16 CapitalPress.com
March 10, 2017
Thresher Wheat focuses on food safety, grower returns
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
BLACKFOOT, Idaho —
The chief executive officer of
a major Eastern Idaho wheat
buyer said his company is
ramping up production at its
local grain cleaning facility,
having completed upgrades
to double capacity and im-
prove food safety.
Don Wille, CEO of
Thresher Artisan Wheat, said
his company finished adding
a second cleaning line at the
Blackfoot plant last April,
and hired about five workers
to staff it.
Wille said increasing the
volume of wheat treated at
the facility remains “a work
in progress.”
“Before, we were maxed
out (at the Blackfoot plant),
and we couldn’t take on any
new customers,” Wille said.
Courtesy of Thresher Artisan Wheat
A worker at the Thresher Artisan Wheat facility in Blackfoot, Idaho,
runs a wheat cleaning line at the plant, which is seeking to expand
production after adding a second line.
“By adding a second line, we
can now go after more cus-
tomers throughout the coun-
try.”
Thresher, a subsidiary
of the Kansas-based hold-
ing company Agspring, was
formed in 2014 when Ag-
spring acquired General
Mills’ Eastern Idaho grain
handling infrastructure.
Agspring vice president
Bradford Warner said the
cleaning line upgrades should
enable the facility, built to
handle a single customer, to
segregate grain by quality
and type for many customers.
Eventually, Warner envisions
grain from his company’s
sustainable wheat production
project may even be segregat-
ed.
Last fall, Thresher also
underwent inspections to
achieve compliance with
the federal Food Safety and
Modernization Act, as well
as food-safety certification
through the Safe Quality
Food Institute, Wille said.
As part of that effort, Thesh-
er changed more than 2,000
pages of procedures, upgrad-
ed its metal detection capacity
and added X-ray machines for
“one more level of screen-
ings” in Blackfoot.
Cathy Wilson, director of
research collaboration with
the Idaho Wheat Commis-
sion, said Wille updated her
organization about progress at
the plant during a recent board
meeting. She said a recent na-
tional case of E. coli found
in flour demonstrates that
wheat is not immune from
food-safety challenges.
“As far as food safety and
food quality, that is on the ra-
dar of a lot of different people,
including consumers,” Wilson
said.
During the past season,
Wille said Thresher also im-
plemented a program to help
growers determine the opti-
mum time to harvest. He said
Thresher has equipment for
pre-harvest testing of mois-
ture levels in growers’ wheat
so they know when to cut to
avoid high-moisture grain that
could be rejected upon deliv-
ery.
“We’ve got a moisture
tester we put in the back of a
pickup truck, and we can get
to and from the field faster
than they can,” Wille said. “If
they bring all of their equip-
ment to one field and get half-
way through the field and it’s
not dry enough, they’ve got to
move everything to another
field.”
In February, Wille said
Thresher rolled out a new
web-based portal, enabling
producers to access their
contracts, balances and ac-
counting information from
home.
Producers previously had
to call Thresher and request
to have the information faxed
or mailed, Willie said. Pro-
ducers can access the portal
through thresherwheat.com,
after obtaining a user name
and password through the
company.
Calif. agronomist
brings cautionary tale
to Idaho hay growers
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
BURLEY, Idaho — Con-
trolling alfalfa weevil, the
most damaging insect pest of
alfalfa in the West, is getting
tougher in Northern Califor-
nia and that problem could
spread throughout the Inter-
mountain West if growers
don’t take heed.
It’s a huge problem in the
Scott Valley, especially bad
in the last few years, and it’s
starting to be a problem in
Idaho, Steve Orloff, forage
agronomist with the Universi-
ty of California told growers
at the Idaho Hay and Forage
Conference March 2.
High populations of wee-
vils and significant decline in
control have been observed,
even with multiple applica-
tions of insecticides. In addi-
tion to high populations, the
climate offers an extended
time for weevils to develop
into adults.
“By and large it’s the lar-
vae stage that does the most
damage,” Orloff said.
But the severe problem
with weevils in the last cou-
ple of years couldn’t be ex-
plained by prolonged emer-
gence or high weevil pressure
alone, which led to studies of
whether weevils had develop
resistance to pyrethroid insec-
ticides.
Pyrethroids have been
widely used for weevil con-
trol because they are cheap
and effective.
Growers in Northern Cal-
ifornia have used them every
year for the last 15 years, he
said.
To test for resistance,
university researchers col-
lected weevils from four
conventional fields – where
pyrethroids had been used at
different intensities — and
one organic field, where pyre-
throids had never been used.
