Capital press., February 24, 2017, Page 7, Image 7

February 24, 2017
CapitalPress.com
7
Mexico takes more of plentiful Red Delicious crop
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
WENATCHEE, Wash. —
While Washington tree fruit
companies are awash in Red
Delicious apples, exports to
Mexico are up 33 percent
from a year ago with most
of them being the iconic
Red Delicious.
“I’d say it’s pretty good
into Mexico even with rum-
blings by the administration
and discussion of NAFTA.
Mexico has taken a lot of
fruit,” said Todd Fryhover,
president of the Washing-
ton Apple Commission in
Wenatchee, the industry’s ex-
port promotion arm.
On Jan. 26, President Don-
ald Trump’s press secretary,
Sean Spicer, mentioned a 20
percent tariff on Mexico as
a possible means of having
Dan Wheat/Capital Press File
Red Delicious apples ready for packing at Olympic Fruit in Moxee,
Wash. Mexican buyers are taking more Red Delicious this year
than last.
Mexico pay for a border wall.
Washington apple exporters
don’t want that to trigger re-
taliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.
The administration plans
to renegotiate the 1994 North
American Free Trade Agree-
ment with Mexico and Can-
ada to make it fairer to the
U.S. While questionable in
some other sectors, NAFTA
eliminated Mexican tariffs on
U.S. apples over time, result-
ing in it becoming the No. 1
export market for Washington
apples.
Washington will be mid-
way in sales of its 2016 apple
crop in March. But with its
second largest crop in histo-
ry, 135.7 million, 40-pound
boxes, it is 10 percent behind
in sales targets of Gala and 4
percent behind in Reds, Tom
Riggan, president of Chelan
Fresh Marketing has said.
Reds and Gala are both
selling below breakeven for
growers and make up 55 per-
cent of the 76 million boxes
of apples left to sell, Riggan
said.
Reds are estimated at 39
million boxes for the year
with 26 million remaining to
be sold. Prices are likely to
fall below the current $13 to
$16.90 per box.
While lower prices help
exports, the strength of the
dollar in relation to the value
of other currencies and the
large size of Reds hinder ex-
ports, Fryhover said.
“The size of the crop is all
a refl ection of size of fruit,”
Fryhover said, noting that one
size larger equates to 10 per-
cent more fruit.
Reds are running large,
which means fewer per box
and more boxes or volume.
Despite all of that, Wash-
ington season-to-date exports
to Mexico, as of Jan. 31, to-
taled 3.4 million boxes of ap-
ples, mostly Reds and a lot of
Gala, he said. That compares
with 2.4 million a year ago
when the total Washington
crop was about 20 million
boxes smaller.
“We’re probably on track
for about 12 million boxes for
the season. That’s not bad. It
could be better if we had more
smaller fruit,” Fryhover said.
Mexico took 9.7 million
last season and a record 16
million out of the record
143.6-million-box Washing-
ton crop in 2014. China is up
almost 32 percent over last
year, so far, at 1.1 million
boxes versus 840,000, Fry-
hover said.
India is up about 200 per-
cent at 1.3 million boxes ver-
sus 440,000 last year, he said.
India was abnormally low a
year ago with port closures.
India takes about 97 percent
Reds and China is heavy in
Reds, Gala and Granny, he
said.
Season-to-date exports to-
taled 17 million boxes Feb.
5 compared to 14.6 million
a year ago and 21 million in
2014.
Legality of Cascade-Siskiyou
expansion challenged in court
Culture Breads owner Shaun Thompson Duffy talks about his fl our milling and bread-baking processes
Feb. 17 in south Spokane. BELOW: Thompson Duffy bakes bread made from ancient and heritage
grains.
Breadmaker relies on ancient grains
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
SPOKANE — When bak-
er Shaun Thompson Duffy
and his family moved to Spo-
kane fi ve years ago, he found
the close proximity to the
Palouse — one of the nation’s
most productive wheat-grow-
ing areas — appealing.
“It just sort of makes
sense for a bread baker to be
here,” Thompson Duffy said.
“There’s so much potential
here, with food, with grains,
with life in general.”
Thompson Duffy owns
Culture Breads. He sells his
breads at the Rocket Mar-
ket and Doma Coffee, and
through subscription.
He maxed out at 50 cus-
tomers, and had to get a big-
ger oven to take on more peo-
ple. He still has a waiting list
of 150 people.
He said he intends to open
a storefront in the Perry Dis-
trict in south Spokane at the
end of August.
Originally from Texas,
Thompson Duffy attended cu-
linary school and was a chef
in Las Vegas, New York City
and hotels in Texas and Chi-
cago, where he began, in his
words, “exploring” bread.
“You can be at the top of
the bread game but you can
still have a life,” he said.
“And you can really do it on
your own terms.”
Thompson Duffy, 36, uses
ancient, heritage or landra-
ce grains, including spelt,
einkorn, rye, Khorasan wheat,
Turkey Red wheat, sonora
wheat, Egyptian barley and
Red Russian wheat, of which
he says, “It’s my favorite
grain in the world.”
