10 CapitalPress.com
March 23, 2018
FPI provides a great breadth of understanding of farm issues
VOICE from Page 1
Rice, who speaks regular-
ly with FPI leaders, said the
group “is actually one of the
most important ways we can
make sure ag laws actually
help agriculture and don’t
harm it. It’s an important
group that does a lot of good.”
Food Producers meets
weekly during Idaho’s three-
month legislative session and
monthly the rest of the year.
During the session, members
discuss several dozen bills
that could impact agriculture
and vote to support or oppose
many of them.
So far this year, FPI has
discussed 46 bills.
A “green sheet” listing
FPI’s stance on these bills ap-
pears in legislators’ mail box-
es every Wednesday morning
during the legislative session.
“Legislators recognize that
when Food Producers of Idaho
sends in a letter or testifies at
a hearing, this message rep-
resents a collective voice for
the agriculture industry,” said
former FPI president Roger
Batt, the husband of Gayle
Batt and the cousin of Phil
Batt, a farmer who started the
group and later became Ida-
ho’s governor.
There are many competing
interests within agriculture,
and the green sheet helps law-
makers understand where the
state’s farming industry stands
on various issues, Rice said.
“When you have a group
that can resolve those compet-
ing interests before asking the
Legislature for something, that
is really important,” he said.
“That is what’s unique about
Food Producers.”
One of the benefits of the
group is that it gives even
small farm groups a big voice,
said Rick Waitley, who has
served as Food Producers’
like Food Producers of Ida-
ho.”
Because FPI members
have such a collective breadth
of understanding of the farm-
ing industry, the group emerg-
es from discussions with a
good road map for how to deal
with a problem or help out on
a certain issue, said Meridian
farmer Drew Eggers, a voting
member.
Seeking consensus
Sean Ellis/Capital Press File
Lt. Gov. Brad Little speaks at a Food Producers of Idaho meeting in February 2016. FPI allows the many organizations the opportunity to
speak to state political leaders with one voice.
executive director since 1989
and has been with the organi-
zation since 1977.
Collective voice
That collective voice pro-
vides a great breadth of un-
derstanding of farm issues, he
said.
“When general ag issues
come up, that voice is really
important to us,” he said. “It’s
a really, really good depth of
understanding of agricultural
issues.”
FPI members don’t always
see eye-to-eye on every issue,
“but we accomplish more
when we are together than
when we are separated and
fragmented,” Waitley said.
The group was formed in
1970 to address farm labor
legislation. At one point sev-
eral years later the group had
shrunk to only about six mem-
bers and was all but dead,
Waitley said.
But following what Wait-
ley called a “miserable” three-
day planning session, it was
reborn as a group that focuses
on more than only farm labor
issues.
Today, the group rep-
resents more than 40 ag-re-
lated groups and businesses
and deals with dozens of
farm-related issues each year.
Organizations pay $800 a year
for a membership with voting
privileges or $275 to become
an affiliate member without
voting privileges. Individuals
pay $55 to become an affiliate
member.
Other efforts
FPI also created the Ag-
riculture Pavilion, which ed-
ucates tens of thousands of
Idahoans about the farming
industry each year at the state
fairs.
Food Producers’ annual
Ag Summit, which is attended
by several hundred leaders of
the state’s farming industry,
focuses on several important
farm industry issues.
It also facilitated the de-
velopment of an agriculture
and natural resource political
action committee and created
an Ag All-Star award, which
goes to legislators based on
how they vote on ag-related
issues.
“I think Food Producers is
a fantastic group,” said former
FPI president Blair Wilson,
the Idaho president of North-
west Farm Credit Services,
which is an FPI member. “I
think all states would benefit
from having an organization
“We can usually come to
a consensus, but in those rare
instances where there isn’t a
consensus, we at least under-
stand where that dissenting
voice is coming from and we
can still respect their opin-
ion,” he said.
FPI members don’t always
agree on an issue at the begin-
ning of a discussion “but by
the time it’s done, it’s rare that
we don’t figure out a consen-
sus,” Wilson said.
The Idaho Nursery and
Landscape Association joined
Food Producers as a vot-
ing member this year and its
membership quickly paid off.
After hearing from an
INLA member about how it
could harm the nursery indus-
try and all of agriculture, FPI
opposed a bill that would have
required conspicuous red la-
bels on all plants for sale that
could be poisonous to humans
or animals if eaten.
The state’s nursery indus-
try has never had lobbyists,
so being connected with a
room full of people who have
done that for years was valu-
able, said Seneca Hull, who
represents the INLA at FPI
meetings.
“It’s a great group to have
a seat at the table with,” she
said. “It’s really helpful to
have people who understand
how the legislative system
works.”
Filmmakers hope to broadcast the film nationwide next March
FILM from Page 1
Tanner and Mulkern met
during a Focus on Farming
conference in Snohomish
County, Wash., and launched
the partnership to make the
documentary.
“Women are farming,
they’ve always been farm-
ing,” Mulkern said. “What’s
missing is their place in histo-
ry. As we look at agricultural
history, we have been con-
ditioned to look at farming
as sort of men’s work. We’d
really love to reinsert wom-
en back into that narrative, to
really celebrate those women
who have done it all along and
are still doing it, and inherited
those wonderful legacies.”
