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CapitalPress.com
Friday, September 17, 2021
Wheat crop
insurance
harvest
prices
announced
Counties’ predator control tax running out of time
By CRAIG REED
For the Capital Press
ROSEBURG, Ore. — Live-
stock owners in Douglas and Coos
counties are hopeful the predator
control district tax bill will be rein-
troduced in the Oregon Legislature
next year.
The tax pro-
gram has been a
voluntary method
for landowners to
support predator
control for the past
fi ve years in the
two southwestern
Mark
Oregon counties
Dowdy
by paying up to $1
per acre. The pro-
gram was also being considered by
a couple other Oregon counties.
But the program was not re-ap-
proved by the state Legislature in
June. Its last day will be Dec. 31,
2021.
Wildlife Services also receives
funds from the counties, the state
Department of Fish and Wildlife,
the Oregon Department of Agri-
culture and the USDA. But fund-
ing from some of those sources has
been decreasing.
Ron Hjort, an Oakland, Ore.,
area sheep and cattle rancher, is
optimistic if the predator control
district tax bill is reintroduced it
would pass both the House and
Senate if there are no added con-
ditions. The bill was held up most
recently in the Senate Rules Com-
mittee as it was tied to a bill ban-
ning coyote hunting contests in
Eastern Oregon and to a bill that
would give the state Department
of Fish and Wildlife the ability to
Courtesy of Wildlife Services
Mark Dowdy checks a spot in a fence line where coyotes were enter-
ing a livestock pasture despite branches blocking the opening. After
20 years of working as a Wildlife Services specialist, Dowdy retired at
the end of July because of the program’s funding issues.
regulate predator management.
Eventually, none of the three bills
moved forward or were revived.
“I don’t see why anybody
would be against a tax that is vol-
untary and is not out of the gen-
eral fund, but from those involved
themselves,” Hjort said.
Jim Carr, chairman of the Coos
County Predator Damage Control
District Advisory Committee, said
the program was working in Coos
County.
“We’re not using public funds,”
he said prior to the bill going to the
legislature earlier this year. “It’s a
landowner self-assessment.”
The Coos County assessment
total has been about $85,000 a year.
Most of that money comes from
large timber holdings because bear
damage to trees in the Coast Range
is a major problem.
In Douglas County, the assess-
ment total has been about $35,000
annually. Most of that money has
come from livestock owners with
small acreages while timber own-
ers haven’t contributed as much
because they haven’t experienced
as many bear issues.
Mark Dowdy, a 20-year Wild-
life Services specialist in Doug-
las County and one of two spe-
cialists in the county, retired at the
end of July because of the funding
uncertainty. There is funding for
two specialists in Douglas County
through June of next year. Beyond
that month, funding sources are
questionable or unknown at this
time.
Dowdy believes livestock and
their protection play important
roles in providing safety for the
public.
“A whole lot of people don’t
understand the importance of agri-
culture in this county,” Dowdy
explained. “Without predator con-
trol, sheep operations are likely to
end entirely or they won’t be able
to run their sheep out as far. Then
predators will work on calves and
goats and those people will feel the
pain. With deer numbers down and
less predator control, those pred-
ators will be right here in town
looking for dogs and cats.
“Ranches and farms with their
livestock are providing a buff er
for towns,” he added. “It’s always
been a struggle to communicate
that.”
With predator damage being a
key reason, the number of sheep in
Douglas County has decreased to
about 24,000 head from 125,000
back in the 1960s and 1970s. Cat-
tle, which are a little better at hold-
ing off predators, have increased to
about 61,000 head in the county.
As a Wildlife Services special-
ist, Dowdy has helped to protect
the local livestock industry by tak-
ing an estimated 2,000 coyotes and
a couple hundred cougars during
the past 20 years. By fi guring half
of those coyotes as females and
the average litter size being six, he
said the coyote population would
explode with no Wildlife Ser-
vices program, or a diminished
one. With cougar litters averag-
ing three, he said their populations
would slowly grow with no preda-
tor control.
“Even though it’s been my
job to control coyotes, I abso-
lutely respect them,” Dowdy said.
“They’re the smartest animal
out there. For me, the most chal-
lenging wildlife was always the
coyote.”
Agency will not
adjust early August
prices higher
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
Food insecurity fell since 2020, but still higher than pre-pandemic
By SIERRA DAWN MCCLAIN
Capital Press
Thirty-eight
million
Americans lived in food-in-
secure households last year,
a 9% increase over the 2019
level of 35 million, accord-
ing to the USDA.
About 7.5% of U.S.
households with children
— 3 million families —
didn’t always have ade-
quate, nutritious food for
their kids last year. That’s
up 6.5% compared to 2019,
the agency found.
