December 30, 2016
CapitalPress.com
13
Tree fruit growers wary of ‘predictive scheduling’ requirement
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
WENATCHEE, Wash. —
“Predictive scheduling” for
employees is one of several
issues the Washington State
Tree Fruit Association will
be watching during the up-
coming legislative session in
Olympia.
Predictive scheduling or-
dinances gained popularity in
some California cities several
years ago.
More recently, Seattle
passed an ordinance requiring
employers of retail and food
service workers to give them
several weeks’ notice of their
work schedules.
“It might work in an office
setting but not really in an
agricultural setting. We will
have to watch that one close-
ly,” Jon DeVaney, the tree
fruit association president,
said at the group’s annual
meeting in Wenatchee in early
December.
Growers often decide
when to tend or harvest crops
in quick response to weather,
crop maturity and other fac-
tors.
The Seattle ordinance is
the type of law that can be
limited to certain workers at
first and later be expanded,
DeVaney said.
Other issues the asso-
ciation will be monitoring
include the minimum wage
increase, sick leave and pesti-
cide regulations.
Initiative 1433, passed by
voters in the Nov. 8 general
election, increases the state
minimum wage from $9.47
to $11 per hour on Jan. 1. It
reaches $13.50 by 2020. The
new law also requires all em-
ployers provide sick leave for
full-time and seasonal em-
ployees.
The Department of Labor
and Industries is just starting
rule-making for tracking sick
leave, DeVaney said.
Sick leave accrues at
one hour for every 40 hours
worked beginning on the first
day of employment. A full-
time employee working 40
hours per week would accrue
6.5 days per year.
Seasonal workers who
leave an employer but then
return are entitled to continue
accruing from where they left
off if it’s within 12 months.
Dan Fazio, director of WA-
FLA, formerly the Washing-
ton Farm Labor Association,
has said it’s unfair and dif-
ficult for employers to track
sick leave of employees com-
ing and going. It shouldn’t
accrue if an employee is gone
for more than 90 days, he ar-
gued.
The tree fruit association
also will watch for any legis-
lative bills seeking to increase
no-spray buffers and advance
notice of pesticide applica-
tions, De-Vaney said.
L&I is looking at expand-
ing state pesticide application
requirements beyond new
federal requirements. Several
agricultural groups are seek-
ing more information on how
and why, he said.
State bills often come up to
increase buffers and advance
notice requirements for pesti-
cide applications when those
restrictions are already set by
the EPA specific to the prod-
uct used, he said.
Newer, less toxic pesti-
cides often require more ap-
plications, increasing risk but
lowering toxicity, DeVaney
said.
The governor’s push for a
carbon tax and possible efforts
to raise revenue by removing
fuel sales tax and business and
occupation tax exemptions for
agriculture will be monitored
by the association, DeVaney
said.
Plant Materials Center hires cover crop researcher
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
ABERDEEN, Idaho —
Farmers interested in planting
cover crops to improve the
health of their soils have a new
resource at the local Plant Ma-
terials Center, run by USDA’s
Natural Resources Conserva-
tion Service.
In recent years, the cen-
ter has focused on rangeland
research. With the hiring of
Terron Pickett, 39, as its new
agronomist, the center has
committed to expanding into
crop production trials.
Most of Pickett’s time will
be devoted to studying ways for
Idaho growers to better utilize
cover crops, which are planted
specifically to improve soil.
The center’s manager, Der-
ek Tilley, held the agronomist
position, which is the lead re-
search position at the facility,
from 2004 until he was pro-
moted in 2014. The position
remained vacant until Pickett
started on July 24. Tilley said
Pickett will “find niches pro-
ducers can use to raise cover
crops without disrupting rota-
tions.”
He plans to devote a portion
of the center’s farmland toward
a long-term study to track soil-
health changes due to integrat-
ing cover crops into a typical
southeast Idaho rotation.
“We’ve got a lot of farmers
out there who maybe didn’t
quite understand what we did,
but now we’re going to be able
to directly reach out to them,”
Tilley said.
Pickett was raised on a dairy
farm in Sanpete County, Utah.
After graduating from Utah
State University with a bach-
Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press
Joel Packham, right, University of Idaho Extension educator in
Burley, talks with Steve Harrison, an extension educator in Soda
Springs, at the Ag Outlook conference in Burley on Dec. 6.
Hay glut weighs down prices
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
John O’Connell/Capital Press
Terron Pickett, the new agronomist at the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Plant Mate-
rials Center in Aberdeen, Idaho, shows cover crop trial plots. Pickett will conduct cover crop research
to assist Idaho growers.
elor’s degree in crop science,
he held his first full-time job
with the USDA Agricultural
Research Service’s Forage and
Range Research Lab in Logan,
Utah. In 2005, he became a
soil conservationist for NRCS
in Castle Dale, Utah, where he
worked until accepting his cur-
rent position.
In late August, Pickett plant-
ed his first southeast Idaho cov-
er crop trial. The trial is also
being conducted at every other
U.S. Plant Materials Center.
