May 19, 2017
CapitalPress.com
3
Second round of Oregon wolf
plan review happens in Portland
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
Convinced U.S. agricul-
ture is in the midst of a cri-
sis, the National Farmers
Union is planning a recruit-
ing drive to establish new
farm advocates trained to
help struggling farmers cope
with stress and keep their
businesses afloat.
The concept dates back
to the farming crisis of the
early 1980s, when farmers
throughout the country start-
ed a grassroots movement
to aid their overwhelmed
peers. Advocates educated
other farmers about their le-
gal rights, helped them keep
their land in the face of fore-
closure and sought to ad-
dress such issues as suicide
in rural America.
“We’re getting a lot of
calls from our members tell-
ing us that they are going
through a tough time, or that
folks they know are going
through a tough time,” said
NFU spokesman Andrew
Jerome, adding the crisis
is most acute in the major
grain-producing states. “We
think the crisis is here and
that things are due to get
worse.”
NFU has also created a
Farm Crisis Center web-
site — farmcrisis.nfu.org
— linking to resources to
help farmers, such as Farm
Aid, Farmers Legal Action
Group, the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline and debt
mediation resources. NFU
is accepting testimonials on
the site about farmers’ strug-
gles to share with lawmak-
ers, and has distributed fact
sheets to its roughly 200,000
farming family members to
help them make the case to
Congress that agriculture
needs additional federal sup-
port, Jerome said.
According to statistics
cited on the Crisis Center
site, U.S. farmers and ranch-
ers have lost half of their net
farm income since 2013, and
net farm income is forecast
to decline by 8.7 percent
this year, marking the fourth
consecutive year of declines.
A Kansas City Federal
Reserve report shows a 40
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percent decrease in farm
lending from a year ago,
and farm debt is forecast
to increase by 5.2 percent
in 2017, while the value of
farm assets is expected to
decrease by 1.1 percent.
Jerome said some of the
organizations that aided in
the original farm advocate
movement have been invit-
ed to a meeting with NFU to
discuss details on training a
new crop of advocates.
Northwest
Farmers
Union
President
Kent
Wright, a rancher from St.
John, Wash., believes pro-
ducers within his region ha-
ven’t struggled as much as
those in the Great Plains due
to the diversification of their
production. But he plans to
discuss the new crisis pro-
grams with members — not-
ing some who specialize in
specific commodities, such
as wheat, are hurting. Wright
said his region has been
pushing for the formation of
new farmer cooperatives to
find strength in numbers.
“Our beginning farmers
and ranchers, they’re weath-
ering their first storms,”
Wright said.
NFU’s push coincides
with the May 18 debut of
Farm Aid’s documentary
about the original farm ad-
vocate movement, called
“Homeplace Under Fire.”
Farm Aid spokeswoman
Jennifer Fahy said her orga-
nization wanted to preserve
the stories of aging advo-
cates who have continued to
help their colleagues. One
advocate in the film said the
support was often as simple
as hearing of a struggling
neighbor and going to have
a cup of coffee with him.
“We’ve been lamenting
there are not new people
coming into this field to sup-
port farmers,” Fahy said.
Fahy said Farm Aid no-
ticed a 27 percent increase in
calls to its hotline during the
first three months of 2017, in-
cluding a 37 percent increase
in calls from farmers con-
cerned about bankruptcy and
a 50 percent increase in calls
from farmers with concerns
about Farm Service Agency
loans.
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Russ Morgan, ODFW wolf
program leader, has described
wolves’ population growth and
geographic spread as a biolog-
ical success story.
Livestock producers and
other rural residents question
that thinking, while urban en-
vironmentalists generally fa-
vor the return of wolves to the
state’s landscape.
The management plan is
where those differences get
argued.
Oregon Farm Bureau and
Oregon Cattlemen’s Asso-
ciation said the draft plan
makes it harder for ranchers
to protect their animals be-
cause it increases the num-
ber of confirmed attacks
required before allowing
Beehive privacy? 9th Circuit debates ‘ag gag’ law
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Analysis
Debates over Idaho’s so-
called “ag gag” law, which
criminalized secret audiovi-
sual recordings of farm op-
erations, often center on the
livestock industry.
It was an undercover vid-
eo of cattle abuse at an Idaho
dairy, after all, that inspired
state lawmakers to pass the
statute in 2014.
During oral arguments on
May 12 about the law’s con-
stitutionality before the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
in Seattle, Judge Mary Mar-
garet McKeown approached
the matter from an angle that
didn’t involve dairy cows.
“It could apply to beekeep-
ing too, right? So does a bee-
hive have a privacy interest?”
McKeown asked Idaho’s
deputy attorney general, Carl
Withroe.
Withroe
acknowledged
that beehives would be cov-
ered by the statute but said
they probably lack the right to
personal privacy.
However, the farmer does
have the right to control who
enters his property and to
exclude those who want to
record its operations without
permission, he said.
