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Friday, April 30, 2021
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Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
A fanciful climate change challenge
L
ast week President Joe Biden
announced a goal to reduce
U.S. greenhouse emissions by
50% of 2005 levels by 2030.
His goals nearly double the emis-
sion cuts agreed to in 2015 by Presi-
dent Barack Obama in the Paris Cli-
mate Agreement. The president offered
only a broad outline on how this would
be accomplished.
The impacts and the costs would be
staggering. To meet these goals would
require producing all of the nation’s
electricity by carbon-free sources,
rebuilding the power grid and radi-
cally changing the transportation sys-
tem. All in nine years to help the world
limit global temperature increases to no
more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
No one can say exactly how much it
will cost and what the specific impacts
will be on the lives and livelihoods of
everyday Americans. The president
says his plan will cre-
ate hundreds of thou-
sands of new, high-pay-
ing jobs as hundreds of
thousands of existing
jobs will end.
Presidents of both parties are
famous for over promising benefits and
soft-peddling suffering. We would be
surprised if this was the exception.
What about agriculture?
According to the Environmen-
tal Protection Agency, agriculture is
responsible for 10% of U.S. green-
house gas emissions. Plowing, plant-
ing, harvesting and transporting crops
to market are all powered by fossil
fuels.
Conventional machinery would
likely continue in use for years, but
would eventually have to give way to
electric versions. The major manufac-
turers are touting R&D to build pro-
duction-size electric tractors. One John
Deere prototype plugs into the on-farm
power supply through a 3,000-foot
cable fed from a reel mounted on the
front.
There are some electric utility trac-
tors on the market, but we couldn’t find
any over 100 horsepower available
for sale, let alone an electric combine.
When they do come, we’ve read that
they could cost twice the price of a die-
sel equivalent.
Farmers could find it more attrac-
tive to lease their land for solar and
wind energy production. If the admin-
istration excludes nuclear power, it will
take a lot of ground to replace the elec-
tricity generated by fossil fuels. We’ve
seen estimates of 11 million to 15 mil-
lion acres, but it would take much more
to supply all the things now powered
by fossil fuels.
It’s also possible that farmers would
Occasional tillage and
herbicide resistance
Our View
I
ODFW
A female member of the Wenaha Pack in northern Wallowa County, Ore.
Oregon’s wolves are fine,
ranchers not so much
T
he good news is the wolf population con-
tinues to grow and spread across Oregon.
The population grew 9.5% last year to at
least 173 wolves in 22 packs. In 2019, the popu-
lation grew 15%, according to the department.
The bad news is ranchers — particularly those
in Klamath County — struggle as wolves continue
to attack their livestock at will.
That’s the short version of the Oregon Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife 2020 wolf report, which
was issued last week.
Of particular concern to ranchers are the con-
tinued attacks on livestock. Despite ranchers’ use
of non-lethal means in attempts to keep their live-
stock safe, state biologists confirmed 31 attacks
last year.
Even more troubling: the three wolves in the
Rogue Pack were responsible for more than half of
those attacks, killing 16 yearling cows in Klamath
and Jackson counties.
That’s in spite of the fact that biologists and staff
from ODFW, USDA Wildlife Services and the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spent 99 nights last
year trying to keep Rogue Pack wolves away from
livestock using non-lethal means.
This is the second straight year that the number
of confirmed depredations in Klamath County due
to the Rogue Pack has exceeded all other depreda-
tions elsewhere in the state, according to ODFW.
Statewide, wildlife managers did not remove
any of the problem wolves, though a rancher did
legally shoot one as it attacked his livestock. Four
other wolves were illegally killed.
Meanwhile, the state paid $30,609 to ranch-
ers who had dead, injured or missing livestock and
spent $217,000 on non-lethal preventive measures
trying to keep wolves away from cattle.
What’s apparent in reading this report is wolves
in Oregon need to be better managed. In Klamath,
Jackson, Baker, Union and Umatilla counties, they
continue to cost ranchers — and the state — many
thousands of dollars with no resolution of the prob-
lems they cause.
The wolf population has clearly reached a crit-
ical mass. The time has come to remove the small
minority of wolves that create the vast majority of
problems.
READERS’ VIEW
Investing in
our future
The landscape of northeast
Oregon has changed significantly
over the past century and a half.
Myself and my family have borne
witness to much of it. From the
railroad to the state highway,
hydroelectric dams and their dis-
tribution infrastructure to mecha-
nization and computers. Change is
ever present.
As a sixth generation farmer/
rancher I often lament of the
world today and how best to
move forward. I look at where we
have been and what direction, as
a productive contributing member
of society, I should go and teach
my children to head. We live in
uncertain times, from climate
change and economic crashes to
the pandemic and riots. Certainty
seems fleeting.
We, however, are still tasked
with guiding change in the
attempt to maximize holistic ben-
efit. Idaho Congressman Mike
Simpson is proposing a change
of gargantuan proportion in the
lower reaches of the Snake River
watershed. This proposal is
unique to my knowledge in that it
attempts to encompass and miti-
gate all aspects of change in rela-
tion to the breaching of the lower
have opportunities to produce crops for
increased biofuel production. But the
energy required to process and trans-
port biofuels reduces the benefits and
make them unpopular among climate
activists.