Alfalfa shoots were dipped
in five different pyrethroid
solutions and placed in sam-
ple cups to which weevils
from the various fields were
added.
The best control was seen
with the weevils from the or-
ganic field, where mortality
rates ranged from 62 percent
at one-fourth of the recom-
mended application of py-
rethroid to 92 percent at the
recommended rate.
Mortality at the stan-
dard-use rate in the weevils
from conventional fields
ranged from just 3 percent to
15 percent. Even at four times
the recommended rate, wee-
vil control was 23 percent in
three fields and 35 percent in
one.
“So we have a resistant
population to pyrethroids,”
Orloff said.
Over time, that could build
to a population that is all re-
sistant, he said.
The research results mean
growers in the Scott Valley
must rotate to other insecti-
cides and not use pyrethroids.
But the resistance devel-
oped from the exclusive use
of pyrethroids should also
serve as a cautionary tale for
growers in Idaho and other
areas of the Intermountain
West.
To avoid a similar out-
come, they should rotate to
insecticides with other modes
of action and incorporate in-
tegrated pest management.
“The key is don’t use the
same insecticide over and
over and over,” he said.
The problem is there ar-
en’t many good alternatives at
this point. Alfalfa isn’t a big
enough market to grab the at-
tention of insecticide compa-
nies, so insecticides approved
for alfalfa are spillovers from
other crops, he said.
Hopefully there will be
some new insecticides in the
future to control alfalfa wee-
vils, he said.
Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press
Steve Orloff, extension forage agronomist with the University of
California, talks about insecticide resistance in alfalfa weevils during
the Idaho Hay and Forage Conference in Burley on March 2.
Dan Wheat/Capital Press File
Wheat is harvested near Waterville, Wash., last August. A new multi-year study predicts that inland Pacific Northwest wheat crops will do
better than first thought as climate change occurs in the coming century.
Wheat will do better than assumed
as climate changes, study predicts
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
Dryland wheat crops will
do better than researchers
originally assumed as the cli-
mate changes, according to a
scientist who took part in a
$20 million, six-year region-
al study of cereal crop pro-
duction systems.
Climate models for the
inland Pacific Northwest
call for warmer weather with
drier summers and slightly
wetter winters, according to
Claudio Stockle, Washington
State University professor
of biological systems engi-
neering. He was among 279
scientists at WSU, the Uni-
versity of Idaho and Oregon
State University who took
part in the recently complet-
ed Regional Approaches to
Climate Change for Pacific
Northwest Agriculture proj-
ect, known by the acronym
REACCH.
Such conditions would
likely decrease yields, espe-
cially for spring cereal crops,
Stockle wrote in his study
summary.
“However, the rising lev-
els of atmospheric carbon
dioxide that are driving glob-
al warming also have direct
beneficial effects on crops,
promoting crop growth and
improving water-use effi-
ciency,” he wrote. “This ef-
fect, sometimes referred to
as ‘CO2 fertilization,’ might
mean that the future of dry-
land agriculture is better than
it is assumed to be when con-
sidering climate warming
alone.”
Higher winter and spring
temperatures allow for ear-
lier planting and will benefit
winter crop growth, accord-
ing to Stockle’s study. Earlier
maturity of winter and spring
crops would help them sur-
vive “the more extreme and
damaging” summer heat.
REACCH study yields discoveries
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
Sanford Eigenbrode, a University of Idaho entomolo-
gist and director of the Regional Approaches to Climate
Change for Pacific Northwest Agriculture project, known
as REACCH, said some of the discoveries made by re-
searchers include:
• The region’s cereal cropping system is resilient to cli-
mate change and has the ability to continue to be profitable.
• Better data on no-till farming benefits.
• New, more precise measurement methods.
• Regional earthworm distribution.
• The discovery of a new aphid, which will be added to
pest alerts.
• Bare-patch rhizoctonia thrives in dry conditions,
which was previously unknown to researchers, since other
pathogens prefer wet conditions.
• Better precision nitrogen management.
• Improved rotational cropping systems, including triti-
cale, winter canola and winter legumes.
• Better water conservation in the driest parts of the region.
• New climate-based tools to help growers make deci-
sions.
The project was funded by the USDA National Institute
of Food and Agriculture. More than 200 researchers from
UI, Washington State University, Oregon State University
and the USDA Agricultural Research Service worked on
the project.
— Matthew Weaver
Stockle’s study compared
low and high levels of at-
mospheric carbon dioxide
to baseline crop yields from
1979 to 2010.
