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Friday, May 21, 2021
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Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
Saving the world one meal at a time
I
t is in a farmer’s DNA to grow
crops, to bring forth new life
from the soil. They include
everything from the golden waves
of grain rolling across the plains, to
the billowing clouds of blossoming
fruit trees urged on by battalions
of pollinators, to the hundreds of
other crops that burst forth from the
land each year in what can only be
described as the miracle of life.
That is what agriculture is.
But another part of a farmer’s
genetic code includes a mission: To
feed people. In the U.S., Europe,
China, India — and thousands of
other places you would struggle to
find on a map — all people depend
on farmers. Every one of them.
Whether it’s their own patch of land
or a large-scale farm in the Ukraine,
U.S. or Brazil, the goal remains sin-
to scare people and sell magazines,
gular — feeding people.
books and points of view.
You may not have heard of
Borlaugh proved them all
the World Food Prize Founda-
wrong. He developed hybrids
tion, but in a very real sense it
of wheat and other food crops
is one of the reasons you were
that multiplied their yields. The
able to eat today. The founder
result was the Green Revolu-
tion, a renaissance of agricul-
of the Food Prize, Norman
tural productivity that contin-
Borlaugh, is a legend in agri-
Shakuntala
culture. For decades he worked Haraksingh ues today.
For his efforts, Borlaugh
in the laboratories and fields
Thilsted
received the 1970 Nobel Peace
of Mexico and other countries.
Prize.
His goal: feeding people.
Over time, the population bomb
In the 1960s, chatter among those
fizzled. The impossible has been
“in the know” was the world popula-
tion was growing so fast and so large
made possible. The planet’s 3 bil-
lion people in 1960 not only survived
that within a few years it would be
but thrived. Today, the population is
impossible to feed everyone. It was
nearly 8 billion.
described as a population “bomb”
Each year the Food Prize Foun-
and was one of a procession of sky-
dation honors a leading scientist or
is-falling scenarios that the popu-
lar media latch onto occasionally
other person who has increased the
Simpson dam proposal
smart and strategic
Our View
T
Ryan Brennecke/EO Media Group
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have loosened COVID-19 regulations ahead of Washington and
Oregon officials.
Will state regulators get
behind the CDC?
I
t took almost 14 months, but Oregon Gov.
Kate Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee
have finally set an objective standard for re-
turning their states to some level of pre-COVID
normalcy.
Then the Centers for Disease Control and Pre-
vention pulled the rug out from under them. Will
state regulators follow suit?
Last week Brown announced that once 70%
of eligible Oregonians were fully vaccinated she
would lift “most” of the restrictions that have
been in place over these many months.
The CDC considers a person fully vaccinated
two weeks after receiving the final dose of the
course they’ve chosen.
Brown said her actions were possible because
data showing the most recent spike in cases over
the past month has begun to fade. Brown said she
was confident the statewide vaccination goal to
reopen the entire state by mid-June was in reach
if residents stepped up to get vaccinated and help
others get their shots, too.
A few days later, Inslee followed suit, saying
most restrictions would be lifted by June 30, or
sooner if the 70% vaccination rate were met.
But also that day the CDC advised that fully
vaccinated people can resume prepandemic activ-
ities without a mask or socially distancing if
allowed to by state laws. Though not a full-scale
retraction of COVID restrictions, the new guid-
ance put a big hole in the justification of many
state regulations.
So, both Brown and Inslee announced that
their states would immediately follow the CDC
quantity, quality or availability of
food.
This year, the Food Prize went
to Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted.
As a researcher in Bangladesh, she
led the way in developing the farm-
ing of nutrient-rich small fish to feed
mothers and young children. Ponds
became fish farms producing tons of
nutrient-rich foods that filled the void
left by shortages of other foods.
She has demonstrated in a very
real way the proverb: “Give a man a
fish and you feed him for a day; teach
a man to fish (and to raise fish) and
you feed him for a lifetime.”
That is the legacy of the new-
est World Food prize recipient. Hun-
dreds of millions of people around
the globe will eat today as a direct
result of her work.
mask guidance. But each warned that it might be
days, if not longer, before state agencies could,
or would, alter their workplace rules to reflect the
newly acknowledged science that the vaccines
work.
Last March, Inslee and Brown were able to
shut down businesses, school districts, colleges
and cultural and religious institutions by fiat. But,
even the chief executives are powerless to dictate
terms to their bureaucracies. Perhaps that’s really
not surprising.
The bureaucracy has its timetable, the pub-
lic has another. Our initial observations show that
many businesses and their patrons are moving
forward without official sanction, relaxing their
guidelines or eliminating them altogether.
The actual authority of the bureaucracy, how-
ever, remains intact. Producers, processors and
businesses disregard official regulations at their
peril.
