February 17, 2017
CapitalPress.com
Wheat prices to remain low, economist predicts
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
SPOKANE — Washing-
ton farmers aren’t likely to
see wheat prices rebound sub-
stantially for the next three to
five years, an economist says.
Washington State Univer-
sity small grains economist
Randy Fortenbery and Glen
Squires, CEO of the Washing-
ton Grain Commission, deliv-
ered a joint economic forecast
Feb. 8 at the Spokane Ag
Expo and Pacific Northwest
Farm Forum.
Record global wheat pro-
duction and “huge” world
stocks that are growing fast-
er than demand will continue
to depress commodity prices,
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Randy Fortenbery, Washington State University small grains
economist, and Glen Squires, CEO of the Washington Grain Com-
mission, chat before speaking Feb. 8 at the Spokane Ag Expo and
Pacific Northwest Farm Forum.
Fortenbery said.
“The real problem has
been not only have we done
well, most of our global com-
petitors have done well also,”
Fortenbery said. “Unfortu-
nately, without some sort of
a production problem some-
where in this coming crop
year, that’s not going to go
away.”
If the situation contin-
ues, low prices will lead to
stressed margins, impacting
land rental rates and farm as-
sets, Fortenbery said.
Wheat prices received in
Washington state are gener-
ally a little higher than U.S.
average prices, Squires said.
The U.S. average price is
roughly $3.80 per bushel,
and the Washington average
is roughly $4.29 per bushel.
Because of low wheat and
corn prices, across the U.S.
more farmers will shift into
soybeans, whose price is do-
ing relatively well, Forten-
bery predicts.
Lower prices also mean
the U.S. Department of the
Treasury will pay more in
crop insurance claims than
anticipated, Fortenbery said.
“If you remember back
in 2014, a lot of the discus-
sion was, ‘This has to be a
budget-reducing farm bill,’”
Fortenbery said.
The industry will likely
push for increased flexibility
and a better safety net in the
next farm bill, but Forten-
bery said it isn’t likely to be
a top priority in Washington,
D.C.
Commodity groups will
need to build strong coali-
tions to get farm bill discus-
sions on lawmakers’ agendas,
he said.
Large snowpack
triggers cloud
seeding suspension
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
BOISE — Idaho water
users have suspended an ef-
fort to increase precipitation
from winter storms by seed-
ing clouds with silver iodide
to form additional ice nuclei.
The program, led by Ida-
ho Power in cooperation
with state irrigators and the
Idaho Department of Water
Resources, was put on hold
Feb. 8 based on the abundant
mountain snowpack.
“The water supply all over
Southern Idaho is looking re-
ally good,” said Brian Sauer,
water operations manager
with the Bureau of Recla-
mation. “If there is too much
snow, they don’t want to
cause any flooding with their
cloud seeding operations.”
Idaho Power spokesman
Brad Bowlin said it’s likely
snowpack may dip below the
program’s threshold soon and
justify resuming cloud seed-
ing around Island Park and in
the Payette Basin.
“I don’t know if we’ve
ever stopped across the whole
territory. This might be a first,”
Bowlin said.
The program incorporates
55 ground-based generators
and three aircraft that seed
clouds from the sky. Based on
current conditions, Bowlin said
continuing operations would
likely produce no return on in-
vestment, as storage water may
ultimately be released for flood
control.
Bowlin said the program’s
suspension is a setback for re-
search funded by the National
Science Foundation to bet-
ter understand the physics of
cloud seeding.
But the hiatus is a good sign
for irrigators, who hope to start
the season with full reservoirs,
despite entering winter with
little storage carryover.
“The projections are if we
keep getting even a little bit of
snow for the next six weeks, I
think you’ll have to do some
flood control at this point,”
said Lyle Swank, watermaster
for the water district that in-
cludes the Upper Snake reser-
voir system.
Swank emphasized flood
control releases aren’t an ex-
act science, and reservoirs
don’t always refill after space
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Small railroads in Washington state are lobbying the Legislature to revise a new Department of Ecolo-
gy rule that threatens to make transporting vegetable oils unprofitable.
Courtesy of Wes Hipke
Ice restricts the aquifer
recharge flow on Feb. 10 at
the Milepost 31 site on the
Northside Canal. The state
has fallen behind in its winter
recharge effort but is optimistic
flood-control releases will sup-
port Upper Snake recharge.
is freed.
Wes Hipke, IDWR’s re-
charge program coordinator,
has already started making
contracts with canal managers,
anticipating he’ll get to test
new infrastructure the depart-
ment helped finance to con-
duct managed aquifer recharge
in the Upper Snake. Recharge
involves injecting surface wa-
ter into the aquifer through
unlined canals or spill basins
to replenish declining ground-
water levels.
Water rights for Upper
Snake recharge are only in pri-
ority during spring flood-con-
trol releases. Hipke said IDWR
has the capacity to recharge up
to 430 cubic feet per second
of water in the Upper Snake,
which equals 25,000 acre-feet
over the course of a month.
