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CapitalPress.com
Friday, July 23, 2021
Wheat industry watches EU glyphosate renewal
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
The agriculture industry is
watching the European Union
to determine the fate of gly-
phosate as a tool for farmers.
Glyphosate, known by
the trade name Roundup, has
been used as an herbicide for
40 years to rid farm fi elds of
weeds. More recently, it has
also been used in conjunc-
tion with a handful of genet-
ically modifi ed “Roundup
Ready” crops that are resis-
tant to it. This allows farmers
to kill weeds without killing
the crops.
Use of the chemical will
be up for renewal in the EU in
the next few years.
M a n y
food compa-
nies will fol-
low the EU,
said Dalton
Henry, vice
president of
Dalton
policy
for
Henry
U.S. Wheat
Associates,
the overseas marketing arm of
the industry. They want to be
able to export fi nished prod-
ucts to those countries.
The EU would need to
consider an import tolerance,
allowing for a small amount
of residue, under World Trade
Organization rules.
“They can’t just ban it
because they don’t like it,
they’re going to have to pro-
vide sound science as to why
that action would need to be
taken,” Henry said.
Chemical weed control,
especially the use of gly-
phosate, is critical to mini-
mum-tillage or no-till wheat
farming and is used to kill
weeds or cover crops. No
glyphosate-resistant wheat is
commercially available.
U.S. Wheat advocates
for the safety and benefi ts of
allowing farmers to use the
chemicals, he said.
Henry spoke July 14 in an
online presentation hosted by
the Idaho Wheat Commis-
sion and Oregon Wheat Com-
mission. The topic was tariff
and non-tariff trade barriers,
which impact farmers’ ability
Yogurt rule not up to speed
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
Four decades after it
fi rst began, the federal
Food and Drug Adminis-
tration has issued its fi nal
rule to modernize the stan-
dard of identity for yogurt,
and the International Dairy
Foods Association is not
impressed.
The agency’s drawn-
out process of rulemaking
and scant consultation with
industry has resulted in a
rule that doesn’t refl ect cur-
rent manufacturing practices
or consumer preferences, the
IDFA said. The association
has fi led a formal objection.
FDA has consulted very
little with yogurt mak-
ers and has largely ignored
IDFA’s comments and sug-
gested revisions, said Joseph
Scimeca, the association’s
senior vice president of reg-
ulatory and scientifi c aff airs.
“The result is a yogurt
standard that is woefully
behind the times and doesn’t
match the reality of today’s
food processing environ-
ment or the expectations of
consumers,” he said.
IDFA is pleased the
Wikipedia
New Food and Drug Ad-
ministration yogurt rule
leaves industry cold.
agency fi nally put out a
fi nal rule but has some seri-
ous concerns, said Michael
Dykes, president and CEO
of the association.
Updates to the fi nal rule
have been pending since
1982 when, in response to
objections, FDA stayed sev-
eral major provisions of
its 1981 fi nal rule that fi rst
established standards for
yogurt.
Dairy food makers began
petitioning FDA to update
the standard in 2000.
Finalizing the rule has
been a priority for FDA, and
IDFA has submitted com-
ments and off ered revisions
and technical assistance. It
has also continued to request
updates on the status of the
fi nal rule and has stressed
the importance of modern-
izing and fi nalizing the stan-
dard in a timely manner.
“The FDA is broken. The
process needs to be more
transparent and more timely.
Four decades is just too
long,” Dykes said.
The rule is out, but unfor-
tunately it refl ects comments
that are 12 years old —
when FDA proposed a rule
but never fi nalized it — and
doesn’t refl ect current indus-
try practices, he said.
“Science and technology
and consumer preferences
have changed signifi cantly
in 40 years,” Dykes said.
The industry could have
shared how things have
changed with FDA, but 40
years of non-transparency
on the part of the agency
doesn’t lend itself to such
discussions, he said.
One concern is a require-
ment that yogurt must reach
a pH of 4.6 before fruit is
added. But that’s not how
the industry has been mak-
ing cup-set yogurt. Ingre-
dients are put in the cup
together and fermented in
the cup, rather than fer-
mented in a vat, he said.
