2017 Ag Journal - Summer by Daily Record

n Farmer betting on beans

n New programs at 4-H

Ag Journal

Daily Record Summer 2017

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Ag Journal Editor Joanna Markell

Table of contents Cattle ranchers sue to return country-oforigin labeling

Farmers using beans as rotation crop

Publisher Heather Hernandez Advertising Contact us: Ag Journal 401 N. Main Street Ellensburg, WA 98926 509-925-1414

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The Ag Journal is published three times a year by Kittitas County Publishing LLC. Contents copyrighted 2017 unless otherwise noted.

New programs, age groups at 4-H this year

On the cover: Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A farmer cuts alfalfa along Tjossem Road south of Ellensburg.

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Betting on beans

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Local farmer Matt Eslinger looks over his bean crop on June 7. Eslinger is among a number of area farmers who are growing several types of beans, from pintos to red merlots, as a rotational crop.

Area farmers using beans a rotation crop for hay

By TONY BUHR staff writer

hile timothy hay reigns supreme in the Kittitas Valley, more farmers are planting beans as a rotational crop. Area farmers are growing several types of beans, from pintos to red

merlots, said local farmer Matt Eslinger. When fields need a break from timothy, area farmers have a number of options, from alfalfa to wheat to Sudan grass. Like alfalfa, beans are legumes and can be used to replenish depleted soils in hay production.

Eslinger has about 120 acres of beans this year and is growing the merlot variety. It is his third year growing beans. “Why beans? Rotation,” Eslinger said. “I’ve had alfalfa — a lot of people do — but as a lot of people will tell you, alfalfa can be kind of a pain.”

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Challenges with alfalfa include baling at night and having to harvest three or four times a year, he said. Beans are a less labor intensive rotational crop and are an annual, unlike alfalfa. It is recommended farmers don’t do beans more than two years before getting back into timothy.

Challenges and benefits

Last year Eslinger tried growing pinto beans, though he and other farmers ended up leaving quite a bit of the crop on the field. Since then many farmers have stopped trying to grow beans. Last year in the Kittitas Valley about 700 acres of beans were grown. “We had some trouble, not with growing them, but getting them out of the field and into the truck because they grow a lot closer to the ground,” Eslinger said. “We weren’t using the right harvest techniques last year.” Pinto beans creep along the ground on vines, which makes it difficult for farmers to harvest them without the proper equipment, he said. The merlot beans Eslinger is raising this year grow taller into bushes. Many farmers in the valley started growing beans after Twin City Foods stopped buying corn, Eslinger said. Farmers used to grow corn as a rotational crop between timothy and invested quite a bit of money into equipment. “It was like, ‘Well, now I’ve got a corn planter, what do I do with it?’” he asked. “I’m going to try and turn it into a bean planter.” Beans do come with challenges, Eslinger said. The plants are susceptible to colder temperatures, and an early frost can damage

the plants. “This year has been especially cool,” he said. “We’d prefer it to be warm. A hundred is not good. A nice 85 sure would be nice for weeks on end.” Weeds can damage beans to a greater degree than some other crops, Eslinger said. It is important to spray fields with herbicide and keep on top of weed control. Mites can also present a challenge, but they can be managed by spraying pesticide along the edge of the fields. Eslinger planted his beans on May 24 and expects to harvest the crop on Sept. 10. The merlots are harvested in a similar manner to grains. They are first placed into windrows and allowed to dry and then a combine sifts the beans and throws them into a hopper.

plow pan and break up the ground, allowing for water infiltration. “One of the benefits of growing beans in Kittitas County is the million dollar wind you generate,” Erickson said. “If I water the beans and then the wind dries out the soil, I don’t have the opportunity to get a white mold problem happening.” The wind also helps cure the beans faster so harvest is a lot neater and tighter, he said. There are two varieties that grow well in the Kittitas Valley, pinto beans and red beans, Erickson said. The valley has a shorter growing season than other areas, and those varieties take 83 to 90 days on average. The price of beans is competitive with wheat and corn, he said. On average farmers get paid between $750 to $900 per acre.

