August 11, 2017
CapitalPress.com
5
Lambs bring ‘best prices
ever’ in Douglas County
By CRAIG REED
Capital Press File
For the Capital Press
ROSEBURG, Ore. —
June and July were profitable
months for sheep producers in
Douglas County, Ore.
The county’s spring lamb
crop was sold at an average
of $1.75 to $1.80 a pound live
weight. The lamb price “was
the best we’ve ever received,”
said Dan Dawson, a county
sheep rancher. Dawson said
the price was 20 to 25 cents
higher than a year ago.
According to the most re-
cent National Agricultural
Statistics Service, there are
approximately 23,000 ewes
in Douglas County. It is esti-
mated the county’s lamb crop
that went to market numbered
34,000. The average weight of
the market lambs was 100 to
120 pounds.
“Lambs and sheep are
still a major part of the coun-
ty’s economy,” Dawson said.
“The lambs are marketed as
grass-fed natural, making
them more appealing, and
they go to specialty markets
and restaurants. The lighter
lambs are finished on irrigat-
ed pasture before going to
market.”
The 43 producers who
were participating in the
Douglas County Livestock
Association’s wool pool re-
ceived 80 cents a pound for
their fleeces from both ewes
and lambs. The Woolgatherer
Carding Mill of Montague,
Calif., had the highest of the
three bids received for the
product.
Woolgatherer had bid on
the county wool in the past,
and purchased the pool in
2013.
“This is a very good price
compared to the open mar-
ket,” Troy Michaels said of
the 80 cents a pound. Mi-
chaels is a sheep rancher and
chairman of the wool pool
committee.
However, the bid was 26
cents less than the pool price
of a year ago. Hank Kearns,
the chief operating officer for
Woolgatherer, said the reason
for the lower price is because
China is importing less of the
product than last year, dimin-
ishing the demand for coarse
wool and creating an over-
supply.
Unit sales of larger tractors and combines have dropped at a slow-
er rate in 2017 compared to last year, when they plunged more
than 20 percent.
Machinery sales near
‘bottom of difficult cycle’
Sales of tractors,
combines decline at
slower rate
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Craig Reed/For the Capital Press
Members of the Roseburg , Ore., Mat Club do the heavy lifting at the Douglas County Livestock Asso-
ciation’s wool pool shipping day. Eleven members of the club helped with unloading the bales of wool,
getting them weighed and getting them loaded on a truck.
Kearns described the
wool as “excellent quality for
coarse wool.”
The total of the pool was
89,555 pounds. That tonnage
is about the same as the pool’s
weight for each of the last two
years, according to Michaels.
Two semi-truck box trailers
were loaded and headed south
to the mill in Northern Cal-
ifornia, where the county’s
coarse wool product will be
made into batting for mat-
tresses and furniture.
Kearns said the reason
Woolgatherer bid for this
wool was its low vegetation
matter and its consistency, ex-
plaining the wool didn’t have
a lot of dirt and grass tangled
in it, leaving “a good clean
product.”
“This pool has a lot of val-
ue to our business, we value
the growers and we wanted
the lot,” Kearns said of the
high bid. “Our company will
make it into batting and then
sell it to mattress and furniture
companies that use it in their
products. Those folks are pri-
marily interested in natural,
chemical-free products.”
Helping out with the wool
shipping process were 11
members of the Roseburg
Craig Reed/For the Capital Press
Ethan Stone, a member of the
Roseburg, Ore., Mat Club, rolls
a bale of wool toward a truck
for shipping. The 43 producers
who participated in the Douglas
County Livestock Association’s
wool pool received 80 cents a
pound for their fleeces.
Mat Club and coaches Steve
Lander and Doug Singleton.
The teenage members un-
loaded the wool bales that
ranged in weight from 400 to
500 pounds from trailers and
flatbed trucks, rolled and lift-
ed the bales onto scales to be
weighed, then rolled them off
the scales. A forklift lifted the
bales and stacked them in the
semi-trailers.
“It’s nice to have the wres-
tling kids in here to help with
the physical work,” Michaels
Roza Irrigation District
testing its new reservoir
By DAN WHEAT
said. “It’s a good, different
type of weight training for
those kids. We make a dona-
tion to the mat club for their
efforts and to help out their
program.”
For many years back in the
1900s, Douglas County was
home to about 100,000 ewes.
Low lamb and wool prices
through the years and lamb
losses to predators were two
key reasons ranchers down-
sized their flocks.
In addition to being an
economic factor in Doug-
las County, Dawson said the
sheep population is import-
ant because the animals help
limit vegetation that can fuel
possible wildfires. The sheep
will eat back blackberry canes
and other forage, decreasing
the amount of ground fuel on
valley and hillside pastures.
Farmers are continuing to
pull back from buying large
tractors and combines in 2017,
though sales aren’t plunging
as steeply as they did last year.
Through mid-year in the
U.S., unit sales have de-
creased 14 percent for two-
wheel-drive tractors over 100
horsepower and 6 percent for
four-wheel-drive tractors and
combines, according to the
Association of Equipment
Manufacturers.
While that’s hardly a stel-
lar performance for the farm
machinery industry, unit sales
in each of those categories
dropped more than 20 percent
in 2016.
