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Friday, August 30, 2019 CapitalPress.com 3 Hops harvest underway in Oregon fourth-generation farmer and third-generation hops grower, said the setback — however brief — was a good reminder to be ready for any- thing during harvest. “There are a lot of steps that need to go into the pro- cess so it’s smooth,” Goschie said. “You have to be ready to go.” Goschie Farms began growing hops in the Willa- mette Valley in 1904. The farm is now run by Gayle Goschie and her two brothers, Gordon and Glenn. They typ- ically harvest about 300 tons of hops in a given year, selling to customers that range from local microbreweries to beer giants like MillerCoors. The cooler climate in Western Oregon is espe- cially favorable to produc- ing highly aromatic hop vari- eties, Goschie said, with names like Cascade, Nug- get and Strata. Some have more fruity or citrus flavors, she said, while others can be described as piney or floral. Total hop acreage appears to be down in Oregon this year, from 7,725 acres in 2018 to 7,506 acres in 2019, By GEORGE PLAVEN Capital Press SILVERTON, Ore. — The morning began with an unexpected delay at Goschie Farms here as summer hop harvest kicked into high gear. Craft brewers from around the Northwest, including Portland and Seattle, arrived Aug. 27 looking to buy fresh hops for specialty beers. In a stroke of bad timing, the farm’s mechanical picker that separates hop cones from the bine blew a motor, tem- porarily stalling the whole operation. Fresh hops have a shorter shelf life than dried hops — meaning fresh hop beers must be made quickly to avoid losing flavor. After 30 minutes, the equipment was back up and running and workers continued load- ing bags of hops for delivery back to the breweries. Gayle Goschie, a Oregon hazelnut production (Thousands of tons) 47 51 45 38.5 49* 44 31 28 32 Down 3.9% from 2018 2009 ’11 Sources: USDA NASS ’13 ’15 * Forecast ’17 2019 Alan Kenaga/Capital Press Hazelnut production forecast dips 4% National Agricultural Statistics Service predicting 49,000 tons By GEORGE PLAVEN Capital Press Oregon hazelnut pro- duction is expected to dip slightly in 2019 compared to last year’s record-setting crop, though the industry remains poised for long-term growth as orchards planted within the last five years begin reaching maturity. The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Ser- vice estimates growers will harvest 49,000 tons of hazelnuts, which is 4% less than 2018 but still the sec- ond-highest total since 2008. NASS released the annual forecast Aug. 20, funded by the Oregon Hazelnut Indus- try Marketing Board. Nearly all U.S. hazelnuts are grown in the Willamette Valley. While Oregon produces just 3-5% of the world’s hazelnuts, figures show acreage is expanding. Total planted acres have nearly tripled over the last decade, from 30,000 to more than 80,000. About 50,000 acres are now bearing nuts, while the rest is young orchards between 1 and 5 years old. Garry Rodakowski, chairman of the Oregon Hazelnut Commission, said the increase is driven by new varieties developed by Ore- gon State University, includ- ing Jefferson, Yamhill and McDonald, that are resistant to Eastern Filbert Blight — a tree-killing fungal disease. “OSU pretty much saved our industry by developing these resistant varieties,” Rodakowski said. “Prior to the introduction of the new according to the USDA National Agricultural Statis- tics Service. But Michelle Palacios, administrator of the Oregon Hops Commission, said that figure is a bit misleading. Farmers are in the process of transitioning some of their acres into new varieties, Pala- cios said, and unlike warmer growing regions such as the Yakima Valley in Washing- ton, Oregon growers can- not harvest first-year plants. Thus, they do not get counted in the overall forecast. “It looks like we’ve dropped, but we really hav- varieties, we were stagnant for probably 20 years.” The 2018 crop was a record at 51,000 tons of hazelnuts. As more planted acres come into production, Rodakowski said growers will likely continue break- ing the record over the next five to 10 years. More importantly, Roda- kowski said a larger, more stable supply of Oregon hazelnuts will help solidify markets and encourage food companies to invest in new products. “(Buyers) can be assured the U.S. nut supply is going to be there,” he said. “They’re starting to use more of them, but they want to know that supply is going to be there year after year.” Terry Ross, executive director of the Hazelnut Growers Bargaining Associ- ation — an organization that negotiates prices for grow- ers — said the 2019 fore- cast is “a really great num- ber to work off of,” though the escalating trade war between the U.S. and China is still creating uncertainty. China buys a little more than half of all the hazelnuts grown in Oregon, includ- ing 60% of in-shell variet- ies. However, Ross said the figure for in-shell exports to China fell to just one-third last year as that nation raised tariffs to 65%. Ross said the association is waiting to set this year’s prices, which could happen between mid-September and mid-October, to try to ensure the best possible outcome for growers. “We always have hopes that the tariff war will be over before the crop price will be set,” Ross said. “We’re optimistic there may be some relief there.” WDFW calls off wolf meetings Emotions are so intense that planned public meetings on wolves are too risky to hold and have been canceled, Washington Fish and Wild- life said Tuesday. The department had scheduled 14 open houses throughout the state in September and October to collect com- ments on how wolves should be man- aged once they are breeding all over rural parts of Washington. Fish and Wildlife said it had infor- mation that the meetings could be dis- rupted and even unsafe. The depart- ment did not provide specifics. The department was concerned about having enough law enforcement officers at every open house and about people feeling intimidated, spokes- woman Staci Lehman said. “The bottom-line is better safe than sorry,” she said. “It’s frustrating for us because we need to go out and talk to people. “We’d like it to be done in a civil way.” Instead of in-person meetings, Fish and Wildlife will hold three online open houses. The dates for the digital meetings have not been set. The department expects writing a post-recovery plan will take several years. Statewide recovery is also years away. The department has no evidence wolves breed in the South Cascades or southwest Washington, a prerequi- site to taking wolves off the state’s pro- tected species list. Northeast Washington, however, is saturated with wolves, according to the department. Wolfpacks are attack- ing cattle, and Fish and Wildlife has resorted to killing wolves if non-lethal WDFW The male member of the new Diobsud Creek pack in Skagit County, Wash., is seen in this trail camera image. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has canceled 14 public meetings on wolf management. measures fail. As in past summers, feelings are high. The department supported leg- islation in 2017 that shields the iden- tities of ranchers who lose cattle and Fish and Wildlife employees involved in controlling wolves. The OPT pack in the Kettle River Range was eliminated by Fish and Wildlife this month because of chronic attacks on cattle. The department plans to lethally remove the two wolves in the Togo pack, also in the Kettle River Range. Several ranchers in northeast and southeast Washington have lost live- stock to wolves this year. “We’ve seen incredible intensity around wolf issues this summer, on both sides of the issue. For outreach to be meaningful, our meetings have to be productive,” Fish and Wildlife Director Kelly Susewind said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we’ve received some information that indicates to us that the meetings could be disrupted, possibly creating an unsafe meeting environment for the public participat- ing,” he said. The public will be able to ask ques- tions and comment during the digi- tal open houses, according to Fish and Wildlife. “We will schedule additional in-per- son engagement opportunities later in the process, once we have a draft plan and are requesting comments,” Susew- ind said. “We will do our best to ensure that those meetings will be productive and safe.” Fish and Wildlife anticipated the migration of wolves into Washing- ton would create a human-manage- ment problem for it. The depart- ment has invested heavily in time and money in a Wolf Advisory Group that includes conservationists and livestock representatives. The group helped Fish and Wild- life craft a lethal-control policy. Wolf advocates are challenging the policy in Western Washington courts. Rural housing plan sent back to drawing board Oregon land use decision faults Douglas County’s analysis of impacts By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press A plan to make rural housing development eas- ier in Oregon’s Douglas County must be reconsid- ered because state land use adjudicators have deter- mined it inadequately pre- serves farm and forest lands. Last year, the county authorized about 22,500 acres outside urban growth boundaries to be rezoned