Friday, June 24, 2022
CapitalPress.com 5
Soaking rain hampers farming along north Oregon coast
en’t seen a spring like this
in a long time,” said Garritt
Kuipers, of Kuipers Farms
TILLAMOOK,
Ore. LLC.
— While parts of central
Kuipers milks 650 cows
and eastern Oregon remain at his family’s farm on High-
parched by extreme drought, way 101 just south of Til-
farms along the north coast lamook. He came to Ore-
face an entirely diff erent set gon in the summer of 2019
of weather-related
after
previously
challenges — relent-
dairying in Mt. Ver-
less rainfall.
non, Wash., join-
A nearly con-
ing the Tillamook
stant soaking in Til-
County Creamery
lamook this spring
Association.
has made it diffi cult,
Both 2020 and
if not impossible,
2021 were fantas-
for the area’s signa- Derrick Josi tic springs, Kuipers
ture dairies to work
remembers,
with
in their fi elds, cutting grass plenty of sunshine to get
and planting corn that goes fi eldwork done. The farm
to feeding cows.
grows about 325 acres of
Instead, farmers say they grass and 100 acres of corn.
may need to purchase addi-
This year, however, has
tional hay and silage from been a diff erent story. The
outside the area, adding sig- rain has let up for only a few
nifi cantly to their production days at a time, Kuipers said,
costs.
shortening their window of
“Most of the locals I’ve opportunity to harvest grass
talked to here say they hav- silage and making fi elds too
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
George Plaven/Capital Press
From left, Armando Macias and Wym Matthews with
the Oregon Department of Agriculture, and Garritt and
Cory Kuipers, talk about their dairy farm near Tillamook
during a recent tour.
soggy to plant corn or spread
manure fertilizer.
“It’s impossible to get the
equipment out without get-
ting stuck, for one,” he said.
“If you do get out there,
you’re just ruining the fi elds
with ruts.”
According to the National
Weather Service, it has been
wetter than normal so far
this year on the north Ore-
gon coast. Data for Seaside,
about 50 miles north of Til-
lamook, shows 41.3 inches
of rain fell between January
and May. That is approxi-
mately 4.5 inches more than
the average dating back to
2000.
Whereas Kuipers said he
would usually be on his third
grass cutting of the season,
the farm was only able to
fi nish its fi rst cutting by the
third week of May.
“It was only hours after
we got it off that it was rain-
ing again,” he said. “It was
nip and tuck the whole time.”
As for corn, Kuipers said
little has been planted any-
where in Tillamook. Some
farmers pivoted instead to
cheaper annual crops such as
grass, barley or peas rather
than spend the money on
diesel and fertilizer to grow
what, after weeks of delays,
would be less corn.
That means buying sup-
plemental feed, which Kui-
pers said has increased dra-
matically in price. Alfalfa
hay that sold for $290 per ton
last year is now more than
$400 per ton. Spot prices for
corn are up 68% from a year
ago.
Kuipers estimated his
feed costs last year were
$5.50 per cow per day, or
$3,575 for the entire herd.
This year, he expects it to be
$9 to $10 per cow, per day.
Meanwhile, the price he gets
for his milk from the Tilla-
mook dairy co-op remains
the same.
Derrick Josi, of Wilson-
view Dairy, tells a similar
story at his farm. In addi-
tion to growing 200 acres of
feed crops, he has 450 acres
of pasture where by June
his herd of 500 Jersey cows
would normally be grazing
day and night.
“It still feels like March
here. It’s cold and rainy,”
Josi said. “We put them out
when it’s halfway decent, but
when it’s rainy, they just stay
in the barns.”
Wet and cold spring slows Washington ag Oregon drought
persists, though recent
rainfall reduces severity
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Western Washington’s wet
and cold spring has delayed
planting and slowed crops,
according to farmers, who
came into the season already
facing rising fuel, fertilizer,
labor and chemical costs.
“Every front that a farmer
is fi ghting is against him,”
said Andrew Albert, owner
of Andrew’s Hay LLC in
Arlington.
“It’s been tough on the
crew. When it’s nice out,
you try to do a whole week’s
worth of work in two days,
which is not possible,” he
said.
Washington’s third cold-
est April in 128 years of
record-keeping was fol-
lowed by the eighth coldest
May ever, according to the
National Centers for Environ-
mental Information.
Put together, it was
third-coldest and fourth-wet-
test April-May combination
in state history. The National
Weather Service predicts the
state will be cooler and wetter
than normal throughout June.
“The weather has been
absolutely horrible,” said
Gary Lund, a farmer in Stan-
wood in northwest Washing-
ton. “Nobody can remember
it being this bad, this late.”
Skagit County dairy farmer
Jason Vander Kooy said corn
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
U.S. Drought Monitor
Drought areas remaining in Washington state.
that should be waist-high is 4
inches tall. Not all fi elds are
planted because they are too
wet. Water fi lls tracks made
by tractor tires, he said.
Plus, alfalfa has been slow
to grow in the cold. Vander
Kooy said he doesn’t expect
to get the usual fi ve cuttings.
“It could be kind of a
tough year for feed,” he said.
“You spend $5.50 a gallon for
fuel and $1,000 on fertilizer
and hope for a bumper crop.
It’s not looking like a bumper
crop.”
Washington
stands
alone in the West as nearly
drought-free. Only 17% of
the state remains in “mod-
erate drought,” according to
the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Nearly three-quarters of Ore-
gon and Idaho are in drought.
When April begin, the
eastern half of Washington
was in a drought. A quarter
of the state was in a “severe
drought.”
Parts of Washington still
have rain defi cits built over
months. The wet spring grad-
ually overcame the long dry
period, Washington State
Assistant Climatologist Karin
Bumbaco said.
