16 CapitalPress.com
June 30, 2017
University of Idaho fruit researchers
bullish on Thomcord table grapes
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
USDA
Thomcord grapes appear to be a good fit for the climate of
southwestern Idaho, researchers say. They can survive below-zero
winters and still produce a bountiful crop.
PARMA, Idaho — The
state’s emerging table grape
industry may have found a new
go-to variety.
Fruit researchers at Univer-
sity of Idaho’s Parma Research
and Extension Center report
that Thomcord grapes are per-
forming well under southwest-
ern Idaho conditions.
Thomcord grapes, which
are a cross between Thompson
seedless and Concord grapes,
have been grown in other parts
of the country for several de-
cades.
UI researchers began testing
them seven years ago to see
how they would perform under
southwestern Idaho’s weather
and soil conditions. They now
feel confident enough to pro-
mote them as a good variety to
grow in this region.
“Now that we can see that
they are phenomenal and that
they are really producing well,
we can highly recommend
Thomcord,” said table grape
grower Tom Elias, a research
assistant at UI’s trial orchard in
Parma. “I think (growers) are
really, really going to like them.”
Despite a harsh winter —
temperatures fell to minus 21
degrees at the Parma center or-
chard in January — none of the
Thomcord plants died.
“We had 100 percent surviv-
al under minus 21 degrees,” said
Essie Fallahi, who manages UI’s
pomology program. “We are
very excited about this variety.”
Elias, secretary-treasurer of
the Snake River Table Grape
Growers Association, said the va-
riety has exceeded expectations.
“This winter was probably
the ultimate test for the Thom-
cord here in Idaho,” he said.
“The longevity of the grape, the
size of the grape and its hardi-
ness are just going to be dyna-
mite for this area.”
California pear harvest
forecast up 27 percent
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Cat Salois, McGregor Co. director of research, and Walla Walla area farmer Dean Farrens look over chickpeas during the company’s crop
tour June 22 in Colfax, Wash.
Tour spotlights chickpeas
as crop gains popularity
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
COLFAX, Wash. — More
farmers are raising chickpeas
for the first time, so the Mc-
Gregor Co. offered plot tours
last week devoted to the pulse
crop.
Chickpea acres were up
150 percent year over year,
said Cat Salois, the company’s
director of research. “We felt
it was pretty important to go
ahead and put some kind of
educational program on.”
The tour showcased insec-
ticides, nutrition, fertility, fun-
gicides and weed control for
the crop.
Salois believes the higher
interest is because chickpea
prices are up and wheat prices
are down.
Chickpeas — also known
as garbanzo beans — are sell-
ing for $36 to $37 per hun-
dredweight in Washington and
Idaho. Soft white wheat rang-
es from $4.85 per bushel to
$5.05 per bushel on the Port-
land market, near or below the
break-even point for farmers.
“A crop that used to be con-
sidered a rotation is now hold-
ing the farm,” Salois said.
“I see more acres of gar-
banzos right now, and I also
see garbs where I’ve never
seen them before,” said farmer
Dean Farrens, who has raised
chickpeas east of Walla Walla,
Wash., for 15 years.
He attended the tour to get
Opposition continues
despite changes to rural
Oregon land use bill
Bill relaxing
restrictions in
slow-growth
counties clears
Senate committee
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
SALEM — Supporters
of a bill to relax Oregon’s
land use restrictions in
slow-growing counties were
unable to overcome objec-
tions to the proposal despite
several revisions.
Nonetheless, Senate Bill
432 was referred to the Joint
Committee on Ways and
Means on June 26 by the
Senate Rules Committee,
albeit without a “do pass”
recommendation.
Under the original lan-
guage of the bill, counties
with fewer than 50,000
residents that have experi-
enced no growth since the
previous federal population
census were exempted from
statewide land use planning
goals.
The amended version
of SB 432 allows such
slow-growing counties, and
the cities within them, to
adopt exceptions to statewide
land use planning goals.
Such exceptions cannot
take place on high-value
farmland or adversely affect
areas protected under a pres-
ervation plan for the greater
sage grouse, a sensitive bird
species.
The amendment also
clarifies that counties that
experience
population
growth greater than 4 per-
cent or 1,000 residents be-
tween census reports cannot
qualify for new land use ex-
ceptions.
“For all the angst over
this bill, the impact on the
ground is very small,” said
Dave Hunnicutt, executive
director of Oregonians In
Action, a property rights
group that supports SB 432.
The Association of Or-
egon Counties and the
League of Oregon Cities
also support the bill, with
representatives testifying
that it provides economical-
ly struggling counties with
more autonomy.
more information about weed
control and emergence.
“They’ve been a pretty sol-
id crop for us over the years,”
he said.
Colfax, Wash., farmer Dan
Harder has raised chickpeas
for 17 years.
“If you haven’t raised them
before, you better go talk to
somebody who has,” Harder
said. “There are guys that have
raised really good garbanzos
year after year after year, and
those are the guys you want
to talk to and find out what
they’re doing.”
Weeds such as dog fennel,
lambsquarter and prickly let-
tuce are the biggest problems,
Harder said.
“Chickpeas do not yield
well with weed competition,
because they don’t compete,”
he said. “And diseases can
wipe you out.”
Carryover of chemicals
used in wheat propagation can
also be a big problem, Harder
said.
