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CapitalPress.com
September 1, 2017
Opinion
O V
‘New day’ long overdue at the EPA
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approved by members of the
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Editorial Board
All other commentary pieces are
the opinions of the authors but
not necessarily this newspaper.
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
UR
T
he New York Times last
week highlighted a March
1 meeting in Washington,
D.C., between offi cials of the
Environmental Protection Agency
and the Washington Farm Bureau
in the weeks before rejecting
a decade-old petition to ban
chlorpyrifos, the most widely used
pesticide in U.S. agriculture.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt
joined the meeting briefl y, telling
participants that it was “a new
day, a new future, for a common
sense approach to environmental
protection.”
Common sense at the EPA is
something of an oxymoron given
the agency’s recent history:
• Critics suggest the Farm
Bureau and other groups have
undue access to Pruitt, and that
Pruitt is showing favor because
he agreed to listen to their plea.
EPA
Environmental Protection Agency Admin-
istrator Scott Pruitt has declared “a new
day, a new future, for a common sense
approach to environmental protection.”
Those same critics, however, were
silent when it was discovered
that environmentalists had direct
access to Lisa Jackson, President
Obama’s fi rst EPA director, via
her private email account and an
offi cial account she maintained
under an alias — Richard
Windsor.
• Critics were also silent when
it was revealed that EPA staffers
communicated with activists
by text messages in an effort to
thwart public record laws.
• Al Armendariz was EPA’s
Region 6 administrator in
2010 when he gave a speech
describing the agency’s regulatory
enforcement tactics. “It is
kind of like how the Romans
used to conquer villages in the
Mediterranean — they’d go into a
little Turkish town somewhere and
they’d fi nd the fi rst fi ve guys they
saw and they’d crucify them,” he
said. He resigned when a video of
the speech came to light in 2012.
• In 2015 contractors working
for the agency to clean up
an abandoned gold mine in
Colorado accidentally dumped
O UR V IEW
A glimpse at the
future of agriculture
n 1977, when the fi rst “Star Wars” movie premiered, few — if any
— viewers thought it would predict the future of agriculture.
We should explain.
In the movie, Luke Skywalker — “Our Hero” — fi rst appeared as
he was working on his uncle’s “moisture farm” on a desert planet.
This farm captured its water directly from the atmosphere, which was
unique enough, but only Luke and his aunt and uncle ran the whole
operation. The rest of the “workers” were autonomous droids, or robots.
As you will recall, they did all of the work on the farm, and Luke’s job
was to repair them. He was going to town to get a spare part when he
encountered Sand People and was rescued by Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi
knight.
While the rest of the story is well known, most people dismissed
the idea of an automated farm was nothing more than the product of a
fertile imagination and science fi ction.
Fast forward 40 years, and the vision of a farm where robots and
drones do much of the work no longer seems so far-fetched.
At a recent conference in Pendleton, Ore., researchers, inventors and
farmers got together to contemplate the future of farming. The ideas
they have developed make “Star Wars” seem old-fashioned. In the
not-too-distant future, they see robotic workers harvesting fruits and
vegetables and driverless tractors and combines planting and harvesting
crops. Drones and sensors will identify portions of fi elds needing
irrigation or applications of fertilizer or pesticide and call in other
drones to do the job.
Ranchers will use drones to monitor the location and health
of their cattle on the range and, when needed, to chase off
predators such as wolves or coyotes.
Combine that with other advances in agriculture, from
genetic editing of crops to use less water, fertilizer and
pesticide to orchards, vineyards and berry farms that are
designed for effi cient mechanical harvesting, and you
have a hint of what the future of agriculture holds.
These advances will not happen solely because they
represent “progress.” They will address problems that
farmers and ranchers face. Among those problems are
a shortage of labor, the need for the more precise use
of resources and, most importantly, the need to feed
7.5 billion people on the planet today and more in the
future.
The possibilities are endless. They are limited
only by the imaginations of agriculture’s
best and brightest innovators.
“There’s a clear path toward
completely automated farming,”
Jake Joraanstad of Myriad Mobile
Solutions, a Fargo, N.D.-based
tech company, told the Pendleton
gathering. “To solve the hunger
problem, we have to be going
there, that has to be the future.”
As technology develops in
every arena of agriculture, we
will see farmers and ranchers
adopt it as a way to grow the
food a hungry planet needs.
May the force be with us.
I
Wookieepedia.com
The future of agriculture?
“Star Wars” character Luke
Skywalker with a droid and a
vaporator.
IEW
3 million gallons of heavy-
metal laced wastewater into
the Animas River. The agency
eventually took responsibility
for the spill and spent millions
to mitigate the disaster. But, it
declared itself immune to private
damage claims. “From the very
beginning, the EPA failed to
hold itself accountable in the
same way that it would a private
business,” said Ryan Flynn, New
Mexico Environment Department
cabinet secretary.
• John C. Beale, a
$100,000-a-year lawyer for the
EPA, for 13 years convinced
his bosses that on Wednesdays
he also worked for the Central
Intelligence Agency. He went
missing entirely for six months
in 2008, and was gone “on
assignment” from June 2011 to
December 2012. He remained on
the payroll the whole time, and
even was awarded a 25 percent
bonus.
• The EPA funded the “What’s
Upstream” propaganda campaign
launched by the Northwest
Indian Fisheries Commission
and Swinomish Indian tribe to
advocate for greater regulations
on farmers to improve water
quality.
The public didn’t perceive
a problem with water quality,
so campaign backers ginned
up imagery and a fall guy that
would move the public to demand
increased regulations. But it was
fake, and all paid for by the EPA.
The agency said it didn’t know
what was going on, but it turns
out it did.
All things considered, a new
day probably isn’t such a bad
thing at the EPA.
Readers’ views
Collaborative
needs more trust
and inclusion
U.S. Forest Service
“collaboratives” do not
want to grant Eastern Ore-
gon residents a vote at the
table.
They want people to
“participate” but not to ask
for a vote in the process.
That’s why now, finally,
when residents of Grant
County ask for voting sta-
tus, the Blue Mountains
Forest Partners come out
with defamatory state-
ments of residents being
“untrustworthy,” hoping to
marginalize those trying to
participate in a meaningful
manner.
My mom had to sit
through a shaming by the
Blue Mountains Forest
Partners because she was
“untrustworthy,” because
I question the collabora-
tives, and how they use
economic hardship to jus-
tify restricting motorized
access to the mountains of
Eastern Oregon. They use
“vegetative treatments” to
“restore” the forest, while
restricting motorized ac-
cess when they help the
Forest Service “develop
projects.”
The collaboratives are
supposed to be civil and
open to diverse public in-
put, but if that input does
not align with the collabo-
rative’s stated goals, they
become personal, nasty
and petty.
The question is, can we
get logs to the mills with-
out “rewilding” Eastern
Oregon? We did it for de-
cades, and grew some of
the healthiest wildlife pop-
ulations around.
Unfortunately, the en-
vironmental community
turned that on its head with
their litigation strategy,
and they now get to drive
their message through
these collaboratives, while
excluding public input
through voting member-
ship.
To paraphrase a col-
laborative board member,
“My grandmother always
told me, you are the com-
pany you keep.”
The other lesson most of
us learned from our grand-
parents was “the only thing
you have is your word.”
Unfortunately, collab-
orative members never
learned that lesson, be-
cause every time they give
you “their word” they back
track from it.
Eastern
Oregonians
should not be shamed upon
requesting voting member
status to “diverse and in-
clusive” groups, but unfor-
tunately, that’s how East-
ern Oregon collaboratives
operate.
John D. George
Bates, Ore.