“It would indicate we’re
getting closer to the bottom of
a difficult cycle,” said Charlie
O’Brien, senior vice president
at AEM.
As of last year, unit sales
of larger tractors and com-
bines had fallen by nearly 55
percent overall since the most
recent peak in 2013, tracking
the reduction in farm incomes
caused by lower commodity
crop prices.
Dealers have also been
dealing with a glut of fairly
new trade-in machinery that’s
depressed demand for new
tractors and combines, though
the surplus appears to be eas-
ing, said O’Brien.
Last year, 59 percent of
dealers said inventories of
used machinery were too high,
but that has shrunk to 48 per-
cent in 2017, he said.
“A lot of that used equip-
ment has been flushed through
the system,” O’Brien said.
With more room on their
lots, dealers are able to accept
trade-ins when farmers are
ready to buy new machinery,
he said.
Manufacturers have al-
ready adjusted to reduced de-
mand by shuttering factories
and cutting back production
shifts, O’Brien said.
There are indicators farm-
ers are also becoming more
accustomed to the new envi-
ronment of lower commodity
prices, though debt-to-asset
ratios have grown, indicating
their balance sheets have dete-
riorated on the whole, he said.
The
“macroeconomic”
trends for agriculture are pos-
itive, given long-term popula-
tion growth, but the machinery
industry isn’t expecting anoth-
er sales boom like the one in
2012-2013, O’Brien said.
“I think everybody agrees
that was a bubble, but I don’t
think this is normal, either,” he
said.
However, surveys of farm-
ers indicate that most still be-
lieve it’s currently not a good
time to buy machinery or in-
vest in buildings, said Michael
Langemeier, an agricultural
economist at Purdue Univer-
sity who studies the industry.
DID YOU KNOW?
FACT:
• There is new stabilized dry granular NITRATE form of
fertilizer available.
Capital Press
SUNNYSIDE, Wash. —
The first water has flowed into
a new $31 million reservoir
off the Roza Canal that soon
will capture irrigation water
once lost to wasteways and
the Yakima River.
The first of five pumps
was tested Aug. 2. It pumps
water from the canal into the
1,600-acre-foot reservoir in
Washout Canyon, five miles
north of Sunnyside.
“This project had its or-
igins in the 1970s and really
gathered steam in the early
1980s when the Roza Irriga-
tion District adopted a water
conservation plan,” said Scott
Revell, district manager.
Early on, the district con-
sidered building a larger res-
ervoir for greater storage but
decided it would cost too
much, Revell said.
Geologic and technical
studies on where to locate the
reservoir took 10 to 15 years.
Property acquisition, design
and funding all took time.
The U.S. Bureau of Rec-
lamation is paying 65 percent
of the project and the state
Department of Ecology and
Roza district are each paying
17.5 percent.
The Roza Irrigation Dis-
trict operates 95 miles of
main canal and more than 350
miles of laterals serving 1,700
growers on 72,000 acres from
the northwestern edge of the
Yakima Valley at Selah to the
southeastern end at Benton
• NITRATE nitrogen is the fastest acting nitrogen source.
• SAN 30-6 has 30% nitrogen and 6% Phosphate.
• A unique combination of ammonium phosphate and
ammonium nitrate in a homogenous granule.
• SAN 30-6 gets nitrogen to the plant when it needs it. Use
for early, mid and late season applications.
• SAN 30-6 is less volatile than other dry forms of Nitrogen.
No need to add a nitrogen stabilizer.
Courtesy Roza Irrigation District
From left, Roza Watermaster Clay Bohlke, Board Vice President Jim
Willard, District Manager Scott Revell and consulting engineer Stan
Schweissing watch the first water flow into a new reservoir.
City. Water is diverted from
the Yakima River at Roza
Dam into the canal 10 miles
north of Selah in Yakima Can-
yon.
The district is the largest
one most severely impacted
in drought years because it
operates solely on junior wa-
ter rights, which are the first
to be restricted in droughts.
The district uses about
300,000 acre-feet of water
annually.
Right now, when a grower
in the lower part of the dis-
trict orders water it takes two
days for the water to arrive
from the dam and by then the
weather may have changed
and the grower may not need
as much. Water that isn’t
used goes into one of several
wasteways that take it back
to the Yakima River, Revell
said.
The new reservoir, called a
reregulation reservoir, allows
the district to pump such ex-
cess water from the canal into
the reservoir and hold it for
later use in the lower half of
the district instead of dump-
ing it into the wasteways. It
will enable the water master
at the dam to fine tune diver-
sions, saving water and pro-
viding more equal shares to
everyone in the district.
The reservoir covers 35
acres, is 70 feet deep and will
hold 1,600 acre-feet of water.
It will be operating at the end
of August but won’t be full
until next spring’s mountain
runoff.
• Grass crops prefer a mixture of both Nitrate and
Ammonium forms of nitrogen.
• Grass seed set is determined in the Fall, so proper
nitrogen and phosphorous nutrition are essential for
maximum yield.
AVAILABLE THROUGH YOUR LOCAL AG RETAILER.
For Questions and More Information, Contact
Two Rivers Terminal
866-947-7776
info@tworiversterminal.com
www.tworiversterminal.com
32-3/#6