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Friday, July 9, 2021
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Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
A BLM nominee with ties to ecoterrorists
W
e add our voice to those
who believe an enemy
of livestock grazing with
ties to ecoterrorists shouldn’t lead
the Bureau of Land Management.
Tracy Stone-Manning has been
nominated by President Joe Biden.
The agency has a huge footprint
in the West. It manages 247 million
acres of federal public land, includ-
ing 155 million acres used for live-
stock grazing. BLM oversees 18,000
separate grazing permits.
Stone-Manning has standard bona
fides that set the hearts of environ-
mental activists aflutter. She spent
nearly four years with the National
Wildlife Federation, serving as an
associate vice president and a senior
policy adviser. She served as director
of the Montana Department of Envi-
ronmental Quality. She led the Clark
Fork Coalition, a conservation group
dedicated to preserving the Clark
Fork River Basin.
She is no fan of live-
stock grazing on public
lands.
In 1992 she wrote in
her master’s thesis at
the University of Mon-
Tracy
tana, “Into the heart of
Stone-
the beast: A case for
Manning
environmental advertis-
ing,” that livestock grazing on public
land “is destroying the West.”
In a series of mock magazine
advertisements, she made the case
against a variety of things that she
contends hurt the environment,
including livestock grazing.
“It is overgrazed. Most likely, the
grasses won’t grow back, because
the topsoil took flight,” she wrote.
“Worse still, the government encour-
ages this destruction. It charges
ranchers under $2 a month to graze
each cow and its calf on public land
— your land.”
Pretty standard piffle for environ-
mental activists. But, it appears she
may have taken a more active role in
radical environmentalism.
In 1989 she typed and mailed a
letter for a former roommate, John
P. Blount, anonymously warning the
U.S. Forest Service that 500 pounds
of spikes had been driven into trees
in a swath of Idaho’s Clearwater
National Forest set for harvest.
Blount later served 17 months in
prison in connection to the spiking
incident.
There is no evidence that
Stone-Manning participated directly
in driving the spikes. She main-
tains that she was never under crim-
inal investigation. She was offered,
and accepted, immunity from pros-
ecution in 1993 in exchange for her
testimony.
She clearly had knowledge of the
incident, and was not immediately
forthcoming despite the danger the
spikes posed to loggers cutting the
trees. Anything for the cause.
According the Montana Stan-
Taking a stand for
property rights at
the Supreme Court
Our View
T
Associated Press File
America’s food system continues to be a point of pride for the nation.
Celebrating America’s
food system
D
uring the past two weeks Capital Press
reporter Sierra Dawn McClain took a
close look at how food gets from the
farm to the grocery store.
The food system she wrote about is as intri-
cate as a clockwork, but it works fabulously well.
Every day of every year, 331 million people
directly benefit from this system, which provides
them with a vast selection of food — and lots of
it — at affordable prices.
And it’s resilient.
Last year, when politicians closed restaurants,
schools, businesses and other public institutions
in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, the
food system was up to the challenge. Farmers,
ranchers, processors, distributors and retailers all
pivoted to make sure food was available. It was a
truly heroic effort.
Today, the nation is emerging from those
COVID-provoked shutdowns and every link in
the food chain is pivoting back to normalcy.
From time to time, some folks get together to
try to figure out how to improve the food system.
No doubt those discussions take place around
well-stocked lunch or dinner tables.
Those of us who have a little bit of gray hair
remember back to our childhood when the selec-
tion and quality of food, particularly produce,
was much more limited in the winter.
Today, it’s a different story. Whether they are
in a boutique organic store in Manhattan, a super-
store in Kansas or a regional supermarket chain
dard, Stone-Manning addressed the
incident in a state legislative hear-
ing when she was nominated to lead
the Montana Department of Environ-
mental Quality.
“I’m sure everyone in this room
regrets things they’ve done in their
early 20s, but we all accumulate les-
sons,” Stone-Manning said at the
time.
A youthful indiscretion? Hardly.
We agree with Bob Abbey, BLM’s
director during President Barack
Obama’s first term, who said her par-
ticipation in the plot disqualifies her
for the position.
“BLM needs a really strong
leader,” Abbey told the Daily Mon-
tanan. “To put someone in that posi-
tion that has this type of resume will
just bring needless controversy that
is not good for the agency or for the
public lands.”
in the Pacific Northwest, consumers will find that
the selection, freshness and affordability of pro-
duce and all other foods is astounding. In many
parts of the nation, consumers don’t even have to
go to the store. They can order their food online
and have it delivered to their house that day.