The judge seemed to think
that argument was beside the
point.
“But that’s trespass, not
privacy, that you’re talking
about,” she said, later adding
that “corporations don’t have
a privacy interest.”
McKeown’s observation
that “it keeps coming down
to trespass” could be prob-
lematic for Idaho’s defense
of the law, which was struck
down nearly two years ago by
a federal judge who found it
violated free speech rights.
Trespass is already prohib-
ited by Idaho law in the legit-
imate interest of protecting
private property, while other
statutes aim to protect people
from defamation, theft and
fraud, according to the Ani-
Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press File
Dairy cows rest at Si-Ellen
Family Dairy in Jerome, Idaho.
Judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals are weighing
the constitutionality of an Idaho
law criminalizing secret record-
ings of farms.
mal Legal Defense Fund.
ALDF claims the real
goal of the “ag gag” law, on
the other hand, is the illegit-
imate purpose of suppressing
speech that casts a negative
light on the farm industry.
As for privacy rights, the
law’s opponents argue that
farms are effectively “indus-
trial facilities” that don’t have
the same expectations of pri-
vacy as people.
Idaho’s lawyers counter
that the law simply requires
people to obtain a farmer’s
permission to enter his prop-
erty and film operations with-
out misrepresenting who they
are.
The statute regulates the
ability to use a tool, such as
a camera, on private property,
rather than restricting “ex-
pressive conduct,” according
to Idaho.
“There is no First Amend-
ment right to make those re-
cordings in the first place,”
said Withroe.
Since the law simply re-
stricts the ability to record on
private property, without dis-
tinguishing between favorable
and unfavorable coverage, the
regulation is impartial regard-
law that prohibit using misrep-
resentation to gain access to
records, obtain employment or
economically harm the farm.
At one point, Judge
Richard Tallman wondered
whether ALDF could live
with a narrower injunction
against the Idaho law than
the current order entirely
blocking its enforcement.
“The misrepresentation
is basically for the purpose
of surreptitiously obtain-
ing the record. It doesn’t
have anything to do with
speech about the produc-
tion facility’s operation,
does it?”
Marceau responded that
such misrepresentation is
within the scope of free
speech protections provid-
ed by the First Amendment,
similar to misleading politi-
cal statements.
ing content and thus doesn’t
violate free speech rights, he
said.
Judge Carlos Bea seemed
skeptical of this argument,
noting that people who vio-
late the statute must pay the
farmer double the amount of
losses caused by the crime in
restitution — a requirement
that’s unlikely to be triggered
by a positive portrayal.
“It isn’t viewpoint-neutral.
It’s directed to the operations
only, and only to pejorative
reports of the operations,”
Bea said.
Though Idaho’s legal theo-
ry was subject to much of the
tough questioning by the three
9th Circuit judges, they also
pushed back against some ar-
guments by ALDF’s attorney,
Justin Marceau.
Specifically, the judges in-
quired about provisions of the
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NFU leads new push
for farm advocates
Courtesy ODFW
Snake River pack captured by a remote trail camera Feb. 1 in Hells
Canyon National Recreation Area. The ODFW Commission will
hear testimony and eventually will adopt a five-year wolf manage-
ment plan. No date for adoption has been set. A first hearing April
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Courtesy of Rob Amberg
Farm advocate Benny Bunting, of North Carolina, discusses how
farm advocates helped other farmers during the agricultural crisis
of the early 1980s in Farm Aid’s new documentary, “Homeplace
Under Fire.” The National Farmers Union hopes to renew the push
for farm advocates, believing farmers are facing a new crisis.
Public review of the con-
tentious way Oregon manages
gray wolves continues May 19
with a hearing in Portland.
Not surprisingly, a draft
plan from Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife has been
criticized by livestock produc-
ers and wildlife activists alike.
The ODFW Commission will
hear testimony and eventually
will adopt a five-year manage-
ment plan. No date for adop-
tion has been set. A first hear-
ing April 21 in Klamath Falls
saw 40 people testify.
Department biologists say
the draft management plan
builds on what they’ve learned
over the years. Oregon had no
documented wolves when the
first plan was adopted in 2005;
the state now has a minimum
of 112 wolves, including 11
packs and eight breeding pairs.
lethal control of wolves.
The draft plan requires
three confirmed depredations
or one confirmed and four
“probable” attacks within a 12-
month period. The previous
standard was two confirmed
depredations or one confirmed
and three attempted attacks,
with no time period set.
The groups also believe
ODFW should continue col-
laring wolves, and should set
a population cap for wolves in
Oregon.
Groups such as Oregon
Wild and Cascadia Wildlands
find fault with the plan as well.
They believe Oregon took
wolves off the state endan-
gered species list prematurely.
They oppose a population cap
and plan provisions that might
allow killing wolves if deer
and elk populations drop due
to wolves, saying that proper
habitat is a greater factor in
ungulate populations.
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