He buys the grains from
area farmers.
Carole Landt, a Rear-
dan, Wash., farmer, provided
Thompson Duffy with Kho-
rasan wheat, or kamut, an an-
cient wheat whose grains are
double the size of other wheat.
“I think he’s a caring in-
dividual that wants to make
great, healthy bread for peo-
ple,” she said. “I believe in
that process, and I’d sure
like to move that movement
along.”
Don
Scheuerman
is
co-founder of Palouse Heri-
tage, which raises heirloom
landrace grains in Endicott,
Wash. He hopes Thompson
Duffy is successful as “a voice
in educating about bread” and
provides “landrace breads to
the Spokane market that are
good for the soul, the soil, the
environment and the health of
his friends and customers.”
Thompson Duffy currently
mills his grains in Post Falls,
Idaho, once a week and bakes
using a custom wood-burning
oven in south Spokane. He
will switch to twice a week as
the weather gets warmer and
move a mill into the bakery.
He gives talks about bread
and setting up bakeries or piz-
za shops in the region, and
offers bread-baking classes at
Spokane public libraries.
He hopes to encourage
businesses to use whole
grains for fl avor, nutrition and
digestibility.
Thompson Duffy eventu-
ally wants 7 to 9 tons of each
grain each year, although he’s
interested in smaller amounts,
too.
He is looking for farmers
who use natural practices and
no chemicals.
He’s also able to con-
tract-mill grains for farmers
looking to sell fl our.
99
5
Ashland
tns.
u M
r
66
Ore.
R
Ore.
Calif.
N
th
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
The federal government
unlawfully expanded the Cas-
cade-Siskiyou National Mon-
ument onto public land that’s
dedicated to timber produc-
tion, according to a lawsuit
brought by 17 Oregon coun-
ties.
The Association of O&C
Counties claims the national
monument designation will
effectively prohibit logging
on 35,000 acres of U.S. Bu-
reau of Land Management
forests that must be harvested
on a “sustained yield basis”
under a 1937 law.
Capital Press was unable
to reach a representative of
the U.S. Interior Department,
which oversees the BLM.
The 53,000-acre national
monument was initially cre-
ated in 2000 under the Clin-
ton administration and was
recently increased by 48,000
acres in the waning days of
the Obama administration, to
the consternation of timber
and grazing interests.
Much of the newly added
acreage is comprised of lands
the federal government origi-
nally granted to the Oregon &
California Railroad in the late
1800s but later repossessed
due to a contract breach.
Because that property was
taken off county tax rolls, the
O&C Act of 1937 committed
it to forest production, with
50-75 percent of the logging
revenues going to 17 counties
in Western Oregon.
The Association of O&C
Counties, which represents
those governments, argues
that O&C Lands can’t be in-
cluded in the national mon-
ument because commercial
logging is prohibited within
its boundaries.
140
Medford
238
kiyo
Capital Press
Area in
detail
Original monument boundary
Newly expanded boundary
Sis
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Cascade-Siskiyou National
Monument expansion
ive
Complaint alleges
expansion
overreaches
presidential
authority
Kl a m a
5
Calif.
10 miles
Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
According to the com-
plaint, the federal government
has repeatedly backed off
from including portions of the
O&C Lands within a national
monument, a wilderness area
or a state park.
In 1986, the federal gov-
ernment concluded that O&C
Lands may only be included
in a plan to protect the threat-
ened spotted owl if it doesn’t
confl ict with timber produc-
tion, the complaint said.
Counties affected by the
expansion were caught by
surprise by the Obama admin-
istration’s announcement and
had no input on the decision,
said Rocky McVay, executive
director of the association.
“We’re very disappointed
we weren’t brought into this
early on,” he said.
It’s possible that ranchers
and inholding landowners
may also fi le lawsuits against
the expansion, McVay said.
The Murphy Co., an Ore-
gon veneer and plywood man-
ufacturer, and Murphy Timber
Investments, an Oregon forest
landowner, have fi led a law-
suit over the decision, largely
on the same legal grounds.
Both lawsuits have asked
a federal judge to declare that
expanding the national mon-
ument onto O&C Lands ex-
ceeds presidential authority.
McVay said his group
hasn’t been in touch with the
Trump administration about
the lawsuit and whether the
expansion could be rolled
back under a settlement deal.
“We have to wait and see.
The ink hasn’t quite dried on
it yet,” he said, noting that
Ryan Zinke, the nominee to
head the Interior Department,
hasn’t yet been confi rmed by
the Senate.
The
Klamath-Siskiyou
Wildlands Center, an envi-
ronmental group in the area,
believes the acreage added
to the national monument is
valuable beyond its extractive
uses, said Jeanine Moy, out-
reach director for the group.
“There are not many plac-
es that are as biologically di-
verse as this region,” she said.
The lawsuit’s understand-
ing of the O&C Act is too
narrow, as the statute also
recognizes the importance of
preserving stream fl ows and
recreational uses, Moy said.
“Counties have largely
interpreted it as ‘timber fi rst’
when the Act doesn’t neces-
sarily say that,” she said.
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