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Ryan Erickson, who sometimes calls himself Mr. Bean, is the production manager and does sales marketing with the Farmer Bean Company in Quincy. He has worked with farmers like Eslinger on bean crops. Beans work well in the Kittitas Valley because of their long roots and the windy weather, he said. The roots extend past the

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About 70 percent of the beans produced are sold internationally, Erickson said. Some of the larger markets Farmer Bean sells to are Mexico, Japan and Australia. But markets in Central and South America have been hampered in recent months.

See Beans, Page 6

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Beans Continued from Page 5 “Our president has taken a stance that has offended many Hispanic countries and it has been a little bit harder to export into those traditional markets,” Erickson said. In Japan the red beans are mixed with sugar and water and turned in a sweet paste that is used in desserts. In Australia they are used to make a five-bean salad eaten widely in the country. “Australia is an awful like Texas. They have their version of the cowboys and the hats and

they love all things steers and meat,” Erickson said. “What they don’t have is the ability to grow a starchy side dish like a potato.” Three of the beans in the Australian salad are grown in Washington, he said. Last year, area bean crops didn’t do as well in the cooler weather, Erickson said. It affected the yield of the crop and put a damper on local interest in growing beans. “It affected our yield and affected our customer base a little where guys are hunkering

in and I don’t have quite as many beans out in Ellensburg that I did last year,” he said. Besides the weather, beans can be sensitive to weeds and disease. But a lack of legumes in the Kittitas Valley means certain varieties of diseases like white mold have yet to arrive. As far as rotational crops, beans are as competitive as any other plant, he said. “Farming is a gamble and unfortunately with the slipping of commodity prices there is no sure thing, he said.

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Matt Eslinger looks over his bean crop in a field. In Japan the red beans are mixed with sugar and water and turned in a sweet paste that is used in desserts. In Australia they are used to make a five-bean salad eaten widely in the country. 6 | 2017 Ag Journal - Summer

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Local farmer Matt Eslinger looks over his bean crop on June 7.

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More fun with 4-H

Julia Moreno / Daily Record

Alex Bach, 4-H member, with her rabbit, Milkdud, at the pre-show competition.

New programs, age groups at 4-H this year

By JULIA MORENO staff writer

ring up 4-H, and people tend to think of livestock like pigs, cows and goats. But it’s so much more. 4-H offers clubs on photography, food preservation, clothing,

shooting sports, gardening, robotics and even a “getting to know your government” club. Julie Sorensen, Kittitas County extension program assistant at the Washington State University Extension, said this year there are 450 youth, which is more than last

year. And there are 25 clubs and about 94 adult volunteers, which isn’t a big increase compared to previous years. 4-H stands for heart, head, hands and health. Each H has a different “essential element” taught to kids. For example, the

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heart means belonging, which is “an opportunity to establish trusting connections,” according to the Essential Elements of 4-H policy. The head stands for mastery, which means the youth “need to feel they are capable, and

experience success at meeting challenges aligned with their own interests.” Health stands for independence, which is based on self-control and responsibility. And lastly, the hands stand for generosity, which means the young children will learn how to show respect and concern along with motivation to help others. Sorensen said 4-H teaches kids responsibility and allows them to be proud of their hard work. “Learning the life skills and preparing them for adulthood,” she said about the importance of 4-H. “Once they get out of high school and head to college, it prepares them for organizing and getting the right information.”

New Cloverbud program

This year, Kittitas County 4-H started a Cloverbud program, which is geared for children 5 to 7 years of age. Previously 4-H was only offered to kids 8 to 19 years of age. “They’ve had them in the state, but our county never had Cloverbuds. We had a new policy that changed … that required Cloverbuds to be in every county in Washington,” Sorensen said. “That was new for us.” Sorensen said recommended projects

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for Cloverbuds include cats, dogs, rabbits, chickens, photography and creative arts. They can’t do large animal projects, or shooting sports, motorized vehicle projects, or food preservation because of safety. Cloverbuds are given participation ribbons and are not ranked or in competition with one another. The program is available as a sort of training for young children who are interested in doing 4-H, but are not old enough to participate in the judged competitions.

