16 CapitalPress.com
March 17, 2017
Apple commission plans to boost overseas promotions
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
WENATCHEE,
Wash.
— The Washington Apple
Commission is looking at
reallocating export promo-
tional dollars and increasing
Washington apple brand iden-
tity overseas by encourag-
ing more shippers to use the
Washington apple logo.
It’s an effort to meet in-
creased international competi-
tion brought on by more pro-
duction in Europe, elsewhere
in the U.S. and in other coun-
tries and Russia’s ban on West-
ern produce. The ban, begun
on Aug. 7, 2014, was in re-
taliation for Western sanctions
on Russia for its aggression in
Ukraine.
“I was in Asia two weeks
ago and saw Canadian apples
in markets there for the first
time in 15 years,” Todd Fry-
hover, commission president,
said at a commission meeting
in Wenatchee on March 14.
“The French are upping
their game. South Africa is
there (in Asia) again. It’s really
competitive out there,” Fry-
hover said.
“We’ve had good years and
now things are evolving within
the industry and international-
ly so Red Delicious and Gala
are struggling,” he said.
By reducing promotional
funding for Central America,
Thailand, Malaysia/Singapore,
Taiwan, the Middle East and
Colombia/Peru to 2012 lev-
els, the commission can save
$700,000 to be reallocated
elsewhere, Fryhover told com-
missioners.
That would reduce the fund-
ing to $187,000 to $387,000
per country annually versus
the current level of $260,000
to $550,000. The commission’s
Foreign Trade Committee will
consider the reallocations at its
May 18 meeting in advance of
the next commission budget
meeting on May 25.
The commission is budget-
ed to spend $7.6 million this
year on export promotions
with $5.1 million of that com-
ing from the federal Market
Access Program — known by
the acronym MAP — and $2.5
million from grower assess-
ments.
More than $1 million each
is budgeted on promotions in
Mexico and India. China/Hong
Kong, Vietnam and Indonesia
follow as top targets with be-
tween $550,000 and $875,000
each.
Fryhover said he’s con-
cerned about the future of MAP
funding and that the commis-
sion has funding that can be
used to keep promotions at the
$7.6 million level for the next
couple of years.
The Russian embargo has
shifted European apple exports
to Asia and the Middle East, in-
creasing competition there for
China, the U.S., Chile and New
Zealand.
The commission slashed
its promotions in Russia from
more than $300,000 before the
embargo to $11,000, and Fry-
hover is recommending elimi-
nating that.
Washington exports to
Russia peaked at 921,558,
40-pound boxes in 2007 and
was 598,028 boxes in 2013. It
has been zero since the embar-
go.
The commission passed a
motion supporting use of the
Washington apple logo on all
varieties shipped into all mar-
kets. About 70 percent of ship-
pers already use the logo on
price look-up stickers on apples
being exported but it would be
good to have everyone doing it
to build the Washington brand,
Fryhover said.
Oneonta Starr Ranch
Growers in Wenatchee and
Yakima Fresh and Sage Fruit
Co. in Yakima are moving to-
ward using the logo, he said.
Fryhover also displayed
conceptual Point of Sale ma-
terials of the logo surrounded
by the individual logos of 23
marketers. It’s a way of in-
cluding everyone in promo-
tions, he said.
Commissioner Frank Da-
vis, vice president of business
development of Domex Su-
perfresh Growers in Yakima,
said the industry needs to
build its international identity
if it’s going to get to 60 mil-
lion boxes in exports.
In 2014, the Washington
industry exported a record
50.6 million boxes, which
represented 35.5 percent of
the year’s record crop. Nor-
mally, exports are 30 million
to 35 million boxes.
Wheat variety list
Stories from OSU professors
adds 15 new options help children explore nature
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
Fifteen new varieties have
been added to the annual list
that ranks wheat quality for
growers and seed dealers.
Usually five or six variet-
ies are added each year, said
Doug Engle, manager of the
USDA Western Wheat Qual-
ity Laboratory in Pullman,
Wash.
The laboratory, the Idaho
and Oregon wheat commis-
sions and the Washington
Grain Commission distribute
the Preferred Wheat Varieties
brochure.
The brochure assigns a
ranking to each wheat variety
— most desirable, desirable,
acceptable and least desir-
able.
Of the 107 varieties listed,
52 received a most-desirable
ranking.
Overall quality is the de-
ciding factor, industry offi-
cials say.
“If you’re looking at
choices of varieties, and you
have a couple that have com-
parable agronomics, compa-
rable yields, choose the one
with the better quality,” said
Glen Squires, CEO of the
Washington
commission.
“That will just increase the
overall quality of the crop.”
Mike Pumphrey, a spring
wheat breeder at Washing-
ton State University, said
the brochure is also a good
guideline for breeders.
“I want my line to be on
there with a desirable or
most-desirable quality, so
that the industry sees we’re
doing our best to maintain
the market share based on
quality and production fac-
tors,” he said.
Farmers and seed manag-
ers pay attention to the bro-
chure, Engel said.
Varieties don’t move up
or down on the list, he said.
The brochure uses all cumu-
lative information on a vari-
ety.