for 20-acre home sites, which was opposed by Ore- gon’s Department of Land HARVESTING Klopfenstein Ag Service en’t,” Palacios said. “We’re at least even, if not pushing up to that 8,000 (acre) mark.” Hop acres across the U.S. increased by about 4% up to 57,339. Washington added another 2,093 acres, up to 41,263, and Idaho added 430 acres, up to 8,570. Palacios said growers in Oregon are reporting good quality in the crop, despite some flooding in April due to heavy rains. “Hops are very resilient,” Palacios said. “Because it happened so early in the season, we were able to rebound.” one of five industrial dryers. It takes six hours to dry the hops at 135 degrees, filling the floors 2 feet deep. From there, they are allowed to sit for about 18 hours before being compressed and pack- aged into 200-pound bales. Goschie said the growth of the craft beer industry is driving new markets and innovation for growers. Retail sales for craft beer grew 7% in 2018, up to $27.6 billion, accord- ing to the Brewers Associa- tion, a trade group that rep- resents the industry. Craft beer now accounts for nearly one-quarter of the $114.2 billion total U.S. beer market. While Goschie said she has never met a brewer she didn’t like, she admires how microbreweries are able to experiment with all differ- ent styles, taking the profile of hops and turning it into an art form. “The craft brewers are just completely passion- ate,” Goschie said. “We try to match that passion on the growers’ perspective as well.” By DON JENKINS Capital Press 36 35.5 George Plaven/Capital Press Helen Coskey, left, and Brian Bolduc, of Goschie Farms, load bags of fresh hops for craft brewers. Goschie said she is also seeing good quality, though the farm did have to spray for powdery mildew this year given the cooler, wetter weather. Harvest began Aug. 12 at Goschie Farms and will run 24 hours a day, six days a week for the next 30 days. It starts in the field, where trac- tors pushing a trailer drive between rows of 18-foot-tall plants cutting them down from the trellis. The trailers are then brought to the picker, which is housed inside a two-story building roaring with loud machinery. Workers climb in the backs of the trucks and hook each bine to an auto- mated conveyor line, pass- ing through a system that accomplishes in minutes what it used to take hun- dreds of people days to accomplish by hand. “The hops and the leaves are raked off the bine,” Goshie said. “Then they go through a couple of simple processes for separating the hops from the leaves.” Once the cones are picked, they are moved into Conservation and Develop- ment and its Department of Fish and Wildlife. The conservation groups 1,000 Friends of Oregon and Friends of Douglas County joined the govern- ment agencies in challeng- ing the plan. Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals has now agreed with critics that Douglas County fell short of ensuring that its new “rural open space” designa- tion complies with several state land use goals. The decision sends a message to counties that farm and forest land conser- vation goals must be taken seriously, said Saman- tha Bayer, associate pol- icy counsel for the Oregon Farm Bureau, which sub- mitted a court brief arguing against the county’s plan. DRYING “Despite being in Doug- las County, it is an import- ant ruling statewide,” Bayer said. The county was overly reliant on “geographic information system” map filters in evaluating the plan’s impacts on agricul- ture and forestry instead of engaging with the local nat- ural resources community, she said. “They didn’t do a suc- cessful on-the-ground anal- ysis of farming and agricul- ture in Douglas County,” Bayer said. Such an analysis must take a thorough view of the land’s agricultural capacity, rather than relying solely on factors such as soil quality, she said. “Some of our best ranch and range land is on lower class soils,” Bayer said. POLISHING “Soil type is not necessarily consistent with the value of that land.” Friends of Douglas County is pleased with LUBA’s opinion, which makes clear the county can’t disregard farm and forest preservation goals, said Shelley Wetherell, the group’s president. “They don’t get to pick what land is protected and what isn’t,” she said. “They have to follow the statewide rules.” The decision stresses that Oregon’s land use goals are intended to con- serve not only commer- cial farm and forest opera- tions but also surrounding lands that provide stabil- ity for these industries, said Scott Hilgenberg, attorney for 1,000 Friends of Oregon. 503-932-0766 35-4/110 Aromatic varieties especially appealing to craft brewers
