November 2, 2018
CapitalPress.com
5
Rain gives Christmas trees boost before harvest Washington restarts removal
By BRENNA WIEGAND
For the Capital Press
Willamette Valley trees
have benefited from several
days of rain going into har-
vest, just what Bob Schaefer,
general manager of Noble
Mountain Tree Farm near Sa-
lem, Ore., likes to see.
“Harvestable trees will
hang on through the toughest
of weather conditions, but
it’s nice to have all our nee-
dles plumped and fresh going
out,” Schaefer said.
Noble Mountain farms
4,000 acres and produces 1
million trees every year.
With California its No.
1 market, the farm stocks
the big chain stores prior to
Thanksgiving, when Black
Friday weekend draws 2 per-
cent of retail sales.
Though the industry has
predicted a shortage the last
few years, Schaefer believes
there are enough trees this
year.
Customers wanting to pay
less go with shorter trees and
faster-growing species, espe-
cially Douglas fir.
“You can probably get a
5- or 6-foot Doug fir for un-
der $30,” Schaefer said. “I’ve
seen retail lots charging $18-
20 a foot for the bigger Noble
firs and selling them like hot-
cakes. The average price for
a 9- to 10-foot Noble tree in
L.A. is about $160.”
Natural Christmas trees
still have a special attraction
for families, he said.
“A lot of times people
are buying that Christmas
tree smell,” Schaefer said.
Noble Mountain Tree Farm
Harvest commences at Noble Mountain Tree Farm near Salem,
Ore. California is the Pacific Northwest’s No. 1 Christmas tree
customer, buying 45 percent of the annual crop.
“Millennials starting families
want to develop traditions.
Some were raised with arti-
ficial trees but are now into
whole foods and a clean en-
vironment and they’re jump-
ing onto the real tree band-
wagon.”
Grand fir is the most fra-
grant Christmas tree, but
Douglas and Frazier firs hold
up longer, making them the
choice farther afield, where
customers can enjoy them
for upwards of a month and
a half.
Due to a higher produc-
tion of Douglas fir this year
Noble Mountain is increas-
ing its shipments to Mexico.
However, Helmuth Rogg
of the Oregon Department of
Agriculture says the overall
number of trees sold in Mex-
ico is on a downturn due to
high freight costs, exchange
rates, prohibitive require-
ments and political machi-
nations. From 1 million trees
two years ago, last year Ore-
gon sent 600,000 to Mexico.
During the past few years
ODA has worked with its
counterparts in Mexico to
eliminate a longstanding pes-
ticide requirement to protect
Oregon’s
much-preferred
integrated pest management
strategy.
“Due to some internal po-
litical issues I’m not privy to,
the review has not been final-
ized so unfortunately again
this year we have to spray our
trees three to six weeks prior
to cutting,” Rogg said. “This
is a big bummer to us be-
cause spraying pesticides in
a field disrupts our growers’
integrated pest management
approach.”
Not only is it impossible
for growers to confine spray-
ing to Mexico-bound trees in
the field, the pesticides don’t
discriminate between good
and bad insects and, with
their natural enemies wiped
out, spider mites and aphids
often flare up the following
season.
Hawaii continues to be
a major market for Oregon
and works closely with the
ODA to keep out foreign slug
and snail species and yellow
jackets. “I’ve heard hor-
ror stories of the sugar cane
fields having yellow jackets’
nests as big as Volkswagens,”
Schaefer said.
Oregon growers use sev-
eral weapons to get rid of
any hitchhikers bound for
Hawaii.
“We end up taking leaf
blowers and blowing them
twice, shaking them for 30-
40 seconds and once that has
been done they never hit the
ground again,” Schaefer said.
About 45 percent of Pacif-
ic Northwest trees go to Cali-
fornia and 10 percent to other
Western states. Gulf states
comprise 9 percent of the
market and about 16 percent
go to Mexico. About 4 per-
cent go to Atlantic states with
the rest going as far afield as
Japan, China, Hong Kong,
Philippines, Guam, Puerto
Rico and Dubai.
Oregon produces about
5.2 million trees a year, fol-
lowed by North Carolina’s
3.5 million, Michigan’s 3
million, Pennsylvania’s 2.3
million and Washington
state’s 1.5 million.
