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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 5, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Tuesday, September 5, 2017 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Offi ce Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OUR VIEW Where agriculture and sci-fi meet In 1977, when the fi rst “Star Wars” movie premiered, few — if any — viewers thought it would predict the future of agriculture. We should explain. In the movie, Luke Skywalker — “Our Hero” — fi rst appeared as he was working on his uncle’s “moisture farm” on a desert planet. This farm captured its water directly from the atmosphere, which was unique enough, but only Luke and his aunt and uncle ran the whole operation. The rest of the “workers” were autonomous droids, or robots. As you will recall, they did all of the work on the farm, and Luke’s job was to repair them. He was going to town to get a spare part when he encountered Sand People and was rescued by Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi knight. While the rest of the story is well known, most people dismissed the idea of an automated farm was nothing more than the product of a fertile imagination and science fi ction. Fast forward 40 years, and the vision of a farm where robots and drones do much of the work no longer seems so far-fetched. At a recent conference here in Pendleton, researchers, inventors and farmers got together to contemplate the future of farming. The ideas they have developed make “Star Wars” seem old-fashioned. In the not-too-distant future, they see robotic workers harvesting fruits and vegetables and driverless tractors and combines planting and harvesting crops. Drones and sensors will identify portions of fi elds needing irrigation or applications of fertilizer or pesticide and call in other drones to do the job. Ranchers will use drones to monitor the location and health of their cattle on the range and, when needed, to chase off predators such as wolves or coyotes. Combine that with other advances in agriculture, from genetic editing of crops to use less water, fertilizer and pesticide to orchards, vineyards and berry farms that are designed for effi cient mechanical harvesting, and you have a hint of what the future of agriculture holds. These advances will not happen solely because they represent “progress.” They will address problems that farmers and ranchers face. Among those problems are a shortage of labor, the need for the more precise use of resources and, most importantly, the need to feed 7.5 billion people on the planet today and more in the future. The possibilities are endless. They are limited only by the imaginations of agriculture’s best and brightest innovators. “There’s a clear path toward completely automated farming,” Jake Joraanstad of Myriad Mobile Solutions, a Fargo, N.D.-based tech company, told the Pendleton gathering. “To solve the hunger problem, we have to be going there, that has to be the future.” As technology develops in every arena of agriculture, we will see farmers and ranchers adopt it as a way to grow the food a hungry planet needs. May the force be with us. OTHER VIEWS Why can’t we get cities right? T Nathan Stein with sense- Fly launches an eBee fi xed wing imaging drone August 16 during the Fu- ture Farm Expo at Echo West Ranch & Vineyard. Staff photo by E.J. Harris Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. offered as an excuse for the Bay he waters are receding in Area’s failure to build more housing, Houston, and so, inevitably, is there’s no good reason it couldn’t national interest. But Harvey build up. San Francisco housing is will leave a huge amount of wreckage now quite a lot more expensive than behind, some of it invisible. In New York housing, so why not have particular, we don’t yet know just more tall buildings? how much poison has been released But politics has blocked that kind by fl ooding of chemical plants, waste of construction, and the result is dumps, and more. But it’s a good bet Paul that more people will eventually die Krugman housing that’s out of reach for ordinary from the toxins Harvey leaves behind working families. In response, some Comment than were killed during the storm itself. workers engage in extreme commuting Oh, and if you trust the current from affordable locations, spending as administration to handle Harvey’s aftermath much as four hours each way. That’s no way right, I’ve got a degree from Trump University to live — and no way to run a city. you might want to buy. There are already Houston and San Francisco are extreme cases, signs of dereliction: many toxic waste sites but not that extreme. It turns out that America’s are fl ooded, but the Environmental Protection big metropolitan areas are pretty sharply divided Agency is conspicuously absent. between Sun Belt cities where anything goes, like Anyway, Harvey was an epic disaster. And it Houston or Atlanta, and those on the East or West was a disaster brought on, in large part, by bad Coast where nothing goes, like San Francisco or, policy. As many have pointed out, what made to a lesser extent, New York. (Chicago is a huge Houston so vulnerable to fl ooding was rampant, city with dense development but relatively low unregulated development. Put it this way: Greater housing prices; maybe it has some lessons to Houston still has less than a third as many people teach the rest of us?) as greater New York, but it covers roughly the The point is that this is one policy area where same area, and probably has a smaller percentage “both sides get it wrong” — a claim I usually of land that hasn’t been paved or built on. despise — turns out to be right. NIMBYism is Houston’s sprawl gave the city terrible bad for working families and the U.S. economy traffi c and an outsized pollution footprint as a whole, strangling growth precisely where even before the hurricane. When the rains workers are most productive. But unrestricted came, the vast paved-over area meant that development imposes large costs in the form of rising waters had nowhere to go. traffi c congestion, pollution, and, as we’ve just So is Houston’s disaster a lesson in the seen, vulnerability to disaster. importance of urban land-use regulation, of Why can’t we get urban policy right? It’s not letting developers build whatever they not hard to see what we should be doing. We want, wherever they want? Yes, but. should have regulation that prevents clear To understand that “but,” consider the hazards, like exploding chemical plants in the different kind of disaster taking place in San middle of residential neighborhoods, preserves Francisco. Where Houston has long been a fair amount of open land, but allows housing famous for its virtual absence of regulations construction. on building, greater San Francisco is famous In particular, we should encourage for its NIMBYism — that is, the power of construction that takes advantage of the most “not in my backyard” sentiment to prevent effective mass transit technology yet devised: new housing construction. The Bay Area the elevator. economy has boomed in recent years, mainly In practice, however, policy all too often thanks to Silicon Valley; but very few new ends up being captured by interest groups. In housing units have been added. sprawling cities, real-estate developers