There are 40,544 grocery stores in the U.S.,
and all of them are well-stocked and afford-
able. They, and the rest of the food system, are a
uniquely American miracle.
Several decades ago, a delegation from Vlad-
ivostok in the old Soviet Union was visiting a
Fred Meyer store in Juneau, Alaska, as part of a
sister city exchange. As they toured the grocery
section, the Soviets shook their heads in disbelief.
Here, in the middle of the largest national for-
est, during winter, in a city with no roads to the
Lower 48 — or anywhere else, for that matter —
was a selection of produce that couldn’t be found
anywhere in the Soviet Union. Not only that, the
other three grocery stores in the city were equally
well-stocked.
That, quite simply, shows the difference
between capitalism and communism, between
what freedom produces and what servitude
produces.
America’s food system is worth celebrating. It
remains robust and continues to evolve over time
to meet consumers’ expectations to feed a hungry
nation — and a good part of the world.
From the farm and the ranch to the dinner
table, that celebration takes place three times a
day.
hursday, Oct. 29,
2015, began like any
other day at Cedar
Point Nursery, in Northern
California’s Butte Valley.
It was early and we were
operating at full capacity
when chaos erupted. Union
activists stormed our facil-
ity by surprise. Before the
day was over, we found
ourselves in a legal fight
for our company, our
employees, and our private
property rights. A fight that
the U.S. Supreme Court
settled last week.
My wife and I founded
Cedar Point Nursery in the
late 1990s. Today, we are
one of nine California nurs-
eries that supply “mother
plants” to fruit growers in
California. These custom-
ers then produce 85% of all
strawberry fruit consumed
in the United States.
Our employees are the
backbone of the company.
During the peak of our har-
vest season, Cedar Point
Nursery employs over 500
people, but our core team
is comprised of 45 individ-
uals and family members.
They round out the man-
agement team and have
been with CPN for 15 to
25 years. These are career
employees promoted from
within.
This is what the United
Farm Workers found that
morning in 2015 when its
union recruiters raided our
workplace, crashed our
trim sheds, and shouted
through bullhorns. The
UFW tried to convince
our employees to union-
ize. It failed. Although a
few employees were intim-
idated, the rest ignored the
union drama and returned
to work.
The raid on our com-
pany was a first in this part
of California. Most of us
have never seen a UFW
flag. However, we quickly
figured out that this inva-
sion threatened our ability
to deliver product on time.
We have a narrow six-
week window to harvest,
process, pack, cool and
deliver our plants. We must
work at peak efficiency to
meet commitments to our
customers.
Our staff rose to the
challenge, however.
Because of our staff’s hard
work and perseverance,
no customer’s order was
delayed that season.
When the dust set-
GUEST
VIEW
Mike
Fahner
tled, we were all in agree-
ment: what happened must
have been illegal. To our
shock, we learned that the
union trespassing on to
our property was allowed
under California law. If we
denied the union access,
we would be the ones
punished.
Under California’s union
access regulation, we had
to allow union organiz-
ers onto the property for
three hours per day for 120
days per year. California is
the only state in the union
with this access law, and it
applies only to those in the
business of agriculture.
Cedar Point Nursery
is our life’s work. For the
union to have the power to
put this at risk and threaten
our future is wrong.
So, in 2016, with help
from the Pacific Legal
Foundation and Sagaser,
Watkins & Wieland, we
sued to overturn Califor-
nia’s law.
We never imagined that
five years later, this lawsuit
would end up before the
highest court in the land,
but we are grateful that it
did. Allowing California’s
trespass regulation to stand
would have opened the
floodgates to any manner of
property invasions not just
in California, but anywhere
in the country.
This has been a long
journey, however, we
never wavered from our
belief that what we expe-
rienced five years ago was
wrong.
Last week, we received
the news the U.S. Supreme
Court affirmed our property
rights, ruling that the state
couldn’t force us to open
our property to union orga-
nizers without compensa-
tion. The decision means
that everyone can enjoy
the freedom to decide for
themselves who is and isn’t
welcome on their prop-
erty. That’s a victory for
everyone.
Mike Fahner is the
owner and president of
Cedar Point Nursery in
Siskiyou County, Calif. His
company is the lead plain-
tiff in Cedar Point Nursery
v. Hassid.