Friday, July 30, 2021
CapitalPress.com 3
Willamette Valley wine achieves global brand milestone
Region receives
formal recognition
from European Union
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
PORTLAND — The Wil-
lamette Valley wine industry
may be only 56 years old, but
it continues to gain a notable
reputation around the world.
In its latest feat, the Wil-
lamette Valley became just
the second American Viticul-
tural Area — along with Cal-
ifornia’s Napa Valley — to
be granted “Protected Geo-
graphical Indication” status
by the European Union, link-
ing certain iconic products to
their unique place of origin.
Other examples include
Champagne and Barolo
wine, which legally can
only come from the Cham-
pagne region of France or
the Barolo region of Italy,
respectively.
As a reg-
istered Pro-
tected Geo-
graphical
Indication,
or
PGI,
Harry
the Willa-
Peterson-
mette Val-
Nedry
ley name is
now secured
throughout the EU’s market
of 27 countries and 450 mil-
lion consumers, said Stavros
Lambrinidis, EU ambassador
to the United States.
“For the EU consumer,
the PGI is the guarantee of
authenticity, that every bot-
tle meets the quality standard
set by the Willamette produc-
ers,” Lambrinidis said.
Geographical
indica-
tions are the cornerstone of
EU wines, spirits, food and
other agricultural goods,
Lambrinidis said. Products
with a PGI certificate attract
higher prices, which in turn
can entice bad actors to forge
counterfeits.
“Any operator seeking
to sell non-originating wine
using the registered Ore-
gon name, or using labeling
devices to evoke ‘Willamette
Valley’ in the mind of the
consumer, will be stopped,”
Lambrinidis said.
The Willamette Valley is
home to more than 500 win-
eries, and is known for pro-
ducing high-quality Pinot
noir. It was classified as an
American Viticultural Area,
or AVA, in 1983, noted for its
distinctive climate, soils and
water — collectively known
as terroir.
Harry
Peterson-Nedry
considers himself part of the
“second wave” of wine pio-
neers in the Willamette Val-
ley. He started Ridgecrest
Vineyards in 1980, which
would become the first vine-
yard located in the Ribbon
Ridge AVA, a sub-appella-
tion of the Willamette Valley
in Yamhill County.
By 2002, Peterson-Ne-
dry said, the industry was
becoming more intent on
protecting its name and
winemaking style.
“Our viticultural areas,
whether it’s Oregon or the
Willamette Valley, we con-
sider almost sacrosanct,” he
said. “We don’t want other
people using ours.”
The reason, Peterson-Ne-
dry said, is twofold. First,
the Willamette Valley may
lose its exclusivity in the
marketplace if just anyone
is allowed to appropriate the
name.
Second, consumers may
also lose confidence in the
product if it does not con-
sistently meet the region’s
quality standards.
“It recognizes the unique-
ness of a specific place,”
Peterson-Nedry said. “And
that uniqueness is not very
Organic Valley weighing options
after fire at Oregon creamery
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
McMINNVILLE, Ore. — Despite
heavy damage from an April 20
fire, there are still signs of activ-
ity at the Organic Valley creamery in
McMinnville.
Trucks arrive at what remains of
the facility to load and unload milk,
which is then transported to other
processing plants around the North-
west. While flames destroyed the main
25,000-square-foot building, other
assets including storage tanks, the milk
dryer and butter churn all survived the
blaze.
Before it burned, the McMinnville
creamery handled 4 million pounds of
organic milk per week to make butter
and milk powder.
The question now is whether
Organic Valley, the nation’s largest
organic farming cooperative, plans to
rebuild in McMinnville or look else-
where to recoup its processing capacity.
“We have to consider our options
at this point,” said Steve Pierson, a
fourth-generation dairy farmer in St.
Paul, Ore., and president of the co-op’s
board of directors. “We have to decide
what incentives will be available to us,
to stay or to go.”
