Northwest Farm and Ranch, Summer 2015 by Moscow-Pullman Daily News

Farm and Ranch

SUMMER 2015

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Pain and startle are the enemy when handling animals â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Page 10

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Farm and Ranch Pend Oreille

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Says popular weed killer not considered carcinogenic | 5A

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Researcher: No danger in Roundup

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| Friday, June 26, 2015 | 3A

On the cover: Washington State University dairy cows | Photo courtesy of WSU

More milk, more progress

WSU’s Knott Dairy Center equipment upgrade provides students with hands-on experience | 7A

Idaho

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Agriculture jobs on the rise

Northwest Farm and Ranch is published quarterly by the Lewiston Tribune and Moscow-Pullman Daily News and printed at the Tribune Publishing Co. Inc.’s printing facility at 505 Capital St. in Lewiston. To advertise in Northwest Farm and Ranch, contact the Moscow-Pullman Daily News advertising department at 208.882.5561 or Advertising Manager Craig Staszkow at cstaszkow@dnews.com, or the Lewiston Tribune advertising department at 208.848.2216 or Advertising Director Kim Burner at kburner@lmtribune.com. Editorial suggestions and ideas can be sent to Lee Rozen at lrozen@dnews.com or Doug Bauer at dbauer@lmtribune.com.

Study predicts spike in employment to continue through 2020 | 14A

Climate change may be changing farms

Increase in temperatures signal increase in greenhouse gases | 15A

4A | Friday, June 26, 2015 |

Northwest Farm and Ranch

Moscow-Pullman Daily News

As easy as soil chemistry 101 Updated version of UI textbook makes subject within reach for students By Kathy Hedberg for Northwest Farm and Ranch

An updated version of a soil science textbook developed by a University of Idaho soil chemistry professor will help make the complicated subject more accessible to undergraduate students. Daniel G. Strawn’s version of “Soil Chemistry” — the fourth edition — was recently published by Wiley Blackwell publishers. Strawn has been working at the UI for 15 years and teaches a senior-level environmental soil chemistry class. “The book is designed to be used for an under-

Daniel Strawn

graduate student in an undergraduate class, as opposed to other textbooks typically written for graduate students,” Strawn

said. Most of soil chemistry is aimed at seniors and graduate students, Strawn said. “What happens a lot of times is that the undergraduate student often feels overwhelmed by all the amount of information.”

Strawn’s version focuses on giving just the information an undergraduate student could use in a onesemester class and does not include more of the advanced details needed in upper-level classes. “The information is presented in a direct way that someone who doesn’t have a lot of background can still understand it,” he said. The book only recently was released, but Strawn said during the two years he worked to revise the earlier textbooks he had some of his undergraduate students preview it. “My impression is the students appreciate

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the information and the approach and I got some feedback and used that to rewrite it,” Strawn said. When Strawn was an undergraduate 20 years ago at the University of California, Davis, he had used the second edition of “Soil Chemistry” written by Hinrich Bohn and George A. O’Connor. The book helped influence his career choice, which has included a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and a White House visit with President George W. Bush in 2003. The third edition was published in 2001 and when Strawn decided it

needed to be updated he made contact with the original authors. They had co-written the text in the 1970s and gave their approval for his new version. Strawn said he is pleased this latest edition has gone down considerably in price — to $159, which is 15 percent less than the third edition. A paperback version costs $79 and the e-book copy lists for $64. Courtesy “I think not too many people have the oppor- The cover of “Soil tunity to really take on Chemistry” written by such a project,” he said of Daniel G. Strawn. rewriting the textbook. “It takes a lot of time and I think it’s one of the effort. I was fortunate things of my career that I that I was able to work feel really proud of.” with the earlier edition authors. Kathy Hedberg may be reached “I would say I feel at kathyhedberg@gmail.com, or pretty good about it. (208) 983-2326.