But the Biden plan is fanciful, a
technological possibility with low
political probability.
Without Congress, the president
can’t commit the country to such a
goal. Thankfully, we don’t think Con-
gress will be that aggressive once the
cost estimates start rolling in and the
impacts on constituents are known.
We have to ask if it’s worth upend-
ing the U.S. economy and dramati-
cally altering just about everything for
reducing global temperature increases
by less than a tenth of the goal. We’d
feel a bit better if China and India, the
real polluters, were also sacrificing
their economies to the effort.
Snake River dams. From ecological
and environmental to industry, agri-
culture, energy and recreation. This
plan covers all of the bases.
Farmers, ranchers and the tribes
have made considerable progress
improving ecological conditions for
salmon and their habitat in Wallowa
County. But the success of these
measures is dependent on improv-
ing conditions in the Snake River,
which requires action at the federal
level. With change comes oppor-
tunity, and Simpson’s plan cre-
ates opportunities for farmers, fish
and the economy, here in Wallowa
County and beyond.
Woody Wolfe
Wallowa, Ore.
n 2011, I attended the
Fourth International Crop
Science Congress in Bris-
bane, Queensland, Austra-
lia. I listened to a presenta-
tion by Dr. Stephen Powles,
University of Western Aus-
tralia, now retired. Dr. Powles
is still considered the inter-
national guru on herbicide
resistance.
Australia has some of the
most serious herbicide resis-
tance issues in the world. I
was struck by a statement he
made concerning tillage. He
said, “I tell all of my no-til-
lers that what they need is a
little bit of tillage, and I tell
all of my tillers what they
need is a little bit of no-till.”
The basic concept being that
occasionally you need to
change what you are doing
to prevent or slow down the
shift in weed species or pop-
ulations that occurs anytime
you do the same thing over
and over again, whether that
be the same herbicide appli-
cation, tillage operation or
crop selection.
In my grower presen-
tations on herbicide resis-
tance, I encourage grow-
ers to use as many different
weed control tactics as possi-
ble and not rely on a limited
range of weed control prac-
tices, for example, just her-
bicides. I have found the dis-
cussion on occasional tillage
for the management of herbi-
cide resistance to be the most
controversial.
Some people believe that
any tillage jeopardizes the
soil quality gains that have
been achieved with multiple
years of no-till.
Others are afraid of the
“slippery slope” that might
be created by suggesting that
some amount of tillage in
an otherwise no-till system
might be acceptable or even
beneficial. They rightly fear
the detrimental effects of a
widespread return to the till-
age systems of the past.
Until recently, there
have been very few studies
reported in the scientific lit-
erature on occasional tillage.
Comparisons were almost
always between never tilling
and always tilling. This was
likely influenced by the need
for researchers to publish
in a timely manner. Treat-
ment differences between
the extremes of always till-
ing and never tilling were
more quickly evident than in
studies with only occasional
tillage.
In 2020, Humberto Blan-
co-Canqui and Charles Wort-
mann at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln published
a review on occasional tillage
in Soil & Tillage Research.
Their review of the existing
literature on occasional tillage
found that “tillage method,
depth, frequency, and timing,
and also soil temperature and
water content affect occa-
GUEST
VIEW
Drew
Lyon
sional tillage performance.”
While they stated that
more research is needed to
better target and optimize
occasional tillage options,
they found that “occasional
tillage one in 5-10 years has
limited or no effects on soil
ecosystem services while
reducing compaction and
stratification, and aiding
weed control as part of inte-
grated weed management.”
When I was at the Univer-
sity of Nebraska-Lincoln, I
had the opportunity to work
with Dr. John Doran, USDA-
ARS, who is considered by
many to be the father of “soil
health.” He was among the
first soil scientists to try and
quantify soil health. We col-
laborated on a study to look
at occasional tillage effects
on downy brome control
and soil quality in a win-
ter wheat-fallow rotation.
He told me that soil that is
healthy will quickly recover
from an occasional tillage
operation, but soil that is
in poor health, possibly as
the result of frequent till-
age, will struggle to recover
from the damage caused by
additional tillage.
While every situation
is different, I believe that
occasional tillage in an oth-
erwise no-till system can be
an effective tool in the man-
agement of herbicide-re-
sistant weeds. What type
of tillage, and when and
how frequently to use it, are
questions that still need to
be answered. The answers
probably vary widely by
cropping system, soil type,
and location.
Growers who till fre-
quently can also improve
their weed management by
introducing a year or two of
no-till into their cropping
systems. The weed species
that thrive in tilled systems
(annual broadleaf weeds)
are often different than the
weed species that thrive
in no-till systems (annual
grass weeds and perennial
weeds). By occasionally
changing tillage practices,
you can keep any one weed
species or biotype from
dominating and creating
problems for your farming
operation.
Tillage is only one
aspect of an integrated weed
management system, but its
occasional use for specific
weed management objec-
tives can be helpful.
Drew Lyon is the
endowed chair in small
grains extension and
research for weed sci-
ence at Washington State
University.