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CapitalPress.com
Friday, June 4, 2021
People & Places
Growing hemp with a purpose
Lazarus Naturals
earns B Corp. status
Established 1928
Capital Press Managers
Joe Beach ..................... Editor & Publisher
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
POWELL BUTTE, Ore.
— Planting season is under-
way at Lazarus Naturals’
80-acre hemp farm in the high
desert community of Powell
Butte, Ore.
During the next five weeks,
workers at the farm will trans-
plant thousands of tiny hemp
plants from the greenhouse to
the field where they will grow
from a few inches to 4-6 feet
tall.
Cannabidiol, or CBD,
will be extracted from the
hemp on site and will be used
to make wellness products
including tinctures, balms and
lotions.
Lazarus Naturals bought
the property, a former cat-
tle ranch, in 2018 before the
passage of the Farm Bill that
legalized hemp as an agricul-
tural commodity. By 2022,
the farm will complete its
three-year transition to be cer-
tified organic.
Organic farming is one ele-
ment of the company’s recent
certification as a B Corpora-
tion, dedicated to social wel-
fare and public transparency
as part of its business model.
“Even though we are in
the unregulated CBD indus-
try, we continue to set a new
standard for conscientious
and ethical business practices
and use business as a force for
good,” said Sequoia Price-
Lazarus, founder and CEO of
Lazarus Naturals.
Founded in 2014, Lazarus
Naturals’ corporate head-
quarters are in Seattle, and
the company manufactures
its products in Portland. In
an effort to become verti-
Anne Long ................. Advertising Director
Western
Innovator
LAZARUS FARMS
Established: 2018.
Samantha McLaren ....Circulation Manager
Entire contents copyright © 2021
EO Media Group
dba Capital Press
Operator: Zack Troyer, farm
manager and agronomist.
An independent newspaper
Location: Powell Butte, Ore.
published every Friday.
Size: 80 acres.
Crops: Organic hemp grown for
CBD extraction.
Products: CBD-infused
tinctures, topical formulations,
edibles and pet treats.
George Plaven/Capital Press
Zack Troyer, farm manager and agronomist for Lazarus Naturals, inspects tiny hemp
starts ready for planting at the company’s 80-acre farm in Powell Butte, Ore.
cally integrated, the company
started its own farming opera-
tion in an isolated area of Cen-
tral Oregon, growing the hemp
it needs to produce CBD oil.
Rhonda Ahern, manager of
farm administration, said the
early days were marked by
trial and error. The first crop
was entirely hand-harvested
and hang-dried from the raf-
ters of an old horse arena sev-
eral miles away.
“It was definitely a startup
environment to begin with,”
Ahern said. “We did basically
everything by hand.”
Today, the company grows
a total of 350 acres of hemp
— including leased farmland
— and cultivation is done
by machine. Once harvested,
the hemp is sent to the farm’s
on-site CBD extraction facil-
ity. The oil is then delivered
to Portland, where it goes into
Lazarus Naturals’ lines of top-
ical formulations, edibles and
pet food.
“I think every person here
is so passionate about what
they do,” Ahern said.
Heading into their fourth
year, Zack Troyer, farm man-
ager and agronomist, said
they are constantly exper-
imenting with ways to
increase yield, quality and
efficiency.
Growing up on a conven-
tional potato farm in Penn-
sylvania, Troyer said he
became sick of dealing with
potentially harmful pesti-
cides. Organic farming is
something he feels strongly
about, from both a health and
sustainability perspective.
”One of the worst parts is
having employees, your land,
the water resources and all of
that exposed,” Troyer said.
Organic farming is not
new to hemp. Oregon Tilth,
a nonprofit based in Corval-
lis that certifies organic farms
in 49 states, has certified 143
hemp farms, including 77 in
Oregon.
Instead of using tradi-
tional herbicides, Troyer said
the farm uses plastic mulch
to control weeds. Instead
of chemical fertilizers, the
farm uses a combination of
chicken and steer manure,
along with growing cover
crops such as hairy vetch,
oats and triticale.
Eventually, the farm plans
to recycle spent hemp bio-
mass after CBD extraction
to apply back in the
field.
”The hope is that soon
here, we’ll be able to reuse
that biomass to recycle most
of our nutrients,” Troyer said.
