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CapitalPress.com
July 7, 2017
Ex-EPA official linked to Analyst sees positive signs
‘What’s Upstream’ to
for the U.S. sugar market
stay in Puget Sound post
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
McLerran pleased;
farm group not
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — Former
Environmental
Protection
Agency regional director
Dennis McLerran will stay
on the Puget Sound Partner-
ship Leadership Council, a
position that had appeared in
jeopardy because of his link
to the What’s Upstream cam-
paign to restrict farming in
Washington.
The Senate environment
committee on June 29 ad-
journed what’s likely to be
its final meeting this session
without forwarding McLer-
ran’s appointment to the
Senate floor, where he could
have been ousted if a majori-
ty opposed his confirmation.
McLerran can serve indef-
initely in the unpaid post if
the Senate doesn’t act.
“I’m pleased I’ll be able
to serve on the leadership,”
McLerran said Monday. “I
clearly have a passion for the
recovery of the Puget Sound
and have a lot of experience
to bring to that.”
McLerran was Region 10
director as the Swinomish In-
dian tribe between 2011 and
2016 spent nearly $500,000
from an EPA grant on What’s
Upstream, a media campaign
that portrayed farmers as un-
regulated polluters.
His appointment by Gov.
Jay Inslee to advise the agen-
cy that oversees Puget Sound
restoration was opposed by
Save Family Farming, which
was formed to respond to
claims by What’s Upstream.
“We’re
disappointed
with the governor’s actions
certainly and disappointed
it didn’t come to a Senate
vote,” the group’s director,
Gerald Baron, said. “This
appointment has put us on
notice to be watching care-
fully the actions of the Puget
Sound Partnership.”
McLerran was grilled
about What’s Upstream June
14 by the Senate environment
committee in a confirmation
hearing. McLerran said the
campaign was too harsh to-
Courtesy Environmental Protection Agency
Former Environmental Protection Agency Northwest Adminis-
trator Dennis McLerran stands on a beach in Seattle during a
2015 Earth Day cleanup. A state Senate committee has decided
to allow him to stay on the Puget Sound Partnership Leadership
Council.
ward farmers, but declined to
outright condemn it.
The hearing was unusual.
None of the other six mem-
bers on the leadership coun-
cil, appointed over the past
several years, have been sub-
jected to a hearing. McLerran
was summoned soon after he
was appointed.
The chairman of the envi-
ronment committee, Ferndale
Republican Doug Ericksen,
denied that he singled out
McLerran because of What’s
Upstream. Ericksen said that
he didn’t realize the other
members of the council had
not been called for a confir-
mation hearing.
He deflected questions
about why the committee
didn’t forward McLerran’s
appointment for a vote by
the full Senate and didn’t rule
out taking up the issue again.
“There’s no rush to it,” he
said.
The Republican-led com-
mittee lacked one vote to
force a floor vote, according
to a person familiar with the
matter.
McLerran was appoint-
ed to fill the final year of an
unexpired four-year term.
McLerran said he would be
willing to be on the council
beyond the one year.
“If the governor asked
me to serve again, I certain-
ly would,” he said. “I’d very
much like to have a positive
and collaborative relation-
ship with agriculture.”
What’s Upstream culmi-
nated in 2016 with a media
blitz to influence state legis-
lators to impose mandatory
buffers between fields and
waterways. The effort col-
lapsed that spring when some
federal lawmakers took note
and denounced the campaign
as a malicious attack on ag-
riculture.
According to EPA re-
cords, McLerran met tribal
officials in 2015, assuring
them he didn’t see the cam-
paign as a legal issue but also
urging them to tone down the
campaign’s attacks on agri-
culture.
Subsequently, the tribe,
in partnership with several
environmental groups, inten-
sified its criticism of farming
through a revamped website
and letter-writing campaign
to state lawmakers,
“I think I did everything
possible to change the tone
and the nature of the cam-
paign,” McLerran said.
The EPA’s inspector gen-
eral found that What’s Up-
stream was a proper use of an
EPA grant, dismissing alle-
gations by some federal law-
makers that it was illegal lob-
bying funded by taxpayers.
NAMPA, Idaho — U.S.
sugar beet growers are poised
for a profitable year despite
expectations of a large global
sugar crop, market analysts
with Rabobank predict.