Every three years, Engle
polls the three state wheat
organizations and removes
varieties that don’t have
significant acreage to make
room for the new ones.
Pumphrey said growers
see the long-term need to
maintain a high-quality prod-
uct.
“I often am surprised how
much they value quality,
considering it’s something
they’re not overtly paid for
any given crop year,” he
said. “There’s been many
times I’ve heard a farmer say,
New varieties
Following are the new
wheat varieties added to the
Preferred Wheat Varieties
brochure:
• LCS Drive
• UI Sparrow
• Norwest Duet
• SY Assure
• WB1604
• WB1529
• ARS-Pritchet
• LCS Evina
• LCS Jet
• Tekoa
• WB6341
• Ryan
• SY Steelhead
• LCS Luna
• LCS Iron
‘Yeah, but I don’t like the
quality of that line.’ That’s
a tall order, when someone
might be looking past bot-
tom-line economics in one
given year to say, ‘I don’t
like the quality of that line
and what it might do to us
long-term.’”
A new category was add-
ed this year: Unacceptable
Except Customer-Specific
Uses, or UCS, for varieties
that might perform well in a
specific product, but should
be segregated from general
commercial channels, ac-
cording to the brochure.
“If a mill wants to source
that wheat, more power to
them,” Engle said. “There’s
a home for everything if you
just look hard enough.”
WestBred soft white
spring wheat WB-1035CL+,
Arizona Plant Breeders hard
white spring wheat BR7030
and three hard red winter
wheats, Residence and Estica
from Cebeco and Symphony
from Tanio Tech, have the
UCS ranking.
Two Oregon State Univer-
sity associate professors won
a national science writing
award for their collaboration
on a children’s book set in
Eastern Oregon.
The book, “Ricky’s Atlas,
Mapping a Land on Fire,” is
the second by stream ecolo-
gist and author Judith Li and
Peg Herring, communications
director for OSU’s College
of Agricultural Sciences and
who illustrated the book. In
February, they received one
of five awards for outstand-
ing science writing from the
American Association for the
Advancement of Science and
Subaru of America Inc.
The pair’s first collabora-
tion was “Ellie’s Log: Explor-
ing the Forest Where the Great
Tree Fell,” published in 2013.
Oregon State University Press
published both books.
As the titles suggest, both
books center on the adven-
tures of friends Ricky and
Ellie. “Ricky’s Atlas” finds
the youngsters learning about
the impact of wildfire on the
dry forest of Eastern Ore-
gon. While visiting the ranch
of Ricky’s uncle, a lightning
storm touches off a fire and
the children later explore the
burned area, handle fossils
and visit a fire lookout tower.
OSU stream ecologist Judith Li has written a
pair of children’s books that use a story format to
introduce elementary-age students to old growth
timber and rangeland wildfire ecological issues.
Two more books are in the pipeline, one set at
the Oregon Coast and another in a city.
Ricky plots their explorations
and findings with maps and
field notes. In “Ellie’s Log,”
the pair study the aftermath of
a huge tree falling to the forest
floor during a winter storm.
Li, who is retired from
teaching but still does some
research at OSU, said “Ricky’s
Atlas” is drawn in large part
from her years of field work
in Eastern Oregon’s John Day
River Basin. “Ellie’s Log”
began as an initiative prompt-
ed by the National Science
Foundation and grew from
research conducted at OSU’s
H.J. Andrews Experimental
Forest. It also marked the start
of Li’s collaboration with Her-
ring, who has a background in
fisheries biology and is a long-
Photos courtesy of Oregon State University
Peg Herring, communications director for OSU’s
College of Agricultural Sciences, illustrated a pair
of children’s books in collaboration with Judith Li,
an OSU stream ecologist.
time science writer at OSU.
Li learned to her surprise that
Herring also is an artist, and
that led to the line drawings
and watercolors that illustrate
the books.
“I didn’t realize she was
such an amazing artist,” Li
said. “We discovered we had
two little friends in our lives,
Ricky and Ellie, who I invent-
ed and she illustrated.”
The stories are intended
for upper elementary school
students, but are not dumbed
down, Herring said.
“These are fun books and
they’re meant to delight chil-
dren, but they’re also accurate,”
she said. “The science in these
books is matched by estab-
lished scientific benchmarks.
The level of precision is appro-
priate for a 10-year-old, but it’s
accurate as well.”
The protagonists record
their field notes in journals
and make maps, practices that
match the work of adult scien-
tists and that Li and Herring
hope encourage children to get
outside and take note of what
they see. Instead of a glossa-
ry, the books use margin notes
and illustrations to help young
readers better understand the
text.
“The story is fiction but the
information is related to the sci-
ence of the landscape,” Li said.
The books have received
positive reception from teach-
ers, parents and young read-
ers, she said.
Domestic interest growing in PNW hard red spring wheat
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
More domestic millers are
considering a blend of Pa-
cific Northwest-grown hard
red spring wheat with wheat
from elsewhere in the nation
to boost the protein content,
said Glen Squires, CEO of the
Washington Grain Commis-
sion.