Age divisions

Another change this year was how the age groups are split up. There are three age divisions, not including Cloverbuds. The first is junior, which is ages 8 to 10, intermediate, which is ages 11 to 13, and senior, which is 14 to less than 19 years of age. “It ended up being that we used to have them (the youth) be 8-years-old and in the third grade by Jan. 1. But it changed to just using ages,” Sorensen said. For example, in the junior age division, a child must be eight by Oct. 1 of the current 4-H year to be placed into that division. Once a child is in the junior division, they are able to compete in livestock shows and sales,

large animal projects, shooting sports, motorized vehicle and food preservation projects. Sorensen said one of the biggest challenges is having children who are eight by Oct. 1, but in the second grade. Or some of the youth are only in the intermediate class for two years versus three because they turn 14 before Oct. 1 and are placed in the senior class. “We’re having some adjustments this year,” she said.

Pigs

Bob Eddings, fair director and former swine superintendent, said there was a shift in where kids could get pigs this year. Usually most youth who do swine get their pigs from Pat Clerf, however, he decided he wanted to cut back on doing pigs to spend more time with family. With the change, “people have started to raise little individual two sows and breed them for their kids and then sell the rest. We’ve had a few people step up,” Eddings said. He said small farms around the area have been breeding pigs and some of the 4-H youth got their pigs from Grant County.

See 4-H, Page 11

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4-H Continued from Page 9 “It’s just replacing the 75 to 100 hogs we lost (with the Clerf family),” Eddings said. “We haven’t lost kids; we’re gaining more kids.” He said if families plan ahead and get a hold of a breeder or two, they can get on a list to get pigs. “Pigs are fickle. You can have 11 to 13 (pigs) in a litter and you might lose three or you might lose seven,” he said. “The mothers aren’t very gentle. They lay on them; they step on them.” He said if 4-H families get in contact with several different breeders, then it should be easy to get pigs, especially if something goes wrong with one litter. Sorensen agreed. “We ended up with more kids and more pigs,” Sorensen said. “I don’t think it was a problem as much this year compared to last year.”

Julia Moreno / Daily Record

A pig stands in the stall after being weighed at the 4-H summer weigh-in. Pigs are generally supposed to weigh between 90 to 120 pounds at this time of the season.

See 4-H, Page 12

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4-H Continued from Page 11 She said she hasn’t gone through where all the pigs have come from, but the families involved in swine were able to find pigs for this year’s fair. “I would have thought we would have lost some kids, but we ended up with like four more kids and about 10 more hogs. So, we’re pretty much the same as last year,” she said.

Reptiles

Julia Moreno / Daily Record

4-H swine at the weigh-in, pigs were supposed to be between 90 and 120 pounds. alpacas and then our son who was in high school age at the time, he’s in college now. At the time, he wasn’t going to do an alpaca or anything,” Neustel said. “He’s always had a

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couple of snakes. My wife thought, ‘it would be great if he could participate in 4-H.’” He said the extension office told him kids can do all kinds of projects

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This year, more animal projects were added to the menagerie of choices the 4-H youth have and those happen to be snakes. Scott Neustel, leader of Kittitas Camelids and More, said the club includes both alpacas, llamas and just recently, the club added reptiles back into the mix this year after a break. The club started in 2013 and Neustel took over in the fall of 2014. “Our girls … they started with the

as long as there is a leader for the project, so they decided to add snakes to their club. Club members teach people about their animals, and offer educational displays. The club has five youth; each member shows an alpaca. Two also show snakes. Neustel said he moved here with his family in 2012 from Moses Lake and his two daughters attended a 4-H recruitment function and learned about alpacas from the woman who started the group initially. His daughters were immediately drawn to alpacas and decided that’s what they wanted to do in 4-H. “When we moved here a few years ago, I didn’t even know what an alpaca was,” he said with a laugh. He said the fair is his favorite part of 4-H. “That’s where the kids get to show off, it’s kind of their reward,” he said. “Because they do all the requirements all year long. The fair is when you get to go show the animals to other people. You get to see the kids and the results of their hard work.”

