipts. Those
payments are forecast to be up
$2.1 billion to $12.9 billion,
making up more than 14 per-
cent of net cash income, Wil-
liamson said.
Farm assets are forecast to
decline 2.1 percent on a drop in
value on real estate, as well as
other declines. Debt is forecast
to increase 5.1 percent, driven
by higher real estate debt, he
said.
Farm equity is forecast
down nearly $80 billion, or 3.1
percent, from last year. Both the
debt-to-asset and debt-to-equity
ratios have been ticking up but
are relatively low compared to
the 1980s, he said.
The bigger picture shows
the health of the overall farm
economy is strong in the face
of challenging markets, USDA
Secretary Tom Vilsack said in
a statement on the fi nancial re-
port.
Farm income over the last
fi ve years refl ects the highest
fi ve-year average on record,
debt-to-asset and debt-to-eq-
uity ratios continue to be near
all-time lows and 90 percent
of farm businesses are not
highly leveraged, he said.