“It’s going to be a little bit of
a closed loop.”
By using sub-surface drip
irrigation and soil moisture
sensors, Troyer said they can
avoid wasting water, espe-
cially in a year like this when
the Upper Deschutes Basin
is experiencing severe to
extreme drought.
Despite the worsen-
ing drought, Troyer said he
ODFW if they find anything
suspicious.
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
Tracking zebra mussels
wikipedia
A Cuban tree frog.
Cuban tree frogs are native
to Cuba, the Bahamas and
the Cayman Islands, but have
established a few highly inva-
sive populations in places like
Florida, Hawaii and the Carib-
bean Islands, where they out-
compete native frogs and
amphibians for space and
food.
Boatner said the frogs are
small, just 2-3 inches in length,
which makes them hard to
detect in plants. They are sim-
ilar in appearance to Oregon’s
native tree frogs, or peepers.
While it is not certain
whether Cuban tree frogs can
survive and become estab-
lished in Oregon’s climate,
Boatner said the department
doesn’t want to take chances.
“We’re being cautious,” he
said. “If you do find one, call
us and let us know. We don’t
want them out in the wild.”
Boatner urged nursery
retailers and consumers to
thoroughly inspect plants for
invasive hitchhikers, and call
Earlier this year, ODFW
also discovered invasive zebra
mussels in imported “Betta
Buddy Marimo Ball” moss
plants sold at pet stores in the
Salem and Ashland areas.
Though Oregon and the
Pacific Northwest are cur-
rently free of zebra mussels
in the wild, the species poses
a massive threat to agricul-
ture because they attach them-
selves on hard services in
waterways, which can cause
blockages of irrigation pumps
and headgates.
Zebra mussels cause an
estimated $1 billion per year
in damage and control costs
where they have become
established in the U.S.
Since reports of zebra
mussels in the moss balls sur-
faced in April, the Oregon
Department of Agriculture
issued a 180-day quarantine
on the product.
Moss balls may only
be imported into Oregon if
accompanied by a compliance
certificate stating the prod-
Capital Press (ISSN 0740-3704) is
published weekly by EO Media Group,
2870 Broadway NE, Salem OR 97303.
Periodicals postage paid at Portland, OR,
and at additional mailing offices.
expects a decent growing
season and harvest come fall.
“I think we should be
OK,” he said. “All of our
(plant) starts look really good
and healthy ... We were fortu-
nate to get enough water allo-
cated this year, too, for all of
our properties.”
Lazarus
Naturals
announced its B Corp. sta-
tus on April 12. The rigor-
ous assessment to obtain
certification not only takes
into account the company’s
record on environmental
stewardship, but also gover-
nance, employee welfare and
community service.
Troyer said the farm did
not have to change any of
its practices to qualify as a
B Corp. Becoming certified
organic will only help build
transparency and consumer
confidence, he said.
”It’s financially better for
us if we do that, and it’s also
the right thing to do for the
environment, for our people
and for the bottom line,” he
said.
Invasive tree frogs identified in plants shipped to Oregon
SALEM — Oregon wild-
life officials have identified
two non-native and poten-
tially invasive Cuban tree
frogs that apparently hitch-
hiked into the state on nurs-
ery plants.
Both reports came on the
same day, May 18, under
strangely different circum-
stances, said Rick Boatner,
invasive species supervisor
at the Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife.
One of the frogs was spot-
ted on a tropical plant shipped
from Florida to a Home Depot
store in the Eugene area, and
the other was found on a gar-
den croton plant that had been
purchased online through the
e-commerce site Etsy by a
customer near Corvallis.
“It’s rare, but not unusual,
for creatures to come in on
plants or in shipping contain-
ers,” Boatner said. “It’s criti-
cal to prevent non-native spe-
cies from entering Oregon
rather than try to deal with
them once they’ve become
established.”
Carl Sampson .................. Managing Editor
uct was inspected and free of
zebra mussels within seven
days of shipping. Moss balls
without the required proof of
inspection will be destroyed,
and violations may result in a
fine up to $10,000.
Boatner said ODFW will
be conducting environmental
DNA testing later this sum-
mer to track whether any
zebra mussels have made it
into the wild.