Julia Moreno / Daily Record

Pre-show winners for 4-H rabbits. From left to right: Rosemary Fiske, novice junior winner; Dylan Moore, novice intermediate winner; Elsa Caron, junior winner; Adele Carron, intermediate winner and overall grand champion; and Kylie Smith, senior winner and reserve overall grand champion.

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Crops on the rise

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A farmer cuts alfalfa along Tjossem Road south of Ellensburg.

Hay market exports have picked up

By Clark Israelsen USU Extension Agent

rowers and buyers of alfalfa and grass hay are all asking the same question. “What is hay worth today?” One year ago, hay was relatively cheap and buyers had

the upper hand. We had quite a carryover inventory that had built over time. Some of that was because of comparatively mild winters where beef cattle did not eat much hay. Also, the West Coast port slowdown had quite an impact on the export market. Additionally, growers were

raising impressive yields, so most hay barns were full and beyond. Those factors have changed this year. As most know, the winter of 2017 was brutal for crops and cattle. Because of difficult weather conditions, beef and dairy cattle

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had voracious appetites. They always eat more when the weather is cold. Several states have reported significant winterkill in their hay fields. The export market has also picked up, and there’s no indication it will slow down. Aided by

Hay in Kittitas County The first cutting of timothy hay was underway in the Kittitas Valley as this edition of Ag Journal went to press in mid-June. Timothy and alfalfa hay grown for the export market is the singlelargest agricultural product raised in Kittitas County, worth about $50 million annually in a good year. Timothy makes up about $45 million of that total. In a good harvest year, about 90 percent of the timothy hay crop is exported overseas to Japan, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and other Pacific Rim countries. Japan is the largest export customer.

sales to China, U.S. alfalfa hay exports hit 271,174 metric tons in March 2017, likely the highest monthly total ever. March exports of alfalfa cubes and meal were the highest in several months. March 2017 sales of other hay, like timothy, totaled just over 144,560 metric tons, with Japan and South Korea being the major buyers. With the exception of Nevada, hay stocks in most Western states are estimated lower than in 2016. All hay stored on U.S. farms as of May 1 is down 3 percent from the previous May, though they are still historically high. Initial reports of new crop sales in the West are $20 to $25 per ton more than was seen last year. Historically, the monthly average alfalfa hay price peaks in May as supplies tighten before new crop is made. It then falls through the growing season and into winter

as inventories are replenished. USDA reports acres of new alfalfa seedings were down in 2016, and that trend is expected to continue in 2017. U.S. acres harvested for dry hay are expected to drop by 650,000 acres compared to 2016. Reports like that can cause optimism for sellers and pessimism for buyers. Dairy producers are still feeling the effects from a long run of low milk prices. Understandably some may remain unwilling to pay a premium price for alfalfa hay. Dairymen are always looking for more frugal feed options, while maintaining high milk production and the percentage of alfalfa hay in dairy cow rations continues to decline. In 2014, for example, less than 12.5 pounds of alfalfa hay was fed per head on average to California dairies. That compares to eight pounds per head in 2016, about a 33 percent reduction.

Corn prices and almond hulls have been priced competitively with supreme alfalfa hay. As such, dairymen have replaced alfalfa with more concentrates. Some economists believe milk prices have hit bottom and are expected to climb through the remainder of 2017. At the same time, the nation’s dairy herd continues to grow. Beef prices have also shown recent strength, and the beef cow herd continues to expand. All those cows have appetites. And don’t forget the horses. They have appetites, too. Seth Hoyt, a well-respected hay market analyst and author of the Hoyt Report, offered this recent assessment. “The first sale reported on new crop alfalfa hay in southwest Idaho last week was a 400 ton lot of supreme alfalfa hay big bales at $165 FOB stack.

See Hay, Page 16

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Hay Continued from Page 15

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

ABOVE: A farmer turns over rows of wet hay at the corner of Barnes and Brown roads west of Ellensburg. BELOW: A field of hay flourishes along Barnes Road west of Ellensburg.

