INSIDE
EMPOWERING PRODUCERS OF FOOD & FIBER
Friday, May 7, 2021
Volume 94, Number 19
CapitalPress.com
$2.00
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
Martin and Joy Dally pet a Valais Blacknose lamb. The Dallys estimate this little ram will sell for $15,000 to $20,000.
Trailblazing sheep breeders improve
U.S. industry through imported genetics
By SIERRA DAWN McCLAIN
Capital Press
L
EBANON, Ore. — A group of lambs
bounded forward, leaping across pasture and
irrigation pipes. Nearby, border collie pup-
pies yapped and a peacock rustled his fan.
Joy Dally, 62, scooped up a little ram. Her
husband, Martin, 74, ruffl ed its chin.
This little guy, one of the fi rst purebred Valais Blac-
knose lambs born in the U.S., will fetch $15,000 to
$20,000.
The Valais Blacknose is a heritage breed native to
the Swiss Alps. The lambs, with their small black faces,
ears, boots and kneecaps contrasted against white-
wooled bodies, look like stuff ed animals that belong in
a toy store window.
“People say they can’t exist, they must be Photo-
shopped,” said Joy Dally.
The Dallys were the fi rst to import Valais Blacknose
genetics into the U.S. But the novelty importation is just
their latest genetic venture.
Martin Dally was one of America’s earliest pio-
neers of laparoscopic artifi cial insemination, or LAI,
in sheep. He and Joy have helped improve genetics in
American fi ber, meat, dairy and heritage sheep sec-
tors. The couple has selected, purchased and imported
genetics for 29 breeds, and on behalf of clients,
imported 13 others.
“You fi nd me somebody that knows more about the
sheep industry than Martin and Joy, I’d like to meet
them,” said Hank Vogler, a Nevada sheep rancher who
runs about 10,000 Merinos. “They’re like the walking
encyclopedia of sheep genetics.”
As the Dallys grow older, they’re traveling less for
AI work and doing fewer importations, focusing instead
on Valais Blacknose and their wool business. When the
Dallys eventually retire, breeders say they wonder who
will fi ll the gap.
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
See Sheep, Page 12
Hemp prices ‘race to the bottom,’
souring grower enthusiasm
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Stockpiles of unsold
hemp are weighing down
prices for the crop and sour-
ing enthusiasm among farm-
ers who’d until recently
hoped for a lucrative new
market.
In a dynamic that’s not
uncommon in agriculture,
hemp production has over-
shot demand, which was
once thought to be expan-
sive, said Barry Cook, a
hemp seed grower in Bor-
ing, Ore.
“The consumer compo-
nent of it was assumed, a
bit like the Field of Dreams:
Grow it and you will sell it,”
he said.
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
That assumption turned
out to be overly optimistic, Hemp plants dry after harvest. A surplus of hemp has
as some growers are still sit- driven down prices and reduced acreage of the crop.
ting on dried hemp inven-
tory from 2019, when the in the hemp industry, acre- enough harvesting and pro-
fervor to plant the crop was age soared after the crop cessing equipment.
at its highest, Cook said.
was legalized at the national
Oregon’s production in
Farmers are now being level in 2018. Growers 2020 dropped to 28,500
off ered $1 per pound or planted nearly 64,000 acres acres and appears to be fur-
less for dry hemp biomass, in 2019, up from 11,500 ther declining in 2021, with
which is roughly half as acres the year before.
only 3,800 acres currently
much as it costs to produce
The economic problems registered for planting —
it, even among the most effi - facing hemp production down roughly 50% from
cient growers, he said. “It became widely apparent that this time last year, according
just doesn’t work.”
autumn, when many farm-
See Hemp, Page 13
In Oregon, a frontrunner ers weren’t able to access
A Valais Blacknose lamb.
Appeals court: Declare
chlorpyrifos safe or ban it
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
An appeals court panel
April 29 ordered the Envi-
ronmental
Protection
Agency to ban chlorpyrifos
on all food crops within 60
days, unless the agency can
defi nitively declare the resi-
due left on food is safe.
The 2-1 ruling by the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals “virtually guaran-
tees” the EPA will revoke
chlorpyrifos tolerances on
food, according to the dis-
senting judge, Jay Bybee.
He said his colleagues
overreached, substituting its
opinion for the EPA’s and
moving to ban one of agri-
culture’s more important
pesticides.
An EPA spokesman said
the agency was reviewing
the ruling.
“The agency is commit-
ted to helping support and
protect farmworkers and
their families while ensuring
pesticides are used safely
among the nation’s agricul-
ture,” the agency said in a
statement. “EPA will con-
tinue to use sound science in
the decision-making process
under the Federal Insecti-
cide, Fungicide and Roden-
ticide Act.”
The ruling’s roots go
back to a petition two
anti-pesticide groups fi led in
2007. The petition claimed
chlorpyrifos was unsafe for
infants and children. The
petition started a long-run-
ning dispute that has now
involved the Obama, Trump
and Biden administrations.
The Obama adminis-
tration tentatively pro-
posed banning chlorpyrifos
in 2015, but resisted court
orders to make a fi nal deci-
sion until the Trump admin-
istration was in charge.
The Trump administration
See Chlorpyrifos, Page 13
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