As Interim Dean for the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural
Resource Sciences at WSU, I am privileged to see on a daily basis
how diverse groups of people can work together toward a common
goal and overcome obstacles both great and small.
On June 27, when a wildfire broke out east of Lind and about a half-
mile away from WSU’s Lind Dryland Research Station, fears abound-
ed that the devastation of this fire could be catastrophic to the commu-
nity of Lind, and to the research station.
But thanks to the rapid response to the Lind Fire Department who
arrived first on the scene, and the network of other firefighters who
quickly arrived from Ritzville, Odessa, Washtucna, Connell, Ephrata,
and Moses Lake, along with several area farmers who deployed their
own water trucks to the fire, the damage was drastically limited and
the fire extinguished. That these brave individuals faced such a com-
plex and fast-moving fire is heroic on its own merits. That they fought
this blaze on a day when the temperature soared to 105 F makes their
efforts all the more extraordinary.
For their selflessness, courage, and devotion to their communities,
I want to offer my heartfelt thanks and deepest gratitude to the men
and women who came together to help their neighbors in their hour of
need.
As we take stock of this event, I look forward to renewed collabo-
rations with farmers, industry leaders, elected officials, experts, and
community members in addressing the ongoing threat wildfire pres-
ents, and leveraging critical resources that will help us better under-
stand, mitigate, and prevent wildfires in the future.
Again, I want to offer my heartiest thanks and gratitude.
Sincerely,
Richard T. Koenig
College of Agricultural, Human,
and Natural Resource Sciences
Washington State University
S253752-1
to get their wheat to custom-
ers around the world.
Retaliatory tariff s make
the
headlines,
Henry
said. Tariff s are govern-
ment-to-government matters,
and the industry asks U.S.
farmers and overseas cus-
tomers to lobby their respec-
tive governments.
Non-tariff barriers require
a whole-industry approach,
Henry said. They include
pesticide maximum residue
limits called MRLs, weed
seeds, smuts or spores and
mycotoxins.
Wheat is shipped in
50,000-60,000 ton vessels.
Individual farmers are a small
part of that, but if a chemical
is ever misused or misapplied,
it can create problems, Henry
said.
“Making sure we’re stay-
ing within label instructions is
particularly key,” he said.
The industry relies on sci-
ence indicating expected res-
idues down the line when
applied according to label
rates.
“If we go to argue with
other countries about where
an MRL may be too restric-
tive, that’s the science we
have to point to,” Henry said.
While it’s never been easy
to ship wheat overseas, Henry
doesn’t believe it’s going to
get “dramatically” harder
either, pointing to projections
for global population growth.
“It’s still a hungry world,”
he said. “Many of our cus-
tomers are still countries
where ‘calories’ is the largest
demand beyond anything.”
The biggest trade barrier
growers face is lack of under-
standing of science among
consuming populations and
importing agencies, he said.
“At some point, we’re
going to have to square all
of the things consumers are
demanding from U.S. grow-
ers and corporate food com-
panies with the reality of how
products are traded and han-
dled,” he said. “If you want to
make demands about sustain-
ability of production, you’ve
got to allow farmers access to
the best technology that’s out
there.”
House amendment aims
at year-round labor access
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
The House Appropriations
Committee has approved an
amendment to the FY 2022
Homeland Security Appro-
priations Act that would
allow agricultural employers
with year-round labor needs
to access the H-2A program
in fi scal year 2022.
The amendment was
introduced by Reps. Henry
Cuellar, D-Texas, and Dan
Newhouse, R-Wash.
“Our farmers and ranch-
ers remain in desperate need
of a legal and reliable work-
force,” Newhouse told the
committee.
Americans do not want
these jobs, and farmers must
turn to the H-2A program, he
said.
“Unfortunately, the pro-
gram does not work for all of
agriculture, such as the dairy
industry or the greenhouse
industry or operations with
multiple crops with harvest
times that overlap requiring
year-round labor,” he said.
The H-2A temporary
visa program is limited to
temporary and seasonal
labor needs and does not
provide for year-round labor
needs.
“This amendment, while
U.S. Capitol
only a few lines on a piece of
paper ... would provide crit-
ical relief to the entire agri-
cultural industry,” he said.