A recharge water right in
the Lower Snake remains in
priority throughout winter,
but Hipke said the department
has fallen well short of its
Lower Valley goal, recharging
43,450 acre-feet thus far. He
said ice in the Northside Ca-
nal has reduced the program’s
recharge capacity since early
December, but he’s optimistic
the ice will soon be cleared
and the Lower Valley program
will reach 80,000 acre-feet
before winter’s end.
Train exec rails against
Ecology oil spill rule
State agencies
defend new rule
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — A small
railroad that makes about
$4,000 a year hauling soy-
bean oil and mineral oil will
have to spend several times
that amount to meet the
Washington Department of
Ecology’s rule on preparing
for oil spills, a railroad ex-
ecutive told legislators this
week.
The soybean oil goes to
feed cattle and the miner-
al oil goes to orchards as
a pesticide, Central Wash-
ington Railroad Chief Op-
erating Officer Tim Kelly
told the House Environment
Committee on Feb. 6.
Ecology’s new rule treats
those oils the same as crude
oil transported across state
lines by BNSF Railway and
Union Pacific Railroad.
Ecology estimates that
making plans, holding drills
and keeping clean-up crews
on standby will cost rail-
roads between $12,000 and
$39,000 a year.
Kelly, who’s also COO
of the Columbia Basin
Railroad, said the expense
will fall most heavily on
the small railroads, which
don’t even haul explosive
petroleum oils. Combined,
the two railroads have 46
employees and annual rev-
enues of under $10 million,
he said.
“We consider ourselves
small businesses, and we’re
serving small business cus-
tomers, principally support-
ing agriculture,” Kelly said.
“We are responsive to
any accidents on our line
anyway, but these are admin-
istrative costs above the actu-
al costs of having to deal with
anything,” he said.
For the second straight
year, several small railroads
are trying to persuade law-
makers that safety legisla-
tion passed in 2015 wasn’t
intended to regulate vegeta-
ble oils.
Lawmakers declined to
act last year. The deadline for
railroads to submit spill-re-
sponse plans is March 30,
so there is more urgency this
year.
The crude oil boom and
fears of fiery derailments mo-
tivated the legislation. The
derailment of a Union Pacif-
ic crude oil tanker last June
in Mosier, Ore., reinforced
those fears.
Ecology acknowledges
Washington has not experi-
enced disastrous vegetable
oil spills from trains. The
department cites recent veg-
etable oils released from a
burning warehouse and a
tortilla factory as proof that
plant-based oils can menace
waterfowl and fish.
The state Department of
Fish and Wildlife and Puget
Soundkeeper Alliance, an
environmental group, joined
Ecology in defending the
rule.
“In our experience, the
contingency planning, the
planning upfront, pays off in
huge ways,” Ecology spill re-
sponse manager Dale Jensen
told the House committee.
“We’ve worked really, real-
ly hard to have a smart rule,
and I just ask you to give us
a chance to implement it.”
Kelly said the Columbia
Basin Railroad hauls 800 to
900 carloads of canola oil a
year.
“It certainly doesn’t have
any of the properties that the
Union Pacific and the city of
Mosier had to deal with. The
concern would be dealing
with waterways. I think that’s
Ecology’s take,” he said. “On
that line, we cross no water-
ways. We don’t go near any
waterways. The Columbia
Basin is primarily desert re-
gion.”
The Central Washington
Railroad hauled 25 carloads
of mineral oil and five car-
loads of soybean oil in 2016,
Kelly said. As a common
carrier, the railroad can’t dis-
criminate against cargo, he
said.
“If we had the freedom
to act, we would choose not
to haul these products at all
because they’re uneconomi-
cal to haul under these con-
ditions,” Kelly said.
17
Red Delicious
prices dropping
with two-thirds
still unsold
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
WENATCHEE, Wash. —
As sales of the 2016 Wash-
ington apple crop approach
the midway point, the price
of Red Delicious is dropping
significantly.
The average asking price
of extra fancy (standard)
grade, medium size (80 to
88 apples per 40-pound box)
in Wenatchee and Yakima
dropped $3 on the low end
and $2 on the high end in one
month, according to USDA
tracking. The prices were $13
to $16.90 on Feb. 8, down
from $16 to $18.90 on Jan. 9.
All of those prices are be-
low grower costs, said Des-
mond O’Rourke, world apple
market analyst and retired
Washington State University
ag economist in Pullman. The
price of Reds likely will go
lower, he said.
“About two-thirds of the
total Red crop remain to be
sold and they’re 34.6 percent
of what’s left in storage,” he
said. “But with prices this low
that will help them sell in ma-
jor markets like Mexico and
India.”
Tom Riggan, general man-
ager of Chelan Fresh Market-
ing in Chelan, said some su-
per efficient growers may still
be making money on Reds but
that Reds and Gala are both
selling below cost and make
up 55 percent of what’s left of
the 2016 crop to sell.