The same farmer sold similar quality firstcutting alfalfa hay a year ago for $140 per ton. This trend follows the same pattern we have seen in the central and northern valley of California, where new crop alfalfa hay prices have been $20 to $40 per ton higher than a year ago. “… Some people thought new crop alfalfa hay prices in the West might hold unchanged from a year ago when predictions of stronger milk prices did not materialize the past few months. However, it appears that lower hay supplies, including less old crop hay carried into 2017 is pushing new crop alfalfa hay prices higher than last year.” Some sites I like to use for assessing the hay market can be found at ams.usda.gov/marketnews/hay-reports and thehoytreport.com. Clark Israelsen is a Utah State University extension agent in Logan, Utah. This was originally published June 20 in the Herald Journal newspaper in Logan, a sister publication to the Daily Record.

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A farmer cuts alfalfa along Tjossem Road south of Ellensburg.

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Home-made meat Cattle ranchers sue to return country-of-origin labeling

By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS Associated Press SPOKANE — Ranchers on June 19 sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture, seeking to force meat to again be labeled if it’s produced in other countries and imported to the United States. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Spokane, seeks to overturn a March 2016 decision by the

Department of Agriculture to revoke regulations requiring imported meat products to be labeled with their country of origin. That change allowed imported meat to be sold as U.S. products, the lawsuit said. “Consumers understandably want to know where their food comes from,” said David Muraskin of Washington, D.C., an attorney for Public Justice,

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File

Steaks and other beef products are displayed for sale at a grocery store in McLean, Va. Ranchers are suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture, seeking a return of labels that clearly identify meat produced in other countries and imported to the United States. The Department of Agriculture on Monday, June 19, declined to comment on a matter that is in litigation.

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which filed the lawsuit. “With this suit, we’re fighting policies that put multinational corporations ahead of domestic producers and shroud the origins of our food supply in secrecy.” Between 2009 and 2016, the USDA required country-of-origin labeling on meat. The lawsuit said the change violated the nation’s Meat Inspection Act, which required that slaughtered meat from other countries be clearly marked. The Department of Agriculture on Monday declined to comment on a matter that is in litigation. The lawsuit was brought by the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, the nation’s largest group of independent cattle producers, and the Cattle Producers of Washington. Bill Bullard of United Stockgrowers said the labeling is essential to allow Americans to support U.S. ranchers. “Empowering consumers to buy American beef with country of origin labels will strengthen America’s economy,” Bullard said. Multinational corporations use the lack of clear labels “to import

more beef from more foreign countries, including countries with questionable food safety practices,” he said. The lawsuit asks the court to vacate USDA’s current regulations, which allow corporations that import beef and pork and other products into the United States to label that meat “Product of USA.” Beth Terrell, another attorney for Public Justice, which is a nonprofit legal group, noted that President Donald Trump initially expressed support for countryof-origin labeling, but he has since backed off. “Both consumer advocates and domestic producers were disheartened by President Trump’s reversal,” Terrell said. More than 800 million pounds of foreign beef is imported into the United States each year, Public Justice said. Without country-of-origin labeling, “domestic ranchers and farmers tend to receive lower prices for their meat because multinational companies can import meat and misleadingly present it as homegrown,” Public Justice said in a news release.

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, TISE R E P , EX LITY I B A ST Y, EVIT G N LO T TRUS

Sizing up snowpack

Measuring goes high-tech with airborne lasers and radar By Joseph Serna Los Angeles Times (TNS) LOS ANGELES — Every year for almost half a century, California snow surveyor Pat Armstrong has trekked the rugged Sierra Nevada with three simple tools: a snow core tube, a scale and a notebook. For as long as he can remember, state water officials have relied on the accuracy of those tools to deliver crucial data on the size of the Sierra snowpack and its ability to sustain a growing population. “It hasn’t changed in a hundred

years,” Armstrong said of the survey. But there is a growing belief that this low-tech process alone is becoming too unreliable to accurately manage California’s water needs. A warming climate, experts and officials argue, has ushered in a new age of unpredictable rainy seasons and has caused the Sierra snowpack — the state’s largest naturally occurring reservoir — to melt faster than ever before. Knowing how much snow is available is essential to maintaining California’s water supply and

