OFF PAGE ONE
Thursday, July 29, 2021
Dryland:
Continued from Page A1
“Dryland wheat farmers
are the most innovative folks
you will ever meet,” Hagerty
said. “We need to fight for
the good work our growers
are doing.”
The funding also marks a
dramatic change of fortune
for the station after years of
fighting for its budgetary life.
Grower-led initiative
Established in 1931,
CBARC is one of 11 research
centers run by OSU in differ-
ent growing regions around
the state.
The USDA also shares
space at the station, which it
calls the Columbia Plateau
Conser vation Research
Center. Though technically
separate, they have similar
missions to enhance dryland
farming in the arid Columbia
Basin.
However, the center faced
a crisis in 2016 and 2017,
with budget cuts threatening
nearly half the annual fund-
ing on the USDA side.
The Oregon wheat indus-
try lobbied to save the center’s
funding, but Greg Goad, a
Pendleton-area farmer, said
more was needed to find a
stable injection of resources.
“It became clear to us that
this was not a good long-term
strategy for dealing with the
problem,” Goad said.
Goad, who describes
himself as semi-retired,
serves on a grower liaison
committee that works with
both the USDA and OSU
research programs. He said
their focus became identify-
ing proposals that could catch
the eye of Congress and poli-
cymakers — hence the focus
on climate change.
“We could see where we
could be a help on carbon,
and at the same time help the
growers,” Goad said.
The $2 million Resilient
Dryland Farming Appro-
priation was approved by
Congress in 2019, and the
$1.5 million soil carbon
research appropriation was
announced earlier this year.
Amanda Hoey, CEO of
the Oregon Wheat Grow-
ers League and the state’s
Wheat Commission, said the
projects will provide much-
needed data specific to the
Columbia Basin’s unique
climate and growing envi-
ronment.
“It will assure data specific
to the regional differences in
Oregon and will ultimately
lead to increased profitabil-
ity and crop yield — good for
our agricultural economy, our
environmental stewardship
George Plaven/Capital Press
Eric Orem, a wheat farmer in Morrow County, behind the
wheel of his combine during harvest.
and our rural economies,”
Hoey said.
Region-specific data
Wheat is Oregon’s sixth-
most valuable agricultural
commodity, with farmers
harvesting nearly 47 million
bushels worth more than
$294 million in 2020.
The vast majority of that
production comes from
Umatilla and Morrow coun-
ties, which together have
roughly 61% of the total
wheat acreage.
Annual precipitation
varies by location. For exam-
ple, the Pendleton station,
nestled along the Blue Moun-
tains, gets as much as 18
inches, while areas farther
west get as little as 8 inches.
As a result, most dryland
farmers rotate their fields
between growing a crop one
year and leaving it fallow the
next to rebuild soil moisture.
Francisco Calderon,
CBARC station manager
with OSU, said research must
be tailored to this particular
system.
“We cannot use data from
the Midwest,” Calderon
explained. “The answers
to our questions about soil
carbon have to be developed
locally.”
Calderon knows the differ-
ences all too well. He came
to OSU after 18 years work-
ing for the USDA in eastern
Colorado.
Despite both regions
producing dryland wheat,
climatic differences mean
Colorado farmers receive
more moisture in the form of
summer thunderstorms, as
opposed to the Pacific North-
west, where most precipita-
tion falls in the winter.
The timing allows farmers
in Colorado to rotate wheat
with other summer crops,
such as corn or sorghum.
Mother Nature does not give
farmers in Northeast Oregon
that option.
In turn, different farming
practices and crops impact
the amount of carbon that can
be sequestered in the soil.
“There is no cookie-cutter
recommendation,” Calderon
said. “You have to weigh the
local precipitation, conditions
and soils to develop different
recommendations for differ-
ent regions.”
Team science
The new federal appro-
priations, Calderon said, will
work hand-in-hand to answer
those questions.
Under the soil carbon
research program, OSU and
the USDA will evenly split
the $1.5 million, combining
expertise from both teams
across several disciplines.
OSU also will receive
one-quarter of the $2 million
dryland farming appropria-
tion to do the plot work for
cropping trials. Hagerty,
who is the project leader for
OSU, said it is an opportunity
to conduct “team science,”
breaking out of their individ-
ual research “silos.”
“We can have a much
better, broader impact for
the growers,” Hagerty said.
“No more one scientist,
one bench.”
Surge:
Continued from Page A1
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
An abandoned shopping cart sits Wednesday, July 28,
2021, near the corner of Southwest Dorion Avenue and
Sixth Street in Pendleton. The Pendleton City Council
recently passed a local law requiring businesses to post
signs to give the city enforcement authority over aban-
doned shopping carts.
Carts:
Continued from Page A1
By ram added that
Pendleton police would
be willing to work with
stores on providing protec-
tion when retrieving carts
and encouraged them to
contact him with ques-
tions.
