Friday, July 23, 2021
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Carbon: ‘There is no cookie-cutter recommendation’
Continued from Page 1
Grower-led initiative
Established in 1931,
CBARC is one of 11 research
centers run by OSU in differ-
ent growing regions around
the state.
The USDA also shares
space at the station, which
it calls the Columbia Pla-
teau Conservation Research
Center. Though technically
separate, they have simi-
lar missions to enhance dry-
land farming
in the arid
Columbia
Basin.
However,
the center
faced a crisis
in 2016 and
Stewart
2017, with
Wuest
budget cuts
threatening
nearly half the annual funding
on the USDA side.
The Oregon wheat indus-
try lobbied to save the cen-
ter’s funding, but Greg Goad,
a Pendleton-area farmer, said
more was needed to find a sta-
ble injection of resources.
“It became clear to us that
this was not a good long-term
strategy for dealing with the
problem,” Goad said.
Goad, who describes him-
self as semi-retired, serves
on a grower liaison commit-
tee that works with both the
USDA and OSU research
programs. He said their focus
became identifying propos-
als that could catch the eye of
Congress and policymakers
— hence the focus on climate
change.
“We could see where we
could be a help on carbon,
and at the same time help the
growers,” Goad said.
The $2 million Resilient
Dryland Farming Appropri-
ation was approved by Con-
gress in 2019, and the $1.5
million soil carbon research
appropriation was announced
earlier this year.
Amanda Hoey, CEO of
the Oregon Wheat Growers
League and the state’s Wheat
Commission, said the projects
will provide much-needed
data specific to the Columbia
Basin’s unique climate and
growing environment.
“It will assure data specific
to the regional differences in
Oregon and will ultimately
lead to increased profitabil-
ity and crop yield — good for
our agricultural economy, our
environmental stewardship
and our rural economies,”
Hoey said.
Region-specific data
Wheat is Oregon’s sixth-
most valuable agricultural
commodity, with farmers
harvesting nearly 47 million
bushels worth more than
$294 million in 2020.
The vast majority of that
George Plaven/Capital Press
Francisco Calderon arrived Dec. 31 as station manager of OSU’s Columbia Basin Agricultural Research Center in
Pendleton, Ore. He previously spent 18 years working for the USDA in eastern Colorado.
production comes from
Umatilla and Morrow coun-
ties, which together have
roughly 61% of the total
wheat acreage.
Annual precipitation var-
ies by location. For example,
the Pendleton station, nes-
tled along the Blue Moun-
tains, gets 16-18 inches, while
areas farther west get as lit-
tle as 8-10 inches. As a result,
most dryland farmers rotate
their fields between growing
a crop one year and leaving it
fallow the next to rebuild soil
moisture.
Francisco
Calderon,
CBARC station manager
with OSU, said research
must be tailored to this par-
ticular system.
“We cannot use data from
the Midwest,” Calderon
explained. “The answers to
our questions about soil car-
bon have to be developed
locally.”
Calderon knows the dif-
ferences all too well. He
came to OSU after 18 years
working for the USDA in
eastern Colorado.
Despite both regions pro-
ducing dryland wheat, cli-
matic differences mean Col-
orado farmers receive more
moisture in the form of
summer thunderstorms, as
opposed to the Pacific North-
west, where most precipita-
tion falls in the winter.
The timing allows farmers
in Colorado to rotate wheat
with other summer crops
such as corn or sorghum.
Mother Nature does not give
farmers in northeast Oregon
that option.
In turn, different farm-
ing practices and crops
impact the amount of carbon
that can be sequestered in
the soil.
“There is no cookie-cutter
recommendation,” Calderon
said. “You have to weigh the
local precipitation, condi-
tions and soils to develop dif-
ferent recommendations for
different regions.”
carbon) was quantified.”
Chay said local research
like that at CBARC is criti-
cal. Without that data, she said
independent registries will
struggle to quantify and credit
soil carbon sequestration.
Meanwhile, farmers say
they are in a wait-and-see
mode.
Darren Padget, who farms
in Grass Valley, Ore., and
is chairman of U.S. Wheat
Associates, the national orga-
nization that serves as the
industry’s overseas marketing
arm, said the cost of inputs
such as fuel and fertilizer are
only going up.
“The question is whether
any credit that we get will off-
set our increase in inputs,”
Padget said. “We hope it’s a
net positive, financially. If it
isn’t, then it’s going to be a
pretty hard sell.”
Extreme drought
George Plaven/Capital Press
George Plaven/Capital Press
Eric Orem, a wheat farmer
in Morrow County, Ore.,
behind the wheel of his
combine during harvest.
