EMPOWERING PRODUCERS OF FOOD & FIBER
Friday, December 20, 2019
CapitalPress.com
Volume 92, Number 51
$2.00
Mistletoe season
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Garrett Huggins shows off a pile of mistletoe that he collected from a family member’s property in Southern Oregon. His company, Genuine Oregon
Mistletoe, has been operating for more than a decade.
Entrepreneurs profit from parasitic plant
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
A
MISTLETOE MYTHS
fter more than a decade in
Oregon Mistletoe is basically a two-person
business, Garrett Hug-
operation: Garrett collects the mistle-
toe from oak trees in Southern
gins doesn’t aspire
Oregon while his wife, Ashley,
to become a mis-
tletoe magnate.
handles the marketing.
Huggins is content to
Both help tie strands of
earn most of his income
the leafy perennial into bun-
dles with ribbon and pack-
as a union carpenter while
age them for shipping.
selling the wild-harvested
“When people call, they
holiday crop through his
talk to me,” Ashley said. “He
family’s company, Genuine
didn’t want to deal with the cus-
Oregon Mistletoe, as a sideline.
tomer service side of things.”
“We don’t expect it to
become a million-dollar com- A bundle of female
pany, but it does make Christ- mistletoe that con-
Wholesale parasite
mas happen for us, you know?” tains berries of the
The Hugginses are sim-
parasitic plant.
ilar to other mistletoe
he said.
Though they get plenty of
See Mistletoe, Page 11
help from friends and family, Genuine
Though mistletoe is now common-
ly associated with the Christmas
holidays, the plant’s role in season-
al rituals predates Christianity.
The ancient druids, for example,
would harvest mistletoe with a
golden sickle and catch the strands
in white cloth before they hit the
ground, thereby protecting their
supposedly “magical” properties.
In ancient Rome, two white bulls
were sacrificed during mistle-
toe harvest, and the plant was
believed to restore fertility when
mixed with drink, according to the
Roman natural philosopher Pliny
the Elder. These rites are one expla-
nation for the plant’s association
with kissing.
According to Norse mythology,
the god Baldr was shielded from
harm from any plant that grew in
the ground. However, because mis-
tletoe doesn’t grow from the soil,
the malicious god Loki arranged to
have Baldr killed with an arrow or
spear made of mistletoe.
When Badr was eventually resur-
rected in some versions of this tale,
his mother, the goddess Frigg, was
so overjoyed that she declared
that mistletoe symbolized love and
peace.
— Mateusz Perkowski
How the U.S.-China trade deal
achieved a little but left out a lot
By PAUL WISEMAN and KEVIN FREKING
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The limited trade
deal that the Trump administration and Bei-
jing announced Dec. 13 means Americans
will avoid a holiday tax increase on imported
toys, clothing and smartphones. U.S. farmers
can sell more soybeans and pork to China.
And American companies should face less
pressure to hand over trade secrets to Beijing.
But what the administration gained from
the so-called Phase One deal that President
Donald Trump celebrated falls well short
of the demands the president issued when
he launched a trade war against Beijing 17
months ago. Further rounds of negotiations
will be required to achieve a more significant
agreement.
Still, Friday’s preliminary agreement
managed to at least defuse a conflict that had
put investors on edge and slowed economic
growth entering an election year in which
Trump plans to campaign, at least in part, on
America’s prosperity.
Under the agreement, the Trump adminis-
tration dropped its plan to impose new tariffs
on $160 billion of Chinese imports beginning
See Trade, Page 11
Ng Han Guan
Chinese officials attend a press conference
on the trade deal with the United States
Dec. 13 in Beijing.
Radish seed farmers urge against dismissal of $6.7M lawsuit
Growers allege bank
killed the market
for their crop
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Multiple Oregon radish
seed farmers are urging a
federal judge not to dismiss
their $6.7 million lawsuit
against a bank that allegedly
sank demand for their crops.
The long-running dis-
pute arose from the closure
of a cover crop seed bro-
ker who’d contracted with
numerous Oregon growers
to produce radish seed.
Northwest Bank of War-
ren, Pa., filed a complaint in
2015 to seize the farmers’
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
The Wayne L. Morse Courthouse in Eugene, Ore., where
farmers are pursuing a $6.7 million lawsuit against a
bank over lost radish seed value.
seed as collateral for a loan
to the cover crop company.
The farmers eventually
prevailed in that lawsuit and
their victory was upheld last
year by the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals.
The Radish Seed Grow-
ers Association and two
other Oregon seed com-
panies are now seeking to
recover $6.7 million from
the bank in federal court for
lost seed value and storage
costs.
Northwest Bank, mean-
while, is asking for the law-
suit to be dismissed because
it was simply trying to pro-
tect its security interest in
the seed as collateral for
a loan to the cover crop
company.
Peter Hawkes, attorney
for the lender, claimed that
Northwest Bank’s actions
were covered by the “abso-
lute litigation privilege” that
protects plaintiffs from fac-
ing legal liability for law-
suit-related actions and
allegations.
“Even though the bank
lost on that, those weren’t
frivolous
arguments,”
Hawke said during Dec. 17
oral arguments in Eugene,
Ore. “It thought it was doing
what it had the right to do
as a security interest holder.
… It’s not wrong to enforce
the security interest that you
have.”
Furthermore, the rad-
ish growers’ lawsuit should
be thrown out because the
bank had relied in good faith
on the advice of its lawyers
in trying to seize the radish
seed, which shields the bank
from liability, Hawke said.
That protection should
be extended to letters that
Northwest Bank sent to
potential seed buyers, warn-
ing them it held collateral
interest in the growers’ rad-
ish seed crop, he said.
See Radish, Page 11