It involves planting replicated
plots of various cover crop spe-
cies — including hairy vetch,
crimson clover, red clover, bal-
ansa clover, radish, cereal rye,
winter pea and black oat — to
test which ones perform best in
different environments.
Pickett plans to add his
own experiments to the trial,
including testing the top-per-
forming varieties for protein
content and feed value to assist
producers who may raise cov-
er crops for grazing. He’s also
taken biomass samples from
his cover crops to measure for-
age volume.
He’ll also work with Uni-
versity of Idaho Extension
weed specialist Pam Hutchin-
son, who will test various
chemicals in the spring for
their efficacy in terminating
cover crops.
Pickett plans to conduct
additional trials testing soil
moisture retention improve-
ments due to cover crops and
soil health of conventionally
tilled cover crop plots against
no-till cover crop plots.
Another future trial may
involve examining species
mixtures and seeding rates
of multi-species cover crops.
He’d like to work with pro-
ducers on trials, too, be-
lieving growers are more
accepting of results from
commercial fields. He hopes
to work with a producer in
Grace, Idaho, to test cover
crops on rangeland and find
varieties with good early
spring growth for grazing.
Pickett said many produc-
ers within the area are using
cover crops, but his program
has the luxury of learning
through trial-and-error and
“can afford to have a failed
field.”
Pickett said funding to
help producers raise cover
crops is available through
the NRCS Soil Health Ini-
tiative.
“I think everything starts
with soil,” Pickett said. “I see
(cover crops) becoming more
widespread as the benefits are
realized here.”
BURLEY, Idaho — A
lot of hay is sitting on Idaho
farms, which combined with
several other factors paints a
bleak picture for hay prices in
the year ahead, an expert says.
Huge stocks, cheaper sub-
stitute feed, weak exports
and lower milk prices all put
pressure on hay prices, Cassia
County Extension Educator
Joel Packham told producers
at the University of Idaho Ag
Outlook.
“We’re seeing a whole lot
of hay sold at $80 to $85 a
ton,” he said.
That’s good for some peo-
ple but not necessarily for oth-
ers, he said.
Idaho’s average price for
alfalfa hay in 2016 is $114 a
ton, down from nearly $200 in
2014 and about $170 in 2015.
Huge hay stocks now are a re-
sult of big purchases in 2014,
he said.
May 1 on-farm hay stocks
in 2015 jumped 181 percent
year over year, from 320,000
tons in 2014 to 900,000 tons.
And stocks continued to
climb, reaching 950,000 tons
on May 1 of this year.
Hay prices were relative-
ly high in 2014, but so were
milk and cattle prices. Dairy
producers had a lot of money
and saved it by putting hay in
the yard, making a big com-
mitment to more production,
he said.
The value of hay produc-
tion was pegged at $1 billion
in 2014. But a big percentage
of hay stays on the farm; off-
farm sales were $551 million
in 2014, he said.
Volatility in milk markets
is the reason producers built
hay stocks when they had the
money, and that’s what caused
the glut, he said.
In addition, the strengthen-
ing of the U.S. dollar turned
off the spigot of exports, and
that also resulted in lower
prices. Idaho’s ag exports
overall have declined more
than 40 percent in the last two
years, he said.
Another problem for Ida-
ho alfalfa growers is there are
plenty of cheaper substitutes
such as straw, corn, barley,
triticale, other ensiled grasses,
corn silage and hay from other
states.
Idaho’s corn silage pro-
duction has seen a huge jump
over the last 20 years and is
mostly kept within the farm,
he said.
Livestock groups seek reform under new administration, Congress
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
The National Cattlemen’s
Beef Association and the Pub-
lic Lands Council will contin-
ue to work on several priority
issues as they look ahead to a
new Trump administration and
a new Congress.
Among the issues are regu-
lations and litigation that inhib-
it livestock grazing on public
lands.
One priority is rolling back
restrictive federal sage grouse
management plans and giving
deference to state management
plans.
An attempt failed to insert
Language in the National De-
fense Authorization Act that
would prevent implementation
of the federal plans where ex-
isting state plans were in place,
Public Lands Council Execu-
tive Director Ethan Lane said
in a webinar on priority issues.
Beyond the opposition of
Wikipedia
The West front of the U.S. Capitol. A cattle ranchers’ group looks
forward to rolling back sage grouse plans.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,
chairman of the Armed Forces
Committee, there was quite a
bit of opposition from envi-
ronmental groups and “green
decoy” sportsmen groups, he
said.
PLC and NCBA will work
to counteract those groups’
messaging on the Hill, he said.
“We’re going to continue
to press that message that un-
less the current federal plans
are blocked in order to allow
state management to continue,
we’re going to see increased
fuel loads across the West and
increased wildfire threat head-
ed into this summer,” he said.