Wheat yields in lower
levels of atmospheric carbon
dioxide and warming were
projected to have small and
steady increases until the end
of the century.
At higher carbon dioxide
levels, wheat yields were
projected to increase to
mid-century and then decline
by the end of the century, to
levels similar to the baseline,
according to Stockle’s report,
which was one of dozens of
studies undertaken.
REACCH director San-
ford Eigenbrode said the
project was designed to en-
hance the sustainability of
cereal production systems in
the inland Pacific Northwest.
He emphasized collab-
oration among researchers.
Those collaborations will
continue, including a meet-
ing in March 2018 to provide
an update on research still to
be completed.
Eigenbrode compared the
cost of a single $20 million
project such as REACCH to
the cost of 20 $1 million in-
dividual USDA-funded proj-
ects or 40 $500,000 projects
all working on their own.
“We can’t claim neces-
sarily to have discovered
things that would never have
been discovered without RE-
ACCH, but we can claim we
have understood the system
as a whole in a way that nev-
er could have been accom-
plished,” he said.
Genesee, Idaho, farmer
Eric Odberg said his involve-
ment in the project support-
ed his decision to use no-till
production.
“We’ve had greater ex-
tremes in our weather over
my 25-year farming career,”
he said. “The farming tactic
that I’ve deployed has al-
lowed my farm to weather
those extremes better, being
able to get by with less mois-
ture and have less fertilizer
where I don’t need it.”
A book, “Advances in
Dryland Farming in the Pa-
cific Northwest,” is slated for
publication this year. Eigen-
brode intends the 11-chapter
book to be “the go-to place
for information,” printed and
online, for cereal farmers.
“It should be quite use-
ful by anyone, regardless of
their views, positions or lev-
el of concern about climate
change,” he said.
A 2012 REACCH sur-
vey found that 80 percent
of growers agreed that they
have observed weather
patterns changing in their
lifetime, but only 39 per-
cent agreed that the aver-
age global temperature is
increasing.
Most farmers — about
79 percent — do not believe
human activity is the prima-
ry cause of climate change.
The public is roughly 42 per-
cent likely to believe climate
change is human-caused and
not a natural occurrence.
Nine hundred producers par-
ticipated in the survey.
Eigenbrode said the
project was not intended to
change farmers’ minds. If it
was, he said, he would not
have been involved in it.
“We’re about doing good
science for good farming,”
he said.
Both dyed diesel bills run out of fuel in Idaho Legislature
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
BOISE — Two bills deal-
ing with dyed diesel, which is
used heavily in farming, were
introduced during the 2017
Idaho legislative session and
both are now dead.
A bill that would have cre-
ated a dyed fuel enforcement
program in Idaho has been
defeated despite the support
of most of Idaho’s main farm
groups.
The Senate Transporta-
tion Committee earlier in the
session voted to send the bill
to the full Senate with a “do-
pass” recommendation.
But after a lengthy debate
on the Senate floor, Senate Bill
1072 was killed on a 26-8 vote.
Dyed fuel is tinted red so
it can easily be identified. It is
exempt from state and federal
diesel taxes because it is for
off-road use only.
It is used heavily in agri-
culture, construction, mining
and logging. Idaho currently
has no dyed fuel enforcement
program.
Sen. Steve Bair, a retired
farmer from Blackfoot who
spoke against the bill, told
Capital Press he disagreed
with the bill’s inference that
farmers and others eligible to
use the fuel are misusing it.
“The bill presumes that
farmers are cheating and I
don’t think that’s a correct as-
sumption, nor do I think it’s
fair,” Bair said.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen.
Bert Brackett, a Republican
rancher from Rogerson, sent
a letter to Food Producers of
Idaho March 6 thanking its
members for their support.
FPI represents most of Ida-
ho’s main farm groups.
“I have said many times
that I don’t believe there is
widespread illegal use of dyed
diesel in production agricul-
ture,” Brackett stated.
However, he added, there
is a public perception that
abuse of dyed diesel is occur-
ring.
“We in agriculture can ig-
nore the situation or be defen-
sive, but until we are willing
to take a proactive approach,
our image is needlessly sus-
pect,” he said.
Various estimates place the
amount of forgone taxes to the
state because of alleged mis-
use of dyed fuel at between $3
million and $11 million.
Sen. Jim Rice, R-Caldwell,
told Capital Press that it would
take about 500,000 to 1.5 mil-
lion vehicle fill-ups to arrive at
those totals.