Friday, February 4, 2022
CapitalPress.com 3
Cool, wet spring in store for
much of Pacifi c Northwest
Short-term rentals must
pass Oregon’s ‘farm
impacts test,’ ruling says
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
SPOKANE — Spring and sum-
mer will be cool and wet in the Pacifi c
Northwest as the La Nina weather pat-
tern lingers, a top meteorologist told
attendees at the Spokane Ag Show.
Art Douglas, professor emeritus of
atmospheric sciences at Creighton Uni-
versity in Omaha, Neb., presented his
annual weather forecast Feb. 1.
“You guys are going to be kind of
the lucky folks as we go towards the
spring,” Douglas told farmers. “You all
have a better sense of how well your
crop is established. My feeling is, you’re
going to have a pretty good turnaround
with that crop because of the spring
forecast.”
He pointed to ocean surface tempera-
ture forecasts from the National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Administration
anticipating that La Nina will continue
into the summer.
La Nina and El Nino are complex
weather patterns that result from vari-
ations in the Pacifi c Ocean’s surface
temperatures.
La Nina will favor a strong North
Pacifi c high pressure system in Febru-
ary, Douglas said.
While the Pacifi c Northwest will
remain cool and wet, the high pres-
sure will eff ectively block the rest of
the West and Midwest from Pacifi c
moisture, he said. This will result in
two consecutive dry winter months in
a row, Douglas said.
The region will warm up in March,
with the only coolness in western
Washington and Oregon because their
off shore waters are so cold, Douglas
said.
He expected a slight cool down in
April, then a warm-up again in May.
Most of the U.S. will trend warmer
and drier than normal through the
Short-term lodging rent-
als on farms and forest land
in Oregon’s Clackamas
County must be analyzed for
their impacts on agriculture,
according to a land use ruling.
The state’s Land Use
Board of Appeals has over-
turned the county’s regula-
tions for short-term rentals in
farm and forest zones, ruling
that the activities are subject
to conditional use permits.
In eff ect, the ruling will
impose some constraints on
short-term rentals in agricul-
tural zones, rather than pro-
hibiting them altogether,
said Andrew Mulkey, rural
lands attorney with 1,000
Friends of Oregon, a non-
profi t that opposed the coun-
ty’s regulations.
“The way it was written
and implemented, it would
allow hotels to operate on
farm and forest land,” Mulkey
said.
Rural landowners will still
be able to participate in short-
term rental services such as
Airbnb, though they’ll likely
be subject to rules for home
businesses, he said.
“That fi ts better with how
resource land should be used,
not an investment for an
absentee landlord,” he said.
Short-term rentals oper-
ated by landowners who live
on-site are less likely to inter-
fere with surrounding farms,
Mulkey said. “I doubt farmers
would put up with frat parties
every weekend, and that’s the
benefi t of that model.”
Capital Press was unable
to reach attorneys for Clack-
amas County for comment as
of press time.
Farmers who rely on over-
night tourist lodging could
use some direction from state
lawmakers or the Depart-
ment of Land Conservation
and Development, said Scot-
tie Jones, founder of the U.S.
Farm Stay Association and a
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Art Douglas, professor of atmospheric sciences at Creighton University
in Omaha, Neb., delivers his annual weather forecast Feb. 1 at the Spo-
kane Ag Show.
spring, Douglas said. Drought will
intensify in the Southwest and winter
wheat areas of the Plains.
“The Pacifi c Northwest will trend
slightly cooler and wetter than nor-
mal and this may improve wheat pros-
pects,” he said.
The forecast suggests the drought in
much of the U.S. will intensify in mid-
2022, Douglas said. La Nina condi-
tions favor a hot, dry summer through-
out the midsection of the country, with
the Pacifi c Northwest on the western
edge of the drought.
Douglas predicted eastern and
southern Idaho and Montana will be
drier than normal.
“The Pacifi c Northwest kind of stays
cooler than normal and a little wetter
than normal,” he said. “After having
had the cool, wet spring, you’re going
to keep on that coolness going into the
summer.”
The Plains and the Dakotas will
remain “bone dry,” Douglas said, with
dryness extending into the western and
central Corn Belt, impacting a large por-
tion of U.S. cattle grazing lands with
drought.
“I think we’re going to have some
major problems going forward in the
U.S. in terms of summer crops,” Doug-
las said.
Douglas said this year will most
resemble the years 2000, 2011, 2012
and 2013 — “all terrible years in the
midsection of the country.”
Those were all La Nina years, he
said. But the next set of years that the
year could most resemble all turned into
El Nino by the next the summer.
“We’re at a tipping point in terms of
the correlation,” Douglas said. “This is
telling me that probably next year it’s
going to pop. We’ll keep La Nina going
this year, but come 2023, we’re likely to
see early El Nino develop, say about
March of 2023.”
