Capital Press
EMPOWERING PRODUCERS OF FOOD & FIBER
Friday, August 19, 2022
Volume 95, Number 33
CapitalPress.com
$2.50
FAMILY AFFAIR
Tractors pull generations together
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
T
Photos by Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
ABOVE: Garden tractors await their chance to compete
at a tractor pull.
TOP: A competitor pulls a truck modifi ed to be a sled at a
tractor pull competition at BiZi Farms north of Vancouver,
Wash. Tractor pull events have separate classes based on
weight, as well as whether a tractor is a stock model or has
been modifi ed to improve its pulling capacity.
ractor pulling is the rare motorsport whose com-
petitors needn’t worry about breaking the speed
limit, even in a school zone.
But to complain about the maximum speed
of 12 mph would be to miss the point.
When you’re pulling thousands of pounds
across a dirt track, “12 mph does not sound fast, but it takes
an enormous amount of horsepower to go that fast,” said Zack
Peterson, secretary of the Oregon Tractor Pullers nonprofi t.
Though success at tractor pulling is measured by distance
and weight, it’d be an oversimplifi cation to say the contest is
only about raw power.
Harnessing that power takes knowledge that’s often passed
from generation to generation, like a family heirloom.
Many tractor pullers teach their children mechanical skills
they themselves acquired while working alongside a parent.
“The most important thing is they’re preserving a part of
our agricultural heritage,” said Paul Pfnister of Keizer, Ore.,
who offi ciates at the events. “It’s not just an act of preserva-
tion, it’s an act of training the next generation.”
See Tractors, Page 11
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Steve Gleason and his daughter,
Cora, rebuilt a 1952 John Deere
Model A tractor together, with which
they compete in tractor pull events.
The mechanical skill involved in
tractor pulling is often passed down
through the generations.
UPCOMING TRACTOR PULLS
• Tractor pulling is predominantly a summertime
spectacle that can often be enjoyed at county fairs
and other community gatherings. The Oregon Tractor
Pullers nonprofi t also typically organizes several events
throughout the season.
The group’s Fall Barbecue Pull is scheduled for Aug. 27
at BiZi Farms near Vancouver, Wash. Attendance for
spectators is free but competitors are charged entree
fees that vary for members and non-members. For
more information about the organization’s rules, costs,
events and pull results, visit www.oregontractorpullers.
org.
• Another opportunity to compete or watch tractor
pulling will be at the Sublimity Harvest Festival, which
is scheduled for Sept. 9-11 in Sublimity, Ore. More
information about the festival can be found online at
www.sublimityharvestfest.com or by calling 503-769-
3579.
Grain exports from Port of Portland decrease 50% due to drought
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
A dry bulk vessel is loaded with wheat at the Columbia
Grain facility in Portland, Ore., bound for South Korea.
Grain volumes at the Port of Portland, where the ex-
port facility is located, have fallen 50% due to lingering
drought impacts from last year.
Last year’s drought has cast a
long shadow on wheat exports from
the Port of Portland, whose grain
handling volume has fallen by 50%
in 2022.
“You can’t ship what you don’t
have,” said Kurt Haarmann, senior
vice president of the grain division
for Columbia Grain.
The 2021 drought’s impact on
production in the northern U.S.
wheat-growing tier was the most
severe seen in more than 30 years,
Haarmann said.
The company’s export facil-
ity at the port’s Terminal 5 is more
wheat-dependent than others in the
area, which handle more corn and
soybeans, and so was particularly
hard-hit by the dry weather, he said.
Total tonnage handled by the
port’s marine division has declined
more than 5% in the current fi scal
year, with grain cargo seeing the big-
gest decrease of nearly 50%, accord-
ing to a recent report.
Haarmann said the drought’s
eff ects have been felt throughout the
farm economy in wheat-producing
areas.
Crop insurance and disaster assis-
tance from the federal government
helped mitigate some of the harm
to farmers, but reduced production
aff ects other businesses along the
supply chain as well, he said.
“That ripples through all those
communities because ag dollars get
spent time and time again,” Haar-
mann said.
Typically, drought impacts are
localized, but the lack of moisture in
2021 extended all the way from the
Northwest to the Dakotas, he said.
It’s likely the region has lost some
export market share to Canada and
Australia due to the lack of available
wheat for Asian markets, Haarmann
said.
“When we got to the tail end of
the crop year, the supplies were
really tapped out,” he said, refer-
ring to the marketing season for last
year’s crop, which ended with this
year’s summer harvest.
See Port, Page 11
Paper calls for fewer cattle, more wolves in the ‘rewild’ West
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Some 110,000 square miles of
federal land in the West should be
closed to cattle and restocked with
wolves and beavers, according to a
paper by Oregon State University
scientists and others.
Appearing Aug. 9 in the journal
BioScience, the paper identifi es 11
blocks of federal land spread over
11 states for a “Western rewilding
network.”
The paper’s 20 signers include
six OSU scientists, professors from
other schools, conservationists and
former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice director Daniel Ashe.
They propose reducing the
amount of federal land grazed in the
West by 29% — equal to the size of
Nevada — and also limiting logging,
mining, oil and gas drilling and off -
road vehicles.
Once rid of “troublesome non-
native species,” the network would
advance President Biden’s executive
order to conserve 30% of the U.S. by
Capital Press File
A new paper proposes taking cattle off some publicly owned land
and putting wolves and beavers on it.
2030, the authors said.
“Although our proposal may at
fi rst blush appear controversial or
even quixotic, we believe that ultra
ambitious action is required,” they
wrote.
R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard
said the proposal ignores the rights
of ranchers and the importance of
widespread food production that can
withstand regional catastrophes.
“The American West is vitally
important as a protein source, beef
and lamb, and is ideally suited for
protein production,” he said.
“It is a shortsighted and unreal-
istic proposal that does not consider
the economic and social impacts it
would have, uprooting entire com-
munities that are valuable contribu-
tors to the economic welfare of this
nation,” Bullard said.
The proposal identifi es blocks
of federally owned land in Ore-
gon, Washington, Idaho, California,
Nevada, Montana, Colorado, Ari-
zona, New Mexico, Wyoming and
Utah for the rewilding network.
The network would include
Olympic National Park, and the
North and South Cascades in
Washington.
Other blocks in the network
would include the Blue, Klamath
and Cascade mountains in Oregon;
the Sierra Nevada mountains in Cal-
ifornia and the Northern Rockies in
Idaho.
The proposal intertwines reduc-
ing cattle on federal land and wolf
recovery. The paper argues that
See Rewild, Page 11