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Says popular weed killer not considered carcinogenic

glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic” to humans on the basis of tumors in mice, according to a statement in Washington State University Tri- March. “The content generCities professor Allan ated by the IARC conFelsot recently precluded that glyphosate sented evidence to was part of a human attendees of the Latin carcinogen,” he said. American Pesticide “I made the conclusion Residue Workshop that their conclusion countering a recent is completely out of assertion that the date.” active ingredient of Glyphosate was popular herbicide introduced in the Roundup is a carcinoUnited States around gen. 1970 under the name The International Allan Felsot Roundup, and it is Agency for Research Washington State University currently the most on Cancer — an arm TriCities professor widely used and proof the World Health duced week killer in Organization — recently released its conclusions that the world, according to the IARC. By Shanon Quinn

for Northwest Farm and Ranch

“

I care about good science and using high standards.”

Studies conducted in the U.S. by the United States Environmental Protection Agency placed the chemical in a C Class — possibly carcinogenic to humans — in 1985, but after later investigations the classification was changed. The 1991 studies, which focused on agricultural exposure in humans and lab mice, found “evidence of non-carcinogenicity.” Felsot, who began research on the topic when IARC made its preliminary announcement in March, said he jumps into research on potentially controversial statements as soon as they are made public as part of his regular routine.

| Friday, June 26, 2015 | 5A

Felsot said information used by the IARC to generate the statement, as well as the monograph that is expected to be released within the month, is old news and its argument that glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans is not based on “good science.” “I care about good science and using high standards,” Felsot said. Felsot said part of the IARC’s argument is that an increase non-Hodgkin lymphoma occurred at the time glyphosate was increasing in popularSee roundup, Page 9A

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One man’s ag pest, another’s cash crop WSU researchers use prickly lettuce for rubber production By Calley Hair for Northwest Farm and Ranch

Researchers at Washington State University may have found a way to turn a common agricultural pest into a cash crop for farmers on the Palouse. Prickly lettuce, a wild and bitter relative of cultivated lettuce, provides a raw material that can be used for rubber production, the researchers report in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The project was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. “This is the front end of what I hope will be a very sizable research project,” said Ian Burke, study author and professor of the WSU Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. Burke began work on the project in 2006. He chose to investigate the properties of prickly let-

tuce because it is, as he called it, “a successful weed.” Prickly lettuce plants grow abundantly in the hot summertime climates of Idaho and eastern Washington, invading flower beds and forcing their way through cracks in pavement. Such hardy abundance holds potential. “Prickly lettuce has a very unique set of attributes that allows it to live in Lewiston in the middle of August with no water,” Burke said. A single lactuca serriola plant can grow up to 7 feet high and yield more than 2,000 flowers. Another colloquial name for it is milk thistle, so named for the sticky, milky latex found in its stems. Rubber makes up 5 percent of this substance, and it’s what might turn prickly lettuce from burden to boon for farmers in the region.

Working alongside WSU doctoral student Jared Bell and molecular plant scientist Michael Neff, Burke looked to maximize the rubber yields one can harvest from a single plant. The team identified certain breedable traits in the plants that affect rubber production. “We discovered, very simply, that prickly lettuce has quite variable rubber content,” Burke said. “The trait, that rubber size, is inheritable.” According to the study, latex was collected by making multiple diagonal incisions with a razor and capturing the drips of latex into a tared microcentrifuge tube. The research found that rubber yields are linked to a plant’s bolting behaviors. Plants with shorter bolting periods and multiple stems produce more rubber, providing more frequent opportunities to harvest the

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latex. These desirable traits can be propagated through selective breeding. While the research shows a promising new source for natural rubber, commercial cultivation is a ways off, Burke said. The quantity of rubber that can be extracted from prickly lettuce is limited. At the moment, growing the plant to harvest rubber isn’t cost effective. “We know it produces highquality rubber. We don’t know how to access it yet, so I wouldn’t call it a resource yet,” Burke said. “We need to know how to effectively extract large amounts of rubber from the field.” The biggest source of natural rubber comes from rubber trees, native to Brazil but mostly grown in plantations in South Asia. The latex in these trees consists of 30 percent rubber, as opposed to the 5 percent found in prickly lettuce. “When you can get a resource relatively cheaply, you don’t look

around and try to find one that costs more money,” Burke said. But rubber trees are susceptible to disease, and their centralization makes them a target for instability. “Alternative sources of natural rubber are of importance due to economic, biological, and political threats that could diminish supplies of this resource,” according to the report. Today, artificial rubber derived from petroleum oil makes up more than half of the rubber products on the market, from shower curtains to condoms. Whether or not the discoveries at WSU will cause a significant shift in the industry remains to be seen. “This is long term. Growers aren’t going to be growing prickly lettuce in the next five years for rubber,” Burke said. Calley Hair may be reached at (208) 8482274, or by email at intern1@lmtribune.com