“My door is always
open,” he said. “I answer
my emails. My phone is
always on.”
Byram said the impe-
tus for the new ordinance
was an uptick in calls
about abandoned carts in
2019. While most of the
calls came from a small
group of individuals and
“99%” of stores complied
when asked to retrieve
their property, Byram said
police couldn’t ignore their
reports, especially when a
store was slow to react to
an abandoned cart.
Byram said they try to
handle each call about carts
on a case-by-case basis,
especially when some-
one still is using it. Byram
said the police response is
different when its a senior
using the cart as their only
means of transporting food
or goods home.
Ultimately, Byram said
he doesn’t anticipate invok-
ing this ordinance often, but
it provides the city “teeth”
when it needs to get a store’s
attention.
Turk said he worked at
an Ace in Baker City prior
to managing the Pendleton
location and the Baker store
would sometimes find a cart
in a nearby river. Even if
it’s not a problem now, Turk
said he wants to preserve
the Pendleton Ace’s carts,
not only because they’re
expensive to replace, but
also because he considers
shopping carts an import-
ant service for customers.
Health officials say the
surge is largely due to social
gatherings and large summer
events that have ensued since
the state lifted all pandemic
restrictions on June 30.
Infection is spreading almost
entirely among unvaccinated
people, health officials say.
Less t ha n 40% of
Umatilla County residents
have been fully vaccinated
against COVID-19, accord-
ing to federal data.
Hospitalizations spike
The masking recom-
mendations also come as
COVID-19 hospitalizations
surge statewide and at some
regional hospitals.
More than half of all
patients currently hospi-
talized at CHI St. Anthony
in Pendleton have tested
positive for COVID-19,
according to a hospital
spokesperson.
The hospital has reported
a “significant uptick” in
positive COVID-19 cases
over the past week, nearing
peak numbers last winter, the
spokesperson, Emily Smith,
said in an email. Fourteen
people have been hospital-
ized with the virus over the
past seven days, with eight
hospitalized on July 26 alone.
Local hospitals will
sometimes refer critically
ill patients to other facilities
for a higher level of care. But
regional hospitals have been
“unable to accept transfers”
because they are full with
patients, Smith said.
For one patient in need of
a transfer, health care work-
As part of the dryland
far ming appropriation,
Hagerty said studies are
underway both at the station
and at Starvation Farms
in Lexington, which is in
a lower rainfall zone in
Morrow County.
She highlighted trials to
determine whether certain
types of cover and rotational
crops — such as winter peas,
barley or canola — can natu-
rally improve soil health,
break up soil-borne diseases
and minimize erosion with-
out sapping too much water
from the farms’ cash crop.
“What we’re trying to
understand here is, do the
benefits outweigh the cost?”
she said.
The soil carbon program,
meanwhile, is still being
finalized, but Calderon said
it breaks down into three
general objectives.
First is maintaining exper-
iments to see if different
growing practices sequester
carbon. Second is seeing how
weeds and plant diseases
interact with changes in soil
carbon, and third is analyz-
ing the system’s total carbon
footprint.
“That goes beyond just
quantifying how much
carbon stays in the ground,
but how much reducing
fertilizer applications, till-
age or other things affect the
carbon cycle,” Calderon said.
Stewart Wuest, a USDA
research soil scientist at the
Pendleton station, is one of
the project leaders on the soil
carbon sequestration study.
Additional funding will
allow the agency to hire four
new scientists, including a
bioinformatics expert to do
statistical work, and an agri-
cultural economist.
For now, Wuest said he is
skeptical of how much more
carbon can be sequestered in
soils given the limitations of
the dryland wheat-summer
fallow rotation.
“We want to avoid poli-
cies that are unrealistic and
ask farmers to do something
that can’t be done,” he said.
“The main point is to be real-
istic.”
Carbon offsets
In 2019, the Oregon Legis-
lature seemed poised to pass
cap-and-trade legislation
requiring large produc-
ers of carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases to
buy “allowances” for every
metric ton of carbon they
generate.
Such a market place
would have allowed farm-
ers to generate credits
by sequestering carbon.
Companies also could
purchase those carbon cred-
ers reached out to 15 different
hospitals before finding one
with an available bed, Smith
said.
“We’re seeing a big
surge,” Fiumara said. “And
if they’re already having
issues with having enough
room and being able to trans-
fer people out when appropri-
ate, that doesn’t speak well
for if this surge continues.”
On July 23 and July 24
alone, approximately 40%
of patients who came to the
hospital with COVID-19
symptoms tested positive.
None had been vaccinated
against COVID-19.
The emergency depart-
ment’s physician director on
July 26, reported a threefold
increase in patients testing
positive in the department
during the past five days,
Smith said.
