CapitalPress.com 11
Friday, February 22, 2019
Former NIFA chief fights agency relocation
Small farm conference
addresses big questions
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
Broetje
Orchards
fetches at
least $288M
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
PRESCOTT, Wash. —
While parties involved are
not commenting, govern-
ment records show Bro-
etje Orchards, of Prescott,
sold to a Canadian pension
fund for $288 million at
the end of December.
That’s the real estate
portion of the sale, which
may not reflect the total
purchase price.
The transaction net-
ted the state $3.6 mil-
lion and local government
$720,000 in excise taxes,
according to state Depart-
ment of Revenue records
on file at the Walla Walla
County Assessor’s Office.
The purchaser is the
Ontario Teachers’ Pen-
sion Plan, which provides
defined benefit pension
services to about 323,000
retired and working teach-
ers. It is one of the world’s
largest institutional inves-
tors with about $146 bil-
lion of investments in var-
ious assets including real
estate, farmland and food
production in Canada, the
U.S. and overseas.
Broetje Orchards, also
known as First Fruits
Farms, was started by
Ralph and Cheryl Bro-
etje who bought their first
cherry orchard near Ben-
ton City in 1968.
Their holdings grew
to 6,175 acres of apples
and cherries, mostly near
Prescott, producing 7 mil-
lion boxes of apples a
year, including the com-
pany’s new proprietary
variety, the Opal. Annual
employment peaks at
2,800 people.
The sale includes the
orchards, storage, packing
and shipping facilities and
subsidiaries First Fruits
Marketing of Washington
and Snake River (farm-
worker) Housing.
Jim Hazen, Broetje
business manager, was
named president and CEO
of the operation, which
will continue under the
First Fruits brand.
In
2015,
Broetje
agreed to pay $2.25 mil-
lion in civil penalties to
end several years of U.S.
Immigration and Cus-
toms Enforcement inves-
tigations that at one point
found 1,700 unauthorized
workers. Broetje issued
a news release saying it
agreed to pay with no
admission of wrongdoing.
Broetje was among
many companies sued
by farmworkers for back
pay of non-picking time
shortly after the state
Supreme Court ruled last
May that farmworkers
must be paid separately
from harvest piece-rate
pay for such time.
Washington State University
An upcoming conference
will focus of small farm
issues.
total similarities (to larger
farms), and we want to
bridge that scale. We don’t
want a small farm-large farm
divide.”
On the Palouse, some
small fruit and vegeta-
ble operations can see pest
pressures from other farms,
DePhelps said. How smaller
farmers manage for pests can
be specific, she said.
The event begins at 1 p.m.
March 1 with several work-
shops and tours, including
Washington State Universi-
ty’s bee lab and UI’s meats
lab.
The agenda includes per-
formance in the evening of
the play, “Map of My King-
dom,” by Mary Swander,
commissioned by Practical
Farmers of Iowa, about farm
families deciding on a suc-
cession plan.
The next day begins at
8:30 a.m., at the Pitman Cen-
ter on the University of Idaho
campus.
Keynote speakers include
Beth Robinette of the Lazy
R Ranch in Cheney, Wash.,
and LINC Foods cooperative
in Spokane and Laura Garber
of Homestead Organics in
Hamilton, Mont. Both have
experience forming coopera-
tives, DePhelps said.
Bill Snyder, Washing-
ton State University ento-
mologist, will speak about
on-farm research.
“On-farm research is a
very useful tool for improv-
ing your production system
on your farm and answering
questions that you have,”
DePhelps said.
Wash. Senate committee leaves
door open to H-2A fees in 2022
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — For at
least three years, Washing-
ton farmers won’t pay new
state fees to hire foreign
farmworkers, but could be
charged as much as $75 per
H-2A worker beginning in
2022, under a plan endorsed
Thursday by the Senate
Labor and Commerce Com-
mittee in a bipartisan vote.
The
revised
Senate
Bill 5438 drops a plan by
the Employment Security
Department to impose fees
this year to raise $2 mil-
lion annually to help fed-
eral authorities oversee
the H-2A program. ESD
receives $300,000 from the
federal government, but the
department says that’s not
enough in a state that’s grow-
ing more reliant on foreign
farmworkers.
The labor committee’s
top-ranking
Republican,
Curtis King of Yakima, said
the delay will give state offi-
cials and farm groups time
to lobby Congress for more
money. If that fails, lawmak-
ers will have a debate before
forging ahead with state fees,
he said.
“It gives us a chance to
really go back and work in
D.C., which is where I think
the work needs to be done,”
Curtis said. “If this hasn’t
been addressed in a manner
that we’re all hoping it can
be through the federal gov-
ernment, we’ll be having this
discussion again.”