In late May, the state
retained a drought designa-
tion for fi ve watersheds in
Eastern Washington. At least
two, maybe all fi ve, will soon
no longer qualify for drought
status.
“What we did in May no
longer matches the reality of
conditions,” Department of
Ecology drought response
coordinator Jeff Marti said.
From a water supply out-
look, “things keep getting
better and better,” he said.
The USDA’s weekly
report on crops in Western
Washington on Monday high-
lighted the drawbacks to the
cool and wet weather:
Too wet to do much fi eld-
work, ponds in potato and
vegetable seed fi elds, farm-
ers planting between thun-
derstorms. Tomatoes, peppers
and cucurbits planted outside
“suff ered severely.”
Albert said he’s waiting
for four or fi ve dry days to
plant 100 acres of corn. He
could try to overcome the late
start by applying more fer-
tilizer, but he said he won’t
gamble.
“It’s not worth risking the
fertilizer,” he said.
Agricultural groups comment on emissions proposal
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
Several agricultural groups
have fi led joint comments to
the Securities and Exchange
Commission on its proposed
rules requiring publicly traded
companies to report green-
house gas emissions up and
down their value chain.
The Enhancement and
Standardization
of
Cli-
mate-Related Disclosures for
Investors would require SEC
registrants to provide infor-
mation about climate-related
risks that are likely to have
an impact on their business or
fi nancial condition.
It would require com-
panies to report their direct
emissions, emissions primar-
ily resulting from the gener-
ation of electricity they con-
sume and all other indirect
emissions.
Those “other” indirect
emissions would include
emissions by the vast major-
ity of farmers and ranchers, as
they provide almost every raw
product that goes into the food
supply chain.
The American Farm
Bureau Federation and other
groups said farmers and
ranchers could be forced to
report personal information
and business-related data,
creating onerous reporting
requirements.
In their comments to SEC,
Farm Bureau and 10 other
agricultural groups pointed
out agriculture’s success in
reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and said the pro-
posed rule threatens that
progress.
“Our organizations and
our members are committed
to transparency in climate-re-
lated matters to inform our
stakeholders in a manner con-
sistent with existing practices
in the agriculture industry,”
the groups said.
“However,
without
changes and clarifi cations,
the proposed rules would
be wildly burdensome and
expensive if not altogether
impossible for many small
and mid-sized farmers to
comply with … ,” they said.
When farmers and ranch-
ers can’t aff ord the overhead
required to comply, they will
have no choice but to consoli-
date, the groups said.
Further
consolidation
could seriously impede the
ability of local communities
to fund education, social ser-
vices and access to health
care. The proposed rule would
also harm consumers and
erode the strength of the U.S.
agriculture industry, they said.
The groups encouraged
SEC to consider:
• Removing the “val-
ue-chain” concept;
• Removing or substan-
tially revising the emissions
disclosure requirement to
include an explicit exemption
for the agriculture industry;
• Removing the require-
ment that registrants provide
disclosures pertaining to their
climate-related targets and
goals;
• Providing guidance
with respect to the Consol-
idated Appropriations Act’s
(2022) prohibition on manda-
tory GHG emissions report-
ing for manure management
systems;
• Revising the proposed
rules so that disclosures of
GHG emissions operate in
unison with existing federal
emissions reporting programs;
• Ensuring the fi nal rules
don’t include location data
disclosures for GHG emis-
sions; and
• Enhancing the liability
protections to registrants by
making all disclosures “fur-
nished” rather than “fi led.”
With rain storms relent-
lessly soaking the state
throughout spring, Ore-
gonians can be forgiven
for assuming that drought
fears have dissipated.
Many are surprised to
learn that worries about
water shortages have per-
sisted despite the stub-
bornly soggy weather, said
Ryan Andrews, a hydrol-
ogist at the Oregon Water
Resources Department.
Though the season’s
high rainfall and low
temperatures have mit-
igated what could have
been a much worse situ-
ation, much of Oregon is
still enduring a prolonged
“mega-drought”
that’s
affl icting the entire West,
Andrews said.
“Though the spring pre-
cipitation was nice, it was
not enough to overcome
the long-term defi cit,” he
said at the June 16 meet-
ing of the state’s Water
Resources Commission,
which oversees the agency.
Conditions
associ-
ated with summer, such as
reduced stream fl ows and
soil moisture levels, have
been delayed, Andrews
said.
Irrigators and other
water users must still “pro-
ceed with caution,” though
— particularly in areas
where drought has remained
severe, such as Central Ore-
gon, Andrews said.
According to a recent
study, the past 22 years
represent the West’s worst
“mega-drought” in about
1,200 years, he said. A
mega-drought is an abnor-
mally dry period that lasts
more than two decades.
The multi-year drought
has lingered through the
seasonal intervals of wet-
ness while being aggra-
vated by lower-than-nor-
mal snowpacks and earlier
“melt-out” in the summer,
Andrews said.
Last year, OWRD got
600 reports of domestic
wells going dry or yielding
less water and has received
300 such complaints so far
in 2022, he said. Fund-
ing is available for house-
holds with low and mod-
erate incomes to repair or
replace aging wells.
Of course, the extent
and intensity of the
drought would be exacer-
bated without this spring’s
ample rainfall, he said.
Stream fl ows unfortu-
nately remain below-av-
erage in some areas, but
statewide the outlook is
more optimistic headed
into summer, Andrews
said.
Some irrigation reser-
voirs were at record-low
levels at the end of last
summer, but the prolonged
rains have helped replen-
ish them while reducing
water demand from farm-
ers, he said.
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