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Editorials are written by or
approved by members of the
Capital Press Editorial Board.
August 11, 2017
All other commentary pieces are
the opinions of the authors but
not necessarily this newspaper.
Opinion
Editorial Board
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
O UR V IEW
We’re still waiting for those better trade deals
O
ur colleagues at Politico
this week published an
analysis that showed our
11 former partners in the Trans-
Pacifi c Partnership are involved in
27 separate negotiations with each
other, with major international
trading blocs and regional
powerhouses such as China.
It reports that seven deals
that impact U.S. farmers have
been signed since the Trump
administration pulled the United
States out of TPP.
The TPP was seen by many, but
not all, U.S. agricultural groups as
a boon. It included the U.S. and 11
other countries — Japan, Canada,
Mexico, Australia, Vietnam, Chile,
Malaysia, Peru, New Zealand,
Singapore and Brunei Darussalam.
Japan, Mexico and Canada are
among the biggest trade partners
Stephen B. Morton/Associated Press File
President Trump canceled the Trans-Pa-
cifi c Partnership and is renegotiating the
North American Free Trade Agreement
to get better deals. U.S. agriculture is
anxiously awaiting those improvements.
for U.S. agriculture.
Negotiations on the pact began
in 2008 under President George
W. Bush. A deal was reached in
October of 2015.
President Obama supported
the fi nal deal and submitted
it to Congress for ratifi cation.
With an election looming,
Republicans and Democrats in
Congress weren’t anxious to be
pinned down on a deal that had
both support and opposition that
crossed party lines.
The pact’s critics included the
Republican and the Democrat
presidential nominees.
Donald Trump said the deal
would undermine the U.S.
economy.
As secretary of state, Hillary
Clinton raved about the deal,
calling it the “gold standard” of
trade pacts. Candidate Clinton
opposed the deal during the
campaign and vowed to oppose it
as president.
So without ratifi cation prior
to the election, the U.S. was
destined to reject TPP in its
present form.
Following through on his
campaign promise, President
Trump withdrew from the accord
on Jan. 23.
Among the other parties in the
pact there are differing opinions
as to what TPP means without
the United States. Shinzo Abe,
Japan’s prime minister, says the
deal is meaningless without the
U.S.
Nevertheless, our trading
partners around the Pacifi c Rim
aren’t wasting time. There are a
host of bilateral and multilateral
discussions in the works. China,
Trump’s campaign nemesis, is
trying to make deals with our
trading partners.
Throughout the campaign,
and since taking offi ce, Trump
said he’d replace the 12-party
pact with a series of bilateral
trade deals that would bring jobs
For the love of labor
O UR V IEW
Oregon’s growing
marijuana problem
W
hen Oregon voters
approved an initiative
to make marijuana
legal under state law — but not
federal law — they should have
expected it to create as many
questions as it answered.
Such as:
• The state may be able to
regulate growers and sellers
under the registration system,
but how does it regulate the
black market, which feeds off
legal marijuana?
• How does the state prevent
barely regulated medical
marijuana growers from selling
their “extra” production on the
black market?
• How does the state
reconcile federal law, which
specifies that marijuana is
illegal, with the state law?
• Is marijuana production
included in the state’s Right to
Farm law?
• Where do water rights and
the laws relating to water use
start and stop for marijuana
growers?
For farmers, the last two
questions are especially
pertinent. Our guess is not
many voters considered the
right to farm and water use
when casting their ballot for
the ability to smoke pot.
Now those and other
questions have landed in the
laps of the Legislature and the
courts, which will be sorting
through them until further notice.
It’s a great time to be a lawyer
in Oregon.
We were never fond of an
initiative that would partially
legalize recreational marijuana
and partially regulate medical
marijuana.
The loopholes in that new law
are big enough to drive a 1964
Volkswagen mini-bus painted with
day-glow fl owers through.
In the meantime, 2,788 growers,
processors and sellers are taking a
chance on recreational marijuana as
a crop in Oregon.
Multnomah County, which
includes Portland, has 496
applications pending as of July 27.
Interestingly, Jackson and Josephine
counties, with a combined
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Marijuana plants grow in a high tunnel at a farm near McMinnville, Ore. Since Ore-
gon voters legalized the psychoactive crop in 2013, 685 marijuana producers have
been licensed to grow the crop and more than 800 have applications pending.
population that’s only 37 percent
the size of Multnomah’s, have 649
applications pending. One wonders
whether that marijuana production
is destined solely for the Oregon
market.
If you consider only producers,
685 are now licensed by the
state and more than 800 have
applications pending.
At $800 to $1,200 a pound on
the market, marijuana will continue
to attract a lot of interest, among
both legitimate operators and others
who seek to take advantage of
the loopholes in Oregon’s poorly
written law.