The Bureau of Land Man-
agement’s new Planning 2.0
rule is another priority, with
its broad reorientation of the
agency’s resource manage-
ment planning process. The
agency has stated it wants to
move away from multiple use
to better respond to social and
environmental change, with
no clear definition of what that
means, he said.
“BLM is mandated to man-
age for multiple use and sus-
tained yield, and we will con-
tinue to press them to keep an
eye on that as they move for-
ward,” he said.
The rule contains many ob-
jectionable items, including re-
ducing the comment period on
proposed plans to as little as 30
days, reducing the role of state
directors and local input and
eliminating the specific require-
ments for economic analysis.
“There is simply no other
option. Planning 2.0 must be
thrown out and we must start
over in order to get a result that
works for all multiple uses in
the West,” Lane said.
ESA reform
Reform of the Endangered
Species Act is also on the
groups’ priority list. At this
point there are more than 2,100
species listed, about half of
them domestic species. Only
about half of those domestic
species have functioning recov-
ery plans, he said.
That means livestock pro-
ducers are dealing with the
restrictions of a listing without
any path forward or bench-
marks for success set by the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Part of that is due to the li-
tigious environment and the
relentless pressure from radical
environmental groups through
a variety of legal tactics, he
said.
“But also there’s the simple
fact that it’s easier for the Fish
and Wildlife Service to move
away from those pressure
points of litigation than to deal
with the hard work of recover-
ing those species and delisting
them in an orderly fashion,” he
said.
NCBA and PLC will work
to get more attention paid to the
issue and gaining relief from
species that are recovered and
don’t belong on the list any-
more, such as gray wolves in
the West and grizzly bears in
the Yellowstone area, he said.
The groups will also work
reform of the National Envi-
ronmental Policy Act, which
guides almost every activity on
federal lands.
“It’s got to the point where
for many of us it feels like you
can’t swing a gate open west
of the 100th meridian without
running through a National En-
vironmental Policy Act process
before you do so,” he said.
State and local roles in the
process need to be enhanced,
and “stakeholders” need to
be further defined. The public
and environmental litigants
are inserting themselves in the
process and are granted a seat
at the table equal to livestock
producers who hold grazing
permits, he said.
Allegations of USDA livestock mistreatment overblown, audit finds
No evidence of
systemic problem
at research facility,
auditors say
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Allegations of livestock
mistreatment at a USDA re-
search facility in a New York
Times article were largely
overblown, according to an
internal agency audit.
Last year, the newspaper
published a story, “U.S. Re-
search Lab Lets Livestock
Suffer in Quest for Profit,”
that led members of Congress
to demand an investigation by
USDA’s Office of Inspector
General.
Auditors from OIG exam-
ined 33 specific allegations
about the USDA’s Meat An-
imal Research Center in Clay
Center, Neb., found that most
“were inaccurate, lacked suf-
ficient context, or were uncor-
roborated,” according to their
recently completed report.
Of the 33 statements, the
audit only described seven as
“accurate.”
For example, the article
said that sows at the facility
were giving birth to a high-
er-than-average number of
piglets “but hundreds of those
newborns, too frail or crowd-
ed to move, are being crushed
each year when their mothers
roll over.”
The investigation found
that the number of piglets born
per sow at the facility were in
line with industry norms, as
were piglet mortality rates.
Similarly, the article report-
ed that 6,500 animals have died
of starvation at the facility, but
the audit found that these were
often newborn lambs that had
trouble nursing.
“It does not mean that US-
MARC was not feeding ani-
mals appropriately,” the audit
said.
The article referenced “un-
settling side effects” such as
“deformed vaginas” related to
the center’s research on cat-
tle twins, but the audit found
that this problem is common
among female twins with male
brothers and was not a result of
the study.
“Furthermore, multiple vet-
erinarians have confirmed that,
other than being sterile, ani-
mals with this condition suffer
no ill effects or pain and can
still enter the food supply,”
the audit said.
While some of the New
York Times’ allegations were
true — for example, experi-
ments involving surgery and
breeding were performed
— auditors “did not note ev-
idence indicating a systemic
problem with animal welfare
at USMARC.”
The auditors note that they
tried to contact the New York
Times during the investiga-
tion, but the newspaper and the
reporter who wrote the story
refused to be interviewed.
Although the facility didn’t
have a “systemic problem,”
auditors said USMARC could
improve its oversight and doc-
umentation of animal welfare
issues.
Auditors criticized the lack
of a formal complaint process
about animal mistreatment at
the facility, noting that the in-
formal system led some em-
ployees fearful of retaliation
for reporting problems.
In response, the USDA’s
Agricultural Research Service
— which oversees USMARC
and other facilities — said it
has hired an animal welfare
ombudsman who serves as a
“confidential, impartial and
independent outlet” for com-
plaints.
The Agricultural Research
Service also agreed to imple-
ment other recommendations
made by auditors, except for
the proposal to make more
information about its research
public.
The advantages of releas-
ing additional details “do not
outweigh the associated risks
from domestic terrorism,” the
ARS response said.