minimizing flooding when the snow melts. NASA now wants to bring snow measuring into the digital age with SnowEx, a multiyear airborne snow study that uses a combination of high-tech tools to obtain precise estimates of how much water is contained in the snowpack, or the snow water equivalent. The research will use airborne lasers and radar to measure the snowpack on a scale and elevation impossible to reach by foot. The data will reduce the need for water managers to generalize

data over thousands of square miles of land. Project partners, which include the European Space Agency and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center, hope one day to measure worldwide snowpack by satellite. “It’s going to be a number of years … but that is the dream,” said Dave Rizzardo, water supply forecasting chief for the California Department of Water Resources.

See Snowpack, Page 22

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Snowpack Continued from Page 20

How California measures

For as long as Armstrong can remember, snow surveyors have trekked, skied and snowmobiled to spots thousands of feet high and miles apart, and carried with them what’s known as a Mount Rose Sampler and a scale. The sampler is recognizable in the hands of the state’s chief snow surveyor, Frank Gehrke, who strides into a hoary meadow at Phillips Station near Lake Tahoe every April 1 and plunges the sampler deep into the powder. The sampler is marked like a ruler on the outside to measure snow depth, while its hollow center digs out a “core” of snow. That snow is then weighed to determine how much water it contains. “Manual measurements are still

the backbone of the program and will be for the foreseeable future,” Gehrke said. The technique has worked for more than a century, state water managers say, but it’s not 100 percent accurate. Since the surveyor must force the tube into the powder, the snow is compressed and over-sampled by about 10 percent, said Ned Bair, a University of California, Santa Barbara hydrologist. The sampler is used on some 250 “snow courses,” or areas where folks like Gehrke and Armstrong will dip it into the snow 10 to 15 times over a 300-meter area. The snow courses sometimes overlap with decades-old snow telemetry, or SNOTEL, stations. These sites use ultrasonic sensors to measure snow depth and large, antifreeze-filled bladders, or “snow pillows,” to measure the weight of snow gathered on top of them. SNOTEL stations aren’t

foolproof, though. They can be smashed by falling trees or avalanches, or damaged by curious bears. The stations also generate inaccurate data when ice forms over a pillow and causes inaccurate weight readings, Armstrong said. Estimation errors have also become more frequent in recent years, because none of California’s snow courses or SNOTEL sites are located above 12,000 feet altitude — a zone that is increasingly experiencing late-season snowmelt because of climate change.

Why measuring is important

Roughly 1.2 billion people worldwide — 60 million of them on the West Coast of the U.S. — depend on melted snow for water. Nearly a third of the world’s surface is at one time or another blanketed in seasonal snow, and in California, the Sierra Nevada snowpack accounts for a third of

state’s water supply. Accurate forecasting gives the state’s multibillion-dollar agriculture industry an idea of how much water farmers can anticipate in a growing season and lets water agencies know if they need to conserve water or release it from reservoirs. Ski resorts, whitewater rafting companies and river fisheries all look to forecasts for hints on what conditions could be like later in the year. But scientists and state officials say snow survey methods have failed to keep pace with a changing world. Extreme variations in precipitation tend to skew results, and climate change has altered the rate at which snow melts. In a typical year, California’s snow water equivalent estimates are accurate to within 10 percent, according to Rizzardo, the state water supply forecasting chief.