Team science
The new federal appro-
priations, Calderon said, will
work hand-in-hand to answer
those questions.
Under the soil carbon
research program, OSU and
the USDA will evenly split
the $1.5 million, combining
expertise from both teams
across several disciplines.
OSU will also receive
one-quarter of the $2 mil-
lion dryland farming appro-
priation to do the plot work
for cropping trials. Hagerty,
who is the project leader for
OSU, said it is an opportunity
to conduct “team science,”
breaking out of their individ-
ual research “silos.”
“We can have a much
better, broader impact for
the growers,” Hagerty said.
“No more one scientist, one
bench.”
As part of the dryland
farming appropriation, Hag-
erty said studies are underway
both at the station and at Star-
vation Farms in Lexington,
Ore., which is in a lower rain-
fall zone in Morrow County.
She highlighted trials to
determine whether certain
types of cover and rotational
crops — such as winter peas,
barley or canola — can nat-
urally improve soil health,
break up soil-borne diseases
Darren Padget, a wheat farmer and president of the
U.S. Wheat Associates, stands along one of his fields in
Grass Valley, Ore.
and minimize erosion without
sapping too much water from
the farms’ cash crop.
“What we’re trying to
understand here is, do the
benefits outweigh the cost?”
she said.
The soil carbon program,
meanwhile, is still being
finalized, but Calderon said it
breaks down into three gen-
eral objectives.
First is maintaining experi-
ments to see if different grow-
ing practices sequester carbon.
Second is seeing how weeds
and plant diseases interact with
changes in soil carbon, and
third is analyzing the system’s
total carbon footprint.
“That goes beyond just
quantifying how much car-
bon stays in the ground, but
how much reducing fertil-
izer applications, tillage or
other things affect the carbon
cycle,” Calderon said.
Stewart Wuest, a USDA
research soil scientist at the
Pendleton station, is one of
the project leaders on the soil
carbon sequestration study.
Additional funding will allow
the agency to hire four new
scientists, including a bioin-
formatics expert to do statis-
tical work, and an agricultural
economist.
For now, Wuest said he is
skeptical of how much more
carbon can be sequestered in
soils given the limitations of
the dryland wheat-summer
fallow rotation.
“We want to avoid policies
that are unrealistic and ask
farmers to do something that
can’t be done,” he said. “The
main point is to be realistic.”
Carbon offsets
In 2019, the Oregon Leg-
islature seemed poised to
pass cap-and-trade legisla-
tion requiring large produc-
ers of carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases to buy
“allowances” for every metric
ton of carbon they generate.
Such a marketplace would
have also allowed farmers to
generate credits by sequester-
ing carbon. Companies could
also purchase those carbon
credits to offset greenhouse
gas emissions.
Senate Republicans ulti-
mately blocked the bill by
staging a walkout, though
Democratic Gov. Kate Brown
followed up last year by sign-
ing an executive order target-
ing ambitious greenhouse gas
emission reduction goals —
at least 45% below 1990 lev-
els by 2035, and at least 80%
below 1990 levels by 2050.
Freya Chay, a policy asso-
ciate for Carbon Plan, a non-
profit organization based in
Santa Cruz, Calif., said offset
credits for soil carbon seques-
tration currently exist in vol-
untary markets, though they
are not yet well defined.
“It’s pretty opaque,” Chay
said. “It takes some real trac-
ing to figure out how a ton (of
Amid lingering uncertainty,
farmers across the West are
feeling the effects of extreme
drought, underscoring the
urgency of the research.
Eric Orem, a Morrow
County farmer, plans to har-
vest about 2,500 acres of
wheat this year. He antici-
pates his yield may be down
by as much as half in some of
his fields, where just 6 inches
of precipitation has fallen
since planting last fall.
Combined with a heat
wave in June that pushed
temperatures as high as 118
degrees, Orem said the crop’s
quality may also be affected.
Most wheat grown in the
Pacific Northwest is a low-
er-protein variety predom-
inantly exported to Asia,
where millers use the flour to
make noodles, sponge cakes
and crackers.
Heat stress tends to cre-
ate higher protein levels in
wheat. If the percentage goes
too high, Orem said custom-
ers pay less for the product.
“Conditions have just been
tough,” he said. “It’s going to
be crop insurance year.”
Orem said he has already
done several things to make
his operation more efficient.
He adopted no-till farming,
which saves him money on
fuel, and uses variable rate
seeding on his seed drills and
avoids over-spraying fertil-
izer and herbicides to save on
inputs.
Orem has also contributed
10 acres for OSU to trial dif-
ferent mixes of cover crops.