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More milk, more progress

Moscow-Pullman Daily News

| Friday, June 26, 2015 | 7A

WSU’s Knott Dairy Center equipment upgrade provides students with hands-on experience By Dominique Wald for Northwest Farm and Ranch

Washington State University’s Knott Dairy Center recently completed a $150,000 milk parlor upgrade that allows the center to continue to provide for its extension and research programs. The upgrade, funded by the WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resources Sciences, the animal science department and the WSU Creamery, allows 180 cows to be milked three times a day. It took two weeks to complete and entailed replacing milk-

ing stalls and equipment, along with adding rubber mats for animal comfort. With the new electronic system, 12 cows can be milked at once, which provides more efficiency, reliability and accuracy when milking cows and recording the output. “The transition was definitely rocky,” WSU Dairy Center manager John Swain said. “But after a few days everyone, including the cows, had the hang of it.” The center first started milking cows in 1962 and sells all of its milk to the Geoff Crimmins/Daily News

See progress, Page 9A

Carlos Amado milks cows June 3 at Washington State University’s Knott Dairy Center in Pullman.

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Arid weather increases wheat production Lind’s parched conditions contribute useful research for dryland farming By Kathy Hedberg for Northwest Farm and Ranch

What makes the Washington State University research station at Lind so valuable to farmers is its parched conditions for raising wheat. “It’s representative of 3.5 million cropland acres that are in the wheat fallow rotation with less than 12 inches of (annual) rainfall,” said Bill Schillinger, director of the station. A century ago, “The farmers were really struggling out here. They had back-to-back drought years, unprecedented wind erosion and they said, ‘We need help. How else are we going to farm out here?’ ” The research station, located about 90 miles northwest of Pullman, recently celebrated

its 100th year of operation with a field day, exploring the many contributions to crop production in a semi-arid environment the Lind station has made. Farmers began cultivating the dry lands of eastern Washington in the early 1880s, arriving from the Midwest, northern and central Europe and Russia. Settlers found little rain in summer and the soil prone to wind erosion. Farmers, landlords and politicians began lobbying for a research station to investigate agricultural needs in the harsh climate. In April 1915, Adams County deeded 320 acres to the university and the Lind station was established. Schillinger said through the years scientists at Lind have published research articles in

journals around the world having to do with soil management, alternative crops, soil physics and wheat breeding. “There are places much drier even than in Washington” although the Horse Heaven hills in the eastern part of the state has the driest rain bed region in the world, Schillinger said. “We’ve made a lot of contributions and gotten into a lot of publications. Most are applied directly to the needs of farming.” Because of the work done at Lind, average wheat yields in the arid conditions of Adams County following a year of falWSU photo low increased from 10 bushels Steve Jones, WSU winter wheat breeder, discusses the work at per acre in 1915 to 50 bushels per acre today. the Lind Dryland Research Station. Schillinger said the increase is due to breeding, machinery, other factors, he’s confident the and being relevant to farmers soil and residue management, field station will remain viable in the future,” he said. fertilizer and weed and disease and continue to contribute useful research for dryland farm- Kathy Hedberg may be reached control practices. Schillinger also said, despite ing. at (208) 983-2326, or by email at “I hope we’re still around kathyhedberg@gmail.com. university budget woes and

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Northwest Farm and Ranch

Lost and found

Century-old apple varieties resurrected in a lab By Hannah Shirley for Northwest Farm and Ranch