See Snowpack, Page 25

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Snowpack Continued from Page 22 In outlier years such as this one, however, that margin of error can reach as high as 20 percent to 25 percent. In a major watershed, such as the hills above the San Joaquin River — where an estimated 2.4 million acre-feet of water lies frozen — that margin of error equates to more than a hundred billion gallons of water. How the SnowEx study works SnowEx researchers chose a high-elevation, snowy plateau in Grand Mesa, Colo., and the Senator Beck Basin in the western San Juan Mountains to conduct their study. Both areas had low avalanche risk, vast sheets of snow and vegetation that would test the limits of the team’s equipment. By mounting various tools that measure snow depth, density and

light reflection onto land-based equipment and aircraft, the study aims to find what combination gives the most comprehensive and accurate measurement of snow water equivalent. Researchers used five aircraft to fly over the basins in tightly plotted, back-and-forth flight paths while zapping the snowpack with different wavelengths of radar and lasers to measure density, depth and albedo, or ability to reflect light, said Thomas Painter, principal scientist of NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory. Radar, in theory, can penetrate the surface of a blanket of snow and return an accurate picture of its density by detailing the shape and size of snow grains and how densely packed they are. Unfortunately, the technology isn’t advanced enough to cope

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with the fuzziness that comes when the radar hits liquid water, so researchers haven’t been able to go more than a few inches deep before the data become useless,

Measuring snow from the air How NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory works. In the summer, an aircraft flies over snow-free mountains using laser pulses to measure reflected light bouncing back from the surface. Airborne Snow Observatory

Laser pulses are shot toward the ground.

auGust 31 tHrouGH sEPtEMBEr 4, 2017

The reflected laser light is measured to create a map of the surface.

In the winter, the aircraft flies over same area to measure laser light bouncing from the snowy surface.

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Painter said. For snow depth, the team mounted LIDAR, a type of laser that works similar to radar, and flew over the study area last year

The returning light from laser pulses measures distance.

Comparing data from both seasons shows snow depth.

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Source: NASA/JPL

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Graphic: Los Angeles Times/TNS

accurately model a snowpack across a basin?” Bair said. “I think there’s a lot of research questions there, and I don’t know if we have short answers.” Thousands of ground-based measurements were taken of the Colorado snowpack to verify accuracy, researchers said. Teams dug deep pits into the snow, then carved samples from the side of a wall to measure snow density, rather than using snow core tubes.

When will the results be usable?

That depends. Water managers prefer California’s current forecasting method because records go back decades and provide a consistent, historical backdrop for comparison. The forecasting recipes being brewed in Colorado are in their relative infancy and have to be fine-tuned before they’re put on satellites — a proposition that is years away, said Noah Molotch, a SnowEx research scientist with JPL and the University of Colorado.

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“When we get these sensors into programs, more than ever we’ll need ground-based observation,” Molotch said. “We need truth measurements on the ground to determine how well it works.” Once the technology is mounted to satellites, it’ll take years to form a foundation of records that water managers can rely on to create forecasts, he said. “I’ll be convinced it works decades before the water management community is convinced it works,” Molotch said. Are there solutions for better forecasting in the short term? It looks like it. For the last five years, NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory has been working in conjunction with the Department of Water Resources to conduct flyovers of the Tuolumne River basin in the Sierra Nevada. Additional flyovers have included the Merced, San Joaquin and King river basins, said Painter, the NASA scientist. Though the aircraft aren’t

loaded with all the gadgets used in the larger SnowEx study, they do use the same LIDAR and albedo equipment. At the end of the season, NASA researchers and state hydrology forecasters compare the flyover data with their forecasts to see how their predictions measured up. “Even in this very short time … we’re learning that a lot of our physically based watershed models are not accurate in the sense of developing the snowpack,” Gehrke said. The Airborne Snow Observatory flights give forecasters a view of the entire watershed so they can narrow down where the errors in their estimates come from, Gehrke said. “This idea that you know very precisely how much snow is up there, it’s pretty revolutionary in the sense it didn’t exist before.” Those types of comprehensive and detailed observations will be available — at a cost — years before they’re available via satellite, scientists said.

