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CapitalPress.com
Friday, March 5, 2021
Business Oregon awards grant for open-source ERP software
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
SALEM — Manag-
ing complex businesses
and supply chains is a pro-
cess fraught with potential
pitfalls and human error,
says Abisha Stone with the
Salem-based Strategic Eco-
nomic Development Corp.,
or SEDCOR.
For example, a grass seed
or hazelnut farm in the Wil-
lamette Valley might have to
schedule applications of fer-
tilizer and pesticides during
the growing season, hire
labor for harvest, process
and sort seeds and nuts after
harvest, and match ware-
house inventory and pur-
chase orders for shipping.
“Many (companies), in
my experience, are doing
all those functions in Excel
documents,” said Stone,
Yamhill County economic
development director for
SEDCOR. “To have differ-
ent people in different places
in your business, doing sep-
arate documentation and
trying to pull that together.
FOR MORE
INFORMATION
Scott
Cooper
Abisha
Stone
... There is opportunity for
them to make significant
mistakes.”
Enterprise
Resource
Planning software, or ERP,
is one tool that can help,
Stone said.
The software systems,
typically custom-built by
developers, combine differ-
ent “modules” that integrate
all of a business’ internal and
external resources under one
program — including assets,
cashflow, purchasing, inven-
tory and payroll.
The problem, Stone said,
is small and mid-size busi-
nesses often cannot afford
the tens of thousands of dol-
lars per month it takes to buy
and host ERP software, put-
ting them at a competitive
disadvantage.
Bovine manure tax credit
encounters opposition
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
A proposal to extend Ore-
gon’s tax credit for collect-
ing cow manure for energy
has come under fire from
critics who say it’s mostly
beneficial to large dairies.
The tax credit of $3.50 per
wet ton of bovine manure col-
lected is intended to promote
the construction of methane
digesters that produce renew-
able energy. It’s slated to end
in 2022.
Senate Bill 151, which
would change the sunset
date to 2028, is supported
by the Oregon Farm Bureau
and Oregon Dairy Farmers
Association.
“Manure digesters pro-
vide very clear environmen-
tal, renewable energy, and
economic benefits to the
dairy industry and the pub-
lic,” the groups said in written
testimony.
Oregon currently has three
methane digesters in operation,
one of which annually seques-
ters 136,000 metric tons of
carbon dioxide — the amount
emitted by about 29,000 cars,
the groups said.
Extending the tax credit
helps ensure these digesters
will remain online and may
encourage others to invest in
the technology, the letter said.
However, critics of the tax
credit claim it amounts to a
subsidy for the largest “con-
fined animal feeding oper-
ations,” or CAFOs, in the
state.
The biggest benefactor of
the tax credit is a dairy with
70,000 cows, and digest-
ers are only economically
feasible for facilities with
well over 500 cows, said
Amy Van Saun, an attorney
with the Stand Up to Fac-
tory Farms Coalition, which
The Public Lands Coun-
cil will hold its 2021 Legis-
lative Conference virtually
March 23-25 to give live-
stock producers an inside
look at the federal policy-
making process.
PLC volunteer leaders,
staff and affiliates will con-
duct legislative strategy
sessions and workshops on
how to successfully advo-
cate for the livestock indus-
try in the nation’s capitol.
Attendees will hear from
members of Congress, pol-
icy experts, scientists and
other industry profession-
als who are dedicated to
western lands, waters and
perspectives. This also
gives public lands ranch-
ers the opportunity to catch
up after a busy start to the
year.
“This is always such a
great event because it pro-
vides a chance for ranchers
“There just tends to be a
much more complex, com-
plicated and time-exhaustive
process for capturing all that
data and sharing it with one
another,” Stone said. “For
small businesses, even just
managing the procurement
and scheduling is a huge jug-
gling act.”
Buildable, a software
company
in
McMinn-
ville, Ore., is now working
with SEDCOR and other
local economic develop-
ment groups to create an
open-source ERP platform,
called OregonERP, allowing
smaller businesses to capital-
ize on the technology.
Open-source software, as
opposed to proprietary soft-
ware, means that anyone with
the source code can access
and modify the program.
In December, Busi-
ness Oregon awarded a
$211,250 grant to finish the
final two phases of develop-
ment, including implemen-
tation and marketing. Stone
said the modules for Ore-
gonERP should be tested
and completed by the end of
September.
“It really is a true game-
changer for small to mid-size
businesses to have access to
systems like this, that they
can actually afford,” she said.