The amendment won’t
change the time limits on
how long H-2A guestwork-
ers can stay in the country or
the requirement that farmers
need to show they fi rst tried
to hire American workers, he
said.
“It would simply ensure
that all of agriculture can uti-
lize the H-2A program. It
supports legal immigration,”
he said.
The amendment allows
agricultural employers to
use H-2A regardless of
whether the work is tem-
porary or seasonal, said
Claudia Larson, senior
director of government
regulations for National
Milk Producers Federation.
That’s really useful to
the dairy industry and other
year-round industries that
are not allowed to access
H-2A workers, she said.
While the amendment
just pertains to fi scal year
2022, the eff ects of this
amendment go beyond that
to the broader immigration
conversation, she said.
It is a short-term fi x, but
it adds momentum to the
ongoing bipartisan eff ort to
fi nd a long-term legislative
solution to the agricultural
labor crisis, she said.
The dairy industry is
awaiting a companion bill
in the Senate that improves
upon the Farm Workforce
Modernization Act that was
passed in the House, she
said.
Washington’s raspberry
industry gets report to mull
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
The Washington Red
Raspberry Commission will
study a 314-page federal
report, looking for grounds
to pursue a trade complaint.
The recently published
report by the U.S. Interna-
tional Trade Commission
repeats fi gures, estimates
and comments gathered
during a year-long investiga-
tion into global red raspberry
production.
A surge in imported ber-
ries between 2010 and 2015
continues to lower sales for
Washington berry farmers,
the report acknowledges,
even though imports have
leveled off and declined
slightly since then.
However, the report
doesn’t outright answer the
raspberry
commission’s
main concern: Whether low-
er-grade Mexican raspber-
ries are being dumped into
the U.S. at below the cost of
production.
“I can’t say we accom-
plished that,” said Henry
Bierlink, executive director
the raspberry commission. “I
think we got at least a partial
answer.
“Certainly a number of
us are looking at it,” he said.
“What we do about it is the
next question.”
At the request of the
raspberry commission, the
Trump administration’s top
trade offi cial, Robert Ligh-
thizer, ordered the fact-fi nd-
ing investigation by the trade
commission, an independent
agency.
Whatcom County, Wash.,
farmers produce most of the
U.S. red raspberries that are
immediately frozen individu-
ally or in blocks.
Mexico’s raspberry indus-
Washington State University
The Washington Red Raspberry Commission will digest
a recently released report by the U.S. International Trade
Commission on global production and competition.
try focuses on fresh mar-
ket sales, but some berries,
known as “seconds,” are
sold to processors and com-
pete directly with Washing-
ton berries.
The trade commission
didn’t fi nd any evidence to
contradict testimony from
the Mexican raspberry indus-
try that “seconds” make up
only about 10% of Mexican
imports to the U.S.
The Washington raspberry
industry suspects that rising
imports of fresh Mexican ber-
ries means that more “sec-
onds” are being diverted to
processors at salvage prices.
One Mexican offi cial
testifi ed that fewer Mex-
ican berries were failing
to meet fresh-market stan-
dards because of improved
cultivars.
The trade commission
said that incomplete trade
data “confounded” investi-
gators, who were unable to
determine whether the vol-
ume of Mexican “seconds”
was rising or falling.
The Offi ce of the U.S.
Trade Representative did
not respond to a request for
comment.
Washington’s red rasp-
berry industry warns that
declining prices will lead to
fewer acres planted and fewer
domestic farmers.
Mexican red raspberry
production nearly doubled
between 2015 and 2019,
driven primarily by the
lucrative U.S. fresh market,
according to the trade com-
mission’s report.
Mexican farmers grow
berries year-round in hoop
houses. The berries are hand-
picked by workers who make
an average of $1.29 an hour,
according to the report.
Washington farmers are
vulnerable to bad weather and
machine pick. The workers
earn, on average, $14.49 an
hour, according to the report.
The report also examined
imports from other countries.
Imports from Canada, Ser-
bia and Mexico increased by
40.5% in the past half dozen
years, but Chile pulled back,
pushing overall imports down
6%.
Between 2015 and 2020,
Washington farmers sold
roughly $530 million worth of
red raspberries for processing,
compared to $740 million by
foreign competitors, accord-
ing to the trade commission.