A new report from the Ra-
bobank Food & Agribusiness
Research and Advisory Group
estimates the world’s sugar
growers will overproduce by
2.7 million metric tons in the
current crop year.
But U.S. sugar prices
should avoid downward pres-
sure from the expected inter-
national glut, thanks largely to
a recently renegotiated agree-
ment addressing the dumping
of subsidized Mexican sugar
into the country, explained
RaboResearch sugar analyst
Stephen Nicholson.
Nicholson said the outlook
is for increased production in
major sugar-producing coun-
tries — including Brazil, India
and Thailand.
Domestically,
however,
USDA estimates U.S. sugar
farmers cut their beet acres
by 2.7 percent and their cane
acres by 3.4 percent. Adverse
growing conditions in U.S.
sugar production areas should
also reduce sugar output,
Nicholson said. He said the
weather has been especially
dry in Minnesota, Montana
and the Dakotas, and a turn to
humid weather could raise dis-
ease pressure.
Duane Grant, chairman of
John O’Connell/Capital Press
Sugar beets grow in American Falls, Idaho. Experts say beet
growers in the U.S. should enjoy stable prices, thanks to a recently
renegotiated agreement with Mexico, despite an expected global
glut of sugar.
the board with Idaho-based
Snake River Sugar Coopera-
tive, said his company’s grow-
ers planted late in Vale, Ore.,
Weiser, Idaho, and pockets of
the Magic Valley, due to heavy
snowpack and storms.
“Probably 10 to 15 percent
of the company’s fields were
planted in challenging condi-
tions,” Grant said, adding de-
layed planting also affects how
plants take up nitrogen and
produce sugar content. “We’re
probably not looking at record
yields, but I think it will be a
decent crop.”
Pest pressure could also
pose challenges for growers in
Idaho’s Treasure Valley, where
Amalgamated crop consultant
Kevin Fouldger has reported
finding loopers, armyworms
and false celery leaftier.
Nicholson said there’s also
been a recent narrowing of a
price gap that developed in the
U.S. between sugar cane and
sugar beets, which some buy-
ers have avoided because most
of the crop comes from seed
produced with biotechnology.
The five-year average end-
ing with the 2016 crop year
shows a 0.3 percent reduction
in beet sugar deliveries for
human use and a 3.1 percent
increase in cane deliveries,
Nicholson said. More recently,
he said beet sugar got cheap
enough that buyers purchased
most of the remaining 2016
crop inventories from beet pro-
cessing companies. Further-
more, prices have risen about
1.5 cents since the early June
updated agreement with Mex-
ico, now at 32 cents per pound
for refined beet sugar delivered
to the Midwest.
Yakima reservoirs stay fuller longer
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
YAKIMA, Wash. — Five
mountain reservoirs that pro-
vide summer irrigation to hun-
dreds of thousands of acres of
Yakima Basin farmland fell
two days short of remaining
full into July.
They’ve only reached July
in 11 of the last 37 years, says
Chris Lynch, U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation hydrologist in
Yakima.
It’s called the “storage con-
trol date,” when reservoir out-
flows are greater than inflows
to the point that drawdowns
start.
Most years, that happens
in June, seldom in May or
July and only a very few times
has it been in April or August,
Lynch said.
Dates are later in years of
water abundance from good
snowpack and later mountain
runoff. Dates are earlier in
drought years.
The most recent late dates
were July 23, 2011, and July
15, 2012, Lynch said.
Being on the later side of
normal, this year’s storage
control date of June 29, from
a good winter snowpack and
cool, wet spring increases the
chance of more water carry-
over in storage heading into
winter.
However, Lynch said, it
looks like hot weather is in the
forecast for the next couple of
weeks. Highs will be in the 90s
and 100s in the lowlands of the
Yakima Basin and that will
work against a large carryover.
“Hopefully, the hot streak
won’t last a whole month. That
would cut into our carryover,
but we have enough water in
the reservoirs to cover that and
even two months of unbroken
heat,” he said.
The five reservoirs —
Keechelus, Kachess, Cle
Elum, Bumping and Rim-
rock — have a total capacity
of 1,065,400 acre-feet. As of
the Fourth of July, they were
at 1,042,232 acre-feet, which
was 98 percent of capacity.
The irrigation districts,
providing water from the res-
ervoirs to 464,000 acres, most
of it farmland, have been using
104 percent of normal amounts
daily for about a week, but av-
eraged 95 percent of normal in
June and 79 percent of normal
since March 1, Lynch said.