It’s a cold case nearly 120 years old, and retired federal investigator David Benscoter has cracked it wide open. It’s not a murder or a missing person, but a missing apple — the Nero, to be exact, which hasn’t been seen on the Palouse since the turn of the 20th century and thought by many to be extinct. That was the case until last fall, when, after nearly six years of searching, Benscoter found the familiar red fruit growing off the top of a single sickly tree in a long-overgrown orchard near Steptoe Butte. “I was sort of relieved, and also excited,” Benscoter said. “Some people search for Big Foot and you know they’re never going to find it, but I

was hoping some day I would find an apple that would validate my search and what I was doing.” The Nero was one of 11 “lost” apple varieties Benscoter has been searching for, including varieties such as the Arkansas Beauty, the Babbit, the Isham Sweet and the much more region-specific Whitman. The Nero is the only variety that has been positively identified, and of the remaining 10 varieties, seven have received “possible” to “probable” identification by experts with the Temperate Orchard Conservancy in Portland, Ore. Benscoter plans to send these varieties out to other apple experts across the country for more positive identification. In the meantime, he’s still See Apples Page 11A

Moscow-Pullman Daily News

WSU Creamery. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week and has quadrupled in milk production during the past 50 years. The spike in production made the upgrade a necessity. Swain said the upgrade also allows students to work with state-of-the-art equipment. “We’re teaching 500 students a year, and the equipment we were working with was about 30 years old,” Swain said. “The last upgrade we got was in the ’80s, so it was definitely time.” Swain said the hands-on experience students receive with this equipment allows the center to make strides toward its mission of servicing teachers, researchers and stakeholders of the dairy center. “What we provide for students here helps them compete in the job market once they leave the school,” Swain said. Dominique Wald can be reached at (208) 883-4628, or by email to dwald@ dnews.com.

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ity, but, Felsot said, incidence of the disease failed to increase in 1995 when the chemical was most highly used. “In ’95 it started leveling off,” he said. “The IRAC is not looking at risk, they’re just looking.” Felsot said the biggest risk of using glyphosate is killing desirable plants by accident. But with the recent introduction of herbicide tolerant crops, the problem is no longer as large of a concern as in previous years. In the past, farmers would till their fields, sow seeds, then apply a broad spectrum herbicide in order to kill off undesirable foliage without affecting their crops, but as weeds continue to crop up during the growing season, farmers are forced to use narrow spectrum herbicides in order to control them, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications.

| Friday, June 26, 2015 | 9A

The method becomes expensive both for the farmer and the environment, ISAAA’s article stated. Thorough use of crops tolerant to herbicides glufosinate and glyphosate, less chemical is used and the broad spectrum of targets eliminates the need for multiple herbicides. The crops are modified through use of soil bacterium genes that produce an enzyme in the plant that degrades the herbicide upon contact while allowing it to work on pest plants, the article said. Felsot said the use of Roundup is not dangerous and the use of masks is not necessary, but he suggests individuals make use of nitrile gloves in order to protect their hands — “just like wearing gloves to wash the dishes,” he said. He also recommends users avoid spraying flowering plants, as the flowers could spread the chemical into undesirable places and result in the death of other plants. Shanon Quinn can be reached at (208) 883-4636, or by email to squinn@dnews.com.

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Moscow-Pullman Daily News

Low energy promotes efficiency and safety Pain and startle are the enemy when handling animals A low-energy handling methodology is showing dairy farmers how to develop and maintain safe and efficient human and animal interactions. Animal handling specialist Don Hoglund, an associate professor with the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University and co-author of “Efficient Livestock Handling: The practical application of animal welfare and behavioral science,” is working with educators and farmers to help spread the training program and promote a higher quality of life for animals. He recently visited Washington State University and held a hands-on workshop in Linden, Wash. Hoglund said he takes research both of his own and others, and uses those ideas with practical applications to create a lowenergy environment. “In order to do that, we try to get

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people to understand how the animal learns,” he said. Once the handler knows how the dairy cow learns, they can get the animals to go anywhere they are physically capable of, he said. Hoglund said as handlers, their job is to get that done as safely and efficiently as possible. “Those two words are important, because it will also be humane and effective,” he said. Once people understand how the animal learns, they can use the animal’s survival and social behaviors with one another, and move them slowly and smoothly from one place to another, he said. “We teach people what is the most efficient method. What comes with that is safety,” Hoglund said. “So far, it has been tremendously successful.” Hoglund said he does most of his work “on-farm.” “You have to go to the pen and apply See safety, Page 12A

