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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
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published. Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave.
Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.