Friday, August 20, 2021
CapitalPress.com 7
Onion yield declines expected
in SE Oregon, SW Idaho
By BRAD CARLSON
Capital Press
E.J. Harris/EO Media Group File
The impact of hot, dry weather on the Washington and Oregon potato crops will be
clear when harvest begins next month.
Northwest potato farmers ‘clobbered’
by weather, hope for average crop
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
Mark Ward has low-
ered his expectations for his
potatoes this year.
“I’m not happy with the
quality,” said Ward, a farmer
in Oregon’s Baker County.
“I have no idea about the
yield yet, but what I see
underground does not please
me. The heat has defi nitely
aff ected those potatoes.”
Instead of a bumper crop,
he’ll settle for an average
crop.
“The good crop went
away in June when it was
too damn hot,” he said.
“It’s Mother Nature — the
heat, the drought and the
wind. We had three huge
factors that just clobbered
us.”
The full eff ect of heat
and drought on the region’s
potato crop will become
clear when farmers begin
to harvest in mid-Septem-
ber and October, said Chris
Voigt, executive director
of the Washington Potato
Commission.
“If you were to drive
through the countryside,
you would see some potato
plants that look really good,
and some potato plants that
look really bad,” he said.
“We’re trying to be opti-
mistic about what the future
might be, but we know that
this is kind of an unusual
year,
that
the heat hit
so early and
lasted
so
long.”
Vo i g t
points to the
Chris Voigt i n d u s t r y ’s
resilience,
and noted many growers
still have a month or so left
before harvest. An average
yield would be about 600
hundredweight per acre, he
said.
“There’s still time for us
to make a pretty good crop,”
he said. “I’m guessing for
sure we’ve lost the top end
of the yield. I would say
probably, best-case scenario
at this point, it’s going to be
an average yield. Which,
compared to everywhere
else in the country, is still
pretty good.”
Some varieties are more
heat-tolerant while others
do not handle it very well,
Voigt said.
This year’s crop of Rus-
set Burbank potatoes, the
most widely grown variety
in the U.S., “looks like it got
hit by a truck,” Voigt said.
Ward is contracted to
grow Russet Burbanks for
Simplot for french fries and
processing.
Under his contract, Ward
could get penalized or
rejected if the percentage of
top quality, No. 1 potatoes is
too low.
Potato harvest began in
July. Early varieties fared
better because the heat
didn’t hit until they were
ready to harvest anyway,
Voigt said.
“It’s the later potatoes
we’re worried about,” he
said.
Voigt estimates 99%
of potato farmers in the
Columbia Basin don’t par-
ticipate in crop insurance.
“Mostly because the
premiums are pretty high
and it’s rare that they ever
pay,” he said. “We gener-
ally have really consistent
weather and always con-
sistently produce a quality
crop and high yields. Grow-
ers over the course of the
years have said, ‘Why buy
insurance? It doesn’t make
sense because it costs way
too much money and I never
collect anything.’ They’re
kind of on their own.”
Is this a year crop insur-
ance might have helped?
“Oh, yes,” Voigt said.
“Probably.”
Ward, the Oregon farmer,
uses crop insurance, but
notes growers can only
insure for 85% of yield and
85% of price.
“It’s kind of like if you
total your car and the insur-
ance company hands you a
check, you can’t go buy a
car with that check as good
as what you just totaled,” he
said.
Onion yields are likely will be down by
double-digit percentages in southeastern
Oregon and southwestern Idaho as pro-
longed hot weather has shifted much of the
crop from bulk-up to survival mode.
The region produces about 45% of the
U.S. crop from September through April.
About 24 shippers and six processors
operate in the region, where the National
Onion Association pegs acreage at about
22,000.
As for yield reductions, “20-40% down
from average is what I’m hearing around
the area, and mine could be on the higher
end of that range,” said Dyke Nagasaka,
who farms near Weiser, Idaho.
He said his yield could be down 35%,
adding that “onions are smaller and
weedier.”
Nagasaka said high temperatures in
the mid-90s to above 100 occur on fi ve to
seven days during the typical summer, “not
for an extended period over the majority of
the growing period of the onion.”
Oregon State University Malheur
Experiment Station Director Stuart Reitz
said cumulative heat units for the crops are
running nearly three weeks ahead of the
30-year average.
Onions grow best in temperatures of 50
to 90 degrees, he said. An abundance of
days with highs in the 90s and 100s meant
plants matured earlier but did not grow
as much. And unusually warm nights left
them less time in good growing conditions
before daytime temperatures soared again.
“A little bit of heat is good and too
much heat starts to be bad,” Reitz said.
“Like any other year, we have
good-looking fi elds and fi elds that are not
as great-looking,” Reitz said.
Malheur County Onion Growers Asso-
ciation President Paul Skeen of Nyssa,
Ore., said quality looks good, “and what
we are going to miss is the larger onions.
And when you have less larger onions, you
are going to have less yield” by weight.”
He said he expects regional yields to be
down “as much as 20%, and it could be
more.” Supply should still be suffi cient to
meet clients’ needs.
Onion plants soften at the stem and fall
over after they mature and send energy to
the bulb below.
“We are getting that earlier than nor-
mal because of wind and extra heat units,”
Idaho and Malheur County Onion Growers
Southeastern Oregon and southwest-
ern Idaho comprise one of the nation’s
largest onion-growing regions.
Skeen said. Bulbs thus did not grow as
large.
“By and large, the onions look fairly
typical, but there was some pretty heavy
wind damage within several fi elds,” said
soil scientist and Western Laboratories
owner John Taberna of Parma, Idaho. The
heat “physiologically aged” the crop, he
said.
Idaho Onion Growers Association Vice
President Jarom Jemmett of Parma said his
yields probably will be about 15% below
the long-term average due to heat and
wind.
He said his farm’s bulbs are about the
usual size, but there aren’t as many. Wind
thinned stands, he said, so the remaining
onions had less competition for nutrients.
Taberna said when temperature exceeds
86 a foot above the onion plant, it can’t
take in enough water to keep itself cool, as
openings in the leaf close to prevent water
loss. He and clients are focusing on indi-
vidual fi elds rather than their entire crops
— optimizing fertilizer applied through
drip irrigation to meet daily conditions and
needs until maturity, for example.
“We’ve been dealt a tough hand as far
as the weather,” he said. “We’ve got to
adapt to this year as opposed to the last 15
years of what we have done with our pro-
gram for that crop.”
Nagasaka said irrigation water at some
of his fi elds was scheduled to be shut off in
mid-August or so, at least six weeks early.
Though there are onions already “down”
and nearing maturity, “it would be nice to
have one more irrigation to put on a little
more size on some.”
Hazelnut Growers Bargaining Association
Annual Meeting
August 31 st , 2021 @ West Salem Roth’s
RSVP by August 20 th
•➢ 8:30 a.m. Coffee & Refreshments
•➢ 9:00 a.m. Meeting
Board member elections to be held
Hazelnut Growers’ Bargaining Association’s Annual Meeting
August 31 st , 2021
West Salem Roth’s
8:30am Coffee & Refreshments
9:00am Meeting
Board member elections to be held.
Must be a member to attend. Contact (TBD) to join: (TBD)
Please RSVP by August 20 th to attend: (Contact info TBD)
Must be a member to attend.
To join, see contact information below.
Please RSVP by August 20 th
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