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February 10, 2017 CapitalPress.com 11 Washington Shrink the EPA? Speaker Overseas buyers praise industry for GE wheat handling, but questions remain says he has a way By MATTHEW WEAVER Herron: ‘No cause is not an answer’ By MATTHEW WEAVER Capital Press Wheat buyers overseas praised the transparency of the industry during the in- vestigation into volunteer Roundup Ready wheat found in a fallow Washington field in 2016, but reiterated their zero tolerance for genetically modified wheat. Washington Grain Com- mission CEO Glen Squires, board members Mike Miller, Dana Herron and Washington State University Extension Director Rich Koenig recent- ly toured Japan, South Korea and the Philippines to meet with customers. The tour was for several reasons. Squires also wanted the customers’ perspective on how the incident was han- dled. Japan and South Korea both temporarily suspended wheat tenders until they re- ceived updated testing pro- tocols for the GE wheat from Monsanto, which developed the wheat that was found. “We recognize it was a challenging time for both them and us, and we want- ed to know how they viewed what transpired,” Squires said. Capital Press File The Washington Wheat Commission says overseas buyers have praised the industry’s handling of the discovery of volunteer Roundup Ready wheat plants found last year in a fallow field in Washington, but are disappointed investigators have not been able to explain how the incident occurred. An executive told the commission the industry got an “A+” for handling the situation, for keeping them informed and keeping it out of consumer hands, Herron said. Herron said the commis- sion’s repeated trips to the customer countries have es- tablished a relationship with the buyers. “It goes without saying we certainly do not want to test this trust with another GE event,” he said. The Ministry of Agricul- ture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan and company execu- tives wanted to know what the Washington reps thought was the cause. “Of course, we don’t know the cause,” Herron said. In December, the USDA Animal and Plant Health In- spection Service closed its investigation. “APHIS could not deter- mine how these volunteers came to exist in the fallow field after exhausting all leads and resources,” said Rick Coker, a public affairs spe- cialist for APHIS. GE wheat was also de- tected in Oregon in 2013 and Montana in 2014. The agency verified that all three GE glyphosate-resistant wheat detections came from APHIS-authorized field tests of GE wheat planted more than a decade ago, Coker said. APHIS in 2016 estab- lished new requirements for GE wheat field trials, such as permit conditions imposing additional record keeping and reporting requirements and extended post-harvest moni- toring periods. The new rules are a “significant” step in preventing similar incidents, Coker said. “However, additional de- tections of GE wheat related to the early field trials are pos- sible,” he said. Herron said the lack of conclusions is still a concern. “‘No cause’ is not an an- swer,” he said. “Our custom- ers don’t like that answer, I don’t like that answer, the Washington wheat industry as a whole doesn’t like that an- swer.” A future event would have to involve a federal investiga- tion on the highest level, he said. “With all the transition and political upheaval in Wash- ington, D.C., I kind of doubt it’s at the top of the agenda,” he said. “We hope and anticipate it won’t happen again,” Squires said. “But, if it does, regard- less of where it happens, the point is we need to have as close communication with our overseas customers as we can.” Food forum picks up where roundtable left off, backers say By DON JENKINS Capital Press KENNEWICK, Wash. — Most of the Environmental Protection Agency’s responsi- bilities should be delegated to the states, a speaker told potato farmers at last week’s Washing- ton-Oregon Potato Conference in Kennewick, Wash. Keynote speaker Jay Lehr, science director of the Heart- land Institute, economist and futurist, also said regulations would be dramatically reduced under Trump. Lehr said he is the last liv- ing scientist who was involved in the formation of the Envi- ronmental Protection Agency, which he said worked well for about 10 years before it was taken over in 1980 by “envi- ronmental zealots, activists and green organizations.” Lehr recently wrote a plan to shrink the EPA over a five- year period. The plan includes turning over the agency’s re- sponsibilities to the individual states, and is in the hands of key people in Washington, D.C., in- cluding Scott Pruitt, Trump’s nominee for EPA administrator, Lehr said. The move would reduce the number of EPA employees from 15,000 nationwide to 300 and reduce an $8 billion budget for environmental protection to $2 billion, with each state get- ting a grant of $20 million, Lehr said. Beyond that, he said, “The ability to take away from us the tools we use — the pesticides and fertilizers always under at- tack from anti-ag people, that is Matthew Weaver/Capital Press Keynote speaker Jay Lehr, sci- ence director of the Heartland Institute, talks about future trends in agriculture during the Washington Oregon Potato Conference Jan. 25 in Kenne- wick, Wash. really going to be history.” Also under Trump, Lehr ex- pects farmers will see a reduc- tion in fear over carbon dioxide and recognition that “man does not control the temperature of our planet.” National Potato Coun- cil CEO John Keeling said Trump’s transition so far has been fairly normal compared to past presidents, but he expects lots of uncertainty from his ad- ministration. “I think for President Trump, having a lot of people off-balance in some of these issues is something he thinks plays to his strengths,” Keeling said. Keeling said Trump’s regu- latory reforms are good for ag- riculture and small business. He expects Trump’s team to target narrow, specific regulations and the way regulations are promul- gated. Capital Press OLYMPIA — The Wash- ington Farm Bureau and a free-market policy center say they are concerned a new state-funded panel will become a platform for es- pousing more