According to SEDCOR,
Oregon has approximately
6,200 manufacturing busi-
nesses — including val-
ue-added farms and food pro-
cessors — that employ more
than 200,000 people, making
Speaker urges FFA members to
lead environmental discussions
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
EO Media Group File
A methane digester col-
lects gas from decompos-
ing cow manure at a dairy
and uses it as fuel to gen-
erate electricity. Oregon
lawmakers are consider-
ing a bill to extend until
2028 a tax credit for col-
lecting cow manure rath-
er than have it lapse next
year.
opposes major CAFOs.
The bill creates a “per-
verse incentive” to continue
siting major CAFOs in Ore-
gon at the expense of rural
communities, she said.
At best, such digest-
ers only capture the added
methane generated by the
development of factory farm
systems, Van Saun said.
CAFOs
should
be
required to trap their emis-
sions if they choose to
raise animals in this man-
ner, rather than be paid for
it by the public, said Amy
Wong, policy director of the
Friends of Family Farmers
nonprofit.
Natural gas from fac-
tory farms is not “truly clean
energy” and the state gov-
ernment should instead
encourage
pasture-based
farming and technologies
such as wind and solar elec-
tricity, Wong said.
“Oregon should not use
public dollars to support
large, private corporations
at a time Oregon is facing a
budget shortfall,” she said.
PLC sets 2021
Legislative Conference
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
For more information
about OregonERP, contact
Abisha Stone at 503-507-
4175, or Scott Cooper at
503-474-6814.
to meet with
members of
Congress
and agency
officials as
we
work
to develop
Niels
policy and
Hansen
develop
long-lasting
friendships,” Niels Han-
sen, PLC president, said in
a press release.
“I am excited to hear
from our speakers and talk
with PLC ranchers about
the benefits that livestock
grazing on public and pri-
vate land have for our
country,” he said.
Panel discussions will
focus on how grazing
facilitates
opportunities
for other multiple uses and
how permittees help protect
open spaces, reduce the risk
of catastrophic wildfire and
promote biodiversity.
To register for the free
event, visit www.publi-
clandscouncil.org.
up 21% of the total value of
goods produced across the
state.
Of those, 5,000 manufac-
turers, or roughly 80% of the
state’s total, employ 20 peo-
ple or fewer.
While typical ERPs may
cost between $75,000 to
$750,000 a year, OregonERP
will cost clients less than
$12,000. And since the soft-
ware is open source, it can be
easily customized.
“We believe all manu-
facturers, regardless of their
size, should have access to
a tool that helps them under-
stand all of their costs so they
enter the market at the right
price,” Stone said.
Other partners in the proj-
ect include the Oregon Man-
ufacturing Extension Part-
nership and McMinnville
Economic
Development
Partnership.
“This will have a really
meaningful impact on the
manufacturing community,
not only in Yamhill County
but across the state,” said
Scott Cooper, executive
director of the MEDP.
SPOKANE — FFA members should
devote one hour per week to advocat-
ing for agriculture as part of their col-
lege and business career path, a long-
time forester says.
“Don’t fight the environmental dis-
cussion, lead it,” third-generation logger
and author Bruce Vincent said. “We are
the environmental answer to what Amer-
ica thinks are problems, but we can only
do that if we lead the discussion.”
Vincent spoke during the Spokane
Ag Show, held virtually due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. He previously
spoke to FFA members during the 2019
show.
Rural and urban residents have a
“collision of visions,” Vincent said.
“They want to save the environment,
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press File
Montana logger Bruce Vincent
talks to FFA members Feb. 7, 2019,
during the Spokane Ag Show. Vin-
cent gave a presentation during
this year’s show, held virtually due
to the COVID-19 pandemic.
and they have no idea what makes it
work,” he said. “We love to consume,
it’s just production we don’t like.”
The public has a desire to protect
“the last best places,” Vincent said.
“The most consumptive society on
earth has fallen in love with the environ-
ment,” he said. “They demand rules and
regulations to protect their environment
and health. And who can blame them?”
Public policy is not defined by real-
ity, but by the public perception of real-
ity, he said.
Well-intentioned groups, causes and
laws have been “bastardized” to the
point where the “thin line between envi-
ronmental sensitivity and environmen-
tal insanity” is being crossed, Vincent
said.
