Capital Press
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Friday, March 25, 2022
Volume 95, Number 12
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INTERCROPPING HAZELNUTS
OFFERS CASH FLOW DURING ORCHARD ESTABLISHMENT
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Paul Kuehne, a farmer in Dayton, Ore., at a hazelnut orchard that’s intercropped to produce grass seed during establishment. With him are his wife,
Brynn, and children, Rhett and Sailor.
‘YOU STILL HAVE TO MANAGE THAT AREA, SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL PUT
THE MONEY TOWARD SOMETHING YOU CAN HARVEST AND SELL.’
— Paul Kuehne of Dayton, Ore.,
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
uggling two crops in the same field isn’t for
the faint of heart, particularly when one is
as enduring and expensive to establish as
hazelnuts.
Yet farmers planting hazelnuts have a
powerful incentive to simultaneously grow
another crop in their young orchards: generating
cash flow for four years or so while the trees mature
enough to produce a commercial hazelnut crop.
Cultivating seed crops between rows of trees is
the only way Paul Kuehne of Dayton, Ore., says
he can justify committing property to orchards for
years without harvesting hazelnuts.
Over roughly a decade, Kuehne has established
2,400 acres of hazelnuts orchards that were inter-
J
cropped with perennial ryegrass, annual ryegrass,
tall fescue, red clover and ryegrass.
“That’s a lot of land to not have income for four
years. I couldn’t financially have done it,” he said.
Intercropping requires an elevated level of care
and won’t fit every operation, but in reality, the space
between tree rows must still be flailed and dragged
to remove weeds, Kuehne said.
“You still have to manage that area, so you might
as well put the money toward something you can
harvest and sell,” he said. An acre of fully mature
hazelnut trees yields about 2,700 pounds with prices
ranging from about 90 cents to $1.03 per pound.
The key is never losing sight of the fact that the
hazelnut orchard must take priority if rodents or
other problems threaten the trees, he said.
“We’re always going to make the decision that’s
best for the tree. As for the intercrop, it’s always
going to be secondary,” Kuehne said. “We’ll pull the
plug on the intercrop at any point if we needed to.”
Seed crops
Grass and clover grown for seed dominate inter-
cropped orchards these days, though there was more
crop diversity when the hazelnut planting boom
began about a decade ago, said Mike McDaniel, a
geographic information system specialist who stud-
ies hazelnuts.
“It seemed like it was a pretty short window of
crop experimentation,” he said. “It’s quieted down.”
Hazelnut acreage in Oregon has roughly tripled
over the past decade, from 30,000 acres to 90,000
acres, McDaniel said. The pace of planting has now
leveled off at 3,000-5,000 acres a year, down from
as many as 11,000 acres at the height of the boom.
See Intercropping, Page 11
Oregon FFA State Convention returns to in-person
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
REDMOND, Ore. — Watch-
ing the opening session of the 2022
Oregon FFA State Convention,
Hayden Bush could feel tears well-
ing in his eyes.
“I’m an emotional person,” said
Bush, an agriculture teacher and
FFA adviser at Tillamook High
School. “There is something about
being in that session hall and feel-
ing that excitement that you can’t
get virtually.”
More than 2,500 Oregon FFA
members and guests gathered start-
ing March 17 for the first in-per-
son
convention
since the start of
the
pandemic,
bringing a rush of
energy and unbri-
dled enthusiasm to
the Deschutes Fair
Hayden
& Expo Center
Bush
in Redmond. The
convention culmi-
nated Sunday in the election of state
officers.
For Codie-Lee Haner, a fresh-
man at Sherman County High
School in Moro, it was her first live
convention experience. She likened
it to a rock concert, particularly in
the main session hall where mem-
SEE RELATED STORY
PAGE 3
bers crowded around the stage to
dance with their friends.
“So far, I’ve made a lot of friends
along the way,” Haner said. “I’m
not good at making friends, but I’ve
opened up to a lot of people here.”
It is precisely that element of
togetherness that FFA members
and advisers say can’t be duplicated
Ryan Brennecke/EO Media Group
online.
Two years ago, Oregon FFA
members were preparing for the Students gather to enter the First Interstate Bank Center for
the opening session of the Oregon FFA State Convention at the
See FFA, Page 11 Deschutes Fair & Expo Center on March 17.
Forecasters expect
West’s drought to deepen
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
NOAA
Drought outlook for spring.
The National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration predicts that
drought will worsen in the West this
spring. The exceptions include West-
ern Washington, northwest Oregon and
Northern Idaho.
Already, 89% of the West is in drought,
according to the U.S. Drought Moni-
tor on March 17. Drought is expected to
persist in most places and return to the
one-quarter of Arizona that’s now classi-
fied as “abnormally dry.”
The West had a wet December, but has
been relatively dry since, according to
the monitor, a partnership between fed-
eral agencies and the National Drought
Mitigation Center at the University of
Nebraska.
The snowpacks in many basins in the
West have declined and are now below
normal, according to the monitor.
Among all Western states, Oregon has
the highest percentage of area in “excep-
tional drought,” the worst classification,
at 15%, followed by Nevada with 7.5%.
NOAA’s spring outlook was driven
by a La Nina, which is expected to per-
sist through the summer. A La Nina gen-
erally leads to cooler temperatures in the
northern U.S. and warmer temperatures
in the southern U.S.
Between now and June 30, most of
the Lower 48 will have above-average
See Drought, Page 11