Two years ago in the last
drought, the storage control
date was April 15, tying the
same date of 1981. But the
early record was April 1 in the
drought year of 1977, he said.
The only other April date was
in 1986.
The record late date was
Aug. 17, 1972, a wet year.
August dates also occurred in
1933, 1955, 1971 and 1974.
Spud growers encouraged by acreage reports
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
EAGLE, Idaho — Idaho
potato growers are optimistic
that their down market may
turn around in 2017 following
the recent release of estimates
showing a significant decrease
in the state’s planted spud
acreage.
Idaho growers planted
310,000 acres of spuds this
season, down from 325,000
acres last season, according to
a report released June 30 by
USDA’s National Agricultural
Statistics Service.
Another recent estimate
released by United Potato
Growers of Idaho, compiled
by personnel who visited each
LEGAL
SECRETARY OF STATE NOTICE
OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING
Oregon Department of Agriculture, Market Access &
Certification, Administrative Rules Chapter #603,
Sue Gooch, Rules Coordinator, tel:(503) 986-4583 .
Adopt: OAR 603-048-2300, 2305, 2310, 2315, 2320, 2330, 2340,
2350, 2380, 2450, 2480; Amend: 603-048-0010, 0500, 0650, 0800,
1000; Repeal: OAR 603-048-2300, 2305, 2310, 2315,2320, 2330,
2340, 2350, 2380, 2450, 2480, 0010, 0500, 0650, 0800, 1000.
RULE SUMMARY: These rules make permanent the temporary rules
effective March 15, 2017, set to expire on September 10, 2017, that set
out requirements for testing of industrial hemp products and
commodities intended for human consumption (consumables)
mandated by Oregon Laws 2016, Chapter 71, Section 9. The proposed
rules explain and provide procedures for registered handlers to obtain
sampling and testing prior to sale to ensure consumables comply with
requirements adopted by Oregon Health Authority (OHA) under ORS
475B.555 (1)(a) and (b) and (2) for testing marijuana items. The
rulemaking also allows the department to recognize OHA’s most
recent administrative rule amendments effective May 31, 2017.
Adopting these rules will implement required testing by establishing:
Standards for testing hemp consumables as their marijuana item
equivalencies; minimum requirement for laboratories authorized to
conduct sampling and testing; reporting and documentation
requirements for handlers and laboratories; requirements for ordering
tests; testing standards for usable hemp; hemp concentrates or
extracts, and cannabinoid products; procedures for determining batch
sizes and for sampling industrial hemp commodities and products;
requirements for labeling, storing and securing consumables prior to
successful testing; procedures for establishing a control study; handler
options to request research or quality control testing of consumables;
protocols for consumables that fail testing, including destruction;
violations of testing requirements; and additional testing that may be
required by the department.
27-2/#18
Hearing date: July 25, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. Location: Oregon
Department of Agriculture, Hearings Room, 635 Capitol St NE, Salem,
OR. Last day for public comment is August 11, 2017.
27-2/#4
potato field for better accu-
racy, placed the state’s crop
at 307,000 acres, down from
322,000 acres.
The NASS report also
shows a decrease in total U.S.
fall acres, estimated at about
908,000 acres, down from
about 921,000 acres. NASS
estimated the No. 2 potato
state, Washington, kept its po-
tato acreage flat, at 170,000
acres. Oregon’s 38,000 plant-
ed acres were down 1,000
acres from last season, and
California planted 1,400 fewer
acres, with a total fall crop of
6,500 acres.
Though Idaho’s fresh ship-
ments have been well ahead
of the previous year’s pace,
grower returns from a bumper
2016 crop have remained
poor.
“I was there with all of the
potato guys when they got
the news from Idaho. Every-
body was pretty excited,” said
Idaho Potato Commissioner
Randy Hardy, an Oakley fresh
grower who attended the re-
cent National Potato Council
summer meeting in Denver.
Hardy, who heads Sun Val-
ley Potatoes Inc., said the 18
fresh growers who supply his
company cut their potato acres
by about 6 percent. In his area,
he’s seen a shift toward more
dry beans and alfalfa.
“Anything down was prob-
ably good news, but I don’t
think anybody thought it
would be down this far,” Har-
dy said.