The total fresh crop shrank
1.34 million boxes from Jan. 1
to Feb. 1, from 137.1 million
to 135.7 million, according to
the latest industry report.
Unfortunately,
only
23,000 boxes of the shrink
was in Reds but they likely
will shrink more in coming
months as more large size, of
which there is an abundance,
are diverted to processing,
Riggan said.
As of Feb. 5, 60.9 million
boxes had been sold versus
54.7 last year at this time and
64.3 two years ago from the
record 2014 crop.
Of the 76 million boxes
left to be sold, 26.5 million of
them are Reds and 15.8 mil-
lion are Gala. Eventually all
the Reds and Gala will move
on the fresh market or to pro-
cessing, Riggan said.
Reds sell better in the Mid-
west than on the coasts, he
said.
Growers and shippers are
doing well on managed vari-
eties but they make up smaller
volume, he said.
Total national fresh hold-
ings are at 85.7 million boxes,
up 13 percent from a year ago
and 9 percent from the five-
year average, according to the
U.S. Apple Association.
Sales of Granny Smith in
Washington is 9.6 percent
ahead industry sales volume
targets and Golden Delicious
is ahead by 7.9 percent, Rig-
gan said.
But Fuji and Gala are be-
hind by 10 percent and Reds
by 4 percent, he said. Fuji will
catch up as a later variety, but
Gala and Reds are a concern,
he said.
“It’s definitely not a train
wreck but it’s nice if we’re
ahead by mid-season and not
too far behind,” Riggan said.
Bill would prevent employers from recovering attorney fees in wage disputes
Other changes to labor litigation rules also proposed in Oregon Legislature
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
SALEM — Oregon farm-
ers would be stripped of the
ability to recoup attorney
fees if they win a wage and
hour lawsuit under a bill be-
fore state lawmakers.
Only employees who file
and win such cases would be
entitled to attorney fees un-
der House Bill 2169, which
is being considered by the
House Committee on Busi-
ness and Labor.
Currently, either workers
or employers can recover
costs if they win legal dis-
putes over wage and hour
claims.
Proponents of HB 2169
argue the current system ef-
fectively prevents workers
from filing lawsuits when
employers have paid less
than the minimum wage or
made improper wage deduc-
tions.
“It serves as a real de-
terrent for low-asset house-
holds to proceed with legit-
imate claims,” said Michael
Dale, executive director of
the Northwest Workers’ Jus-
tice Project, during a Feb. 13
committee hearing.
Judges would still retain
the right to penalize plaintiffs
and their lawyers for cases
that are deemed frivolous,
Dale said. “I think it balances
out.”
Attorneys who represent
workers in labor disputes said
their clients are typically un-
willing to risk paying tens of
thousands of dollars in attor-
ney fees over disputes involv-
ing several hundred dollars in
wages.
“It guarantees bankruptcy
for the individual,” said attor-
ney David Schuck.
Opponents of HB 2169 ar-
gue the law should remain im-
partial as to who can recoup
attorney fees in wage and
hour lawsuits.
“We don’t think Oregon
law should stack the deck
against one side or the other,”
said Anthony Smith, state di-
rector for the National Federa-
tion of Independent Business.
Tim Bernasek, an attorney
representing the Oregon Farm
Bureau, said judges ultimately
decide whether such awards
are appropriate, so workers
don’t necessarily have to pay
the opposing side’s attorney
fees when they lose a dispute.
The prospect of being lia-
ble for attorney fees has a “so-
bering effect” on both parties
in such disputes, Bernasek
said. “It’s important to keep
that balance.”
Representatives of Ore-
gon’s business community
testified they were also trou-
bled by other proposals aimed
at strengthening the posi-
tion of workers in litigation
against employers.
“Wage theft is already il-
legal and none of the bills
before you make it any more
illegal,” said Betsy Earls, vice
president of Associated Ore-
gon Industries.
Under House Bill 2180,
workers who file a complaint
over unpaid wages can file a
lien against their employer’s
property.
Supporters of HB 2180 say
the change is necessary be-
cause companies can transfer
assets or change their names,
preventing employees from
collecting unpaid wages even
when they’ve won court judg-
ments.
Opponents of the bill ques-
tion its fairness, since a lien
can impede the ability to sell
property, hurt a company’s
creditworthiness and other-
wise disrupt business transac-
tions, even if the wage claim
is unfounded.
“The due process concerns
are significant,” said Ber-
nasek.
Similarly, under House
Bill 2181, if a worker is fired
within 90 days of filing a wage
claim, the employer faces the
“rebuttable presumption” that
the termination was intended
as retaliation.
According to proponents,
this revision levels the play-
ing field.
“Proving retaliation is very
difficult,” said Dale. “You
have to get in someone’s head
based on something they did
in the past.”
Critics of HB 2181 main-
tain it’s just as difficult for
employers to prove they were
not retaliating against work-
ers.
“You’re telling me I’m
guilty until I prove I’m inno-
cent,” said Smith.