The team launched a fund-
raising campaign March 8,
which was International Wom-
en’s Day, with a goal of $50,000.
It’s important that the proj-
ect has grassroots support,
Mulkern said.
The filmmakers hope to
broadcast the film nation-
wide next March for National
Women’s History Month and
Audra Mulkern/The Female Farmer Project
Kylie Gray of Gray Girl Farms in Othello, Wash, balances being
a farmer and a mother. Washington filmmakers are raising funds
to make a documentary about past and present female American
farmers.
Audra Mulkern/The Female Farmer Project
Micha Ide with her flock at Bright Ide Acres in Orting, Wash. Washington filmmakers are raising funds
to make a documentary about past and present female American farmers.
International Women’s Day.
They are still looking
for stories, said Kara Rowe,
co-executive producer.
“It seems like every little
community has some grand-
mother’s journal or a little book
their aunt put together that talks
about what their great-grand-
mother did, some of those little
stories that are out there but
they’re more family heritages
Online
http://bit.ly/2pq3waw
than publicly known,” she said.
“We are still looking for some
of those stories about our ma-
triarchs that have always been
there, it’s just that their stories
aren’t as well known as some of
the male-dominated stories that
are out there.”
Tanner and Rowe also di-
rected the documentary, “The
Gamble: The Washington Po-
tato Story,” and produce the
television show, “Washington
Grown.”
At 169 million pounds, hop stocks at highest level in decades
HOPS from Page 1
“I don’t think this hop
situation is going to straight-
en itself out anytime soon,”
said Annen. “There’s just too
many hops. Too many plant-
ed, too many in storage.”
The hop industry is accus-
tomed to the boom-and-bust
cycle. A shortage of the crop
around 2008 spurred enough
production to cause a surplus
within three years. At this
point, though, hop stocks are
40 percent above that earlier
peak.
“That was a pile of peanuts
compared to now,” Annen
said.
Despite this tremendous
heap of unused hops, many
farmers and merchants are
still in denial about the impli-
cations of the oversupply, said
Doug MacKinnon, president
of the 47Hops, a merchant in
Yakima, Wash.
“Nobody wants to admit
the severity of the problem
today,” he said.
While the hop inventory
has continued to accumulate,
the crops were grown under
contract, which some in the
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Workers harvest hop vines near Independence, Ore., in this Capital Press file photo. A record 169
million-pound inventory of hops in the U.S. is prompting concerns of an oversupply.
industry find reassuring, he
said.
In MacKinnon’s view, that
tranquility is based on a de-
lusion because there’s still
an excess of hops for which
brewers have no immediate
demand.
“The farmer will tell you
it’s sold. Some merchants
will tell you that too,” he
said. “And technically, it is,
but it’s not moving.”
The imbalance between
supply and demand is based
on overly optimistic projec-
tions of beer sales, said Jim
Solberg, CEO of Indie Hops,
a merchant in Portland, Ore.
Major international brew-
ers and larger independent
brewers “over-revved on how
much could be accomplished
and how fast” while the U.S.
also saw a profusion of small
breweries, he said.
There was a sense that
craft beer sales will contin-
ue surging as long as brew-
ers invest in more capacity,
convincing them to contract
for additional hop production,
Solberg said.
However, the astronom-
ic growth that brewers were
counting on didn’t material-
ize.
The rate of growth for craft
beer sales fell by more than
half between 2014 and 2016,
from 22 percent to 10 per-
cent in value, according to the
most recent statistics from the
Brewers Association.
Sales of craft beer are still
rising, but not enough to con-
sume the amount of contract-
ed hops, Solberg said. “It’s
just piling up. It just backs up
and piles up.”
Much of the hop industry’s
expansion was paid for with
borrowed money, said MacK-
innon.
For growers, investing in
poles, trellises, drip irriga-
tion and hop plants amounts
to about $10,000 per acre,
while merchants spent about
$1.5 million to $3 million per
warehouse building, he said.
With brewers not using as
many hops as expected, some
will take the financial hit of
honoring contracts but others
will abandon their contractu-
al obligation to buy the crop,
MacKinnon said.
For merchants, there’s no
easy way to deal with brew-
ers who reject hops for which
they previously contracted, he
said. “You don’t want to sue
all your customers.”
Sitting on an inventory
of hops isn’t cheap — mer-
chants currently have an in-
ventory of about $1 billion
worth of hops on which they
must pay interest, MacKin-
non said.
That financial strain
makes it harder for them to
honor contracts to buy hops
from farmers, who have their
own debts to pay back, he said.
MacKinnon said he ex-
pects the hop industry will
face a reckoning within a
year, such as the failure of a
major company that causes
hop inventories to be severe-
ly devalued.
His own company filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy last
year, from which it expects
to emerge with a restructur-
ing plan by June, he said.
One way or another, the
industry will end up in the
same place: With a seriously
diminished acreage of hops,
MacKinnon said.
Accomplishing this re-
duction voluntarily would be
hard work, but preferable to
more bankruptcies, he said.
“Everybody needs to be flexi-
ble to make this work.”