If it isn’t already, Oregon will
soon be awash in marijuana. The
and industry back to the United
States. That sounds great. When
can we expect that to happen?
Farmers and ranchers, a group
that largely supported Trump’s
election, have a lot riding on
foreign trade. The U.S. exports
$135 billion in agricultural
products each year. It could
always be better, but it’s pretty
great as it is.
It’s hard to say what dumping
TPP and renegotiating the North
American Free Trade Agreement
may mean for the economy in
general, and for farmers and
ranchers in particular.
But at the moment it’s fair
to ask what happens next, and
when will it happen? We await
a tweet, or any other appropriate
communication, from the Oval
Offi ce.
state already grows about fi ve
times as much marijuana as can
realistically be smoked here,
according to Rep. Carl Wilson,
a Grants Pass Republican who
is vice chairman of the Oregon
Legislature’s Joint Committee on
Marijuana Regulation.
That leaves many Oregonians
scratching their heads about the
problem they created.
The failure to properly regulate
marijuana is further proof that the
initiative process in Oregon is wide
open to interesting concepts that
lack the full vetting the legislative
process provides.
The result is laws that fail the
public.
By MARY ALAMEDA
For the Capital Press
O
ver time, the cost of
living in the Golden
State has increased
relentlessly, repercussions for
improper documentation have
grown more severe, and high-
er wages in other industries
are drawing more workers
away from agriculture. Even
with the rise in H-2A worker
visas in California and across
the country, fi nding willing
hands to help plant, tend and
harvest crops on America’s
farmland is harder with each
passing season.
For the fi rst time in my
life, I fear for the future of
agriculture. I fear the fi elds
will go fallow. I fear the cor-
ridos will stop playing out of
the stereo on the harvester. I
fear the lunchtime chatter will
go silent. I fear the colorful
bandanas and hats shading
faces will disappear. I fear my
favorite local fruits and vege-
tables will become a thing of
the past. I fear the extinction
of the people and industry I
fell in love with.
I am often asked why I
would choose a career in ag-
riculture. For me the answer
has always been easy: I fell in
love with the hands and hearts
that characterize farming.
My love stems from birth;
I am truly a farmer’s daugh-
ter. I come from a long line
of farmers, fourth generation
on both sides of my family. I
grew up sitting on my father’s
lap, 10 and two on the wheel,
waving to every other white
pickup truck we passed.
I trailed behind his foot-
steps struggling to keep up
with his long stride through
furrows. I practiced rolling
R’s with foremen. As I got
older, I put my own hands to
work, only to learn they didn’t
stand a chance. I was left in
the dust of hoeing and thin-
ning crews. I laughed with
the ladies sorting green beans,
providing comic relief as the
guera, blondie, trying to keep
up.
In the midst of our peak
season, my fears for agricul-
ture are being realized more
rapidly than anticipated. Due
to challenging immigration
laws and a rising minimum
wage, the California farmer
cannot fi nd hands, let alone
pay them. By 2023, the min-
imum wage will be $15 per
hour statewide. With that, the
Guest
comment
Mary Alameda
designated work hours and
days in a week have also been
revised. An employee can
only work six days a week
at eight hours a day before
hitting overtime, with the ex-
emption of irrigators.
A farmer only wishes he or
she could feed the world on
these hours! Sadly, California
farmers and ranchers cannot
sustain the rising costs, and
many may be forced to cut
back production or employ
more crews to absorb the
cost. Thus, an attempt to bol-
ster farm laborers may have
a reverse effect, and result in
workers getting fewer hours
and making less money than
before.
How does a farmer do
more with less, or at least
keep up? Technology is pro-
viding the answer, as the
heartbeat of agriculture gets
drowned out by the eerie low
hum of mechanization.
Many hands to make light
work will no longer be need-
ed due to automation. Crews
of 20 to 30 workers are now
being replaced by one ma-
chine. Take for example the
Splat 2.0, the Mantis Thin-
ning Rover, operated by one
person, can swiftly hoe and
thin a fi eld of leafy greens,
which once required dozens
of workers to tend.
In 2017, we romanticize
a picturesque farm-to-fork
process during which farmers
lovingly handpick fresh pro-
duce. While we sporadically
appreciate and consistently
expect the same quality, most
people are unwilling to do the
same work. With the current
labor situation, we will be
abruptly awoken from our
farming fantasy. I was once
excited to return to the farm
I left, but I’m now afraid I
won’t recognize it.
Mary Alameda is in-
terning this summer in the
American Farm Bureau
Federation’s Communica-
tions Department. Mary is a
senior studying agricultural
communications at Califor-
nia Polytechnic State Uni-
versity, San Luis Obispo. Her
column appears courtesy of
the American Farm Bureau
Federation.
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