The agency is compiling
a list of between 70 and 100
aquarium dump sites around
the state — such as small city
ponds — and will begin test-
ing in July when the mussels’
spawning season begins.
”We’ve been identifying
those places so we can start
testing with the environmen-
tal DNA,” Boatner said. “It’s
kind of like an early warning
system.”
Boatner said officials must
ultimately decide how they
will handle the moss balls
beyond the temporary quaran-
tine, or whether they will ban
the product.
The
quarantine
was
announced April 19, meaning
it will expire Oct. 16.
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Plague of ravenous, destructive mice tormenting Australians
By ROD MCGUIRK
Associated Press
BOGAN GATE, Aus-
tralia — At night, the floors
of sheds vanish beneath car-
pets of scampering mice.
Ceilings come alive with the
sounds of scratching. One
family blamed mice chew-
ing electrical wires for their
house burning down.
Vast tracts of land in Aus-
tralia’s New South Wales
state are being threatened by
a mouse plague that the state
government describes as
“absolutely unprecedented.”
Just how many millions of
rodents have infested the
agricultural plains across the
state is guesswork.
“We’re at a critical point
now where if we don’t sig-
nificantly reduce the number
of mice that are in plague
proportions by spring, we
are facing an absolute eco-
nomic and social crisis in
rural and regional New
South Wales,” Agriculture
Minister Adam Marshall
said this month.
Bruce Barnes said he is
taking a gamble by planting
crops on his family farm
near the central New South
Wales town of Bogan Gate.
“We just sow and hope,”
he said.
The risk is that the mice
will maintain their num-
bers through the South-
ern Hemisphere winter and
devour the wheat, barley
and canola before it can be
harvested.
NSW Farmers, the state’s
top agricultural association,
predicts the plague will
wipe more than 1 billion
Australian dollars ($775
million) from the value of
the winter crop.
The state government has
ordered 5,000 liters (1,320
gallons) of the banned poi-
son Bromadiolone from
India. The federal govern-
ment regulator has yet to
approve emergency appli-
cations to use the poison
on the perimeters of crops.
Critics fear the poison will
kill not only mice but also
animals that feed on them.
including wedge-tail eagles
and family pets.
“We’re having to go
down this path because
we need something that is
super strength, the equiva-
lent of napalm to just blast
these mice into oblivion,”
Marshall said.
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Submit upcoming ag-related
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WEDNESDAY-FRIDAY
JUNE 9-11
World Pork Expo: Iowa State
Fairgrounds, Des Moines. The
world’s largest pork industry-spe-
cific trade show brings together
pork producers and industry profes-
sionals from around the world for
three days of education, innovation
and networking. Website: https://
worldpork.org/
THURSDAY-SATURDAY
JUNE 24-26
United Fresh Convention
and Expo (in person and online):
Los Angeles Convention Center.
Whether online or in person, United
Fresh is your partner connecting
the global fresh produce industry.
Sponsored by the United Fresh Pro-
duce Association and the Fresh Pro-
duce and Floral Council. Website:
https://www.unitedfresh.org/unit-
ed-fresh-convention-expo-2021/#
MONDAY-TUESDAY
JUNE 28-29
Idaho Cattle Association Sum-
mer Round-Up: Stagecoach Inn,
Salmon, Idaho. The conference will
include updates from the National
Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Idaho
Beef Council, Idaho Department of
Opinion ...................................................6
Agriculture and Idaho Departments
of Lands, as well as market updates.
An optional rafting trip is planned
for June 27. Website: www.idaho-
cattle.org
WEDNESDAY-THURSDAY
JUNE 30-JULY 1
Western Governors’ Associ-
ation 2021 Annual Meeting (vir-
tual): The event will feature gover-
nors in roundtable discussions on
topics such as energy response, pub-
lic lands challenges, shared steward-
ship, infrastructure and workforce.
Website: www.westgov.org
TUESDAY-THURSDAY
AUG. 10-12
2021 Cattle Industry Conven-
tion & Trade Show: Gaylord Opry-
land Resort, Nashville, Tenn. The
convention will include educational
seminars, exhibits and network-
ing. Website: http://convention.
ncba.org
Correction policy
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staff and to our readers.
If you see a misstatement, omission or
factual error in a headline, story or photo
caption, please call the Capital Press news
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