Of the country’s 350,000
acres of Christmas trees,
42,000 acres are in Oregon.
of Old Profanity wolfpack
Last two wolves
in pack targeted
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
The last two wolves in a
pack that has been attack-
ing cattle in the Kettle River
Range in northeast Washing-
ton have been targeted for le-
thal removal by the state De-
partment of Fish and Wildlife.
Fish and Wildlife Director
Kelly Susewind authorized
the department to restart an
operation to remove wolves
in the Old Profanity Territory
in Ferry County.
The department shot an
adult wolf and a juvenile wolf
there in September.
Attacks on livestock, how-
ever, have continued. Fish
and Wildlife documented two
attacks on calves on a Forest
Service grazing allotment be-
tween Oct. 5 and 7.
On Tuesday, the depart-
ment verified another wolf
depredation on a calf. All to-
gether, Fish and Wildlife has
linked the pack to 16 attacks
on cattle since early Septem-
ber.
Fish and Wildlife’s policy
calls for the department to
consider killing one or two
wolves after three attacks on
livestock within 30 days or
four within 10 months and
then evaluating whether to
remove more wolves. The
department went into a wait-
and-see period Sept. 28 af-
ter shooting a second wolf
WDFW
The state Department of Fish
and Wildlife said Oct. 26 it will
kill the last two wolves in a pack
attacking cattle in northeastern
Washington.
in the pack.
Fish and Wildlife held off
restarting lethal removal after
the two attacks in early Oc-
tober. The department says it
looked at the non-lethal mea-
sures taken to protect cattle to
make sure they were as effec-
tive as possible.
The grazing season is com-
ing to a close in the Colville
National Forest, but it may
take several more weeks to
round up all the cattle in the
densely timbered and rugged
terrain, according to Fish and
Wildlife.
The pack’s territory cov-
ers several grazing allotments
and private grazing lands west
of the Kettle Crest area, ac-
cording to the department.
Major Northwest hop broker accused of contract violation
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
A major Northwest hop
broker is accused of violating a
contract by refusing to sell hops
to an Australian brewery sup-
plier after a competitor bought
a stake in the company.
Bintani Australia of Mel-
bourne, Australia, has filed a
lawsuit in U.S. District Court
for the Eastern District of
Washington seeking an injunc-
tion prohibiting Yakima Chief
Hops of Yakima, Wash., from
breaching the agreement.
Capital Press was unable to
reach a representative of Yaki-
ma Chief Hops as of press time.
If Yakima Chief Hops ter-
minates its exclusive distribu-
tor arrangement with Bintani as
announced, the alleged breach
“will result in damages in ex-
cess of $20 million to Bintani
and approximately $245 mil-
lion to the Australian brewing
market as a whole,” the com-
plaint said.
Bintani has bought hops
from the Washington company
for 15 years and it now rep-
resents 71 percent of the Aus-
tralian firm’s hop volume and
85 percent of its hop sales, ac-
cording to the complaint.
The complaint alleges that
the leadership of Yakima Chief
Hops was motivated to pull
out of the supply agreement by
“animosity” toward the Brew-
WSG18-4/104
44-1/104
ers Supply Group, “one of its
competitors in North America”
that’s taken an ownership inter-
est in Bintani.
Yakima Chief Hops was
“genuinely disappointed” to
learn of Bintani’s decision to
sell a portion of its business to
a competitor, as it considers dis-
tributors to be “loyal partners,”
according to a letter from Ryan
Hopkins, the company’s vice
president of North American
sales, attached to the complaint.
“Not only has confidentiali-
ty been violated, but the agree-
ment also stipulates that there
shall be no assignment of rights
under the agreement without
our prior written approval,”
Hopkins said in the letter.
Bintani counters that it re-
mains the counterpart to the
contract and didn’t “assign, sell
or otherwise transfer” distribu-
tion rights under its deal with the
Brewers Supply Group, whose
parent company, Rahr, was re-
quired to sign a confidentiality
deed as part of the merger and
acquisition transaction.
“As a current owner in Bin-
tani through certain of its sub-
sidiaries, Rahr and these sub-
sidiaries are entitled to receive
the information disclosed,” the
complaint said. “The informa-
tion was not improperly dis-
closed and was always main-
tained as confidential, so there
was no breach and, furthermore,
no harm or prejudice to YCH.”
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