The delay did not win
over farm groups, which con-
cede ESD should have more
money, but are opposed to
leaving open the possibility
of eventually charging grow-
ers a state fee to participate in
a federal program.
“Fundamentally, we think
this is still not the right way
to go,” Washington State
Tree Fruit Association Pres-
ident Jon DeVaney said. “It
needs a federal solution.
“We’re not opposed to
proper and efficient over-
sight of H-2A,” he said.
“We’re fighting about where
the money will come from.”
As a partner with federal
agencies, ESD makes sure
growers are trying to recruit
domestic workers and that
foreign workers are being
well treated. Federal finan-
cial support has been flat,
even as growers annually
bring in thousands more for-
eign workers, according to
ESD.
In its current form, SB
5438 calls for lawmakers to
put more money in the state’s
next two-year budget for the
H-2A program. The bill does
not specify the amount.
If ESD determines in two
years that federal support is
still too little, it would draw
up a fee schedule and start
collecting money July 1,
2022.
The bill directs ESD to
exempt from the fee the
first 10 H-2A workers a
farm hires. The fee, initially
capped at $75 per worker,
would be adjusted annually
by inflation. Farmers also
would pay an application fee.
The amount is not specified
in the bill.
ESD
projects
some
30,000 H-2A workers will
come to Washington this
year. In 2018, Washington
farmers were allowed to fill
24,862 positions with H-2A
workers, according to the
U.S. Department of Labor.
The former director of
the National Institute of
Food and Agriculture is
amping up his battle to halt
the plan to move the USDA
Economic Research Service
and NIFA from Washington
D.C.
“This is a vaunted, much
imitated, much appreciated
system that we’ve got,” said
Sonny Ramaswamy, who
was NIFA director from
2012 to 2018. “It’s been
around ever since Abraham
Lincoln was president of the
United States, and Sonny
Perdue and the Trump
administration are trying
to tear it down basically in
one fell swoop. It’s really
going to come back to haunt
us.”
Ramaswamy is a former
dean of the College of Agri-
cultural Sciences at Oregon
State University. He is now
president of the Northwest
Commission on Colleges
and Universities in Seattle.
Ramaswamy said NIFA’s
ability to quickly get fund-
ing where needed “would
absolutely be paused.”
Ramaswamy predicts the
move would impact fund-
ing for three to five years
as it gets established in a
new location, hindering the
agency’s ability to quickly
get funding where needed,
such as for breeding new
wheat varieties or emerging
insect pests.
The USDA says the
moves are designed to
recruit highly qualified
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Sonny Ramaswamy, former director of the National
Institute of Food and Agriculture, is questioning the
USDA’s decision to relocate the agency outside of
Washington, D.C.
staff, put programs closer
to stakeholders and bene-
fit taxpayers through sav-
ings on employment costs
and rent.
Ramaswamy and other
critics first voiced their con-
cern last fall over USDA’s
proposal to move NIFA and
ERS.
House
Democrats
last week re-introduced
H.R. 1221, the “Agricul-
ture Research Integrity
Act,” designed to “prevent
the relocation, politiciza-
tion and weakening of fed-
eral agricultural research
agencies.”
Language was also
included in the 2019 fiscal
year consolidated appropri-
ations act, signed Feb. 15, to
slow the restructuring.
Steve Pierson, director of
science policy for the Amer-
ican Statistical Association,
said the act is “mostly sym-
bolic,” and that Perdue can
still proceed, “although it
would be kind of an auda-
cious thing for him to do.”
“We are more concerned
because there have been no
course corrections from the
secretary, despite this broad
outcry from agriculture,
food research and nutrition
communities,” Pierson said.
“We’re more concerned that
they’re just going to plow
ahead.”
A clearer explanation of
the benefits of the moves
has not been offered, Pier-
son said.
“They’ve kind of stuck
to their original, one-page
press release ... but when
we’ve tried to look closely
at that, it doesn’t add up, it
doesn’t justify the upheaval
of the USDA research arm,”
he said.
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Cultivating the Har-
vest, the 20th annual Inland
Northwest small farm con-
ference, will be March 1-2 in
Moscow, Idaho.
Topics include finding
and keeping labor, pollina-
tors, regenerative grazing for
small dairies, no-till and min-
imum till practices for veg-
etables, access to new mar-
kets and strategies for when
the weather is unpredictable,
said Colette DePhelps, area
community food systems
educator for University of
Idaho Extension.
Those needs are also cited
by larger farms, DePhelps
said, but smaller farms might
use roto-tillers or small trac-
tor implements, which come
with a different set of man-
agement challenges and
research questions.
“The technology is so
different on small farms,”
DePhelps said. “There are
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
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