Leaders hijacked the environmen-
tal movement by selling fear, not stew-
ardship and conservation, he said. It’s
now dependent upon conflict and things
going wrong to make money, through
20-second sound bites and imagery
without context.
Friday, March 5, 2021
CapitalPress.com 7
Cattle industry to engage with new administration
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
The cattle industry had some
big regulatory wins during the
Trump administration, including
navigable water protections, revi-
sions to the National Environmen-
tal Policy Act and delisting of the
gray wolf.
And cattle producers are under-
standably nervous about los-
ing those gains under the Biden
administration.
But the industry needs to remind
itself nothing is going to happen
overnight, Colin Woodall, CEO
of the National Cattlemen’s Beef
Association, said during NCBA’s
Winter Reboot virtual conference.
“The president started off by
signing a stack of executive orders
… but there’s only so much that he
can do,” he said.
People are worried the Biden
administration is “going to just
wipe everything away with the
Courtesy White House
The White House.
stroke of a pen,” said Ethan Lane,
NCBA vice president of govern-
ment affairs.
But if something took two or
three years to get done in the first
place, it’s going to take at least that
long to undo it. The rulemaking
process takes time, he said.
“The big stuff is going to take
years for it to really work its way
through the system,” he said.
NCBA is building relationships
in the new administration because
even during the Trump administra-
tion, most of the industry’s big wins
came in the last two years, Wood-
all said.
The Biden administration is
heavily focused on climate change,
and there was a memo circulated
among Biden’s transition team
about how agriculture fits in that
mix, he said.
“It was made very clear that they
see agriculture as part of the solu-
tion to climate issues, not a part of
the problem. And they even went
one step further and tackled wild-
fires and talked a lot about how
grazing is an important mitigation
tool,” he said.
“It already has given us a seat
at the table. The question is: Are
we going to be able to maintain the
administration’s position that we
truly are a part of the solution?” he
said.
It is incumbent upon the industry
to do so, he said.
“This is ours to lose at this
point,” Lane said.
The Biden administration has
made it clear that conservation
objectives can’t be accomplished
without grazing and cattle produc-
Analyst sees better times ahead for cattle producers
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
Cattle producers have had
a tough time over the last cou-
ple of years, but better times are
ahead, according to one indus-
try analyst.
The COVID-19 pandemic
backed up nearly a million head
of fed cattle last spring, Randy
Blach, CEO of CattleFax, told
the National Cattlemen’s Beef
Association Winter Reboot
conference last week.
“We’ve pretty much got the
slaughter back on pace in here,
but we’re still putting record
tonnage through these sys-
tems,” he said.
That record tonnage is still
testing the market, and markets
are still underperforming. But
fed prices have recovered from
the $95 per hundredweight last
summer to about $114 now, he
said.
“So the markets have had a
nice recovery, but there’s still
significant potential above
where we’re sitting today,” he
said.
Drought has continued, and
Randy Blach
the herd is continuing to con-
tract. But cattle prices are still
not where producers want them
to be, he said.
With record packer and retail
margins, cattle producers have
been frustrated. But there’s also
been record beef production
since mid-June 2020, he said.
“This has been what’s hold-
ing us back to some degree,” he
said.
Weather impacts in the last
couple of weeks are going to
shave some tonnage off mar-
kets, but there’s still plenty of
cattle to harvest, he said.
“But there are better times to
come,” he said.
Beef demand in 2020 was
the strongest in over 30 years,
and it’s going to be another
strong year in 2021. The growth
in beef demand has added more
than $250 a head to the value of
fed cattle over the last several
years, he said.
“So this has been pretty phe-
nomenal,” he said.
Retail meat sales were up
10% in volume in 2020, even
though foodservice sales were
hammered. Retail meat sales
were up 18% in value, an
increase of nearly $13 billion.
Beef’s share of that increase
was almost $6 billion, he said.
“People voted with their
pocketbooks. I think we’ve got
to like what we see transpire
here,” he said.
Despite higher unemploy-
ment, U.S. household wealth
increased more than $620 bil-
lion in 2020 due to government
support, he said.
“As this economy opens
back up again, people are going
to want to get out and spend
money,” he said.
He expects U.S. gross
domestic product growth will
be somewhere near 6% in
2021. Some of that will depend
on how fast populations in
the U.S. and other parts of the
world are vaccinated. But he’s
expecting two years of strong
GDP growth post-COVID.
When the economy opens
back up, job markets will
improve and people are going
to want to spend money, he
said.
