January 6, 2017
CapitalPress.com
15
Return of Argentine lemons upsets citrus growers
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
California and Arizona cit-
rus growers are chafing over
a USDA decision to reopen
U.S. ports to lemons from
Argentina after a 15-year ban
because of disease and pest
concerns.
The USDA Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Ser-
vice on Dec. 20 announced
it will accept lemons from
northwest Argentina — the
nation’s main citrus grow-
ing region — if they meet
certain conditions, including
registration and monitoring
of farms and packinghouses
and assurances that places of
production are pest-free.
The decision isn’t sitting
Registration
opens for
oilseed
workshops
Farmers to discuss
forming canola
grower association
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
Registration is open for
Washington state oilseed
workshops slated for Jan. 26
in Hartline, Jan. 31 in Ritz-
ville and Feb. 2 in Clarkston.
Karen Sowers, oilseed
cropping systems research
associate at Washington State
University Extension, said the
workshops will cover a range
of rainfall zones and cropping
systems.
“This is pretty much the
only opportunity to attend a
workshop this specific toward
canola, mustard and other oil-
seeds,” she said.
The program is designed
for both expert oilseed grow-
ers and those just trying the
crop for the first time. Oil-
seeds are still new for many
farmers, Sowers said.
“Canola is not your fa-
ther’s wheat,” she said. “It
does take more management,
it does take a little more
time.”
Sowers said she’s heard
from farmers that raising
canola improved their abili-
ties as a farmer because they
spend more time in their
fields.
Last year, Washing-
ton growers grew roughly
33,000 acres of canola. Sow-
ers expects that number to
increase.
“It feels like the momen-
tum is here, between poor or
low cereal commodity pric-
es and problems like falling
number or weed control is-
sues in a cereal crop that can
be controlled by a broadleaf
crop like canola and mus-
tard,” she said. “It’s kind of
opened people’s eyes a little
more to what could be out
there.”
Sessions include what to
scout for in a field and signs
of chemical drift, pests and
diseases. Sowers said dis-
cussions will be encouraged.
She recommends new oil-
seed farmers consider their
herbicide histories in the soil
for several years back. Her-
bicide residual-tolerant va-
rieties of winter and spring
canola are available, she
said.
Speakers from Oregon’s
Willamette Valley and Okla-
homa will also discuss the
formation of a Pacific North-
west canola growers’ associ-
ation. The Willamette Valley
already has an organization.
“We’re the only cano-
la-growing region in the
country that does not have
an association,” Sowers said.
A meeting Feb. 1 will fur-
ther discuss a new organiza-
tion, Sowers said.
Registration is $20.
Sowers expects 100 peo-
ple at each session.
“People will go home with
resources in their hands,” she
said.
Online
http://css.wsu.edu/biofuels/
well with groups such as Cal-
ifornia Citrus Mutual and the
U.S. Citrus Science Council,
which urged officials to scrap
the proposal during meetings
in Washington, D.C., earlier
last year.
The volume of lemons
grown in California and Ar-
izona is 497,350 metric tons
annually valued at $647 mil-
lion, according to USDA.
Lemons from Mexico and
Chile currently dominate the
U.S. import market, shipping
an average 46,376 metric
tons annually, according to
USDA.
Richard Pidduck, a citrus
grower who chairs the Santa
Paula, Calif.-based science
council, said the risk is un-
acceptable considering that
the California citrus industry
is already fighting the Asian
citrus psyllid and the deadly
tree disease huanglongbing.
“We’re being invaded
by new species almost ev-
ery year,” Pidduck told the
Capital Press. “The USDA
does not have a very good
track record of protecting
against these offshore pests
and diseases, so it’s discon-
certing that they’re plan-
ning to open the door even
wider.”
Publishing the final rule
was the first of several steps
that must be completed before
Argentina can begin shipping
lemons, USDA spokeswoman
Suzanne Bond said.
The APHIS and Argenti-
na’s National Plant Protection
Organization, known by the
initials SENASA for its name
in Spanish, must now finalize
a work plan that details the
conditions Argentina must
meet for every U.S.-bound
shipment, she said.
Additionally,
SENA-
SA will have to collect and
APHIS will need to verify
six months of fruit fly data.
APHIS must also verify that
packinghouses have met the
safeguarding requirements
written in the plan, Bond said.
“Until these steps are com-
pleted, APHIS will not issue
import permits for Argentine
lemons,” she said in an email.
In a news release, APHIS
said it has reviewed Argen-
tina’s citrus production and
packing practices and has
made site visits there in 2007,
2015 and in September to in-
spect production.