The partnership between
growers and researchers in
the area has been great, he
said, with both sides collabo-
rating for a common good.
“Looking at these pro-
grams and seeing what farms
can do to benefit our soil
health and the environment is
great,” he said. “It’s a win-win
for everybody.”
Fire: ‘I wish we could’ve got all our cows out, but we did what we could’
Continued from Page 1
“I’m sorry. It’s still fresh.”
Her brother-in-law, Joe
Jayne, a fifth-generation
rancher, lost dozens of his cat-
tle to the fire.
“I wish we could’ve got all
our cows out, but we did what
we could,” he said.
The wildfire consumed all
but one of his permitted pas-
tures. Because of hay prices
and shortages, Jayne plans
to sell many of his cattle this
year, keeping only the best
breeding stock.
Jimmy
Gallagher,
a
Sprague River rancher who
Courtesy of Claire Shields
The view from Beatty, Ore. looking north, July 8.
lost about 20 cow-calf pairs
and one bull, said fire struck
hardest in regions where graz-
ing and prescribed burning
had been restricted. These
swathes of land, he said, are
now white with ash – “looks
like the moon.”
On the southwest tip of
the Bootleg Fire, in Beatty,
Jana Walker, fourth-genera-
tion cattle rancher, said she
emerged from the fire luckier
than most because she was
able to evacuate all her cattle,
about 250 to 300 head.
“We didn’t lose any,” she
said. “I think we’re one of
the few producers that can
say that.”
But Walker did lose cru-
cial summer forage. She’s
in “scramble mode” now
spreading out cattle, paying
freight to haul water, looking
for micro-pastures to graze
— she calls them “yards.”
Walker said the fire was
another tragedy in a series
of natural disasters. Before
the Bootleg Fire hit, her pas-
tures were already thin from
drought, heat waves and
swarms of grasshoppers.
“That’s one of the jokes
we make: The only good
thing about the fire is it
burned up the grasshoppers,”
she said.
Ross Fleming, a Klamath
Falls farmer, similarly joked
about “Biblical plagues.”
“I mean hell, right here in
Klamath County a few of the
prophesies have been fulfilled
already this year. And I’m
not a churchgoing guy that
much,” he said.
Although Fleming is
removed from the immedi-
ate fire, its smoke has blocked
some sunlight from reaching
his potatoes and garlic.
“I think we’ve added a fifth
season in Klamath County:
smoke season,” he said.
Dan Chin, another Klam-
ath Falls farmer who grows
potatoes, onions, garlic,
alfalfa and wheat, said he
believes all of his crops this
year will be impacted by
smoke, especially since sun-
light was blocked at a crucial
time for crop development.
“I think we’ll see less yield
this year,” he said.
Prices: Farm machinery sales this year have risen sharply
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The enthusiasm for
investing in machinery
doesn’t appear much dimin-
ished by the higher cost
of steel and other inputs,
which have made equip-
ment more expensive, he
said.
“Even though the costs
are higher, the returns are
strong enough to offset
that,” he said.
Manufacturers are try-
ing to keep the supply chain
running smoothly despite
tight supplies of steel, labor
and transportation, said
Blades. “All three of those
things are facing pressure in
the global marketplace.”
The industry is also
struggling with a shortage
of computer chips that are
needed to “run everything
from toasters to tractors,”
he said.
As a result, “there’s not
a lot of inventory standing
around on lots” and orders
may take longer to fulfill, he
said. “The only solution is a
little bit of time.”
Despite a recent soft-
ening in commodity crop
prices, the prospects remain
good for farmers based on
the futures market and a
fairly low ratio of stocks to
usage, said Langemeier.
The drought is the “wild
card” that will impact some
farmers more severely than
others, depending on the
region, he said.
Generally, though, crop
prices can be expected to
remain healthy until inven-
tories are replenished,
which usually requires two
to three years, Langemeier
said. “When you get in that
situation, it takes a while to
get out of it.”
Sales of smaller tractors
have also shot up in 2021
— 15% for those under 40
horsepower, 19% for those
40-100 horsepower — after
an already impressive per-
formance in 2020, according
to AEM.
The market for smaller
machinery, which was invig-
orated by people spend-
ing more time at home, has
recently shown signs of lev-
eling off, Blades said. How-
ever, that’s largely a func-
tion of demand becoming
“more rational” after being
“on fire” for so long.
“That market is going
to find its correct footing
and it’s going to be stron-
ger than it has in the past,
though it may not grow at
the rate it has been grow-
ing,” he said.
AGCO
Farm machinery sales have risen sharply in 2021 as
growers reap the benefits of higher commodity crop
prices.