The vaccines work. They protect the fully vac-
cinated from getting seriously ill, and in most
cases from getting sick at all, according to the
CDC. They may prevent the vaccinated from
spreading the virus to the nonvaccinated.
Vaccinations are universally available through-
out Oregon and Washington. A relative few peo-
ple should not receive one because of preexisting
medical conditions. Others freely reject getting
vaccinated, also at their peril.
The regulators have said that they would relax
restrictions as the science and data permit. Now
it’s time to put that promise into action. A more
realistic set of regulations is needed.
he Simpson Plan does
everything the Ag and
Rural Caucus asked
for: 1) puts up dollars up
front to mitigate all foresee-
able costs on eastern Wash-
ington residents, 2) pro-
vides time to make good on
the mitigation guarantees,
and 3) seals off the main-
stem of the Columbia from
discussion.
Fish advocates get the
dams breached. Farmers
are guaranteed grain trans-
portation at the same cost
as using barges. Ports are
bought out of stranded
assets. Power supply is
assured.
What’s not to like? Well,
fish advocates are upset
by the Plan’s moratorium
on litigation. They are cor-
rect. The Plan reaches too
far. So, fix it. The economic
stakeholders do not believe
the guarantees. So, work
at making the guarantees
iron-clad.
It is now time to talk and
deal.
And it is time to lead, and
remember not everyone has
been heard. I was talking
to folks in Pomeroy the
other day and asked them
what they thought about the
Simpson Plan. They wanted
to talk. Even when I thought
I had anticipated their ques-
tions, they returned to say-
ing what was on their minds.
This conversation is going to
take time. We need to start,
now. People on Main Street
need to catch up and we —
advocates of dam breaching
and proponents of the dams
alike — need to engage
them in constructive con-
versation. We do not need
to reinforce their bias. We
do need to sketch out paths
forward.
And we need to be hon-
est with people. Breaching
dams may not restore the
salmon runs. We are grasp-
ing for something to do. Fish
passage is not the question it
was even five years ago. The
Corps has done everything
we have asked to maximize
survivability of smolt going
downriver. Increased spill,
yes. By-pass structures, yes.
Releases from Dworshak
to cool the pools, yes. We
now critique the increased
time for smolt from Idaho
to transit the slack pools to
the Columbia bar. Upstream
passage has not been an
issue for years. Fish lad-
ders work predictably for
adult salmon. There just are
not enough salmon return-
ing. We ratepayers via the
Bonneville Power Admin-
istration have spent billions
restoring habitat. We thought
it was effective but appar-
ently not effective enough.
Breaching the dams is
a little like looking under
the street lamp for your
lost keys. We can do some-
thing about the dams. We
GUEST
VIEW
Don
Schwerin
cannot do much about cli-
mate change and its effect
on ocean conditions for the
salmon. The Gulf of Alaska
is getting warmer and more
acidic as its surface waters
absorb excess carbon diox-
ide. Salmon runs up and
down the coast are stressed
regardless of whether they
are dammed. The Snake run
happens to be among the
most stressed.
Being honest means
acknowledging that remov-
ing the dams is not sufficient
to restore the salmon. Being
honest also means that we
are not quite sure why dam
removal is necessary but it is
what we can do.
Why disable perfectly
good dams? Good ques-
tion, but the wrong one.
The question is that when
the courts remove the dams
— because the salmon are
listed under Endangered
Species Act and are not sur-
viving — what will we
have? No one will stand
in line to bail us out. We
will not have a function-
ing alternative to barging.
Power security may be iffy.
The Port of Lewiston walks
away from its seaport invest-
ment. Ice Harbor irrigators
look to the banks to finance
reconfiguring their intakes.
This is what the Berk Con-
sulting group this week
called the “Litigation Risk:
dam removal without com-
mensurate investment.”
The same scenario plays
out if shifting political
winds beat the courts to it.
We came close to political
preemption when the sur-
vival of the orcas was laid
on removal of the Lower
Snake River dams. Will the
next generation of state-
wide political leaders show
the same deference to local
sentiment? The future of the
Lower Snake River dams
rides more on the impatience
of Puget Sound voters than
on the stubbornness of east-
ern Washington politicians.
The logic of the Simpson
Plan is to take the cost out
of losing the dams. The Plan
is not calling for our hearts
and souls. It is a cool-headed
proposal to use federal dol-
lars to fund a smart strate-
gic plan.
Don Schwerin chairs the
Ag and Rural Caucus of the
Washington State Demo-
cratic Party. The ARC’s mis-
sion is education and advo-
cacy. The views presented
here are his, not necessar-
ily of the Democratic Party.
He lives in the Blue Moun-
tains outside Walla Walla on
his continuous crop, dryland
farm.