Among the USDA’s con-
ditions for entry are that
Argentine grove sanitation,
monitoring and pest control
practices are in place; that
packing areas are treated
with a surface disinfectant;
a lot identification method is
in place; and that inspections
for pest quarantines are han-
dled by SENASA, according
to the USDA’s website.
Argentine lemons have
been blocked from U.S. entry
since 2001 because of con-
cerns about two plant diseases
— citrus variegated chlorosis
and citrus greening, the Reu-
ters news service said.
Their re-entry comes as
California is strengthening
its quarantine for the Asian
citrus psyllid, which can car-
ry the tree-killing disease
huanglongbing, which is also
known as citrus greening. The
disease has devastated the cit-
rus industry in the Southeast-
ern U.S.
Industry leaders also ar-
gue they’ll become less com-
petitive as cheaper offshore
fruit is allowed to “steal shelf
space” as their costs increase.
USDA officials count-
er that economic impacts to
American producers will be
minimal because Argentina’s
production season is opposite
that of the U.S. and its lemons
would help the U.S. meet the
peak summer demand for the
fruit, according to an analysis.
New Chelan Fruit plant saves on labor
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
CHELAN, Wash. — A
year after it started, Chelan
Fruit Cooperative is wrapping
up construction of an $85 mil-
lion rebuild of its main apple
packing plant destroyed by
wildfire in 2015.
It’s the largest single con-
struction investment in the
town’s history, says Reggie
Collins, the co-op’s general
manager.
“I don’t think there is any-
thing close. Not even the Wal-
Mart store,” he said.
Workers began putting in
foundations last February.
A 34,000-bin controlled at-
mosphere storage building
was done by the end of June.
Packing facilities were fin-
ished in the fall and the plant
has been operating since Nov.
1. Administrative offices and
the employee lunchroom and
restrooms will be finished by
the end of January.
It’s 693,000 square feet of
buildings. Some 50,000 cubic
yards of concrete were poured.
Electrical conduit runs 39
miles and electrical wiring
230 miles, Collins said. There
are 20 sprinkler systems with
eight miles of pipe and 3,850
sprinkler heads.
Lightning struck Chelan
Butte within a few miles of
the plant on Aug. 14, 2015.
Wind swept fire into the east
edge of town so fast that busi-
nesses and homes were lost.
Chelan Fruit’s Plant No. 1
was destroyed and Plant No.
2, right next door, was saved,
partly by planes dumping fire
retardant directly on it. Smoke
and cosmetic damage were
quickly cleaned and that plant
continued operating.
Plant No. 1 could have
been rebuilt as it was for $65
million. That much was cov-
ered by insurance. But the
co-op took a longterm loan
for $20 million to cover up-
grades.
“We hope payments are
covered by efficiencies and
savings in operations from
the upgrades so we don’t have
Photos by Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Guadalupe Hernandez grabs automatically bagged Gala apples from the new Chelan Fruit Cooperative packing line on Jan. 3.
Pre-sized and graded Gala apples await in water lanes for move-
ment into bins for automated movement toward storage at Chelan
Fruit Co-op’s new plant, Jan. 3.
to increase packing charges,”
Collins said.
Big-ticket items include
the latest optical apple siz-
er-sorters from MAF Indus-
tries of France on a pre-size
line and New Zealand’s Com-
pac on one of two packing
lines.
The Compac Spectrim
takes up to 500 high-defini-
tion images of a single piece
of fruit as it passes through
the machine at a rate of 12
pieces per second, Compac
states. The MAF Agrobotic
operates similarly. Both sys-
tems analyze fruit externally
and internally and sort for
quality, size and color. They
both can eliminate human de-
fect sorting but people can be
used if there’s a special need
like a lot of hail-damaged ap-
ples, Collins said.
A second packing line has
human instead of addition-
al high-tech sorting after the
pre-sizer. It has the greatest
versatility for different types
of tray and bag packaging.
“We went with MAF on
the front end based on han-
dling. We think it’s best on
fruit handling and Compac is
best on color sorting,” Collins
said.
He said he knows of no
other fruit packer using two
different sizer-sorter manu-
facturers but views it as an ul-
timate double-check for max-
imum consistency in quality.
Fruit enters the system
from orchards at harvest or
later from storage and is sort-
ed and sized on the MAF pre-
size line. It goes back in stor-
age in bins and is brought out
as needed for packing on the
Compac line.
“So say we pre-size some
fruit and two weeks later pack
it and some bitter pit shows
up. We have Compac Spec-
trim on the back end to sort
that out. In the past, it was all
done by hand,” Collins said.
The high-tech sizer-sort-
ers, greater automation of bin
handling at the dump station
and on the pre-size line and
robotic palletizing of packed
fruit save about 20 percent on
labor when running two shifts
of 175 people, Collins said.