Hard red spring wheat
typically has more protein
than other varieties — usual-
ly 13 to 16 percent — which
corresponds with more glu-
ten content that increases its
dough handling and water
absorption characteristics,
according to the North Dako-
ta Wheat Commission. Most
of that variety is grown in the
Dakotas, Montana and Min-
nesota.
“They’re actually request-
ing our high gluten-strength
wheats now to blend up their
lower-quality wheats,” Dana
Herron, a grain commission
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press File
Board member Dana Herron
stands by the Washington
Grain Commission building. He
and other commissioners dis-
cussed the increasing interest
among domestic millers in the
region’s hard red spring wheat.
member, said of millers. He
said PNW farmers have long
emphasized quality in grow-
ing red wheats.
Michael Pumphrey, spring
wheat breeder at Washing-
ton State University, said he
works to maintain lines with
desirable milling and baking
qualities, as well as yield.
Herron praised Pumphrey
for his breeding efforts.
“Our customers under-
stand they can depend on the
wheat that comes out of the
Pacific Northwest, because
we don’t produce wheat of
low quality,” he said.
About 10 percent of
Washington’s wheat crop is
hard red spring wheat and
10 percent is hard red winter
wheat, Squires said. Eighty
percent of the crop is soft
white wheat, most of which
is exported to customers in
Asia.
Some milling compa-
nies in the PNW are having
difficulty getting hard red
spring wheat from elsewhere,
Squires said. They want sam-
ples of PNW-produced wheat
to determine logistics, in-
cluding transportation costs.
Mills typically want to
buy from the closest source,
Herron said.
“More wheats that have
high gluten are being used
domestically and not ex-
ported,” he said. “The qual-
ity of our wheat is starting
to really rise to the top —
even domestic people are
noticing.”
Winter and spring hard
red wheats are also bringing
higher prices. At Portland
this week, hard red winter
wheat with 13 percent pro-
tein was bringing $5.6650-
5.9150 a bushel while soft
white wheat was bringing
$4.5075-4.6575 a bushel.
Squires isn’t certain
how much red spring wheat
could be shipped as a result
of the millers’ inquiries, but
the commission will provide
more information.
“If there’s an opportunity,
we need to take advantage of
it,” he said.
Stock watering rights bill moving through legislature with ease
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
BOISE — An immigra-
tion-related bill that some
Idaho farm groups worried
could have a chilling effect on
much of the state’s agricultur-
al workforce has struggled to
gain traction in the Idaho Leg-
islature.
A House joint memorial
that asks Congress to ensure
that foreign food products im-
ported into the United States
meet the same food safety
standards that domestic farm-
ers and food processors must
meet is also struggling.
But a bill that would cod-
ify in state law a landmark
Idaho Supreme Court deci-
sion on who owns in-stream
stock watering rights on fed-
eral land is sailing through the
Legislature with little opposi-
tion.
That bill passed the Senate
by a 34-0 vote and has been
sent to the House. If passed
by that body and signed into
law by the governor, it could
benefit thousands of ranchers
in Idaho who own cattle that
graze on federal land.
Idaho’s top court ruled in
2007 that the U.S. Bureau
of Land Management can’t
own in-stream stock water-
ing rights because the agency
doesn’t own cattle and there-
fore can’t put the water to
beneficial use.
Senate Bill 1111 would al-
low thousands of Idaho ranch-
ers to potentially file for those
rights.
The immigration bill
stalled after facing opposition
from some farm groups that
worried it could discourage
some of the industry’s for-
eign-born labor force to look
to other states for employ-
ment.
The bill sought to pre-
vent so-called sanctuary cit-
ies from being established in
Idaho by allowing the state
to withhold funding from
them if they were. Sanctuary
cities are municipalities that
discourage cooperation with
federal immigration agencies.
After meeting with ag
groups opposed to the bill, its
sponsor, Rep. Greg Chaney,
R-Caldwell, rewrote it and
dropped provisions that farm
groups believe would have
required law enforcement of-
ficers to hold anyone arrested
for up to 48 hours for further
checks if they could not prove
legal residence.
But House Bill 198 has
sat in the House State Affairs
Committee since Feb. 22 and
with the 2017 session nearing
its homestretch, it’s unlikely
the bill will advance, Chaney
said.
“As of right now, no hear-
ing date has been set,” he said.
“As time winds down (in the
session), it becomes less like-
ly.”
After the bill was re-writ-
ten to try to address concerns
from the agricultural industry,
some of the enthusiasm from
its initial supporters was lost,
Chaney said.
“In the end, we weren’t
able to come up with language
that everybody was comfort-
able with,” he said.
Some of Idaho’s main farm
groups were concerned about
language in House Joint Me-
morial 1 that they believed
was inaccurate, including lan-
guage about country of origin
labeling.
The memorial’s author,
Canyon County farmer Sid
Freeman, worked with those
groups to change some of
the language and the memo-
rial has been reintroduced as
HJM6.
The rewritten memorial
passed the House unanimous-
ly March 14 and has moved to
the Senate.
Freeman believes there is
still enough time in the legis-
lative session to get it passed.
“I think we’ll get it done,”
he said.