Oregon wine leads U.S. in growing direct-to-consumer sales
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
PORTLAND — Bol-
stered by high demand
and rising prices, Oregon’s
wine industry led the U.S.
in accelerating its rate of
growth for direct-to-con-
sumer sales in 2021, accord-
ing to an analysis of ship-
ment data from more than
1,300 wineries nationwide.
The annual report, issued
by Sovos ShipCompliant
and Wines Vines Analyt-
ics, shows Oregon winer-
ies shipped 560,702 cases
of wine valued at $285.5
million.
That
represents
an
increase of 12.9% in volume
and 18.7% in sales value
over 2020, outperforming
all other wine regions across
the country.
Pinot noir dominated the
share of Oregon direct-to-
consumer sales, account-
ing for more than half of the
state’s wine shipments and
two-thirds of the total sales
value. Even with a 5.1%
increase in the average price
per bottle — up to $51.29 —
shipments of Pinot noir still
jumped 8.2%.
“This translates into
an undeniable increase in
demand for Oregon wines,
and Oregon Pinot noir in
particular,” the report states.
Sarah Murdoch, com-
munications director for the
Oregon Wine Board, said
Oregon only produces 2%
of the nation’s wine, but
has garnered a reputation
for high quality, driving up
demand among wholesalers
and retailers.
“We’re still little, but
we’re just getting more and
more well known,” Mur-
doch said. “That demand
is really hard to create in a
crowded marketplace.”
Last year also saw a
“great return to Wine Coun-
try” following pandemic
closures in 2020, Murdoch
said. More people were
comfortable visiting tasting
rooms, and wineries them-
selves became more savvy
with online marketing.
“These things really
helped people buy and have
more Oregon wine shipped
to them,” Murdoch said.
While Oregon wines
account for only 6.8% of
the value of direct-to-con-
sumer shipments nation-
wide, that is more than dou-
ble its share from a decade
ago, the report states.
It isn’t just Willamette
Valley Pinot noir. In 2021,
Chardonnay shipments from
Oregon increased 28.7% in
volume and 36.4% in value
over 2020. That includes a
6% increase in the average
price per bottle.
Sparkling wine is also
gaining steam in Oregon,
increasing 60.7% in value
and 55.6% in volume over
2020.
Murdoch said Pinot noir
has long been the bellwether
winegrape variety in Ore-
gon, though she described
Chardonnay as a “sleeping
giant.” Between 2016 and
2021, Chardonnay plantings
increased 43% in Oregon, to
2,600 acres.
“As plantings go up, our
optimism in that grape goes
up, and so does the atten-
tion,” Murdoch said.
Industry-wide, direct-to-
consumer wine shipments
in 2021 returned to normal
following pandemic-fueled
turmoil of 2020, the report
states.
Total
sales
value
eclipsed $4 billion for the
fi rst time. That was due to
the largest ever year-over-
year increase in the average
price per bottle, up 11.8%
to $41.16.
However, the large
increase in average price
per bottle comes on the
heels of a 9.5% decrease in
2020, when more fi rst-time
buyers stuck at home were
purchasing less expensive
wines, and wineries were
off ering unusually large
discounts.
farmer in Alsea, Ore.
“The problem is the coun-
ties are all interpreting it dif-
ferently,” she said. “It makes
it really complicated for us as
farmers if we’re trying to add a
farm stay to our property.”
According to LUBA,
short-term rentals must
undergo a “farm impacts
test” to determine that they
don’t impair agricultural and
forestry practices or signifi -
cantly increase their cost.
In contrast, the regulations
adopted by Clackamas County
in 2020 allow short-term rental
use “without any requirement
to obtain specifi c authorization
at all, let alone a requirement
to satisfy the farm impacts
test,” the ruling said.
The county’s regulations
allow “overnight, transient
lodging as an outright per-
mitted use” in farm and for-
est zones even though it’s not
allowed under statewide land
use rules, according to LUBA.
According to the county,
short-term rentals are a resi-
dential and not a commercial
land use, so who occupies the
dwelling isn’t relevant once
it’s been built in a farm or
forest zone.
LUBA rejected the argu-
ment, ruling that short-term
rentals must be expressly
allowed in farm and forest
zones, so it’s not relevant that
they haven’t been specifi -
cally prohibited by law.
The conditional use pro-
cess for short-term rentals will
ensure that neighboring farm-
ers can weigh in on the activ-
ity, Mulkey said. “The county
was trying to subvert that, and
it would have created a lot
more headaches.”
Beyond the disruptive
eff ect of short-term rentals in
farm zones, such businesses
also create aff ordability prob-
lems, he said.
“It’s hard enough to buy
farmland as it is,” he said. “It
makes it even harder to buy a
piece of farmland if it has a
dwelling on it.”
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