July 7, 2017
CapitalPress.com
9
Oregon
Hermiston waiting
on watermelons
Harvest expected
by mid-July
By GEORGE PLAVEN
EO Media Group
Courtesy of NORPAC
One of NORPAC’s facilities. The cooperative is selling its canning operation to Seneca Foods and
emphasizing its frozen vegetables, fruit, soups and other value-added products .
NORPAC sells canning
business to Seneca Foods
By ALIYA HALL
George Plaven/EO Media Group
Scott Lukas, assistant professor of horticulture at Oregon State
University, checks on his watermelon trials June 29 at the Hermis-
ton Agricultural Research and Experiment Station.
different treatments for soil-
borne Fusarium and Verticil-
lium wilt that can infect wa-
termelon vines, causing them
to wither and die.
Most growers use chemi-
cal fumigants to keep the dis-
eases in check. For his trial,
Lukas is treating the plants
with a couple of alternative
products that, if successful,
could be cheaper and more
environmentally friendly than
traditional fumigants without
impacting yield, he said.
“That’s the idea, trying dif-
ferent combinations of green
chemistries to solve a com-
mon issue this region’s water-
melon growers face,” Lukas
said.
It is still too early to mea-
sure results, though Lukas is
optimistic. The experiment,
which involves irrigating
roughly 800 watermelon
plants, was not launched un-
til late June, and the melons
themselves are still no larger
than the size of a bean.
Lukas said growers have
been cooperative and enthusi-
astic about the project, which
he intends to expand next year
over several acres.
“It is using a potentially
cheaper product, and one that
has less environmental re-
strictions and consequences,”
he said.
Before hiring Lukas,
HAREC was without a horti-
culturist for about five years.
While the station is still pri-
marily known for its work
with potatoes, Lukas has
made it clear he sees plenty of
potential for high-value crop
diversification across the Co-
lumbia Basin.
“We have affordable land
prices. We have plentiful wa-
ter. We have good soils. And
we have good distribution as
well, in terms of corridors to
ship food out,” Lukas said.
Apart from watermelons,
Lukas’ program also involves
projects with onions, blueber-
ries, sweet corn and broccoli.
Lukas may eventually look at
the possibility of growing tree
fruit and nuts around Herm-
iston, though he said that re-
search is likely a few years
away from happening.
Lukas said he is getting
good feedback from local
growers who previously
didn’t have a lot of resources
available for specialty crops
at HAREC.
“I want to do what the
growers need,” he said.
“That’s where this program is
and where it’s going to go.”
Capital Press
SALEM — NORPAC
Foods has sold its canning
business to Seneca Foods
Corp.
“In our 93 years as a farm-
er-owned cooperative, our
canning business has been
an important part of our his-
tory, but over time, it grad-
ually represented a smaller
percentage of our overall
business,” Shawn Campbell,
president and CEO of NOR-
PAC, said in a press release.
He has been the company’s
top executive since April.
The canning business
represented 6 percent of the
company’s volume, accord-
ing to NORPAC spokes-
woman Amy Wood.
“The company is now
looking at really focusing en-
ergy on growth and innova-
tion in the frozen category,”
she said.
A spokesman for Sene-
ca Foods
declined to
comment
on the pur-
chase.
NOR-
PAC is a
Shawn
coopera-
Campbell
tive owned
by
more
than 200 family farmers in
the Willamette Valley, and
provides frozen vegetables,
fruit, soups and other val-
ue-added products to the
foodservice, retail, club
store, remanufacture and
export market segments, ac-
cording to its website.
The June 30 sale will re-
sult in the closure of a small
Salem beet processing facil-
ity and the consolidation of
the Hermiston, Ore., facility
with the Brooks, Ore., and
Quincy, Wash., operations.
In 2018 the plants in Brooks
and Stayton, Ore., will be
redesigned to accommodate
more frozen vegetable pro-
cessing.
NORPAC will continue
manufacturing other prod-
ucts for Seneca through late
2017.
“The transition away
from our canning business
and the closure of our Herm-
iston processing facility will
help us drive efficiencies and
reduce operational complex-
ities as we invest in contin-
ued growth and innovation
in our frozen product lines,”
Campbell said.
In April, Seneca also
acquired the remaining 50
percent ownership of Truitt
Bros. Inc. from David Tru-
itt, making the Salem-based
company a wholly owned
subsidiary. Truitt Bros. also
has an operation in East Ber-
nstadt, Ky.
Seneca Foods is the lead-
ing provider of packaged
fruits and vegetables in
North America.
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27-3#7
HERMISTON, Ore. — It’s
July and that means famous
Hermiston watermelons — in
all their sweet, juicy glory —
are almost back in season.
This year’s melon crop
may have gotten off to a
slow start compared to recent
years, but growers say they
are making up ground quick-
ly as temperatures have start-
ed rising above 90 degrees
during the heat of day.
Jack Bellinger, owner of
Bellinger Farms, said water-
melons fell behind early fol-
lowing a cool and wet spring,
which impacted both the tim-
ing of planting and limited the
number of hot days needed
for the plants to absorb ener-
gy.
A recent stretch of warmer
weather, including a record
high of 101 degrees on June
26, has helped to speed things
up, Bellinger said. Still, he is
looking at beginning harvest
July 12-14, which is about a
week later than usual.
“The name of the game
for all crops is heat units,”
Bellinger said. “They’ve been
pretty hit and miss.”
Patrick Walchli, of Wal-
chli Farms, also figures to
push back harvest by a week
to 10 days, though he is not
alarmed. Weather patterns
like this aren’t unheard of for
the region, Walchli said, and
he is not expecting any prob-
lems with yield or quality.
“The crop, for the weather
we’ve had at this stage, looks
pretty nice,” Walchli said. “I
expect the melons will be just
as good of quality as ever.”
Watermelons are an iconic
crop for Hermiston, thriving
in the region’s sandy soils and
desert climate. Once summer
rolls around, the plants spend
all day soaking up the hot sun,
which they convert into sugar
as a source of energy. Having
chilly nights allows the fruit
to retain all that sugary good-
ness.
Hermiston watermelons
can be found all over the
Northwest, including Port-
land and Seattle, and have
been shipped as far as Mary-
land and Texas.
Given their immense pop-
ularity, it is no surprise that
Scott Lukas has chosen to in-
clude watermelons as part of
his research program at Ore-
gon State University’s Herm-
iston Agricultural Research
and Extension Center south
of town.
Lukas, who was hired as
the station horticulturist last
year, is experimenting with
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