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EMPOWERING PRODUCERS OF FOOD & FIBER Friday, September 20, 2019 Volume 92, Number 38 CapitalPress.com $2.00 wrap it up Tarp business grows into major player in hay industry Dan Wheat/Capital Press A Tarp-it crew from Ellensburg, Wash., spreads a side tarp on an alfalfa stack near Ephrata. By DAN WHEAT Capital Press OSES LAKE, Wash. — In the summer of 1977, Glen Knopp was covering his hay stacks with a sacrificial layer of baled straw to protect them against rain dam- age. His cousin, visiting from Canada, said there was a better way. New polyethylene tarps seemed to be working well in Alberta, so Knopp, then just 22, bought five and used them on his hay stacks. “I wanted to sell a premium product to dairy guys. Those thunder storms could come up and dump water and I could lose several layers of bales,” Knopp says. No one was covering hay stacks in those days. Growers knew rain would reduce portions of their stacks from top grades to feeder or bedding qual- Glen Knopp ity. It didn’t matter much. It would be used some- where. Dairies could grind it with other feeds. It just meant less money. Exports to Asia and elsewhere were just getting started. Exporters didn’t want rain damage but also didn’t need a lot of hay. Heavy-duty vinyl tarps used in trucking were too Dan Wheat/Capital Press See Tarp, Page 10 Tarp-it tarped hay stacks at Anderson Hay & Grain Co., Ellensburg, Wash. Anderson is a leading U.S. hay exporter. M More fruit companies sue over surprise wage hikes By DAN WHEAT Capital Press YAKIMA, Wash. — Several Washington tree fruit companies are suing the U.S. Department of Labor for increasing the minimum wage for high-density apple har- vesting to $16 an hour. A July 24 DOL notice to Wash- ington apple growers of a 97-cent increase, from $15.03 to $16, is “arbitrary and unsubstantiated” and will cause the companies “irrepara- ble harm” in labor costs in 2019 and into the future, the lawsuit states. The notice applies to growers using H-2A-visa foreign guest- workers and to all their workers foreign and domestic. The increase, effective July 23, does not reflect the actual pre- vailing wage paid by a substan- tial majority of the industry and is based on “inadequate and pro- cedurally deficient sampling and inaccurate extrapolations of data from what appears to be an extreme minority of apple producers and farm labor apple harvesters,” the lawsuit states. The suit seeks a prelimi- nary injunction halting the wage increase. It was filed Sept. 3 before U.S. District Judge Salvador Men- doza Jr. in Yakima by Evans Fruit Co., of Cowiche, and McDougall & Sons Inc. and Columbia Fruit Packers Inc., both of Wenatchee. The lawsuit is similar to an Aug. 7 suit filed by Zirkle Fruit Co., of Selah, which resulted in Mendoza granting a temporary injunction halting a 50% wage increase for blueberry pickers. Zirkle argued that increase did See Wages, Page 10 Luis Javier Galarza picks Gala apples at Mt. View Orchard, East Wenatchee, Wash., on Aug. 26. Several companies, including Mt. View’s parent company, are suing to halt a minimum wage increase. Dan Wheat Capital Press Western winter weather forecast a toss-up By DON JENKINS Capital Press The tropical Pacific Ocean proba- bly won’t be particularly warm or cool this winter, climatologists said Thurs- day, depriving forecasters of their best clue to how much snow will pile up in the Cascade Range and the rest of the Northwest. Over the past month, odds improved that sea-surface temperatures along the equator will be close to average for months to come, according to the fed- eral Climate Prediction Center. Meanwhile, chances that an El Nino or La Nina weather pattern will form are slight. El Nino is linked to warmer Pacific Northwest winters. La Nina is associated with colder winters. The center said the chances of nor- mal, or neutral conditions, prevailing in December, January and February are 58%, up from 49% a month ago. NOAA Neither an El Nino nor a La Nina weather pattern is indicated for this winter, forecasters say. For farmers who rely on melting mountain snow to irrigate, the good news is that the chances an El Nino will form dropped to 29% from 41%. An El Nino prevailed in 2015 during Washington’s “snowpack drought.” “Right now, there’s no sign of it being a terrible winter. By terrible, I mean a lack of snow,” Washington State Climatologist Nick Bond said. The climate center, part of the National Weather Service, put the chances of a La Nina forming at 13%, up slightly from 10% last month. A weak El Nino formed late last winter, arriving later than forecasters predicted. It yielded in the summer to neutral conditions. Ocean-surface temperatures have continued to cool slightly over the past month. Bond said he would be shocked if an El Nino or a La Nina formed that was strong enough to influence this winter’s weather. “We don’t have the tropical Pacific as a source for predictability this time,” he said. To arrive at the outlook, climatol- ogists evaluated more than two dozen forecasting models. Most models showed neutral con- ditions prevailing through next spring, though some predicted a weak El Nino. One forecast stood out by pre- dicting a weak to moderate La Nina this winter. “It’s very much an outlier. Any- thing is possible, and all that rot, but I think we can dismiss that possibility,” Bond said. In the past two months, ocean-sur- face temperatures along the West Coast have warmed. It’s led to spec- ulation about the return of “the Blob,” the name Bond gave to an unusually large body of warm water in the win- ter of 2014-15. Bond said the mass of warm water off the coast is not as deep this time. “It’s really warm out there, but it’s a pretty thin layer of water,” he said. “Right now, my expectation is that as the fall storms roll through, that will decrease in intensity.”
