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About Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 21, 2018)
CapitalPress.com 6 Editorials are written by or approved by members of the Capital Press Editorial Board. Friday, December 21, 2018 All other commentary pieces are the opinions of the authors but not necessarily this newspaper. Opinion Editorial Board Editor & Publisher Managing Editor Joe Beach Carl Sampson opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion Our View Hemp growers at odds with pot producers T he 2018 Farm Bill just passed by both the Senate and House of Represen- tatives takes hemp off the list of controlled substances and legalizes its cultivation as an agricultural commodity. Huzzah. Hemp has been grown for fi ber for centuries. Colonial Virginia required its cultivation in 1691 and it became an American staple until the 20th century. By the 1930s it had been lumped together with marijuana and made illegal by most states — some say at the bidding of cotton interests. During World War II the federal government encouraged farmers to grow hemp to replace jute and other fi bers from Japanese-held areas in the Pacifi c necessary for the manufacture of rope. The plant proved so prolifi c that farmers in the Midwest still strug- gle to stamp it out of ditches and fence rows more than 70 years later. After serving its hitch, hemp again fell out of favor. Since the 1970s it’s been placed on the list of controlled substances, illegal to cultivate or sell in its raw forms. But as we’ve said many times, hemp is as much like marijuana as a poppy seed muffi n is like heroin. Although hemp and marijuana are of the same species, hemp lacks a sig- nifi cant amount of active tetrahydro- cannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive compound that produces pot’s high. All the while preventing its culti- vation here, the federal government allowed the importation of goods — clothing, foodstuffs, cosmetics and essential oils — made abroad from hemp. A commercial market clearly exists for the crop. The last farm bill allowed states to establish some experimental cultiva- tion programs the skirted around the narcotics laws. It’s not clear to us that hemp will be the big crop its promoters envi- sion. It takes a lot of water, which is in ever shorter supply in this part of the country. Because it’s relatively easy to grow, the sudden boom in production could easily produce a bust at market. But that’s the nature of farming. At least hemp growers will be free to succeed or fail outside the yoke of severe government regulation. Well, federal regulation anyway. Would-be hemp growers in the Northwest are fi nding themselves at odds with marijuana producers. Pot growers worry that their high- THC plants will be contaminated Our View On the dairy farm, size doesn’t matt er S ome members of the Oregon Legislature and a coalition of environmental groups and small- farm advocates want the state to ban large dairy farms. Their argument: large dairy farms are bad. They also want tighter regulations governing dairy farms. The argument is the legislature and the state government know the best size for a dairy farm. Pardon our skepticism. This is the same state government that can’t build a much-needed Inter- state 5 bridge over the Columbia River, that can’t produce a website for its Obamacare program, that can’t fi gure out how to plow snow in Portland, that can’t operate its foster care program, that can’t fi x its out-of-control retire- ment plan. ... Yet this coalition wants that same state government to tell farmers how to farm by dictating how big a dairy should be. The Oregon Senate Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources last week decided to introduce two bills during next year’s session targeting dairies larger than 2,500 cows, or 700 cows if access to pasture isn’t available. One concept would classify a large dairy as an industrial facility and strip it of protections under the state “right to farm” law. That law allows Oregon farmers to use normal farm practices, provided they follow the many rules and regulations already placed on them by the state and federal governments. Another legislative concept would ban more large dairies at least until the state comes up will a new permitting system. Neither proposal makes any sense. The fact of the matter is that all sizes of dairy farms in Oregon are already robustly regulated. Any farmers who don’t follow the rules will fi nd them- selves in deep you-know-what, both lit- erally and fi guratively. Whether a dairy has 20, or 200 or 20,000 cows matters not one bit. What matters is the quality of management. Large or small, a farm with good management will meet the many regulatory requirements placed on it. This coalition points to the Lost Val- ley Farm, a bankrupt dairy in East- ern Oregon that was poorly managed, implying that all large farms are equally bad. State regulators saw the problems when they occurred and took the owner to court, forcing him into bankruptcy and putting him out of business. That is exactly what regulators do. If someone screws up, tell him or her to fi x the problems. If the problems per- sist, take the owner to court. But the main argument — that big farms or bad — is simply not supported by the facts. The way Lost Valley Farm was managed, it would have failed no matter how many cows it had. But the “big-is-bad” argument has even more holes in it. Only a few miles from the failed dairy farm, another larger dairy farm, Threemile Canyon Farms, is well-man- aged and recognized as a good steward of the land. They care for their 30,000 cattle and have an independent inspec- tor check up on them, they have the largest manure digesters in the West to handle the waste and grow a variety of crops; they treat their 300 year-round