Pierson, of Sar-Ben Farms, said
Organic Valley remains committed
to the Pacific Northwest. Oregon rep-
resents the second-largest pool of milk
for the co-op, with 25 farmer-members
along the coast and in the Willamette
Valley.
Sar-Ben Farms has 320 milking
cows and has 175 irrigated acres about
Organic Valley
While flames destroyed the main 25,000-square-foot building at Organ-
ic Valley’s creamery in McMinnville, Ore., other assets including storage
tanks, the milk dryer and butter churn all survived the April 20 blaze.
30 miles south of Portland. The oper-
ation went organic in 2005. Pierson is
the first person outside Wisconsin to be
elected board president.
Organic Valley acquired the McMin-
nville creamery from a local co-op, the
Farmers Cooperative Creamery, in
2016. It was renovated and reopened
the following year.
After the fire, Pierson said, “It
became very apparent how tenuous
processing is in the Northwest,” with
Organic Valley sending milk as far as
Idaho and California.
“I think at first there was a little bit
of consternation about what Organic
Valley was going to do,” he said. “(Pro-
ducers) understand how important our
footprint here is.”
Pierson said the co-op has gone the
extra mile to ensure members their
markets are secure. Organic Valley
has continued to buy milk, and taken
a financial hit for transporting it longer
distances.
“Primarily, it’s covered by our busi-
ness interruption insurance,” Pierson
said. “But there is a limit to that. We
can’t do that forever.”
He said the co-op plans to hire a firm
to help the board analyze its options for
adding Northwest processing capacity.
Rebuilding the McMinnville creamery,
he said, is one option.
“We are not looking to leave
McMinnville,” he said. “We’ve been
very happy with the city, the employ-
ees and our neighbors.”
In an earlier interview with the Cap-
ital Press, Mark Pfeiffer, Organic Val-
ley’s vice president of internal opera-
tions, estimated the co-op spent up to
$23 million renovating the McMinn-
ville plant since 2016.
Lawsuit targets new USDA rules for biotech crops
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
A coalition of bio-
tech critics is challenging
the legality of new USDA
rules that allow develop-
ers more leeway in deciding
how genetically engineered
crops are regulated.
The agency eased restric-
tions last year so that bio-
tech developers can decide
whether crops altered with
various methods come under
the agency’s jurisdiction.
The National Family
Farm Coalition and five
other organizations have
filed a complaint alleging
that USDA’s regulations
violate several federal laws
and will endanger farmers
and wildlife.
The lawsuit alleges that
genetically
engineered,
or GE, crops will “now
effectively be left to the
devices of their manufac-
turers” who can grow and
sell them “without any fur-
ther oversight” by USDA,
“regardless of their agro-
nomic risks” or their “risks
to soils, waterways, native
ecosystems, and endangered
species.”
Traditionally,
biotech
crops that posed the risk of
becoming plant pests, such
as those modified with agro-
bacterium, had to be “dereg-
ulated” by USDA, which
involved extensive environ-
mental analysis.
Until they were dereg-
ulated, developers had to
obtain permission for these
crops to be field tested or
moved across state lines.
If another method was
used that didn’t involve
plant pests, such as gene
editing or a gene gun,
then the biotech devel-
oper still had to confirm the
crop wasn’t subject to the
time-consuming deregula-
tory process.
Under the new rules,
though, biotech developers
can decide for themselves if
their crops are exempt from
the deregulatory process.
If they decide a crop isn’t
exempt, the USDA will eval-
uate it for six months to deter-
mine if it’s a “plausible” plant
pest risk. If not, the crop can
be commercialized. Only if
the agency finds that a crop
plausibly poses such a risk
does the deregulatory process
apply.
In the past, critics filed a
lawsuit against USDA alleg-
ing the deregulatory pro-
cess was insufficient, which
complicated the commer-
cialization of such crops as
alfalfa and sugar beets that
were genetically engineered
to withstand glyphosate
herbicides.