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Apples from Page 9A

collecting apples. Benscoter became an apple detective almost by accident. In 2009, he was two years into retirement when his disabled neighbor asked him to pick apples for her from her grandfather’s orchard. He found the orchard untended and overgrown, with apples too high to be picked. He returned to her promising he would prune the trees and get apples for her for next summer and set about researching what kinds of apples might be in her orchard. As Benscoter dug deeper into the county’s historical apple records, he found that the names of everyone who submitted apples to the county fair ran in the newspaper along with the variety they submitted. From there, he realized he could track down where each lost variety had been growing in the county before it disappeared. Once in the old homesteads or orchards, Benscoter relies on watercolor paintings of each

Moscow-Pullman Daily News

variety commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture a century ago to identify the apples. “It’s not an exact science. There’s no DNA testing,” Benscoter said. “In the 1800s and 1900s, there were several well-known books about apples where they describe an apple with about 20 different characteristics — color, shape, size and length of the stem, the color of the seeds — so mainly it’s a consensus. If you can get a couple experts to conclusively identify an apple, that’s as good as you’re going to get.” When Nathan Tarlyn, a researcher at Washington State University, heard about Benscoter’s work, he said he knew he wanted to be involved. Tarlyn works in Department of Horticulture Professor Amit Dhingra’s lab studying plant genomics and biotechnology, and his enthusiasm sparked Dhingra’s interest. With Dhingra’s personal financial support and permission to use the lab, Tarlyn reached out to Benscoter to offer his help. “We’re trying to save these trees before they’re gone and

make clones of them,” Tarlyn said. “For their own right, they are heirloom apples that have desirable qualities, and are also potentially interesting to breeders.” According to Tarlyn, since many of these trees have survived on the Palouse without any care or irrigation for more than a century, they must be fairly drought- and diseaseresistant. The Nero is already growing in Dhingra’s lab, but it doesn’t look like a tree yet — currently, it’s just organic matter in a petri dish. Tarlyn said from there it will be grafted onto host trees and it will take a year to become 10- to 12-inch saplings. Three years after that the trees will be ready to plant. Tarlyn said that Dhingra’s long-term vision is to have a local heritage orchard with all of Benscoter’s found varieties. Tarlyn said he is hopeful this will happen within the decade. “We want it to be in the public interest, both for the preservation of the history and for any fruit it would provide,” Tarlyn said. “We don’t have a model yet — I don’t know if it

| Friday, June 26, 2015 | 11A

Geoff Crimmins/Daily News

Washington State University researcher Nathan Tarlyn talks June 8 in Pullman about his work to reproduce an apple tree growing in a historic abandoned orchard. would be pick your own, or if Backyard Harvest or Second Harvest would pick fruit and give it to food banks, or some of it could be sold to farmers markets to help cover the cost of the orchard ... we don’t know yet.” For now, though, Benscoter said he is OK with a little uncertainty. He’s in it for the long haul.

“Some people like to search for old apples for scientific reasons, and some people — and I’m one of those — would like to bring back a piece of history that has been lost,” Benscoter said. Hannah Shirley can be reached at (208) 883-4632, or by email to briefs@dnews. com.