Harder believes chick-
pea acreage could drop by
as much as half next year as
its prices decrease and wheat
prices increase, but Salois pre-
dicts wheat prices won’t rally
for several years. Chickpea
prices could remain strong for
the same amount of time, she
said.
Farmers don’t think about
managing chickpeas the same
way they think about manag-
ing wheat, Salois said.
California pear harvest
starts the first week of July
and the industry forecast is
up for the first time in sev-
eral years.
On June 22, the Califor-
nia Pear Advisory Board
in Sacramento estimated
the crop at 3.27 million
36-pound boxes, up 27 per-
cent from the 2016 final of
2.4 million.
“It’s a good crop in all
growing districts. Similar
to the crop we had in 2013.
We hope it pans out in great-
er returns to growers,” said
Chris Zanobini, Advisory
Board executive director.
The crop trended down-
ward the past three years.
Some acreage in the Sacra-
mento Delta was converted
to wine grapes and there
were four years of drought
with warmer winters result-
ing in lighter fruit set, Zano-
bini said. But tree removal
to combat fire blight disease
probably was the largest im-
pact the last two years, he
said.
Better winter chill led
to greater fruit set this year
and volumes should be suf-
ficient, he said, for the fresh
market, canned and other
processing.
Good weather is need-
ed for proper sizing with a
recent hot streak being too
hot and anything below 95
degrees being good, he said.
Rivermaid Trading Co.
in Lodi is the only grower
of Sunsprite, the first variety
picked, with trees yielding
about 15,000 boxes annual-
ly near Walnut Grove. The
company is the state’s larg-
est pear grower and packer,
handling more than half the
fresh-pack volume.
Sunsprite will be fol-
lowed by Starkrimson 10
days before Bartlett in the
delta region followed by
Bosc, Zanobini said. Har-
vest usually ends in Men-
docino and Lake counties in
the north in mid-September,
he said.
“It looks like harvest is
12 days behind last year and
five to six days behind aver-
age which is not bad because
the Northwest is still sitting
on quite a few pears (from
the 2016 crop),” he said.
Washington and Oregon
expect to harvest a 17.6-mil-
lion, 44-pound-box crop,
down 2 percent from last
year and down 10 percent
from a five-year average of
19.6 million.
Picking is expected to
start with Comice and Seck-
el in Medford on Aug. 2.
Courtesy California Pear Advisory Board
A California pear orchard. The California Pear Advisory Board
estimates this year’s crop at 3.27 million 36-pound boxes, up 27
percent from the 2016 final count of 2.4 million.
Supreme Court asked to reverse
GMO cooking oil class action suit
Potential decision
could have
repercussions for
food label litigation
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
A legal dispute over label-
ing vegetable oil as “natural”
even though it contains ge-
netically engineered ingre-
dients could have repercus-
sions for other food-related
class action lawsuits.
Earlier this year, the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
allowed a lawsuit against
the Conagra food process-
ing company to proceed as
a class action, which means
numerous consumers who
bought its Wesson vegetable
oil can join in the litigation.
The complaint alleges that
Conagra deceived consumers
with labels claiming the oil
was “100 percent Natural”
despite being derived from
genetically modified organ-
isms, or GMOs, which aren’t
considered natural.
Conagra now wants the
U.S. Supreme Court to re-
Associated Press File
ConAgra Foods’ main office in Omaha, Neb. The company has
appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court a lower court’s designation of
a lawsuit over cooking oil labels as a class action.
verse the class action des-
ignation because there’s no
way to “efficiently and reli-
ably identify” the millions of
people who’ve bought Wes-
son oil over the past decade.
“That left only one other
possible source of informa-
tion about the transactions
— consumers’ memories of
low-value grocery store pur-
chases, recalled years later
in hopes of a cash reward,”
Conagra said in its Supreme
Court review request.
Apart from having impli-
cations for foods containing
GMOs, the lawsuit is seen by
food manufacturers as em-
blematic of a broader problem
with litigation over labeling.
The number of lawsuits
over food labels has “bal-
looned” over the past decade,
increasing from fewer than
20 federal class actions to
more than 400, according to
the Grocery Manufacturers
Association.
“Some of these lawsuits
raise claims so frivolous they
border on comical: Do con-
sumers really think that the
name ‘Froot Loops’ means
that the cereal is made of
fruit? Are coffee drinkers
really surprised to learn that
iced lattes, in fact, contain
some ice?” GMA said in a
court brief. “But to defen-
dants facing the settlement
pressure that comes with a
certified class, the explosion
of food and beverage litiga-
tion is no laughing matter.”
Although class certifica-
tion doesn’t mean the plain-
tiffs have won the case, courts
have recognized the designa-
tion tremendously increases
potential financial liability
— to the point where com-
panies often decide to settle
questionable cases they’d
otherwise prefer to fight.
Conagra, GMA and other
business groups believe the
nation’s highest court should
review the GMO vegeta-
ble oil case due to a “circuit
split” among federal appel-
late courts.
There’s no requirement
for plaintiffs to reliably
identify a multitude of class
members in the 9th Circuit,
6th Circuit and 7th Circuit,
but such a test exists in the
2nd Circuit, 3rd Circuit, 4th
Circuit and 11th Circuit, they
argue.