The plaintiffs claim that
USDA enacted the regula-
tions contrary to the Endan-
gered Species Act by failing
to “consult” with other agen-
cies about potential harms
from releasing genetically
engineered crops without an
environmental analysis.
The complaint alleges that
USDA violated the National
Environmental Policy Act
by ignoring the regulation’s
cumulative impacts and by
refusing to study reasonable
alternatives to the new rules.
unique if you can do it any-
where else.”
California’s Napa Val-
ley was the first AVA to be
recognized by the EU in
2007. Two years earlier, six
global wine regions, includ-
ing Oregon and California,
signed on to what is now
known as the Wine Origins
Alliance, fighting to pro-
tect regional names in the
marketplace.
Jennifer Hall, the alli-
ance’s director, said grant-
ing PGI status for the Willa-
mette Valley is a major step
forward for the entire wine
industry to ensure consum-
ers are not being misled.
“This decision is an
acknowledgment that loca-
tion truly does matter when
it comes to wine,” Hall said.
Morgen
McLaughlin,
executive director of the
Willamette Valley Wineries
Association, said PGI recog-
nition is a big achievement
for a relatively young wine
region.
“The Willamette Valley’s
first vines were planted in
1965, and since then sev-
eral generations of growers
and vintners have put their
imprint on the world wine
map,” McLaughlin said.
Peterson-Nedry, who led
the PGI effort, said it took 13
years of start-and-stop work
to reach the finish line. The
main document submitted to
the EU contains 30 pages of
detailed descriptions about
the region’s geography, wine
varieties, growing practices
and industry accolades.
“This is a hard-won,
important designation that
provides protection for the
name ‘Willamette Valley’ in
wines as they are marketed
around the world,” Peter-
son-Nedry said. “And it puts
us in a marketplace where
we’re all watching each oth-
er’s back.”
Feds protest law firm’s bill
in Easterday bankruptcy
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
The Justice Department
has objected to a $3.8 mil-
lion legal bill submitted
by a Los Angeles law firm
overseeing the liquidation
of the bankrupt Easterday
ranches and farms in the
Columbia Basin.
The bill, with others to
follow, covers work that
lawyers with Pachulski,
Stang, Ziehl and Jones did
between Feb. 1 and May
31. Hourly rates averaged
$1,053, with one attorney
charging $1,695 an hour,
according to court records.
The rates far exceed
what
local
lawyers
involved in the case are
seeking and are substan-
tially higher than fees
attorneys recently col-
lected in a more compli-
cated bankruptcy case
in Eastern Washington,
according to Assistant U.S.
Trustee Gary Dyer, the
government watchdog in
the bankruptcy proceeding.
The L.A. firm’s bill,
submitted this month to
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge
Whitman Holt in Yakima,
fails to justify the fees,
Dyer stated in an objection
filed Friday.
The
firm
vaguely
described its services, had
too many nonparticipating
lawyers attend court hear-
ings and over-billed by
miscalculating hours, Dyer
claimed.
He asked Holt to reduce
the fees and perhaps
withhold them until the
L.A. firm provides fuller
descriptions of its work.
Efforts to reach the
firm’s lead attorney on the
case, Richard Pachulski,
were unsuccessful.
The firm specializes in
bankruptcies and was hired
by new Easterday directors
shortly after Cody East-
erday resigned as head of
Easterday Ranches and
Easterday Farms.
Cody Easterday, 50,
later pleaded guilty to
defrauding Tyson Fresh
Meats and another com-
pany of $244 million by
billing them for buying
and feeding cattle that
didn’t exist. He agreed
to pay restitution and is
scheduled to be sentenced
Oct. 5 on
one count
of
wire
fraud.
He faces
up to 20
years in
Cody
prison.
Easterday
Sepa-
rate from
restitution in the criminal
case, the Easterday com-
panies — owned by Cody
Easterday, his wife and
mother — owe millions
of dollars to creditors.
