EMPOWERING PRODUCERS OF FOOD & FIBER
Friday, December 20, 2019
CapitalPress.com
Volume 92, Number 51
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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
MISTLETOE MYTHS
rett collects the mistletoe from oak trees
After more than a decade in business,
in Southern Oregon while his wife,
Garrett Huggins doesn’t aspire to
Ashley, handles the marketing.
become a mistletoe magnate.
Both help tie strands of the
Huggins is content to earn
leafy perennial into bundles
most of his income as a union
with ribbon and package
carpenter while selling the
them for shipping.
wild-harvested holiday crop
“When people call, they
through his family’s com-
pany, Genuine Oregon Mis-
talk to me,” Ashley said.
tletoe, as a sideline.
“He didn’t want to deal with
“We don’t expect it to
the customer service side of
become a million-dollar com-
things.”
pany, but it does make Christ-
mas happen for us, you know?” A bundle of female
Wholesale parasite
mistletoe that con-
The Hugginses are sim-
he said.
Though they get plenty of tains berries of the ilar to other mistletoe
parasitic plant.
help from friends and fam-
ily, Genuine Oregon Mistletoe
See Mistletoe, Page 11
is basically a two-person operation: Gar-
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