“Food insecurity” is
measured as not having
enough food over a sev-
en-day period.
Prior to Wednesday’s
report, COVID-19’s impact
on food insecurity had only
been measured anecdotally
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
Susan Blachnik, manager at the Creswell, Ore., Food
Pantry, picks up a box to put in a car truck in 2020.
and in smaller samples.
This is the fi rst complete
federal data available for-
mally documenting the full
extent of hunger and food
hardship.
“While hunger was
already a massive, sys-
temic problem in all 50
states before COVID-
19 hit the U.S., domes-
tic hunger surged during
the pandemic,” said Joel
Berg, CEO of Hunger Free
America, a nonprofi t that
tracks and addresses hun-
ger in the U.S.
In the midst of the cri-
sis, USDA’s domestic food
aid spending also reached a
historic high of $122.1 bil-
lion in 2020 — a spend-
ing rate of $232,305 per
minute. Aid programs,
funded by relief packages,
included the USDA Farm-
ers to Families Food Box
Program.
The good news, how-
ever, is that food insecu-
rity has trended down-
ward since the peak of the
pandemic.
Food insecurity nation-
wide fell nearly 30%
between spring 2020 and
spring 2021, according to
data from the Urban Insti-
tute, a think tank.
The institute, based on
its survey, attributed the
drop in food insecurity to
an improved employment
rate, a temporary 15%
increase in the maximum
benefi t for the Supplemen-
tal Nutrition Assistance
Program, the introduction
of new food donation pro-
grams, larger unemploy-
ment benefi ts and govern-
ment relief payouts.
But food insecurity lev-
els are still higher than
pre-pandemic levels, stud-
ies show. A recent sur-
vey by Feeding Amer-
ica, a nonprofi t, found that
while 2021 hunger levels
are lower than 2020’s lev-
els, more than half of food
banks reported increas-
ing or steady demand this
summer.
USDA and groups such
as Farmers Ending Hunger
continue to work to combat
food insecurity.
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The USDA Risk Man-
agement
Agency
has
announced the crop insur-
ance harvest prices for
wheat. The agency will use
a price of $9.86 per bushel
for winter wheat and $9.21
per bushel for spring wheat.
Earlier
in
August,
some Washington farmers
expressed concern over the
prices USDA used to deter-
mine crop insurance.
Farmers and grain mer-
chandisers said the Port-
land soft white wheat
export bid price range is
too wide, and questioned
whether the lower end
of the range accurately
refl ected market value.
Michelle
Hennings,
executive director of the
Washington Association of
Wheat Growers, said she’s
hearing from some Walla
Walla County farmers
who still feel that pricing
issues during the Aug. 2-11
period may have kept the
fi nal harvest price 25 cents
lower than it should be.
WAWG is working with
RMA to investigate the
pricing calculation during
that period and prevent
something similar from
happening in the future,
Hennings said. The organi-
zation will also work with
the agency to address price
discovery in future farm
bills.
The agency published
Frequently Asked Ques-
tions in response to grower
concerns.
The winter wheat har-
vest price is calculated
from daily prices during
August, according to the
agency.
Only bids from partici-
pating elevators that export
soft white wheat to other
countries are captured and
reported by USDA’s Agri-
cultural Marketing Ser-
vice. Bids from other ele-
vators are not included, and
the harvest prices issued by
RMA are not designed to
refl ect local prices at any
particular elevator.
Factors that impact
prices at a local elevator
can include its location,
which can determine how
far an elevator may need to
ship grain to end-users or
export elevators; whether
that’s by train, rail or barge;
and unique growing condi-
tions that aff ect production
and quality.
“It is important to use
a price for crop insur-
ance that is designed to be
refl ective of the market as
a whole, and not any single
local elevator,” the agency
states.
In accordance with the
crop policy, RMA will use
the values reported by the
Agricultural
Marketing
Service and will not adjust
higher the prices reported
by AMS in early August,
according to the agency.
No further action is
planned, said Ben Thiel,
director for the agency
offi ce in Spokane, which
serves
Idaho,
Ore-
gon,
Washington
and
Alaska.
Crop insurance is vital
for farmers, Hennings said.
“It’s important that it’s
funded at the national level
because of years like this,”
Hennings said.
Farmers this year face a
double whammy of drought
that has reduced yields and
raised the protein levels in
some varieties, prompting
elevators to pay less. For
many farmers, the result is
less wheat to sell at lower
prices.
WAWG
is
looking
to include high-protein
wheat in a national disas-
ter ad-hoc program, Hen-
nings said.