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Blue Mountain Eagle
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Wednesday, February 23, 2022
Regenerative ranching aid grows
to natural and organic supermarkets
including Whole Foods and New Sea-
sons Market.
Dan Probert, a Wallowa County
rancher and the marketing director
for Country Natural Beef, said the
alliance with Sustainable Northwest
makes sense for their members.
“We want to call out the attributes
that we have that are important to our
consumers, so they feel good about the
products they pick,” Probert said, add-
ing that ranchers today face increased
pressure and competition from plant-
based meat substitutes among envi-
ronmentally minded shoppers.
Probert Ranch is one of the four
operations currently working with
Sustainable Northwest under the
NRCS grant. The ranch has about
21,000 acres in the Zumwalt Prairie
near Joseph, divided into more than
100 pastures to facilitate rotational
grazing.
Probert said he thinks of regenera-
tive ranching as a “triple bottom line”
— promoting healthy cows, healthy
people and healthy land. With the new
regenerative ranching program, he
said Sustainable Northwest will pro-
vide them with objective data to vali-
date these claims.
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
PORTLAND — A Portland-based
conservation group is forming what
it says will be the country’s larg-
est program to support regenerative
ranching across the West.
Sustainable Northwest received a
$488,500 grant from the M.J. Mur-
dock Charitable Trust to roll out the
initiative, partnering with Country
Natural Beef to help ranchers adopt
grazing practices that build healthy
soils and improve water retention.
The program aims to include
100 ranches and 6.5 million acres of
rangeland by 2025.
“When we think about regener-
ative (agriculture), we really start
with the soil,” said Dylan Kruse, vice
president of Sustainable Northwest.
“If you have heathy soil, you’ll have
a healthier landscape.”
For example, rotational grazing is
a strategy that falls under regenera-
tive ranching. Livestock are rotated
frequently between pastures, allow-
ing forage plants to recover and
deepen their root systems.
“You get increased carbon seques-
tration, you get better water fi ltration
Sustainable Northwest/Contributed Photo
A ranch in the Klamath Basin. Sustainable Northwest received a $488,500
grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust to roll out what it says will be the
country’s largest program to support regenerative ranching across the West.
and capture, you get
better nutrient man-
agement and better
forage production,”
Kruse said. “That
can help the bottom
line for ranchers.”
Probert
In late 2020,
Sustainable North-
west was awarded funding from the
USDA Natural Resources Conser-
vation Service to put some of these
practices to the test on four Ore-
gon ranches. That project is still
underway.
But Kruse said they wanted to go
bigger. There is no single, large-scale
program looking at regenerative
ranching, which he
sees as a gap in the
market.
“This regener-
ative space is just
exploding
right
now,” Kruse said,
Kruse
citing more than
$50 billion in U.S.
organic food sales in 2019. “Respond-
ing to those demands is really
signifi cant.”
Country Natural Beef, a ranching
cooperative based in Redmond, was
founded on the premise of marketing
naturally raised beef to local consum-
ers. The co-op today has 100 mem-
bers in 14 Western states, and sells beef
“We use extensive monitoring to
tell if we’re moving toward or away
from our objectives,” he said. “We
know we have to be ahead of the game
in that space.”
Steve Moore, executive director of
the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust,
said the program “provides an innova-
tive, sustainable solution that helps our
natural landscapes thrive while simul-
taneously growing local business.”
“Ranchers in the Pacifi c North-
west play a vital role in helping our
region thrive but face a variety of chal-
lenges, including development, climb-
ing costs, climate change and more,”
Moore said. “Organizations like Sus-
tainable Northwest are doing import-
ant work to help support the individu-
als and families who run these spaces.”
Kruse, with Sustainable North-
west, said the group plans to hire a
new regenerative ranching program
manager by the end of March. They
will then get to work enrolling the fi rst
cohort of ranches in the program, map-
ping their properties and developing
individual grazing plans.
“It’s voluntary, it’s incentive-based.
For us, that’s good conservation,”
Kruse said. “It’s good for the commu-
nity, and it’s good for the economy.”
Research could aid bees, farmers Oregon wine sales are booming
By SIERRA DAWN McCLAIN
Capital Press
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
CORVALLIS — New
research on native bees could
help Oregon farmers, support
pollinators and boost public
knowledge about wild bees.
Oregon State University
researchers this February
released the results of a 2019
statewide native bee survey,
a project within the volun-
teer-run Oregon Bee Atlas,
an initiative founded in 2018
that tracks wild bee species
and their plant hosts across
the state.
Andony Melathopoulos,
OSU Extension’s pollinator
health specialist and assistant
professor, said this “powerful
biodiversity dataset” not only
tracks wild bee species but
analyzes their interactions
with fl owering plants — doc-
umenting which fl owers cer-
tain bees prefer, for example.
Melathopoulos said this
kind of information could
help farmers more strategi-
cally support local bee pop-
ulations, which is not only
good for bees but may give
growers the ability to boost
crop yields and market their
products as high-biodiversity.
Lincoln “Linc” Best, lead
taxonomist for the Oregon
Bee Atlas, agreed.
“I think this will really
empower the farm sector, the
forestry sector,” said Best.
The data was collected
by volunteers via the Ore-
gon Bee Atlas. Some of the
volunteers are now “Master
Melittologists” — a melittol-
ogist studies bees — in a pro-
gram modeled after OSU’s
Master Gardener program.
In the program, OSU
researchers train volunteers
to locate, identify and pre-
SALEM — Oregon wine
producers are outpacing other
wine regions in sales but face
the same industry-wide prob-
lem of aging core consumers,
experts say.
“It’s pretty stunning how
far ahead of the pack Ore-
gon was in 2021,” said Tom
Danowski, president and CEO
of the Oregon Wine Board.