Good Shepherd Medi-
cal Center in Hermiston
said they are also seeing an
increase in hospitalizations
and positive COVID-19 tests.
Five people have been hospi-
talized with COVID-19 at
the facility in the past week
as more patients are coming
to the emergency department
and Good Shepherd Urgent
Care with COVID-19 symp-
toms, according to Caitlin
Cozad, the hospital’s spokes-
person.
The hospital’s testing
positivity rate has also more
than doubled since earlier
this month. From June 29 to
July 12, 9.3% of tests came
back positive. And from July
13 to July 26, that number
jumped to 23.5%.
Fiumara said he expects
hospitalization rates to
continue to climb, as is
common when infection
East Oregonian
George Plaven/Capital Press
Darren Padget, a wheat
farmer and president of
the U.S. Wheat Associates,
stands along one of his fields
in Grass Valley.
George Plaven/Capital Press
Francisco Calderon is the
station manager of OSU’s
Columbia Basin Agricultural
Research Center, Adams. He
previously spent 18 years
working for the USDA in
eastern Colorado.
its to offset greenhouse gas
emissions.
Senate Republicans ulti-
mately blocked the bill by
staging a walkout, though
Democratic Gov. Kate
Brown followed up last year
by signing an executive
order targeting ambitious
greenhouse gas emission
reduction goals — at least
45% below 1990 levels by
2035, and at least 80% below
1990 levels by 2050.
Freya Chay, a policy
associate for Carbon Plan,
a nonprofit organization
based in Santa Cruz, Cali-
fornia, said offset credits for
soil carbon sequestration
currently exist in voluntary
markets, though they are not
yet well defined.
“It’s pretty opaque,” Chay
said. “It takes some real trac-
ing to figure out how a ton
(of carbon) was quantified.”
Chay said local research
like that at CBARC is
cr it ical. Wit hout t hat
data, she said indepen-
dent registries will strug-
gle to quantify and credit
soil carbon sequestration.
A7
Meanwhile, farmers say
they are in a wait-and-see
mode.
Dar ren Padget, who
farms in Grass Valley, and
is chairman of U.S. Wheat
Associates, the national
organization that serves
as the industry’s overseas
marketing arm, said the cost
of inputs such as fuel and
fertilizer are only going up.
“The question is whether
any credit that we get
will offset our increase in
inputs,” Padget said. “We
hope it’s a net positive,
financially. If it isn’t, then
it’s going to be a pretty hard
sell.”
Extreme drought
Amid lingering uncer-
tainty, farmers across the
West are feeling the effects
of extreme drought, under-
scoring the urgency of the
research.
Eric Orem, a Morrow
County farmer, plans to
harvest about 2,500 acres of
wheat this year. He antici-
pates his yield may be down
by as much as half in some
of his fields, where just 6
inches of precipitation has
fallen since planting last fall.
Combined with a heat
wave in June that pushed
temperatures as high as
118 degrees, Orem said
the crop’s quality may be
affected. Most wheat grown
in the Pacific Northwest
is a lower-protein variety
predominantly exported
to Asia, where millers use
the flour to make noodles,
sponge cakes and crackers.
Heat stress tends to
create higher protein levels
in wheat. If the percentage
goes too high, Orem said
customers pay less for the
product.
“Conditions have just
been tough,” he said. “It’s
going to be crop insurance
year.”
Orem said he has already
done several things to make
his operation more efficient.
He adopted no-till farming,
which saves him money on
fuel, and uses variable rate
seeding on his seed drills
and avoids over-spraying
fertilizer and herbicides to
save on inputs.
Orem has contributed 10
acres for OSU to trial differ-
ent mixes of cover crops.
The partnership between
growers and researchers in
the area has been great, he
said, with both sides collab-
orating for a common good.
“ L o ok i ng at t he s e
programs and seeing what
farms can do to benefit our
soil health and the environ-
ment is great,” he said. “It’s
a win-win for everybody.”
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Registered nurse Heather McLeod dismantles medical
equipment while clearing out a negative pressure room after
discharging a COVID-19 patient on Tuesday, July 27, 2021, at
CHI St. Anthony Hospital, Pendleton.
skyrockets.
Just a few weeks ago,
CHI St. Anthony’s tested
73 people. Five of those tests
came back positive, amount-
ing to a positive test rate of
6.8%. But in the past seven
days, the hospital has tested
107 people with 28 coming
back positive. That’s a posi-
tivity rate of 26.1% — a
number that doesn’t include
the patients who come to
the hospital known to have
COVID-19.
The hospital reports
between 25% and 30% of
its daily visits now are due
to COVID-19, which Smith
said “has risen dramatically
in the last week.”
Since the pandemic
began, Umatilla County has
reported 9,395 COVID-19
cases. That’s roughly 12%
of the county’s population.