12A | Friday, June 26, 2015 |

Northwest Farm and Ranch

Moscow-Pullman Daily News

disease â&#x20AC;&#x201D; everything falls into balance,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The overarching statement, is it improves the quality of their life.â&#x20AC;? from Page 10A Hoglund said the goal is to have the animals healthy and productive and for handlers to be able to understand the animalsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; behavit in order to learn it,â&#x20AC;? he said. Hoglund said he teaches the dairy farm- iors. Cows naturally move in herds, for example, ers topics such as hand-eye coordination, but when they are pushed out muscle memory and how to of their comfort zones it may handle oneself like a dimmer cause some to go off on their switch, rather than an onown or move in the opposite off switch. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about teachdirection. ing how to micromanage oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;What we are teaching own behavior to affect a certhem, instead of having to use tain behavior in an animal. vocalizations and instead of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Pain and startle are your trying to move most of the enemies when handling any cows, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s try to get all the animal,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When we cows to move together, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reduce the stimulus, they tend teach them,â&#x20AC;? Progar said. to learn better.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are not only training the Amber Progar, assistant employees, we are training the Amber Progar professor and dairy manageanimals.â&#x20AC;? Assistant professor and dairy ment specialist at WSU, said Progar said the teaching management specialist at WSU it is ideal to not physically methods Hoglund used durmove such large animals. ing the course were extremely â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lot of work to humans and causes a effective and the farmers were able to teach an lot of stress on animals,â&#x20AC;? Progar said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;... We entire pen of calves to herd and even how to want to move to a more friendly approach to isolate a calf for individual treatment by the time it was over. moving animals.â&#x20AC;? For more information, visit www.dairysHoglund said using this methodology, farmers see less injury, more harvesting of milk tockmanship.com. and other tissue products, and higher live calf rates. Samantha Malott can be reached at (208) 883-4639, or by â&#x20AC;&#x153;We see animals that have absolutely less email to smalott@dnews.com.

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Lackluster commodities market has bright spots There are longer-term logistics challenges for Northwest growers and producers By Terri Harber for Northwest Farm and Ranch

The commodities market has been lackluster overall this year, but area experts see some potential bright spots as well as continuing challenges for Northwest operators. Beef and cattle continues to be a strong commodity product, even though the national prices are well below the highs seen late in 2014 and early this year, said R. Garth Taylor, a regional economist with the University of Idahoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Beef is still king,â&#x20AC;? he said. Ryan Kile, branch manager of the Colfax branch office of Northwest Farm Credit

Services, said regional pulse, barley and spring wheat also look pretty good. Kile said he hopes there will be enough rain so crops that need it are able to â&#x20AC;&#x153;reach their full potential.â&#x20AC;? Not all types of crops fare well when they are provided water at the wrong time, however. A few years ago too much precipitation caused wheat leaf rust to form and forced growers to apply fungicide to save their crops, Kile pointed out. Hay producers in the Northwest appear to have a slight advantage over similar California operations these days because of the drought, said Kate Painter, a farm and ranch economist with the UI.

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Northwest Farm and Ranch expires. “Everyone will be back in the same position again,” Levine said. “A lot of local products have been shipped to Asia. What’s needed is a long-term solution.” Kile said products not getting to Asia and other points overseas has caused a loss of international market share for producers in the region who appeared unreliable to overseas customers since tons of produce was left sitting around to spoil. The Pacific Northwest creates an overabundance of goods so exporting to foreign markets is crucial. “We have to export,” Kile added. In late May, agriculture industry members met in Lewiston to discuss how to address long-term needs, which might include lobbying federal officials to extend the strike and work slowdown ban now on rail and airline unions to include port employees. Terri Harber can be reached at (208) 883-4631, or by email to tharber@ dnews.com.

| Friday, June 26, 2015 | 13A

Researcher: GMOs given bad reputation Says genetically modified crops are not necessarily harmful By Tom Hager for Northwest Farm and Ranch

Voters in Washington state shot down an initiative back in 2013 that would have required genetically modified organisms — also known as GMOs — to be labeled as such in stores, but it didn’t end the debate. Mike Kahn, who works with the Institute of Biological Chemistry at Washington State University, continues to downplay the risks associated with GMO despite a growing concern among the public. “I have looked at the data and the data looks pretty good,” he said. “(It) looks like there’s nothing in the GMO process itself that is creating a hazard. That doesn’t mean that one can’t do something hazardous with GMO technology.” Kahn is involved in GMO research and is looking into genetically modifying a soil bacteria that can affect alfal-

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Fuel prices, which have been creeping upward, however, could begin to cause growers problems, she said. Those who operate larger farms and ranches are also concerned about the long-term viability of sending goods to other countries via West Coast ports. Much of the area produce ends up at the Port of Portland, which, as of mid-June, hadn’t found a way to fully restore container service lost there starting in March after a strike. This has required heavier reliance on trucks to get the region’s produce to northwest Washington for sea transport. Rail companies with service from Chicago to Seattle don’t consider stops in locations such as Missoula, Mont., cost-effective, said Sam Levine, a business analyst with the Strategy and Innovation Center at Northwest Farm Credit Services in Spokane. The Longshoremen contract signed last month ends June 30, 2019, but even if container service returns to Portland, Levine is concerned about what will happen when the contract

