July 28, 2017
CapitalPress.com
3
WDFW to shoot wolves in Smackout pack
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
ONTARIO, Ore. — Ko-
chia weeds that are resistant
to Roundup herbicide can
now be found in sugar beet
fi elds throughout Malheur
County in Eastern Oregon
and parts of Canyon County
in southwestern Idaho.
Weed scientists worry
it’s a matter of time before
they’re abundant in sugar beet
fi elds throughout southcentral
Idaho as well.
Virtually all of the 180,000
acres of sugar beets grown in
the region are genetically en-
gineered to resist applications
of glyphosate, the active in-
gredient in Roundup, the pop-
ular weed killer produced by
Monsanto Corp.
Glyphosate-resistant ko-
chia weeds were fi rst detected
in Eastern Oregon and South-
ern Idaho in 2014 and weed
scientists had initially hoped
their numbers would remain
small.
“In Malheur County in the
Treasure Valley, it’s pretty
much all over the place,” said
Joel Felix, an Oregon State
University weed scientist in
Ontario. “And we know it’s
in Canyon County across the
river (in Idaho).”
While glyphosate-toler-
ant kochia weeds have been
found in southcentral Idaho,
they aren’t widespread there
yet, said Don Morishita, a
University of Idaho weed sci-
entist in Kimberly.
However, he added, “I’m
waiting for it to start showing
up in great numbers here, too.
I’m expecting that.”
Felix said kochia is a tum-
bleweed and he believes some
of the glyphosate-tolerant
weeds are detaching from
fence lines or along fi eld edg-
es and dropping seed as they
tumble through sugar beet
fi elds.
“Taking care of fence lines
and edges of fi elds should be
a priority to keep kochia from
tumbling into fi elds,” he said.
Idaho and Oregon farmers
have been growing GE sugar
beets for 12 seasons now and
Snake River Sugar Cooper-
ative offi cials estimate they
save Idaho and Eastern Or-
egon growers $22 million a
year.
Courtesy of Mark Hanson, CPS
Kochia, also known as fi re weed
or Mexican fi re weed, is a highly
adaptable plant that invades a
wide variety of habitats in the
dryer portions of the Northwest.
Rupert farmer Duane
Grant, chairman of the coop’s
board of directors, said kochia
weeds are a major challenge
in sugar beet production be-
cause they are a fi erce com-
petitor for sunlight, nutrients
and water.
“They must be controlled.
If not, they would take the
yield in the fi eld below the
point anybody would want to
grow the crop,” he said. “To
the extent kochia is becoming
resistant to Roundup, we will
as a grower community have
to fi nd solutions.”
One solution being devel-
oped is an effort by Monsan-
to and KWS Saat Research,
a plant breeding company
headquartered in Germany,
to develop a genetically en-
gineered sugar beet that is
resistant to both glyphosate
and dicamba, another popular
herbicide.
Incorporating both traits
into sugar beets should pre-
vent the proliferation of herbi-
cide-resistant weeds because
it’s unlikely a weed would
be resistant to both modes of
action, a KWS research scien-
tist told sugar beet growers in
Idaho in December 2015.
The technology is a couple
of years away from being in-
troduced to sugar beet grow-
ers, Grant said.
“That really should miti-
gate the effects of glyphosate
resistance in kochia weeds,”
he said. “We can hopefully
hold them to an economic
threshold and persevere until
the next set of tools arrive.”
McMinnville creamery set to reopen as organic facility
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
The former Farmers
Creamery Cooperative in
McMinnville, Ore., will re-
open in August as the newest
facility operated by the na-
tion’s largest organic dairy
cooperative.
The creamery was pur-
chased last fall by Wiscon-
sin-based Organic Valley,
which produces organic
milk, butter, eggs, cheese,
soy and other products. The
McMinnville plant will pri-
marily make butter under the
Organic Valley label, and is
the company’s first brick
and mortar facility outside
of Wisconsin.
