October 27, 2017
CapitalPress.com
3
Washington raspberry growers see red, feel blue
Commission to hire
legal help
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
The Washington Red
Raspberry Commission has
committed $150,000 to fur-
ther investigate whether
growers are the victims of
unfair trade practices and if so
what they can do.
The market has worsened
since the commission retained
a law fi rm last spring to un-
dertake a preliminary probe,
the commission’s executive
director, Henry Bierlink, said.
“The alarm bells started to
ring last spring. We wanted
to see what happened in the
summer and fall. The answer
is, it’s turned in the wrong
direction,” he said. “There
are more concerns rather than
fewer.”
Courtesy of Jayson Korthius/Whatcom Family Farmers
Raspberries are harvested in Whatcom County, Wash. The
Washington Red Raspberry Commission will hire a law fi rm to
look into whether berry growers are being undercut by unfair trade
practices.
Washington leads the U.S.
in red raspberries grown for
processing. The farmers, most
of whom are in Whatcom
County, compete for domestic
customers with berries from
many countries, including
Mexico, Serbia, Peru, Chi-
na and Chile. Imported fruit
makes up about half the pro-
cessed red raspberries sold in
the U.S., according to the Na-
tional Processed Raspberry
Council, a commodity check-
off program overseen by the
USDA.
The average price of
processed red raspberries
dropped to 97 cents a pound
in 2016 from $1.45 the year
before, according to the
USDA. The value of a record
harvest in Washington last
year was less than the pre-
vious year’s drought-dimin-
ished crop, according to the
USDA. Figures aren’t avail-
able for this year, though
prices are reportedly below
the cost of production.
Lynden farmer Marty
Maberry, who’s on the rasp-
berry commission board, said
U.S. growers have differ-
ent labor costs, food-safety
standards and environmental
regulations than their foreign
competitors. All are putting
domestic farmers at a disad-
vantage, he said.
“The long-term potential
could be shifting these la-
bor-intensive crops out of the
country,” he said. “We’re try-
ing to get a conversation go-
ing. Are we OK with that?”
The commission success-
fully petitioned for relief in
2002 and 1985 from berries
being dumped into the U.S.
and driving prices below
production costs. Those cas-
es, however, involved just
one other country, Canada
in 1985 and Chile in 2002.
This time, red raspberries are
coming into the U.S. from
many countries, potentially
complicating an anti-dump-
ing claim.
The commission is also
looking at the U.S. trade law
that allows the president to
impose tariffs to safeguard
an industry threatened by an
infl ux of imports. The law,
however, has been rarely in-
voked, and for much larger
industries.
The U.S. International
Trade Commission is current-
ly reviewing petitions from
manufacturers of washing
machines and solar technol-
ogy. President George W.
Bush used the law in 2002 to
protect the steel industry. The
World Trade Organization
overturned the president’s or-
der the following year.
The commission is look-
ing at forming alliances with
growers in other states, such
as Florida tomato farmers,
who also report suffering
from a disparity in labor costs,
especially compared to Mex-
ico.
“The imports are gaining
ground, and we’re losing it.
NAFTA is not helping,” Bier-
link said.
The red raspberry commis-
sion, a state body, must solicit
proposals for legal services.
Bierlink said he expects to
have a fi rm retained by the
middle of November.
Ruling reinstates 23,000
acres as wild horse territory
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Nicolas Datiche/For the Capital Press
Jun Mokudai, left, director of Oregon’s trade offi ce, Oregon
Gov. Kate Brown, center, and Director of Agriculture Alexis
Taylor show off Oregon craft cider and beer ahead of a seminar
on Japanese trade Oct. 13.
TPP rejection overshadows
Oregon trade trip to Japan
Courtesy of Larisa Bogardus/BLM
An appeals court has reinstated 23,000 acres as wild horse territory in the Modoc National Forest.
Wild horse territory
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Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
destroy fencing and migrate
onto private property, the in-
tervenors said.
A federal judge dismissed
the case in 2015, ruling that
the boundary correction
wasn’t “arbitrary and capri-
cious” because the “middle
section” was never formally
incorporated into the wild
horse territory.
The U.S. Court of Appeals
for the D.C. Circuit has now
reversed that decision and
overturned the Forest Ser-
vice’s exclusion of the 23,000
acres from the territory.
“A 23,000 acre tract of
land and two decades of agen-
cy management cannot be
swept under the rug as a mere
administrative mistake,” the
ruling said.
According to the appeals
court, the Forest Service vi-
olated administrative law by
failing to “adequately explain
its change in policy” and not
considering whether remov-
ing the “middle section” re-
quired a comprehensive envi-
ronmental analysis.
The agency’s defense that
the 23,000 acres were never
formally part of the wild horse
territory is undermined by its
forest management plan, of-
fi cial statements and two de-
cades of agency practice, the
court said.
“Blinders may work for
horses, but they are no good
for administrative agencies,”
the ruling said.
Reward in wolf poaching case jumps to $15,000
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
A coalition of fi ve con-
servation groups said it added
$10,500 to a reward offered for
information about the shooting
of a protected gray wolf in the
Fremont-Wenema National
Forest of Southern Oregon.