regulations on farmers. The food policy forum was authorized by lawmakers a year ago and is just getting organized by the Washington State Conservation Commis- sion. The forum is charged with making recommendations to lawmakers in the fall on im- proving “food systems.” It has yet to set goals or have members, but it’s also already associated with the Wash- ington State Food System Roundtable. The roundtable is the product of an older state government initiative. Made up primarily of government agencies and nonprofit orga- nizations, the roundtable will soon release a “25-year vision for a healthy, just and sustain- able food system.” House Bill 1562 calls on the food policy forum to “co- ordinate with” and “build on” the work of the roundtable. The bill also would push to 2018 the deadline for making recommendations to the Leg- islature. A draft of the roundtable’s report offered a wide range of goals, including minimizing greenhouse gases, protecting shorelines and “incentivizing third-party audits that ensure socially just farmworker con- ditions.” The roundtable weighed in on subjects as diverse as wag- es, soda taxes and breast-feed- ing in the workplace. The roundtable’s co-chair- man, Vic Colman, a public health consultant, told the Capital Press that he did not expect the final report to differ much from the draft. The state Department of Agriculture, which was part of the roundtable, complained last year the group had strayed from its original mission to look at hunger, nutrition and farmland preservation. The Farm Bureau’s direc- tor of government relations, Tom Davis, made the same charge at a hearing Feb. 2 in front of the House Agricul- ture and Natural Resources Committee. “We felt it’s been more divisive than unifying,” he said. The Farm Bureau, Davis said, would support a forum to “make sure that every child that goes to bed at night has a Washington House takes ‘step one’ on rural wells By DON JENKINS Capital Press Courtesy of WSDA Washington state lawmakers are considering a bill to support a forum to develop recommendations for improving the production and distribution of food. The Farm Bureau and Washington Policy Center are asking legislators to make sure the forum doesn’t follow the example of the Washington State Food System Roundtable. full stomach, and that’s really what we think we should fo- cus on.” HB 1562’s prime sponsor, Rep. Mia Gregerson, D-Sea- Tac, said she did not intend for her bill to be an extension of the roundtable and that she would be open to amending the legislation. She said she wanted the forum to unite people. “The food system in Wash- ington state is very compli- cated, and there hasn’t been a forum where everybody is considered equal in or- der to make sure that we’re taking care of the people of Washington state,” she said. The conservation com- mission estimates extending the life of the food policy forum to 2018 would cost $209,000, in addition to the $50,000 appropriated last year. Washington Policy Cen- ter agriculture policy analyst Madilynne Clark told the House committee that the market responds to food de- mands. “We are a very trade de- pendent nation, so why are we focusing on local food when we can already let the market provide good, strong agri- culture by doing what we do best — grow potatoes, grow apples, export our crops?” she said. “My concern is this bill will make us have one more layer of bureaucratic regula- tions that farmers will have to navigate.” Colman said he anticipated criticism, but didn’t agree that the roundtable took on too much. “We’re trying to grab all the elements you would want to grab in a food sys- tem,” he said. Conservation commission policy director Ron Shultz said he expects the forum to keep a tighter focus, empha- sizing how small farmers can distribute their crops, in- creasing the supply of locally grown food. “I think the roundtable did stray too far,” he said. “I think the forum is an opportunity to rethink it.” OLYMPIA — Tribes and environmentalists asked law- makers Tuesday to leave in- tact a state Supreme Court decision that a Washington Farm Bureau lobbyist said has made building rural homes “way too hard.” The House Agriculture and Natural Resources took up legislation responding to the court’s Hirst decision. The ruling, issued in October, re- quires landowners to prove that each new household well won’t siphon too much water from streams and rivers. Defenders of the ruling say the decision will protect fish by preserving state-set min- imum flows. Critics say the wells use little water and that ruling will make houses too costly to build and maybe im- possible in some places. “What you’ve got under Hirst is an awful lot of folks in an awful lot of counties, I think every county in the state sooner or later, who will have an awful hard time getting a home built — thousands and thousands of people,” Farm Bureau associate director of government relations Evan Sheffels said. “Our members need to build homes for their employ- ees. They need to build for their sons and daughters who want to come home and farm, and this makes it way too hard,” he said. The hearing showed bipar- tisan support for easing the burden placed by the court on individual landowners, though legislators are divided on how far to go in revising the Hirst decision. House Bill 1885 would essentially undo the ruling, restoring the state’s policy of routinely allowing wells that draw up to 5,000 gallons a day. House Bill 1918 would phase in the ruling, giving landowners who already have invested in building and sep- tic permits time to build. Bills to either implement or nullify the Hirst decision also are pending in the Senate. HB 1885 prime sponsor Larry Springer, D-Kirkland, said he expected lawmakers to reach a compromise. “It is a critical issue, es- pecially in rural Washington, that we absolutely have to solve, and we have to solve it this session. There’s a bunch of us who are absolutely com- mitted to do that. This is step one — this hearing today.” SAGE Fact #138 Farm Recycling. Potatoes are delivered to local processors. Then the potato peels and culls are returned to Threemile Canyon Farms as feed for the farms dairy herd. 6-2/#14 6-2/#6
