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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2017
VOLUME 90, NUMBER 5
WWW.CAPITALPRESS.COM
E ARLY W ARNING
SYSTEM
Capital Press
P
ARMA, Idaho — Change is in the
air for farmers who battle wind-
borne diseases that attack their
crops, costing them millions of dol-
lars each year in lost production and
added expenses.
Plant pathologist James Woodhall, work-
ing with other researchers, has acquired four
cutting-edge instruments that sniff out air-
borne spores in farm fi elds.
Woodhall, who works for the University of
Idaho Extension, believes the data he collects
will provide growers with the information
they need to treat for crop diseases even be-
fore symptoms surface, saving them a fortune
in chemical applications and
improving disease control.
“We’re currently spray-
ing with little or no knowl-
edge of if spores are in the
air,” Woodhall said. “They’ll
spray based on historical
occurrence, but things vary
James
year to year.”
Woodhall
With industry support, he
hopes to grow the network of spore samplers
in the coming years to give farmers in each re-
gion a more comprehensive look at the threats
that are blowing in the wind.
Each sampler costs about $4,500.
Woodhall, a native of England who has
been at UI about a year, believes the variety
of diseases he plans to target will set his work
$2.00
New ODA
director
tackles issues
from farm
bill to GMOs
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Spore samplers give farmers an upper hand
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Anim
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keep ations ge ing
ing cr
eeks t help
clean
4
apart from other research projects using spore
samplers. Plans are already in the works to
use spore samplers for early detection of dis-
eases that attack potatoes, barley, wheat, sug-
ar beets, beans, onions, oilseeds, grapes and
hops.
How it works
A spore sampler is similar to a vacuum
cleaner, sucking in air and capturing spores in
a vial. Airborne spores can spread many dis-
eases from infected plants, which are often far
away.
The spore DNA is then extracted and iden-
tifi ed using an advanced diagnostic technique
called real-time polymerase chain reaction,
Turn to SPORES, Page 12
Courtesy of Oregon State University
Walt Mahaffee, a USDA Agricultural Research Service plant pathologist who is also on the Oregon State University faculty, and graduate student Lindsey Thiessen pick a
vineyard location to set up a spore trap.
SALEM — With the 2014
Farm Bill expiring next year,
agriculture leaders are already
preparing for the struggle over
its successor.
Alexis Taylor, the Oregon
Department of Agriculture’s
new director, is
no stranger to
farm bill nego-
tiations.
She helped
work on the
2008 and 2014
Alexis
versions of the
Taylor
legislation as
a congressional staffer before
being hired by USDA, where
she most recently served as
Deputy Under Secretary for
Farm and Foreign Agricultural
Services.
Barely a week into her new
role as ODA’s chief, Taylor
headed back to Washington,
D.C. to meet with her counter-
parts at a policy meeting of the
National Association of State
Departments of Agriculture.
Taylor said the 2018 Farm
Bill is expected to be a prime
subject of conversation at the
meeting, which took place Jan.
30 to Feb. 1.
It’s too early to tell what
changes are in store for the
monumental piece of farm
legislation, particularly in
light of uncertainties about
federal budget priorities, she
said.
In the 2014 Farm Bill,
Congress moved away from
traditional farm subsidies and
toward greater reliance on the
federal crop insurance pro-
gram.
Taylor said she expects this
trend to continue, with crop in-
surance serving as the “corner-
stone” of farm programs for
commodity crops and playing
a larger role in support for spe-
cialty crops.
“It’s not a one-size-fi ts-all,”
Taylor said during a meeting
with Capital Press.
Farm bill negotiations have
grown increasingly conten-
tious in the past decade. The
2008 Farm Bill took a year
longer to enact than expected,
and the 2014 Farm Bill went
into effect two years after its
predecessor expired.
Now that Republicans
control the Senate, the House
of Representatives and the
White House, though, some
expect the process to be less
turbulent.
Trade relations was to be
another hot topic at the NAS-
DA meeting, particularly with
the questions that loom over
the Trump administration pol-
icies, Taylor said.
Turn to TAYLOR, Page 12
Oregon hazelnut crop soars
2016 crop is 40 percent larger than previous year
Capital Press
Oregon saw a major upswing
in hazelnut production in 2016,
with growers harvesting 40 per-
cent more nuts than the previous
year.
At 43,300 tons, the state’s
hazelnut crop also outperformed
the USDA’s projection by 14
percent.
The situation is a big improve-
ment over 2015, when the crop’s
size fell 25 percent short of the
USDA’s estimate.
Even so, experts say the uncer-
tainty complicates the Oregon ha-
zelnut industry’s sales planning.
“For the processors and the
handlers, knowing what that crop
is makes it much easier to market
it worldwide,” said Garry Roda-
kowski, a hazelnut farmer near
Vida, Ore.
Turn to CROP, Page 12
Matuesz Perkowski/Capital Press
Hazelnuts are processed at the Willamette Hazelnut
Growers facility in Newberg, Ore., in this Capital Press
fi le photo. Oregon’s 2016 hazelnut crop increase rough-
ly 40 percent from the previous year.
4-1/#14
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI