Friday, May 20, 2022
CapitalPress.com 9
Electric: ‘It’s a lot easier to charge these
than even what we originally thought’
Energy Information Administra-
tion, with about half all all genera-
tion hydro power.
Rates are 10.86 cents per kilo-
watt-hour for residential custom-
ers; 9.27 cents per kilowatt-hour for
commercial customers; and 5.89
cents per kilowatt-hour for indus-
trial customers.
“Energy is one of the few things
(farmers) can control,” Calla-
han said. “Electrifying their farm,
being able to plug their tractor in at
home and being able to completely
remove all these other market forces
provides a lot more stability, and
really adds another layer of resil-
ience to our farming community.”
Continued from Page 1
systems by installing more efficient
pumps and sprinklers.
The electric tractor project came
to Wallace from two other Oregon
nonprofits — Sustainable North-
west, a renewable energy and nat-
ural resources conservation group,
and Forth Mobility, which aims to
expand access to electric vehicles
and transportation.
Discussions started pre-pan-
demic, with the nonprofits inter-
ested in accelerating the adoption
of electric farm machinery.
Bridget Callahan, senior energy
program manager for Sustain-
able Northwest, said the transition
to electrification is “inevitable” as
more states adopt policies to curb
fossil fuels.
Oregon legislators passed a law
known as the Climate Protection
Program late last year. It requires
fuel suppliers in Oregon to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions from the
products they sell 50% by 2035 and
90% by 2050.
“Our idea is, we’re seeing this
rapid transformation. ... We know
it’s not going to look the same in
rural parts of the state and North-
west,” Callahan said. “How do we
ensure major investments in elec-
trification, and what does that look
like in a rural context?”
Whitaker Jamieson, program
manager at Forth Mobility, said
they wanted to show the potential
for electric tractors on farms.
“I think that’s the key to the
demonstration,” Jamieson said.
“You start to see heads turning, and
people saying ‘I need to start think-
ing about this for my farm.’”
Boots on the ground
A fourth project partner, the
Bonneville Environmental Foun-
dation, came aboard and provided
funding to purchase one of the first
two demonstration tractors.
The foundation works primarily
with consumer-owned utilities in
the Northwest that purchase hydro-
electricity from the Bonneville
Power Administration. It includes
a renewable energy program that
supports community solar projects,
as well as electric vehicles.
Evan Ramsey, senior director of
renewables for the foundation, said
the project was a good fit.
“This was one way to get some
of this clean technology into those
communities,” Ramsey said. “Cer-
tainly the prospects for electric
tractors — reducing operating
expenses, reducing health impacts
for farmers and reducing emissions
— those are all great outcomes, if
we can realize them.”
The project has also received
backing from the USDA, Alum-
bra Innovations Foundation, Pacific
Power and Portland General Elec-
tric’s Drive Change Fund.
Wallace, with the Wy’East
RC&D, said he was brought on to
be the boots on the ground, running
the tractors and building interest
among farmers.
The first two tractors were
shipped to his home in 2021. Both
came from the California manu-
facturer Solectrac — the 40-horse-
power eUtility Electric Tractor and
30-horsepower Compact Electric
Tractor.
George Plaven/Capital Press
Wallace demonstrates how to
charge a Solectrac compact
electric tractor at his home in
Dufur, Ore.
George Plaven/Capital Press
Robert Wallace, executive director of the Wy’East Resource Conser-
vation and Development Area Council, demonstrates one of two
new Solectrac compact electric tractors.
Wallace fitted
both models with
data collection sys-
tems that use cel-
lular and satel-
lite connections to
show where the
Evan
tractors have been,
Ramsey
what they were
doing, how long
they were able to
do specific tasks
and how much
energy they used.
One of the chal-
lenges,
Wallace
said,
is
limitations
Bridget
with the battery
Callahan
packs. To make
a battery large
enough to power
a 500-horsepower
combine, like those
seen in his neigh-
bors’ wheat fields,
would not be
cost-effective.
Whitaker
But for smaller
Jamieson
farms, vineyards
and orchards, Wallace said the elec-
tric tractors can do a lot.
“Overall, they can perform any
job that an equivalent diesel tractor
can perform,” he said.
Field testing, charging
Dave Picanso, farm manager at
Rusted Gate Farm in Central Point,
Ore., said they hosted the electric
tractors last spring to test drive in
their apple and truffle orchards.
“When we first started using
them, the first thing everybody
noticed is how quick they are,”
Picanso said. “You can take off
basically in any gear.”
Rusted Gate Farm is a working
farm and nonprofit organization in
the Rogue Valley of Southern Ore-
Taylor: Before joining
USDA, Taylor worked for
several members of Congress
Continued from Page 1
“passion for seeking market opportunities for
American farmers, ranchers and food producers
of all types.”
Since 2016, Taylor has been the director of
Oregon Department of Agriculture, in a state
whose economy is heavily dependent on foreign
trade, exporting about $2.85 billion in agricul-
tural goods annually.
Before coming to ODA, Taylor spent 12
years working on agricultural trade policy and
related issues in Washington D.C., where she
oversaw USDA’s Farm and Foreign Agricul-
tural Services branch. She spent years travel-
ing the world in that role, looking for ways to
open new markets and improve the competi-
tive position of U.S. farm goods in the global
marketplace.
Before joining USDA, Taylor worked for
several members of Congress.
Taylor is a graduate of Iowa State University.
She grew up on her family farm in Iowa, a prop-
erty that has been in her family for more than
100 years.
During high school, Taylor enlisted in the
U.S. Army Reserve. In college, her unit was
deployed to Iraq, where she served one tour
with the 389th Combat Engineer Battalion.
A replacement for her at ODA has not yet
been announced.
gon. Part of the mission, Picanso
said, is to support other small farms
through demonstrations, trials and
educational outreach.
Picanso said there was “defi-
nitely” a learning curve getting used
to the electric tractors and how they
handle. The tractors were too small
to use working hay, he said. They
were better suited for the orchards
— mowing brush, moving mulch
and running a rotary tiller between
rows of trees.
The tractors charged overnight,
and Picanso said they never had an
issue running out of battery while
out on a job.
“We ran it for three and a half
to four hours pretty hard, and we
would still have 30% (battery),” he
said.
In Dufur, Wallace showed
how the tractors can plug into any
standard 220-volt outlet. It takes
roughly three to four hours for the
tractors to fully charge, while the
battery life ranges from several
hours to all day, depending on how
hard they’re working.
“It’s a lot easier to charge these
than even what we originally
thought,” Wallace said. “We don’t
need on-farm charging stations.”
Wallace acknowledges there are
limitations with the tractors’ size
and batteries. They can’t do every-
thing that commercial agriculture
demands, he said, but trials like
those at Rusted Gate prove they can
be effective in certain operations.
“Now we’ve got things we can
use, things we can see on the land-
scape,” he said. “It’s not going to fit
every solution, and that’s not what
we’re trying to do.”
Cost of ownership
On May 12, Oregon State Uni-
versity published a study analyzing
the cost of ownership for the Solec-
trac Compact Electric Tractor and
32-horsepower John Deere 2032R.
The study, conducted by OSU’s
Nexus of Energy, Water and Agri-
culture Lab, assumes both trac-
tors operate 250 hours a year for
seven years. The cost of owner-
ship is divided into four segments:
purchase price, financing costs,
energy costs and maintenance and
repair.
According to the study, the elec-
tric tractor produced substantially
less greenhouse gas emissions —
1.56 metric tons versus 4.84 met-
ric tons generated by the diesel trac-
tor. The electric tractor’s emissions
were calculated based on the esti-
mated emissions of generating the
electricity it used.
Meanwhile, the cost of owner-
ship was roughly equivalent, rang-
ing from $39,853 to $40,738 for
the electric tractor compared to
$37,553 to $43,072 for the diesel
tractor. The findings were based on
data collected by Wallace.
Kyle Proctor, the study’s author,
wrote that eTractors “offer a great
value proposition for farmers in the
Pacific Northwest.”
“The transition toward eTractors
would support the country’s goals
of combating climate change, and
because agriculture is one of the
industries most vulnerable to cli-
mate change impacts, the transition
to eTractors can serve as an act of
self-preservation for agriculture,”
Proctor wrote.
More than 80% of the cost of
ownership for the Solectrac Com-
pact Electric Tractor is associated
with the initial purchase price. The
base price is listed at $27,999, or
$33,797 if you add the front loader
and industrial tires.
The base price for the die-
sel John Deere 2032R is $25,345,
which includes industrial tires.
Deere and other manufacturers
are also developing electric tractors
and sprayers.
Callahan, with Sustainable
Northwest, said the study is fur-
ther underscored by the rising cost
of diesel. The American Automo-
bile Association reports the average
price of diesel is currently $4.99
per gallon in Oregon, and $4.48 per
gallon nationwide.
Average electricity prices in
Oregon are lower than the national
average, according to the U.S.
Growing interest
A separate report released simul-
taneously by the Cadeo Group in
Portland examined the electric trac-
tor market in the Pacific Northwest
and barriers to adoption.
Electric tractors are still nascent
in the U.S., according to the report,
making up less than 1% of the total
market share. Buyers now tend to
be hobby farmers willing to assume
greater risk to try less established
technologies.
“The farm is not their primary
source of income,” the report states,
“and therefore they are more will-
ing to try a new technology based
on other motivations such as car-
bon emission reduction without
risking their long-term economic
capability.”
However, the report states
that adoption of electric trac-
tors could quickly increase due
to recent technological improve-
ments, cost reductions in develop-
ment and manufacturers increasing
production.
Based on their demonstrations
and cost of ownership findings,
Callahan said the project is growing
in both scale and interest. Another
two Solectrac Compact Electric
Tractors were delivered earlier this
month, which will be made avail-
able to farms for testing.
In March, Oregon Sens. Ron
Wyden and Jeff Merkley announced
a $1.5 million allocation to the proj-
ect, which will be used to add 12
new electric vehicles to the fleet.
“We’re certainly eager to watch
this program scale,” Callahan said.
“We just want to make sure this
technology is accessible, and we
think there are a lot of ways to do
it.”
Traci Brock, member services
manager for the Wasco Electric
Cooperative in The Dalles, said
they will bring an electric tractor to
demonstrate at their annual mem-
ber appreciation picnic in June. The
co-op serves roughly 5,000 square
miles and 3,000 customers in rural
Oregon.
“Farmers, as much as they want
to say they don’t want it, I think it
intrigues them a little bit,” Brock
said. “It’s one thing reading an arti-
cle about it. It’s another thing actu-
ally getting your hands on it.”
Jamieson, the project manager at
Forth Mobility, said electric tractors
are only going to get better as the
project moves forward.
“Once the market really starts
to pick up over the next 2-3 years,
I think we’ll start to see pretty sig-
nificant changes in this sphere,” he
said.
Labor: ‘Tardiness is not acceptable. All agriculture is perishable’
Continued from Page 1
Ocean carriers are rushing to get
empty containers across the Pacific
Ocean, where they can be loaded with
Asian consumer products headed for U.S.
shores, he said. “This is at a time export-
ers are screaming for empty containers.”
Carriers don’t want to wait for con-
tainers to travel inland in the U.S. before
returning with farm exports, which are
typically lower in value and less profit-
able for them, Friedmann said.
Meanwhile, ports are clogged with so
many containers that ships must wait to
get unloaded, severely slowing the deliv-
ery of products, he said.
“There is no room for further disrup-
tion,” Friedmann said. “Even without fur-
ther disruption, we’re in crisis.”
Delayed deliveries are especially haz-
ardous for farm products, which can spoil
or fail to arrive in time to meet seasonal
demand, he said. “For food and agricul-
ture, tardiness is not acceptable. All agri-
culture is perishable.”
These problems are putting pressure on
both the ILWU and the PMA to avoid fur-
ther turbulence in port operations as they
try to reach an agreement, said Michael
LeRoy, a law professor at the University
of Illinois who studies labor and employ-
ment relations.
The ILWU’s recent contract deal
Getty Images
The Port of Seattle.
with the United Grain terminal in Van-
couver, Wash., suggests that labor-man-
agement relations are more conciliatory
than in the past, LeRoy said.
Contracts for grain handling opera-
tions are negotiated separately from con-
tainer terminals but likewise devolved
into acrimony and a worker lockout in
2013. A new contract was signed the next
year but broader labor strife at container
terminals soon followed.
The United Grain agreement does
“bode well” for smoother contract nego-
tiations between ILWU and PMA, LeRoy
said. “Usually, those things set a pattern
for the next contract.”
Even so, the combative bargaining
history between the two organizations
cannot be ignored, he said. “Past is pro-
logue in these things, so I expect some
level of contention.”
The longshoremen effectively control
port operations and thus have an inher-
ent negotiating advantage, which is only
stronger during the current worker short-
age, LeRoy said. “Labor has not been
this strong for 40 years and that includes
the longshore union.”
Given the fragile state of the economy
and the “terrible situation” at the ports,
the ILWU would be wise not to overplay
its hand, though, he said.
For example, a coal miners’ strike in
1946 led to a public backlash against the
union and a “massive defeat” for Demo-
crats in the next election, he said.
“The longshore union has to be
careful not the repeat that history,”
LeRoy said. “If you lose public
support, you lose some bargaining
power. I expect that to be a moderat-
ing influence.”