Capital Press
A g
The West’s
FRIDAY, JULY 6, 2018
Weekly
VOLUME 91, NUMBER 27
WWW.CAPITALPRESS.COM
$2.00
Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press
Bill Bitzenberg, left, chairman of the Twin Falls, Idaho, Soil and Water District, talks about planting corn into a cover crop with farmer Lance Griff. No-till farming using cover crops to
improve soil tilth and retain moisture are among the many efforts supported by the district.
Districts bring conservation efforts
DOWN TO EARTH
Soil and water districts, NRCS work with farmers
and ranchers to benefit the land and streams
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
T
WIN FALLS, Idaho — Third-gen-
eration farmer Lance Griff wanted to
improve the soil health and conserve
water on the 3,700 acres he farms
with his father, Ron, on the notori-
ously water-short Salmon Tract in southern Twin
Falls County. He believed planting cover crops
and using no-till farming practices would help
achieve those goals. His interest in them landed
him at the Twin Falls Soil and Water Conserva-
tion District.
“They definitely provided support, and they
provided expertise and were able to direct me to
funding sources to try different projects,” he said.
Those contributions spurred his farm’s ongo-
ing evolution toward sustainability. The practices
are improving water infiltration and soil moisture
and reducing erosion. In the process, he is using
less fuel and labor.
From both soil health and economic perspec-
tives, “we feel like it makes sense,” he said.
There’s a soil-health movement going on,
and farmers need the resources and support that
conservation districts provide, he said.
“They are definitely well-respected and
viewed as useful,” he said.
A former board member of his local district,
Griff had seen the results of district efforts —
from improving soils and irrigation efficiency to
repairing eroded stream banks. He also saw the
value of hosting project demonstrations to ed-
ucate farmers and a public that is becoming in-
creasingly disconnected from agriculture, he said.
Conservation legacy
While soil conservation districts had their
baptism of fire following the devastation of the
1930s Dust Bowl, the movement got its begin-
ning decades earlier. It was championed by Hugh
Hammond Bennett, a young college graduate
who went to work as a soil surveyor for USDA
in 1905.
Now recognized as the “father of conser-
vation,” Bennett spent 20 years trying to bring
attention to the nation’s eroded soils and the
need for conservation. Lawmakers finally
started to listen in the late 1920s, and the Dust
Bowl — a drought that led to massive dust
storms and topsoil losses across a swath land
reaching from Texas to Nebraska — fueled the
movement.
The groundwork for the Dust Bowl was laid
in the early 1900s when high demand for wheat,
generous federal farm policies and a series of wet
years caused a land boom in the Great Plains.
Turn to LAND, Page 9
Commission proposes rules for Oregon Ag Heritage Program
Seeking $11 million
at 2019 Legislature
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
After four months of meetings,
the Oregon Agricultural Heritage
Commission has come up with a
budget request for state lawmakers
to fund grants for farmland conser-
vation, preservation and easements.
The 12-member commission
was appointed in January to write
administrative rules for the Oregon
Agricultural Heritage Program, es-
tablished in House Bill 3249 which
passed the Legislature in July 2017.
Commissioners are recommend-
ing $10 million to run the program,
administered by the Oregon Water-
shed Enhancement
Board. The program
initially sought $4.25
million, though at the
time legislators did
not allocate any fund-
ing.
Ellie
OWEB is now
McAdams
seeking public com-
ment on the proposal,
with a pair of public meetings sched-
uled July 16 in Salem and July 17 in
Burns.
Nellie McAdams, program coor-
dinator, said the bulk of the money
would go toward grants to help Or-
egon farmers and ranchers develop
conservation plans for their property,
establish conservation easements or
move forward with succession plan-
ning to ensure the land remains in
agricultural production.
Conserving farmland is essen-
tial, McAdams said, not only for the
economy and rural communities, but
for the environment as well.
“The commission has taken great
efforts to integrate both conservation
and agricultural outcomes and goals
for each of the grant programs,”
McAdams said. “This program goes
Turn to HERITAGE, Page 9
Perdue pushes help for farmers hurt by trade war
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
SPOKANE — Secretary of Agri-
culture Sonny Perdue says he’s push-
ing for government help for farmers
hurt by the spreading trade war be-
tween the U.S. and other countries.
“The president says he won’t al-
low ag producers to bear the brunt
of trade disputes. We are undergoing
significant trade disruptions on corn
and soybeans. I believe if we are
not able to resolve this — I’m lay-
ing down a marker that we need to
resolve it by Labor Day or we need
some sort of mitigation,” Perdue told
agricultural and timber leaders hosted
by U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodg-
ers, R-Wash., for breakfast at the Spo-
kane Club on July 20.
Perdue said any government help
might be retroactive so cherries and
other commodities that suffer losses
before Labor Day would be covered.
Potential market losses due to
the trade war was the chief topic of
discussion at the breakfast attend-
ed by Derek Sandison, director of
the Washington State Department
of Agriculture, who told Perdue that
Washington has an $11 billion annu-
al farmgate value with 37 percent of
“what we grow” shipped overseas.
“You will hear a lot about trade
from every person because so much
of our product is exported,” said Glen
Squires, CEO of the Washington
Grain Commission.
“Our farmers grow wheat. Nine-
ty percent of it is exported. Some of
these relationships have been built
over 60 years. Markets take a long
time to develop, but they can be lost
quickly because there are a lot of sup-
pliers out there,” Squires said.
Turn to TRADE, Page 9