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July 13, 2018 CapitalPress.com 5 Ag secretary meets with E. Oregon farmers Sonny Perdue makes trip to Sherman County By GEORGE PLAVEN Capital Press Oregon Blueberry Commission The 2018 Oregon blueberry crop may be headed for a record. Largest-ever Oregon blueberry crop predicted By MITCH LIES For the Capital Press As the 2018 Oregon blue- berry harvest season heads toward its peak, all signs point to a record crop and high-quality fruit. “We should see a pretty big jump this year from a rough- ly 107 million-pound harvest in 2017 to projections in 2018 of 125, 130 or possibly even beyond 130 million pounds,” said Bryan Ostlund, adminis- trator of the Oregon Blueberry Commission. “This absolutely should be a record crop.” The current record, har- vested in 2016, is 116 million pounds. The one big factor grow- ers mention when speaking of this year’s blueberry crop is cooperating weather, which has contributed to good quality fruit. “The mild weather has brought the fruit on slow, which has contributed to good quality fruit, and the dry weath- er has kept that quality up,” said grower Doug Krahmer of Berries Northwest. “The cool weather has helped us out quite a bit,” said Jeff Malensky of Oregon Ber- ry Packing in Hillsboro. Yields, both growers agreed, are well above last year when high summer tem- peratures hurt yield and quali- ty, and slightly above average. “We ended up with a short crop in 2017, and usually when you have a short crop, those plants come back in a vigorous way with heavy fruit set, and that is exactly what we have seen this year,” Os- tlund said. “This mild weather also has helped the labor situa- tion, because it gives you a bigger window to get the fruit harvested,” Krahmer said. “I have not heard of any la- bor-shortage issues.” “We haven’t been behind in fields,” Malensky said, “in large part because of the cool weather, and also because there is more labor available than folks originally thought.” Even the price for fresh blueberries has been good to date, growers said, but that could change with the British Columbia crop now coming onto the market. Still, there is some good news on that front in that ear- ly projections of a big crop in British Columbia have been scaled back. Current projec- tions are for an average crop. The bad news, however, as Krahmer put it: “An average crop in B.C. is still a lot of fruit.” Growers to date have no news on the frozen price for the 2018 crop. “It is a little early,” Mal- ensky said on July 6. “We are just at the front end of the pro- cessed fruit starting to come in, so we will get a better idea in the next 10 days how the processed price is looking.” Asked to summarize the season to date, Malensky said: “Overall, things are pret- ty good. Could they be bet- ter? Yes. Could they be a lot worse? Yes.” U.S. Secretary of Agri- culture Sonny Perdue said wherever he travels across the country farmers want to know the latest about trade uncertainty, labor and the status of the 2018 Farm Bill. His July 3 stop among the rolling wheat fields of East- ern Oregon was no different. Perdue arrived at Martin Farms in Rufus, Ore., as part of his “Back to our Roots” tour featuring stops around the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Flanked by Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., he took a brief tour of the farm before arriving back in the shop, where about 50 local farmers and county officials wait- ed for a meet-and-greet that quickly became an impromp- tu town hall. After shaking hands and posing for photographs, Perdue focused his com- ments first on the admin- istration’s trade war with China. Starting July 6, the U.S. imposed a 25 percent tariff on roughly $50 billion worth of Chinese goods. In turn, China has pledged retaliatory tariffs on 545 American products — espe- cially targeting agriculture. As one farmer pointed out, cash bids for hard red winter wheat have dropped from around $7 per bushel to $6 per bushel amid the turmoil. Between 85 and 90 percent of Northwest wheat is exported. “I’m well aware of what percentage of crop here in the Northwest goes over- seas,” Perdue said. “We are mindful of that, not only in your wheat crop but in your specialty crops.” Perdue added that U.S. soybeans have taken a 20 percent hit over the last few weeks. Other farm imports subject to increased Chinese tariffs include everything E.J. Harris/EO Media Group Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue talks with Alan Von Borstel, vice president of the Oregon Wheat Growers League. At right is Clint Carlson, secretary-treasurer of the organization. Perdue visited a farm outside Rufus, Ore., last week. from fresh fruit to beef and pork. Perdue said the USDA is working on “some sort of compensatory mitigation strategy” for farmers, but