“The consumer balance
sheet is in the strongest position
it’s been since the early 2000s,”
he said.
Government data would
suggest U.S. household net
worth has increased $5 trillion.
“That bodes well for demand
going forward,” he said.
In the bigger picture, agri-
cultural loan repayments are
up, debt is down, land val-
ues have increased and global
demand is strong, he said.
We have a new crop
of materials for the
Worker
Protection
Standard.
Protect your workers from pesticide exposure
with the Worker Protection Standard.
We have a bushelful of materials:
brochures, posters and more.
To learn everything that applies, go to
EPA.gov/pesticide-worker-safety
S231794-1
tion, he said.
“To hear that as affirmative rec-
ognition right out of the box from
this administration really gives us
an opportunity to engage,” he said.
That engagement is not just in
what else cattle producers can do
but to educate the administration
about what producers are already
doing. That’s been a piece of the
puzzle that’s kind of been missing
until now, he said.
“Engaging with the new admin-
istration and helping them under-
stand how we apply those tech-
nologies, how we apply that
knowledge to improve conditions
on the ground, how we produce the
best beef in the world with the low-
est environmental footprint is going
to be really important to keep us in
that conversation,” he said.
The conversation is going to
happen with or without the indus-
try, and cattle producers can’t afford
to be absent from the discussion, he
said.
Vilsack makes new
appointments and
policies that impact ag
By SIERRA DAWN McCLAIN
Capital Press
WASHINGTON, D.C. — USDA
Secretary Tom Vilsack, after his con-
firmation by the Senate last Tues-
day, is already moving forward with
appointments and policies that will
impact U.S. agriculture.
Monday morning, Vilsack spoke at
the National Farmers Union Confer-
ence about his priorities.
“Rural America has been forgotten
far too long,” he told attendees at the
virtual conference.
This first full week in office, Vil-
sack said, he plans to talk with the
Secretary of Agricul-
ture and Rural Develop-
ment in Mexico and the
Minister of Agriculture
and Agri-Food in Can-
ada about their commit-
ments under the United
States-Mexico-Can-
ada trade agreement, or Tom Vilsack
USMCA. Vilsack said
he will hold them accountable to their
trade promises “to the letter.”
Vilsack also named two new USDA
appointees: one to focus on fair mar-
kets, another to advise on racial equity.
For his senior adviser on fair and
competitive markets, Vilsack picked
Andy Green, previously a fellow at the
Center for American Progress, a lib-
eral think tank. Green will be responsi-
ble for handling antitrust issues, push-
ing for price discovery and fighting
over-consolidation.
Before his work at the think tank,
Green gave counsel to Kara Stein, for-
mer commissioner at the U.S. Secu-
rities and Exchange Commission and
worked as an aide to Sen. Jeff Merk-
ley, D-Ore.
Vilsack’s pick for the adviser on
racial equity was Dewayne Goldmon,
an Arkansas farmer who served this
past year as the executive director of
the National Black Growers Council.
In his conference speech, Vil-
sack also announced the creation of
an equity commission, which he said
will “investigate USDA to identify and
root out any systemic racism in our
programs.”
Vilsack also reiterated a goal he’s
referenced in other public speeches —
his vision to create viable, voluntary,
incentive-based carbon markets so
that farmers can get paid to store car-
bon. He said USDA will soon be ask-
ing farmers for input on how to cre-
ate these markets so that they will be
“designed by farmers, for farmers.”
Vilsack said he is already work-
ing with Environmental Protection
Agency Administrator Michael Regan
to strengthen America’s ethanol indus-
try, prioritizing small refinery biofuel
waivers and weeding out larger com-
panies that take unfair advantage of
those waivers.
As Congress prepares to pass
another major coronavirus relief pack-
age — this time, $1.9 trillion — Vil-
sack said USDA will take time to “fig-
ure out who was left out, who wasn’t
supported adequately last time” and
prioritize those farmers and commodi-
ties this time around.
“The goal is, when all is said and
done, everyone in the supply chain
gets a fair shot at the resources,” he
said.
Over the next few weeks, Vil-
sack said his agency will also reach
out to state governors to reiter-
ate the importance of giving essen-
tial workers, including farmers,
farmworkers and processing plant
workers, early priority for COVID-19
vaccination.
Vilsack also looked ahead to goals
for the future. These included hiring
more USDA staff nationwide, expand-
ing rural healthcare and broadband
internet and creating markets for farm
waste, such as new fertilizers.