Even with that savings, Chelan
Fruit has been short 80 to 100
people this fall and is short 60
right now, he said.
The plant runs 80 to 90 bins
per hour or 1,200 bins per day
with two, eight-hour shifts, the
same as the old plant, he said.
Along with Plant No. 2
and packing plants at Beebe
and Pateros, Chelan Fruit can
run about 3,000 bins of ap-
ples per day. The co-op packs
about 7 million boxes of ap-
ples and pears annually and
1.5 million boxes of cherries.
Administrative and packing
employment totals 800 people
most of the year and reaches
1,100 to 1,200 during cherry
harvest.
The new CA storage at
Plant No. 1 is built so that an
Automated Storage and Re-
trieval System (ASRS) can be
added in the future, but right
now the cost would not be
made up by the six out of eight
forklift operator positions it
saves, Collins said.
ASRS uses robotic cranes
and dollies and greater com-
puterization of inventory to
move fruit in and out of stor-
age without humans, stacking
it higher and at greater densi-
ties. Matson Fruit in Selah and
some companies in California
are using it and it is a coming
trend, Collins said.
Race to save rare breed of pigs hinges on eating them
By PATRICK WHITTLE
Associated Press
WASHINGTON, Maine
— Susan Frank and her dogs
spend their days shepherding
hairy, black pigs with names
like Bacon, Pork Chop and
Yummy around a chunk of
Maine woods. Her farm,
which raises and fattens the
rare American mulefoot hogs
for slaughter, is essential to
their survival, she believes.
Frank’s mulefoots are rep-
resentative of a breed that was
once the rarest of all U.S. live-
stock, according to some agri-
cultural censuses, and remains
critically rare, the Livestock
Conservancy says. There are
fewer than 500 registered,
purebred, breeding mulefoots
in the country (they are even
more uncommon elsewhere),
and Frank’s Dogpatch Farm
accounts for a dozen of them,
along with some 170 others,
some of which are cross-
breeds.
The way to save declin-
ing breeds of livestock, she
argues, is to get people to
eat them — thereby increas-
Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press
Susan Frank pets one of her mulefoot pigs at Dogpatch Farm in
Washington, Maine. The American mulefoot hog was once the
rarest of all U.S. livestock breeds, and they are still listed as criti-
cally rare by the Livestock Conservancy. There are fewer than 500
registered, purebred, breeding mulefoots.
ing demand that will lead to
more breeding. She wants the
mulefoot restored to its early
20th-century status as a pre-
mier pig.
The U.S. Department of
Agriculture is listening. The
agency is giving her $50,000
to help increase interest in
products made with mulefoot
meat, and Frank is spreading
her gospel to chefs, restau-
rants and markets around
New England and New York.
“I know it sounds weird,
but you have to eat a rare
breed to help it come back,”
she said. “I see it as a way to
spread the word about mule-
foot.”
The mulefoot is named
for its non-cloven hoof, and
was the subject of a vibrant
industry including some 200
herds a century ago. But its
tendency for slow growth and
small litters reduced its appeal
for industrial pig farming, and
the mulefoot was down to just
one significant herd in Mis-
souri a decade ago, when a
slow drive to save the breed
began.
Frank got into the busi-
ness in 2012 after acquiring
her first three purebreds. The
pigs were popular with small
farmers and homesteaders be-
cause of their hardiness and
high yields of meat and lard,
said Darlene Goehringer, a
mulefoot farmer in Hurlock,
Maryland.
“If nobody wants them for
pork, who would keep them?”
Goehringer said. “This isn’t
like raising a parrot.”
The drive to save the mule-
foot is motivated in part by
the importance of preserving
genetic stock, said Jeannette
Beranger, a programs director
with the Livestock Conser-
vancy. Mulefoots, like other
old breeds of livestock, are
genetic storehouses that can’t
be replicated if they become
extinct, she said.
“Even though we’re not
going to feed the world with
mulefoot hogs, the reason you
want to keep them around is
because they might have qual-
ities that might not be present
in other commercial hogs,”
Beranger said.
Frank’s farm has 20 acres
of fenced-in birch, beech
and hornbeam trees where
the hogs roam free, noshing
on feed pellets and the occa-
sional apple or pumpkin. She
wants to organize a food fes-
tival based around mulefoot
products, with some wineries
and breweries.
Until then, she’ll be raising
her pigs and working to con-
vince restaurants in food-cra-
zy places like Portland, Bos-
ton and New York to use their
meat.
“It’s not just to make
a living for me,” she said.
“It’ll help the breed come
back.”