did not offer specifics. “(Trump) knows that you all are great patriots. He knows that you stand behind him when he calls out China for cheating for years,” Per- due said. “But he also knows the bank is going to need more than patriotism to pay the bills.” Perdue said he is more op- timistic about passing a new farm bill before the current package expires Oct. 1. Both the House and Sen- ate have passed their own versions of the bill, and though there are differenc- es between the two, Perdue said he believes they can be resolved. Sherman County farmers also spoke up for changes in regulations they would like to see, including provisions in the National Organic Program requiring organic farmers to comply with all state and local weed ordi- nances. That request stems from an incident last year between Azure Farms, a 2,000-acre organic operation near Moro, Ore., and neighboring wheat farms. Growers had com- plained for years about weeds blowing into their fields from Azure Farms, prompting the county to intervene. Alan von Borstel, a wheat farmer near Grass Valley, Ore., and vice president of the Oregon Wheat Growers League, asked Perdue about the USDA Transition Incen- tives Program, which is de- signed to help get new farm- ers started while also taking land out of the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP, and putting it back into pro- duction. The program works by paying retiring farmers or ranchers two more years on their CRP contracts, on the condition they sell or rent the land to a beginning grow- er — someone who has not been a farm or ranch operator for more than 10 years. However, the transition cannot be made between di- rect family members, such as father to son, which von Borstel criticized as being discriminatory. “They want these guys to succeed, yet they build this kind of wall between family members,” von Borstel said. Logan Padget, a neighbor- ing Grass Valley wheat farm- er and member of the Oregon Farm Bureau’s Young Farm- ers & Ranchers committee, said he got his start in farm- ing thanks to the Transition Incentives Program, taking on a neighbor’s former CRP ground. The program is a valu- able risk management tool, Padget said, especially since it takes two years for a grow- er to harvest that first wheat crop in a dryland fallow ro- tation. “I’d like to see that same opportunity if it arose with my own family,” Padget said. For his part, Perdue said he is not convinced the pro- gram’s rules are discrimina- tory, but would be open to further discussions. Jenny Freeborn, whose family farms in the Mid-Wil- lamette Valley, said she would like to see more of a safety net to accommodate Oregon’s diverse specialty crops. “How you do that, I don’t know,” said Freeborn, chair- woman of the Oregon Young Farmers & Ranchers. “But I do know, as a member of a family farm, I’ve barely fol- lowed the farm bill at times because it’s not going to have an impact on our farm.” Perdue said it is his job to make sure these ideas and concerns are heard back in Washington, D.C. “I’m not (Henry) Kissing- er, but I want to be an unapol- ogetic advocate for Ameri- can agriculture, farmers and ranchers to the president’s administration,” he said. Later on Tuesday, Perdue visited the site of the Eagle Creek fire in the Columbia River Gorge with Walden, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and local officials. His tour wraps up Thurs- day in Alaska with Republi- can Sen. Lisa Murkowski. WDFW collars wolves, fills tracking gap Collar introduced to Togo pack By DON JENKINS Capital Press Two wolves were captured and fitted with radio collars in June to help wildlife manag- ers track packs in areas where wolves have a history of at- tacking cattle, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. An adult male in the Togo pack was collared, as was an adult male traveling in the ter- ritory formerly occupied by the Profanity Peak pack. The collars fill gaps the department had in monitoring wolves in northeast Washington. The Togo pack has at- tacked at least three calves in Ferry County since early November. The most recent attack was May 20. The de- partment says the pack has two known members and nei- ther was wearing a collar pre- viously. The Profanity Peak pack in Ferry County ceased to exist in 2017, according to the de- partment, but wolves are in the area. The department killed seven wolves in the Profani- ty Peak pack in 2016 to stop attacks on livestock. A sur- viving adult female traveled north into Canada in 2017. The department also re- ported Tuesday in a month- ly report on wolf activities that biologists tried to collar wolves in the Huckleber- ry, Lookout Mountain and Grouse Flats packs, but did not succeed. The department plans to try to collar wolves in the next few weeks in the Beaver Creek, Five Sisters and Leadpoint packs. 28-3/102