Farmland Reserve Inc.,
owned by the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, will buy several
Easterday farms for $209
million, but the money
has to be allocated.
The Pachulski firm
was one of three law firms
involved in the bank-
ruptcy proceedings that
submitted a first round of
legal bills this month.
In a court filing,
Pachulski defended its
rates as reasonable, say-
ing its lawyers overcame
objections and organized
an auction that maxi-
mized the value of the
Easterday properties for
creditors.
Dyer
unfavorably
compared hourly rates
sought by Pachulski to
other attorneys’ fees.
Senior members of a
law firm that restructured
Astria Health, a Yakima
County health-care pro-
vider, billed $800 an
hour, Dyer noted. Liqui-
dating farm properties
will be simpler, according
to Dyer.
Two Seattle firms also
are working on the Easter-
day bankruptcy. The lead
attorney for Davis Wright
Tremaine charged $800 an
hour, while the lead attor-
ney for Bush Kornfeld
billed $450 an hour.
By contrast, Isaac
Pachulski presented an
hourly rate of $1,695. He
worked on the case for
1.6 hours, adding $2,712
to the bill.
His brother, Richard
Pachulski, reported work-
ing 224.7 hours at $1,592
per hour for a total of
$358,396.
Hourly rates charged by
firm attorneys were at least
$695 an hour.
Late frost, drought reduce Pacific Northwest canola yields
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
A late frost followed by
drought have taken a toll on
the Pacific Northwest canola
crop, cutting into yields.
May frosts reduced win-
ter canola yields more than
anticipated, said Karen Sow-
ers, executive director of the
Pacific Northwest Canola
Association.
“That’s something you
can’t really see until when
you get to harvest,” she said.
Some Palouse farmers are
seeing a third to half of last
year’s yield, Sowers said.
Spring canola farmers in
Walla Walla County, Wash.,
normally would get a yield
of 2,000 pounds per acre, but
are expecting 800 pounds this
year.
On the Palouse, growers
can get up to 3,000 pounds
per acre, but are expecting
1,000 to 1,200 pounds per
acre this year.
Cold or hot weather can
cause canola flowers not to
produce a pod or produce a
misshapen pod. Sowers has
heard of instances of sprouted
seeds in the pod.
“That’s
a
drought
response, the hormones are
all out of balance in the plant
and they’re triggering some-
thing that’s making the seed
sprout,” she said. “That’s con-
Karen Sowers/PNW Canola Association
Canola grows on the Palouse in Washington state.
sidered damaged seed, and
it can also be a challenge for
storage.”
Sowers
recommends
growers scout their fields and
speak with the facility they
plan to sell their crop to. They
should also contact a crop
insurance agent, she added.
New canola growers need
four years to establish their
yield for insurance purposes,
or else they must rely on
county average yields, Sow-
ers said.
“It’s important to get your
own yield on your own farm,
rather than the county aver-
age,” she said.
Prices are above 30 cents a
pound. Sowers estimates the
cost of production is about 18
cents per pound.
Planted acres are up 20%,
Sowers estimated. Last year
Washington farmers raised
nearly 80,000 acres, Idaho
farmers nearly 47,000 acres
and Oregon farmers roughly
3,800 acres.
Washington canola is 63%
spring-planted; Idaho is 74%
spring-planted; and Oregon is
58% fall-planted.
She attributes the growth
to high demand for oil, meal
and renewable diesel, with
three new facilities in Canada
and several plants being retro-
fitted for production.
She also cited poor
weather conditions in Can-
ada and North Dakota, where
most canola is grown.
“Harvested and produc-
tion will definitely be a differ-
ent story,” she said.
The drought will also
affect planted winter canola
acreage in the fall.
“You have to plant into
moisture,” Sowers said. “It’s
just not there in most situa-
tions. We need rain.”