With 24% sales growth last
year, the state is “the best per-
forming region out of all the
majors” and continues to be
the best positioned for more
growth, said Rob McMil-
lan, executive vice president
and founder of Silicon Valley
Bank.
“Oregon is rocking it. Ore-
gon is the best thing going on
in the wine industry, as far as
I’m concerned,” McMillan
said Feb. 15 during the virtual
Oregon Wine Symposium.
The industry’s strong
fi nancial results don’t mean
it can aff ord to rest on its lau-
rels, especially with worrying
trends developing, he said.
Wine consumption has fl at-
tened after a long period of
growth while consumption of
spirits has been growing and
taking market share, McMil-
lan said.
The wine industry over-
all is too reliant on older con-
sumers and Oregon shares the
same problem, he said.
For example, when asked
what they’d bring to a party,
roughly half of consumers
older than 65 said “wine” in a
survey, he said.
For other age groups, the
percentage who answered
“wine” was 30% or less,
McMillan said. “If we’re not
collecting mindshare for peo-
FEEL THE SPEED,
EVEN AT PEAK TIMES.
Oregon State University/Contributed Photo
OSU researcher Andony Melathopoulos says new data could
help farmers support the bees their crops depend on.
serve bees from the more
than 620 species of native
bees in Oregon.
For this dataset, in 2019,
volunteers submitted 25,022
bee specimens from all Ore-
gon counties. This repre-
sented 224 unique bee spe-
cies and 45 bee genera.
Volunteers also collected
samples from 352 unique
fl owering genera, resulting
in the largest contemporary
state-level database track-
ing interactions between bees
and plant hosts.
The volunteers also made
two big discoveries.
Master Melittologist Judi
Maxwell of Grants Pass
found a rare small stonecrop
mason bee for the fi rst time in
Oregon.
Another rare bee called
the lava hole bee was found
by Master Melittologist Ellen
Watrous of Corvallis — the
fi rst documented in Oregon
since 1969.
Many of the 25,022 bee
specimens were found on or
near farms, which Melatho-
poulos said is evidence that
Oregon’s diverse crop mix
supports bee populations.
“Agriculture is often impli-
cated with bee declines,” he
said. “That’s sometimes true,
but we’re not the Midwest.
Here in Oregon, farmers are
doing a good job overall, and
specialty crops are actually
contributing to many diverse
types of bees.”
Using the new research,
farmers can further step up
their eff orts to support bees.
Farmers will soon be able
to track which wild bee species
have been found in their area
and the types of plants those
bees prefer. From there, Mel-
athopoulos said, growers can
see which bee-friendly plants
or trees they already have and
what they can add to “com-
plete the suite.”
Melathopoulos and Best
said they are working with
several Oregon farms, includ-
ing Willamette Valley Vine-
yards, in trials this year to
explore which plants can sup-
port wild bees.
Best and his team are cur-
rently developing an interac-
tive online Oregon Bee Atlas
with a map and simple user
interface so that farmers can
search for particular bee spe-
cies or plants.
“We’re working hard to
publish that in the next few
months,” said Best.
ple under 65, that’s a serious
threat we need to address.”
Higher wine prices at
restaurants and reduced sales
of economically priced wines
at grocery stores don’t bode
well, as they often serve as
“on-ramps” for new consum-
ers, he said.
The wine industry is an
“incredibly good steward of
the land” but that environ-
mental consciousness often
“doesn’t end up on the label,”
which is a missed opportunity,
McMillan said.
One potential to create new
“on-ramps” is the rising popu-
larity of smaller wine contain-
ers with a lower price point, he
said.
“We can’t depend on
65-plus consumers, but that’s
what we’re doing and that’s
a mistake,” McMillan said.
“We’ve got to market to peo-
ple younger than 65.”
On the positive side, the
wine industry has found ways
to capitalize on changing con-
sumer behaviors during the
coronavirus pandemic, said
Lesley Berglund, a coach with
the Wine Industry Sales Edu-
cation company.
“For most wineries, our
direct-to-consumer business is
better than ever,” she said.
Corporate sales “boomed”
during the pandemic as com-
panies sought to provide cli-
ents with “virtual experi-
ences,” she said.
Those purchases often had
a “surprising ripple impact”
later on, in the form of holiday
gift buying and in-person tast-
ing, she said.
“We couldn’t have imag-
ined it two years ago,” Ber-
glund said. “If we did it cor-
rectly, 80% of those drove
more business.”
Wine club members have
become more active during
the pandemic, participating
in more activities than just
accepting “auto-shipments,”
she said.
“They’re more engaged
across diff erent channels,”
which has boosted sales, Ber-
glund said.
Consumers
generally
have been buying more items
online, which has helped
direct sales, she said. Winer-
ies should seize on that tech-
nological change.
“This is the time to invest
and make sure we leave no
stone unturned to ride the
wave, to mix our metaphors,”
Berglund said.
Due to concerns about dis-
ease transmission, wineries
have off ered more “private
seated experiences” in tast-
ing rooms, rather than having
people belly up to the bar, she
said.
Done properly, such seated
experiences translate to a
higher “conversion” to wine
sales and larger orders, she
said.
Of course, the downside is
that such a strategy can require
more room capacity, staff and
training, Berglund said. “We
actually need more labor, not
less.”
The robust sales seen by
Oregon wineries led to a stel-
lar year in mergers and acqui-
sitions in 2021, with more on
the way, experts said.
“Oregon has incredible
value to price,” both in terms
of wine quality and real estate,
said Erik McLaughlin, CEO
of Metis, a merger consulting
fi rm.
Wine companies with
“portfolios” of brands have
been getting feedback that
Oregon is an important
regional category, he said.
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