The renovated cream-
ery’s grand opening is Sat-
urday, Aug. 12, from 9 a.m.
to 3 p.m., at the facility, 700
NE Highway 99W, McMinn-
ville. Company spokeswom-
an Sasha Bernstein said the
public is invited. Shuttles
will be provided to take
people on tours of dairies
that will provide milk to the
creamery.
Louise Hemstead, Organ-
ic Valley’s chief operating
officer in Wisconsin, said
the Farmers Cooperative
Creamery had long been on
the company’s “risk assess-
ment” list. That is, it was
an important supplier in the
region and Organic Valley
would need to buy it if some-
thing happened, she said.
Hemstead said Organic
Valley spent more than $12
million above the purchase
price to renovate the cream-
ery and “bring it around to
be a modern facility.”
Among other work, the
company rebuilt the dryer
that is used to produce skim
milk powder, upgraded the
electrical system, rebuilt
the drains, improved the
pasteurizing section and in-
stalled a better machine that
forms and packages the fa-
miliar butter cubes.
The company also pulled
out the industrial churn,
shipped it back to Wisconsin
to be rebuilt and will send it
back to McMinnville next
week to be reinstalled, Hem-
stead said.
In addition to butter and
skim milk powder, the plant
will produce buttermilk
powder and a cultured butter
that is more of a European
type spread. The plant will
make trial batches in the first
week of August and should
be operational in time for the
grand opening, Hemstead
said.
The renovation and re-
is reopening as a strictly or-
ganic operation.
The facility will pro-
vide 37 jobs and will pro-
cess milk delivered from 72
member dairies in Oregon
and Washington.
Nationally, the Organ-
ic Valley cooperative rep-
resents more than 1,800
farmers in 36 states and de-
scribes saving family farms
as its “founding mission.”
opening cap a year of chang-
es for the McMinnville
creamery. In July 2016,
co-op members accepted
an agreement that allowed
dairy farmers to apply for
membership in the much
larger Northwest Dairy As-
sociation of Seattle, which
includes Darigold. The Mc-
Minnville plant then was
sold to Organic Valley for
an undisclosed price, and it
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30-1/#7
Sugar beet growers battle
glyphosate-resistant kochia
pack’s behavior before the sit-
uation gets worse.”
The pack has killed a to-
tal of three calves and injured
three others since 2015, ac-
cording to WDFW.
The pack had eight mem-
bers at the end of 2016 and
since then has produced an
unknown number of pups,
WDFW said.
WDFW shot seven wolves
in the Profanity Peak pack last
year to stop depredations in
Ferry County. WDFW also le-
thally removed wolves in 2012
and 2014, both times in Ste-
vens County.
see whether the pack stops at-
tacking livestock.
“The purpose of this ac-
tion is to change the pack’s
behavior, while also meeting
the state’s wolf-conservation
goals,” WDFW wolf policy
coordinator Donny Martorel-
lo said in a written statement.
“That means incrementally re-
moving wolves and assessing
the results before taking any
further action.
“This rancher has made
concerted efforts to protect
his livestock using non-lethal
measures,” Martorello said.
“Our goal is to change the
30-2/#17
ODFW File Photo
The Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife says it
will cull the Smackout Wolfpack after it attacked cattle in Stevens
County, Wash.
The Washington Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife an-
nounced July 20 it will shoot
wolves to stop attacks on live-
stock in Stevens County.
A rancher’s employee
found an injured calf with wolf
bites on federal grazing land
July 18, according to WDFW.
Wildlife investigators de-
termined the calf had been at-
tacked by the Smackout pack.
WDFW last September con-
cluded the pack killed one calf
and injured another, and prob-
ably killed a third calf.
Under WDFW policy, the
department will consider cull-
ing a pack after four depre-
dations in a 10-month period.
The fi rst depredation was con-
fi rmed Sept. 21.
WDFW said the rancher
reported the previous month
that his employee caught two
wolves attacking livestock and
killed one. The shooting was
lawful, according to WDFW.
WDFW did not specify
how many wolves it planned
to shoot, though department
policy calls for removing one
or two wolves and pausing to