Combined with a $5,000
reward previously offered by
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice, the fund now stands at
$15,500. The federal agency
and Oregon State Police are
investigating.
The carcass of a wolf des-
ignated OR-33 by Oregon De-
partment of Fish and Wildlife
was discovered in April 2017
and taken to a USFWS lab
in Ashland, Ore., for a nec-
ropsy. The results were not
announced until Oct. 11. The
animal had one or more gun-
shot wounds, according to
USFWS. It’s not clear when
the wolf was shot.
Another wolf, OR-28, was
found dead in the forest in
October 2016. It also was ex-
amined at the Ashland lab, but
the cause of death hasn’t been
disclosed.
Activist groups have warned
that wolves are being poached
in Oregon and have called upon
state offi cials to take action to
protect the animals. Oregon
Wild, Defenders of Wildlife,
Center for Biological Diversity,
Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands
Center and Humane Society
of the United States jointly an-
nounced the additional reward
contribution.
According to ODFW re-
ports, 2015 was particularly
deadly for wolves. OR-13 in-
gested a chemical that is deadly
to animals; OR-34 and OR-31
were shot and the investiga-
tions are open; OR-22 was
shot by a man who reported
it to state police and said he’d
been hunting coyotes; the Sled
Springs pair were found dead
of unknown cause. An un-
collared sub-adult wolf was
shot in 2016. Earlier in 2017,
wolf OR-48 died when it bit
a spring-loaded cyanide pow-
der trap set by USDA Wildlife
Services in an attempt to kill
coyotes.
Gray wolves are listed as
endangered in the western two-
thirds of Oregon, and under the
Endangered Species Act it is a
crime to kill them.
Anyone with information
about the cases should call U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service at
503-682-6131, or the Oregon
State Police Tip Line at 800-
452-7888. Callers may re-
main anonymous.
By RICHARD SMITH
For the Capital Press
TOKYO — Gov. Kate
Brown recently led an Or-
egon delegation to Japan
focused on doing business
with the state’s top export
market for agricultural prod-
ucts, but she said the Trump
administration’s rejection of
the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership
has put a damper on any new
business.
Brown told the Capital
Press the delegation of Ore-
gon businesses had conver-
sations about the TPP with
the Japanese business leaders
it met, as well as with the
U.S. embassy.
“We are clearly right now
in a no-person’s-land, where
there’s a lack of clarity about
federal policy,” Brown said
of the TPP. One of President
Donald Trump’s fi rst acts
after he entered offi ce was
to reject the TPP, a trade
agreement among 12 Pacif-
ic Rim nations, including
Japan and U.S. He said he
intends to negotiate one-on-
one treaties with the nations
involved.
Brown said her role as
Oregon governor is to make
sure that exporters are con-
tinuing to build relationships
to ensure that the state’s
products fi nd lucrative mar-
kets. But she said uncertainty
over tariffs hinders trade on
both sides.
“I certainly raised this is-
sue when I was speaking to
(U.S. ambassador to Japan
William) Haggerty, letting
him know that our agricul-
tural products are very reliant
on the markets in Asia, par-
ticularly in Japan, and that
we need to make sure that we
can get our products to mar-
ket in a cost-effi cient man-
ner,” Brown said.
Headed by Oregon Di-
rector of Agriculture Alex-
is Taylor, the contingent of
eight food and beverage
exporters included Willa-
mette Valley Fruit Co. of Sa-
lem, OFD Foods of Albany,
Northwest Hazelnut Co. of
Hubbard, Ponzi Vineyards
of Sherwood, 2 Towns Cider
of Corvallis, Bossco Trading
Co. of Tangent, Weaver Seed
Processing of Scio and Pacif-
ic Seafood of Clackamas.
One of the things the
agribusiness side of the tour
focused on was helping com-
panies build additional rela-
tionships with importers if
they are already exporters, or
helping introduce them to the
market if they are fi rst-time
exporters here, Taylor said.
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39
Wa r n e
A federal court ruling has
effectively reinstated about
23,000 acres as wild horse ter-
ritory in California’s Modoc
National Forest despite local
ranchers’ objections.
When the Devil’s Garden
Wild Horse Territory was
originally created by the U.S.
Forest Service in 1975, it con-
sisted of 236,000 acres divid-
ed into two tracts.
However, in the 1980s, an
agency map connected those
two swaths of land with a
23,000-acre “middle section”
that was later included in a
forest management plan.
In 2013, the Forest Service
decided that including the
“middle section” in the map
was an “administrative error”
and excluded that area from
the wild horse territory.
The American Wild Horse
Preservation Campaign, a
nonprofi t group, fi led a law-
suit alleging the change vio-
lated horse protection, forest
management and environ-
mental laws.
The California Cattlemen’s
Association and other groups
intervened in the litigation on
behalf of local ranchers who
have grazing allotments in the
area.
Rangeland in the “middle
section” has been “rendered
nearly unusable by wild hors-
es,” which overgraze vege-
tation, trample waterways,