employees well; and they are constantly innovating to do things better. They are good neighbors in every sense of the word and are a point of pride in the community. Those who are hung up on size ignore the realities of 21st century agri- culture. A farm needs to be the right size for its market and to fi nd econo- mies of scale. To say a farmer is doing something wrong because he, or she, has been suc- cessful and sustainable and built a small family farm into a large family farm is illogical. The state of Oregon should not pick winners and losers in agriculture. It should see that all sizes of farms are well-regulated to protect the environ- ment and produce safe food. If a farmer messes up, he or she should correct the problem, whether the operation is 5 acres or 50,000 acres. When it comes to regulating farms, size really shouldn’t matter. through cross-pollination with low- THC by large-scale hemp production. When both crops were illegal no one gave this serious consideration. But in recent years both Oregon and Washington, with a wink and a nod from the feds, have made marijuana cultivation and sales legal under state law. All this is heavily regulated, and heavily taxed. And that’s the rub for hemp pro- ducers. With millions of dollars in tax money coming in, the states are neck deep in a narcotics trade that is illegal under federal law. The tax produced by legal hemp will be negligible. The states and their partners are unlikely to put their interests at risk, so hemp growers could easily face stiff regulation under a state regime. Such is the beauty of our federalist system of government. New WOTUS defi nition an improvement B urdensome federal regulations often delay or prohibit American businesses from investing in infrastructure or land development proj- ects that will create jobs, grow crops, and improve how we manage our natu- ral resources. Upon taking offi ce, President Trump ini- tiated a process to review and replace these regula- tory barriers, which included the Obama Administration’s 2015 “waters of the United States” defi nition. Under the 2015 defi ni- tion, farmers, landowners and businesses are spending too much time and money trying to determine whether waters on their land are “waters of the United States” and subject to federal regu- lation under the Clean Water Act. In some cases, they pay consultants or lawyers thou- sands of dollars only to dis- cover that they need federal permits that cover isolated ponds, channels that only fl ow after it rains, and wet- lands far removed from the navigable waters the Clean Water Act was specifi cally designed to regulate. The U.S. Environmen- tal Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of the Army (Army) are delivering on the President’s agenda by proposing a new defi ni- tion for waters of the U.S. The agencies’ proposal would end years of uncer- tainty over where federal jurisdiction begins and ends. It would clarify the role of our state and tribal part- ners — those closest to and most knowledgeable about their own waters — and help them more effectively man- age their land and water resources. Our new pro- posal would make it easier to understand where the Clean Water Act applies — and where it doesn’t. Under the proposal, tra- ditional navigable waters, tributaries, certain lakes and ponds, impoundments of jurisdictional waters, wet- lands adjacent to juris- dictional waters, and cer- tain ditches, such as those used for navigation or those affected by the tide, would GUEST VIEW Chris Hladick be federally regulated. More importantly, many ditches, including most roadside or farm ditches, would be excluded from federal regu- lation. Ephemeral streams — those that only fl ow after it rains — would also not qual- ify as waters of the United States. Right now, because of litigation, the 2015 defi ni- tion is in effect in 22 states, while the previous regula- tions, issued in the 1980s, are in effect in the remain- ing 28 states. This unpredict- able, regulatory patchwork will not continue under the Trump Administration. Going forward, our new defi nition would establish national consistency and would rebalance the rela- tionship between the fed- eral government and states. States already have regu- lations for waters within their borders, regardless of whether they are feder- ally regulated. The combi- nation of the agencies’ pro- posal and state regulations would continue to provide coverage for the nation’s water resources as intended by Congress when it passed the Clean Water Act over 45 years ago. President Trump under- stands that we can have clean air, clean water, and a strong economy. By pro- viding greater regulatory certainty to states and the regulated community, our proposed defi nition will streamline and accelerate important projects through- out the nation. This means that hardworking Ameri- cans will spend less time and money determining whether they need a federal per- mit and more time growing crops, building homes, mod- ernizing infrastructure, creat- ing jobs, and improving the lives of their fellow citizens. Chris Hladick is the EPA’s regional administrator in Seattle. LETTERS POLICY Write to us: Capital Press welcomes letters to the editor on issues of interest to farmers, ranchers and the agribusiness community. Letters policy: Please limit letters to 300 words and include your home ad- dress and a daytime telephone number with your submission. Longer pieces, 500-750 words, may be considered as guest commentary pieces for use on the opinion pages. Guest commentary submissions should also include a photograph of the author. Send letters via email to opinions@capitalpress.com. Emailed letters are preferred and require less time to process, which could result in quicker publication. Letters also may be sent to P.O. Box 2048, Salem, OR 97308.
