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.
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