Moscow-Pullman Daily News

fa. Alfalfa is one of the few genetically modified crops that has been introduced into the marketplace, but overall, GMO crops aren’t that common in the marketplace, he said. Kahn said if a customer were to walk into Dissmore’s, he or she would see almost no produce that contained GMOs. Even when some fruits like strawberries look larger than they used to, they might contain growth hormones, but they are not genetically modified, he said. He said much of that is based on the public being confused. A recent study by Oklahoma State University showed just that when it found 80 percent of people said food shouldn’t contain DNA. “If you eat something that has cells like fruits and vegetables, it’s got DNA in it,” Kahn said. “People are very confused and I think it’s one of these issues where a number of people are taking relatively small

set of facts and use them in a very inflammatory way.” Perhaps the easiest target in the GMO debate is Monsanto, one of the most well-known corporations in the industry. It publicly opposed the bill that was up for vote in 2013. “With regard to the GMOs themselves, I don’t see a hazard there from a health standpoint. As a corporate thing a number of people are very upset at the changes that have happened in agriculture as a result of Monsanto developing crops,” Kahn said. “... I think, in general, Monsanto has been a pretty good corporate citizen in this area, but Monsanto came to this area with an awful lot of baggage based on the previous incarnation as a chemical company. They’re basically not a chemical company anymore at all.” Tom Hager can be reached at (208) 8834633 or by email to thager@dnews.com.

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14A | Friday, June 26, 2015 |

Northwest Farm and Ranch

Moscow-Pullman Daily News

Agriculture jobs on the rise Study predicts employment spike to continue through 2020 By Calley Hair for Northwest Farm and Ranch

College students in agriculture and environmental studies may have their pick of careers in the field upon graduation, a recent study from Purdue University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found. The USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture projects that 57,900 jobs will open up every year in food, agriculture, renewable resources and environmental sciences between 2015 and 2020. The same study predicts the annual 35,400 college graduates entering the workforce in these fields can only fill 60 percent of the job openings. “The food and ag value chain offers outstanding opportunities for young people,” said National Institute of Food and Agriculture Director Sonny

Ramaswamy. “Because of the persistent shortfall in number of graduates, salaries are increasing.” T h i s arrangement Foltz is a boon to agriculture students, but it’s not ideal for employers seeking candidates, said John Foltz, the dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Idaho. While employers prefer to hire graduates with expertise in agriculture, many need to turn to candidates in related fields like biology, business administration and consumer sciences in order to fill their remaining job openings, according to the study. Employers would rather teach an agriculture major busi-

ness and management skills than a business or management major agriculture skills, Foltz said. This bumps the resumes of students in agriculture to the top of a prospective employer’s stack. “(They) need someone not afraid of working outside,” Foltz said. Enrollment at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has been increasing by about 1.5 percent annually for the past 10 years, even as overall enrollment at UI has slightly declined, Foltz said. He said this is in part due to efforts to rebrand the agriculture industry in the eyes of college students. Despite these efforts, stereotypes remain pervasive. “Many people in society define it as just farming,” Foltz said. “There’s a lot of science involved in it, a lot of tech involved in it, a lot of very cool

tech involved in it.” This job seeker’s market spurs a fierce competition among larger companies looking to hire fresh graduates. Ken Blakeman, the general manager of the Lewiston branch of CHS Primeland, said the company has had to change its hiring practices. In the last two years, CHS centralized its application process and hired recruiters to its Minnesota headquarters solely responsible for filling professional positions. All CHS job openings across the nation are now listed online. Casting a wider net increases the chance of finding the right fit for the right applicant, Blakeman said. “We’re really struggling to find key personnel for professional positions. We want to make sure we have a pipeline filled with people who want to develop a career with our organization,” Blakeman said. In addition to national efforts, the company seeks out promising students from the UI, Washington State University, Oregon State University and Purdue. Developing relation-

