Friday, March 26, 2021
Volume 94, Number 13
CapitalPress.com
$2.00
EMPOWERING PRODUCERS OF FOOD & FIBER
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
WIN FALLS, Idaho —
Brent Frei grew up on a
dryland wheat farm on the
Camas Prairie of northern
Idaho. And like every farm
kid, he picked his share of rocks
without giving much thought to the
age-old, perennial chore.
It is one of the worst jobs on any
farm.
Now, after a successful career in
high-tech, he has turned his atten-
tion to that chore, starting a com-
pany that uses high-fl ying drones
and robotics to locate and pick up
the rocks that can damage farm
implements.
T
High-tech career
After graduating from Gran-
geville, Idaho, High School in 1984,
Frei set out for Dartmouth Col-
lege in New Hampshire. He earned
a bachelor’s degree in mechanical
engineering in 1989.
From there, he went to work for
Motorola, where he learned soft-
ware development and designed
batteries for cellular phones. He
moved to Microsoft in Bellevue,
Wash., where he built customer data
systems.
Along the way, he founded two
software companies, Onyx Soft-
ware and Smartsheet, which he
took from inception to initial pub-
lic off ering.
He also founded Harvest West
Investments, a farmland investment
fund that owns and manages farms
in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
Frei left his executive role at
Smartsheet in 2016 but remains on
its board of directors. That gave him
more time to return home and help
out on the family farm, which has
grown to 6,000 acres.
And that’s where he was — in the
heat, picking rock by hand with his
81-year-old dad — when the absur-
dity of the manual task hit him.
“I thought, why isn’t this auto-
mated?” he said. “Everything is
automated.”
He was a successful business-
man who knew a lot about soft-
ware, robotics and artifi cial intelli-
gence, but he was still picking rock
by hand all day in the hot sun. And
he couldn’t understand why tech-
nology hadn’t been applied to the
worst, most boring job on the farm.
“Why has this not been solved?”
he said.
He realized all the pieces for
See Robot, Page 9
Drone maps fi eld, then system uses automation to remove rocks
TerraClear
ABOVE: TerraClear’s leaders are, left to right, Ryan Frei, operations; Heidi Lindsley, marketing director; Brent Frei, CEO and
founder; and Trevor Thompson, president. TOP: A drone is used to locate and measure all of the rocks in a farm fi eld.
Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press
Terra Clear
After the drone fl ies over the farm fi eld, it generates a map
showing the location and size of rocks.
TerraClear’s rock picker is used in conjunction with a
drone-generated map of all the rocks in a fi eld. The opera-
tor follows the map to fi nd each rock.
Timing key to how Asian giant hornets might impact hives
SEE RELATED STORY
ON PAGE 9
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Karla Salp/WSDA
An Asian giant hornet.
Bees pollinate berries in north-
west Washington before Asian
giant hornet colonies mature in
the summer, a sequence that may
shield commercial beekeepers
and farmers from being stung by
the invasive wasp.
Western Washington’s larg-
est beekeeper, Eric Thompson,
pollinates raspberries and blue-
berries in the spring in northern
Whatcom County, the only area
in the U.S. where Asian giant
hornets have been seen.
Thompson said March 18 that
people he hasn’t heard from in
decades call up and ask if he’s
concerned. By the time the hor-
nets come out, though, his bees
are off to other jobs, spread out
as far away as Montana.
“The news media in this coun-
try has run wild with the murder
hornet thing,” he said. “I haven’t
worried about it.
“I don’t see how they can be
detrimental to agriculture at this
point.”
Asian giant hornets have a
fearsome reputation for decap-
itating honeybees. Agriculture
offi cials in Washington and Brit-
ish Columbia are out to search
and destroy nests before the hor-
nets slaughter pollinators.
A bigger threat may be to the
ecosystem if the hornets attack
wild bees, wasps or other insects.
Asian giant hornets are a public
hazard, too, infl icting sometimes
lethal stings.
Washington State University
bee expert Tim Lawrence, pic-
tured on his college webpage
happily covered in live bees, said
public safety concerns are real,
but it’s too early to say hornets
menace agriculture.
“Let’s not go overboard. It’s
already hyped up more than it
needs to be,” Lawrence said. “To
See Hornets, Page 9
Five wolves found dead in NE Oregon
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
An investigation is continuing
into the deaths of fi ve wolves dis-
covered early last month in north-
east Oregon.
On Feb. 9, the Oregon Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife reported
a GPS collar on a wolf emitted a
“mortality signal” in the Mount
Harris area near La Grande. Offi -
cers with the Oregon State Police
Fish and Wildlife Division found
fi ve wolves dead.
The carcasses were taken to
a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
forensic lab to determine a cause
of death. Results have yet to be
released.
OSP Capt. Tim Fox said he could
not immediately provide additional
details about the dead wolves, such
as their size, sex and pack. Rob-
lyn Brown, wolf program coor-
dinator for ODFW, also declined
to comment, citing the pending
investigation.
March is about Honoring our
Ag Producers.
THANK YOU!
Oregon has a minimum wolf pop-
ulation of 158, as of the most recent
ODFW survey in 2019, though the
actual number is likely higher. Most
packs are concentrated in the state’s
northeast corner, including Union
County where the fi ve dead wolves
were found.
Kathleen Gobush, Northwest
program director for the conserva-
tion group Defenders of Wildlife,
said the deaths were suspicious,
though without knowing the cause
of death, they cannot say whether
WE UNDERSTAND YOUR WORK
AND DEDICATION. WHAT YOU
NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL.
TO EACH OF OUR AG PRODUCERS.
poaching may have been to blame.
“It highlights the pressing need
for a thorough investigation, for
sure,” Gobush said.
Gobush, who is in Seattle, said
she has never heard of so many
wolves found dead at once in either
Oregon or Washington.
”We’re all waiting to hear what
the cause of death is,” she said. “A
lot of this is a mystery.”
Rodger Huff man, a rancher in
See Wolves, Page 9
Bank of Eastern Oregon’s Mission
has always been to provide
Financial Support for the Ag Industry.
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