exert The result has been soaring rents and outsized infl uence, and the more these cities home prices. The median monthly rent on a sprawl, the more powerful the developers one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is get. In NIMBY cities, soaring prices make more than $3,000, the highest in the nation affl uent homeowners even less willing to let and roughly triple the rent in Houston; the newcomers in. median price of a single-family home is more ■ than $800,000. Paul Krugman is a columnist for the New And while geography — the constraint York Times and professor of Economics and imposed by water and mountains — is often International Affairs at Princeton University. YOUR VIEWS Let’s hear it for the benchwarmers An East Oregonian “Tip of the Hat” should go out to Tom Melton and all his years of effort to recognize former outstanding athletes of Pendleton. Many also appreciate his more recent efforts to recognize good Pendleton athletes who were outstanding in other sports besides football. Even some well deserving ladies are being honored now by the group. Although I am not one of these stars, I did go to school and play on teams with the likes of Dick Jones, Steve Bunker and Clarence Cowapoo. I had Don Requa for a math teacher and his son Billy was a good friend of mine before he died. Kenny Milton was one of my early coaches, and I always valued the lessons I learned from him. His son Steve was also a good friend of mine and one of the toughest guys I knew on the ballfi eld as well as a great coach. I even had the honor of watching the great Bob Lilly play in his early years at PHS. That said, there is one very important semi-athletic group that has been sorely left out of the accolades and honors bestowed upon past Pendleton athletes. After careful thought and consultation with some of those guys who shared this vital spot with me, I am hereby suggesting the formation of the “PHS Bench Warmers Club.” This important group never receives the attention and recognition it deserves. No team — and none of the athletes inducted into the Linebackers Club Hall of Fame — would have ever made it without them. In fact, I am going to be very bold here and suggest myself to be the very fi rst inductee. I might even go a step further and offer my old bench warming buddy, Larry Sweek, to join me as a double induction for the fi rst go round. Larry and I spent many hours, over a four year period, warming the bench for our high school coach. His general rule was that Larry and I would get to play if our basketball team was either twenty points ahead, or twenty points behind. The other golden rule was that we were allowed to play no more than two minutes in each game — just barely enough time to get the adrenalin under control and begin to calm down enough to play with some confi dence. Then it was back to our starting position — First Team Bench Warmer. I know there are many others out there who feel the same, so I will be holding an exploratory meeting for membership at the Rainbow Cafe in the near future I don’t see why we can’t have a nice dinner, good speaker or two, induction ceremonies and have just as much fun as the Linebacker’s Club does each year. We deserve it! David Burns Pendleton Good work by MSC to deny symbol of oppression Compliments to the Main Street Cowboys for denying the application to the vendor wanting to sell Confederate fl ags on Main Street. The Confederate was not the offi cial fl ag of the Confederate Army. While it wasn’t the Confederate states’ offi cial fl ag, several Confederate Army units fl ew the battle fl ag. The most notable among them was Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. And even Lee distanced himself from divisive symbols of a Civil War that his side lost. “I think it wiser moreover not to keep open the sores of war,” he wrote in a letter, declining an invitation by the Gettysburg Battlefi eld Memorial Association. There were no fl ags fl own at his funeral, Confederate or otherwise. Slavery was a big part of why the South wanted to secede. In their declarations of secession from the Union, many Southern states expressly mentioned slavery as a reason for their departure. After the Civil War ended, the battle fl ag turned up here and there only occasionally at events to commemorate fallen soldiers. The fl ag exploded into prominence in 1948 when Strom Thurmond ran for president under the newly founded Dixiecrats. The party’s purpose was clear: “We stand for the segregation of the races,” said Article 4 of its platform. At campaign stops, fans greeted Thurmond with American fl ags, state fl ags and Confederate battle fl ags. But desegregation progressed, and as it passed milestones like the Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs. Board of Education, which gave black American children access to all schools, the Confederate battle fl ag popped up more and more. The South seceded to preserve the violent domination and enslavement of black people and the racist Confederate fl ag only exists because of that secession. Chuck Wood Pendleton Let Round-Up vendors sell whatever they want I am totally amazed by the blatant hypocrisy demonstrated by the Main Street Cowboys in their declining the vendor’s permit to Liberty Flags and Gifts. It was just fi ne last year when they were driving their golf carts around during Round-Up sporting big Stars and Bars fl ags, but now because the liberal social media thinks it is not “appropriate” they are banning vendors because of the merchandise they sell. If you do not like the Stars and Bars Flag, DON’T BUY ONE! You can also tell the vendor you personally think it is in poor taste to sell them, but you do not have the right to stop them from selling, if they meet the standard requirements of all vendors. I never saw any uproar when a statue of a whorehouse madam was put up on Main Street. This is all part of our country’s history, including slavery and the Stars and Bars fl ag. Get over it and move on! We have enough hypocrisy, doublespeak and half-truths in our government already. Let’s try to keep it honest and real here at home. As has been said many times and in many ways, “If we forget (or bury) the past, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.” We should try to be open and learn from the past and those mistakes that were made. We already have people in our local governments who are trying to push their own personal agenda and to hell with “the people.” Your personal feelings toward the Stars and Bars fl ag are your business, but it should not be the grounds for blocking a vendor from trying to make a living. Robert Park Helix It takes a hike to watch soccer So Thursday evening there is a soccer game at the new [high school] fi eld. The parking lot is on top of the fi eld and the only gate that is open is on the bottom. People had to carry their chairs and other stuff 100 yards down the hill and back up to within 50 feet of their cars to watch the game. When done they had to go back the same way. When they drove out of the parking lot they had to look at a locked gate right in front of them. So much for hospitality. Jim Harvey Pendleton LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspa- per reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual ser- vices and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.