ships with administrators and professors helps CHS identify and contact top prospective employees, often before they graduate, Blakeman said. Students who do pursue agricultural studies tend to come from family farm backgrounds, Blakeman said. As a result, larger companies aren’t just competing with each other for fresh graduates — they’re competing with the tug back home. “There were a number of years when they weren’t going back to the farm because the economy wasn’t very good, so they were looking to go to work for ag businesses,” Blakeman said. “Now that the ag economy is stronger, you have a lot more of those students wanting to go back to those family farms.” For Brett Nesbitt, a 2015 graduate from UI College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the job search was practically nonexistent. Nesbitt began training in May to be a plant manager at the Boise branch of Archer Daniels Midland Company, a food-processing corporation.

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Northwest Farm and Ranch At the end of the 18-month training program, he’ll oversee 12 workers. An agricultural systems management major, Nesbitt learned about the position at a university career fair in February. He had a job offer by March — two months before graduating. “The job hunt was very easy for me,” Nesbitt said. “Mostly due to my specific degree.” A combination of skills including math, science, management and field work, coupled with his background on a family farm, set Nesbitt up to be an obvious hire. The USDA study indicates business and management opportunities will make up the biggest portion of the new jobs at 46 percent. The next largest chunk will include science, technology, engineering and math careers at 27 percent, while openings in sustainable foods and biomaterials production will constitute 15 percent of jobs. Calley Hair may be reached at (208) 848-2274, or by email to intern1@ lmtribune.com.

Moscow-Pullman Daily News

| Friday, June 26, 2015 | 15A

Climate change may be changing farms Increase in temperatures signal increase in greenhouse gases By Josh Babcock for Northwest Farm and Ranch

Gov. Jay Inslee declared a drought in Washington state in May, but some farmers feel the drought won’t have a significant impact on the crops grown on the Palouse. Sanford Eigenbrode, a professor at the University of Idaho Department of Plant, Soil and Entomological Sciences, said the increasingly hot temperatures are an impact from the increase in greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Over time Eigenbrode expects those gases to become more concentrated and temperatures to continue to climb and start being detrimental to wheat yields and the yields of other crops as well. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, agriculture production must increase an estimated 60 percent by 2050 to meet the demand of growing population. “It’s well out ahead where these things get more stressful,” Eigenbrode said. Eigenbrode is also a part of REACCH PNA — Research Approaches to Climate Change in Pacific Northwest Agriculture — a group that researches climate change

in the Pacific Northwest with ties to the UI and Washington State University. According to the UI, temperatures in Idaho since the mid-1990s have gradually increased, with just a few years serving as outliers. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association stated 2014 as the hottest year on record globally, with a .8 degree Celsius increase in the last 100 years. The REACCH program sent out more than 900 surveys to local farmers about their thoughts on climate change and found their responses to be similar. Despite what the researchers are finding, many farmers believe there will always be climate patterns and find each year to vary. Kevin Mader is a longtime farmer on the Palouse and his family has been farming for at least three generations. He grows wheat, garbanzo beans, peas and lentils. Mader said although there is a drought in Washington state, from NOAA’s online drought map one can see the eastern side of the state is in the “mid-range,” or the average.

No matter what the year, Mader said rainfall on the Palouse varies from about 18 to 20 inches of rain, to the high end of 24 inches. This year, Mader said it’s been slightly drier than normal. “A few more showers and we’ll be looking pretty good,” He said. “But a week of 90 degree weather would burn up (crops) in a hurry.” For the last three years Mader said he’s experienced a dry trend. He said for the past decade it’s been a cycle of a few wet years and a few dry years alternating back and forth. In 2005 Mader remembers wearing a Tshirt in March and being finished seeding at the beginning of April. Ten years ago Mader asked his grandfather if the climate was changing, he told Mader that “no two years were the same” and said in his farming career he’s witnessed “77 weird years.” Mader expects each year to be different and said in our region it’s important to depend on the calendar to know when to harvest. Josh Babcock can be reached at (208) 883-4630, or by email to jbabcock@dnews.com.

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| Friday, June 26, 2015 | 16A

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