Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (April 10, 2020)
ORCHARD, VINES & NUTS SPECIAL SECTION | INSIDE CapitalPress.com Friday, April 10, 2020 Volume 93, Number 15 $2.00 Farmers, ranchers feel impact of COVID-19 By CAROL RYAN DUMAS Capital Press The coronavirus pandemic is taking its toll on agriculture, caus- ing lost markets and declining prices. Milk is being dumped, pro- duce is being left to rot and some producers are worried they won’t have an operation left to hand down to the next generation. Milk prices have declined 26% to 36% depending on its utiliza- tion. Prices have fallen as much as 31% for cotton and hogs, 25% for cattle, 14% for corn and 8% for soybeans, according to American Farm Bureau Federation. “The entire supply chain is try- ing to adapt to match supply with the changes in demand. Mean- while, the markets continue to swing daily,” Zippy Duvall, AFBF INSIDE MORE COVID-19 STORIES ON PAGES 4-5 president, said in a phone confer- ence with reporters. Jim Alderman, a produce grower in southern Florida, has been farming for 40 years and said he’s been through freezes, floods and hurricanes but has never seen anything like this. “What is happening to us today is that the foodservice industry is basically shut down,” he said. Hotels, clubs, all the restau- rants are closed — and that’s creating a backlog. Squash, for example, has to be picked every day. If it doesn’t get picked, it gets too big to sell. The market today is about $4 and change for a half bushel box of yellow squash or zucchini squash, he said. “That is way below our cost of picking and packing. … There’s no sense in packing it because there is no sale for it,” he said. Some growers are cutting squash every day and throwing it on the ground, hoping the mar- ket will turn around, he said. A lot See Fallout, Page 13 RESEARCHERS HAVE ‘SUPERWEEDS’ IN THEIR SIGHTS B By SIERRA DAWN MCCLAIN Capital Press esieged by lawsuits and a ris- farming. But many growers and research- ing tide of weeds resistant to ers worry the new “tool” won’t be enough its popular Roundup herbicide, by itself to combat the populations of her- German chemical giant Bayer bicide-resistant weeds taking hold on more is touting a landmark discov- than half of U.S. farms. ery — a new molecule that will kill resis- Resistant weeds tant weeds using a different mode of action. Resistance is part of a weed’s basic bio- “Mode of action” describes precisely where and how an herbicide kills a weed at logical struggle for survival. When a field the tissue or cellular level: for example, by of weeds is sprayed again and again with a single herbicide, that herbicide kills weaker interrupting a weed’s growth. individual plants, “We’re super but some naturally excited by the break- NEW CHEMICAL, through we think strong weeds have METHODS OF FARM- random traits that we’ve made,” said Bob Reiter, head of allow them to sur- ING WILL BE USED vive the herbicide. research and devel- opment in Bay- AGAINST HERBICIDE These survivors er’s crop science reproduce, passing RESISTANT WEEDS on resistant traits to division. R&D takes time, the next generations. and Axel Trautwein, a molecular scientist Weeds are not the only pests whose at Bayer, said a decade may pass before a populations evolve to resist pesticides. Par- asites do it. Mosquitoes do it. Even bed new product reaches the marketplace. But many farmers are already bugs do it. Growers now grapple with so-called enthusiastic. “I’m excited about this,” said Randy “superweeds” present on hundreds of mil- Grant, grower and president of the Idaho lions of acres across the U.S., according Sugarbeet Growers Association. “We need Stratus Ag Research. The Washington Grain Commission esti- more tools in our toolbox.” The discovery comes after a nearly mates herbicide-resistant weeds across all 30-year drought in development of new crops increase growers’ costs on average herbicides, and experts say Bayer’s inno- See Herbicide, Page 13 vation will have profound impacts on Bayer Laboratory work at Bayer. The company estimates its new herbicide will be on the market by the end of the decade. Bayer A corn field that uses Roundup Ready crop management solutions for weed control. GETTY IMAGE Oregon hemp farmers retrench in 2020 By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press Oregon’s hemp growers are appar- ently retrenching in 2020 after the crop’s explosive expansion last year left many bitterly disappointed with their financial results. Roughly 6,300 acres of hemp were registered for planting during the first quarter of 2020, down more than 75% from the 25,400 acres regis- tered during the same period in 2019, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Though it’s still early in the sea- son — last year, farmers ultimately registered to grow nearly 64,000 acres of hemp — experts say a prob- lematic harvest, glutted market and regulatory morass is forcing grow- ers to drastically scale back their ambitions. Mateusz Perkowski/ Capital Press Barry Cook, left, speaks with his son, Bo, in a field of hemp growing at his nursery in Boring, Ore. Cook believes the hemp industry is seeing a course correction in production but still faces a bright future. Rick Bush, a hemp farmer and processor in Salem, said he person- ally uses the cannabidiol, or CBD, extracted from hemp for health rea- sons and considers it a “wonderful product.” However, the “brutal” economic situation of plummeting CBD prices and insufficient demand has devas- tated growers who’d invested heavily in growing the crop last year, he said. “Hemp is an empty promise,” Bush said. Many farmers who planted hemp in 2019 were later confronted with inadequate or insufficient harvest machinery, a lack of storage and pro- cessing capacity as well as weather problems that degraded the crop’s quality. “You had just one setback after another,” said Beau Whitney, founder of Whitney Economics, a consulting firm that tracks the hemp industry. Processors now have more than enough hemp biomass remaining for extraction, as well as a surfeit of fin- ished CBD products they’ve yet to sell, which is depressing prices for the See Hemp, Page 13