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before the snow arrived. They then flew over the area again with snow and measured the difference in height on the ground to figure out what the depth of the snow was. The team used spectrometers to measure the snow’s albedo, or reflectivity of light. Sunlight is the single greatest contributor to snowmelt, experts say, and the data collected in the SnowEx missions should tell researchers how the sun’s position in the sky affects the rate at which snow melts. Once the data is calculated, researchers will create estimates on the snow water equivalent. Teams on the ground take the same measurements to compare for accuracy. But that’s not all they’re doing, said Bair, who participated in verifying the airborne measurements. “One of the big questions is how accurately can you model snowpack density, but another, more subtle question is how many measurements do you need to

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Healthy soil is key to feeding the world By David R. Montgomery Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington

ne of the biggest modern myths about agriculture is that organic farming is inherently sustainable. It can be, but it isn’t necessarily. After all, soil erosion from chemical-free tilled fields undermined the Roman Empire and other ancient societies around the world. Other agricultural myths hinder recognizing the potential to restore degraded soils to feed the world using fewer agrochemicals. When I embarked on a six-month trip to visit farms around the world to research my forthcoming book, “Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life,” the innovative farmers I met showed me that regenerative farming practices can restore the world’s agricultural soils. In both the developed and developing worlds,

these farmers rapidly rebuilt the fertility of their degraded soil, which then allowed them to maintain high yields using far less fertilizer and fewer pesticides. Their experiences, and the results that I saw on their farms in North and South Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ghana and Costa Rica, offer compelling evidence that the key to sustaining highly productive agriculture lies in rebuilding healthy, fertile soil. This journey also led me to question three pillars of conventional wisdom about today’s industrialized agrochemical agriculture: that it feeds the world, is a more efficient way to produce food and will be necessary to feed the future. Myth 1: Large-scale agriculture feeds the world today According to a recent U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, family farms produce over three-quarters of the world’s food. The

FAO also estimates that almost threequarters of all farms worldwide are smaller than one hectare – about 2.5 acres, or the size of a typical city block. Only about 1 percent of Americans are farmers today. Yet most of the world’s farmers work the land to feed themselves and their families. So while conventional industrialized agriculture feeds the developed world, most of the world’s farmers work small family farms. A 2016 Environmental Working Group report found that almost 90 percent of U.S. agricultural exports went to developed countries with few hungry people. Of course the world needs commercial agriculture, unless we all want to live on and work our own farms. But are large industrial farms really the best, let alone the only, way forward? This question leads us to a second myth. Myth 2: Large farms are more efficient

Many high-volume industrial processes exhibit efficiencies at large scale that decrease inputs per unit of production. The more widgets you make, the more efficiently you can make each one. But agriculture is different. A 1989 National Research Council study concluded that “wellmanaged alternative farming systems nearly always use less synthetic chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics per unit of production than conventional farms.” And while mechanization can provide cost and labor efficiencies on large farms, bigger farms do not necessarily produce more food. According to a 1992 agricultural census report, small, diversified farms produce more than twice as much food per acre than large farms do. Even the World Bank endorses small farms as the way to increase agricultural output in developing nations where food security remains a pressing

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issue. While large farms excel at producing a lot of a particular crop — like corn or wheat — small diversified farms produce more food and more kinds of food per hectare overall. Myth 3: Conventional farming is necessary to feed the world We’ve all heard proponents of conventional agriculture claim that organic farming is a recipe for global starvation because it produces lower yields. The most extensive yield comparison to date, a 2015 metaanalysis of 115 studies, found that organic production averaged almost 20 percent less than conventionally grown crops, a finding similar to those of prior studies. But the study went a step further, comparing crop yields on conventional farms to those on organic farms where cover crops were planted and crops were rotated to build soil health. These techniques shrank the yield gap to below 10 percent. The authors concluded that the actual gap may be much smaller, as they found “evidence of bias in the meta-dataset toward studies reporting higher conventional yields.” In other

words, the basis for claims that organic agriculture can’t feed the world depend as much on specific farming methods as on the type of farm. Consider too that about a quarter of all food produced worldwide is never eaten. Each year the United States alone throws out 133 billion pounds of food, more than enough to feed the nearly 50 million Americans who regularly face hunger. So even taken at face value, the oft-cited yield gap between conventional and organic farming is smaller than the amount of food we routinely throw away.

Building healthy soil

Conventional farming practices that degrade soil health undermine humanity’s ability to continue feeding everyone over the long run. Regenerative practices like those used on the farms and ranches I visited show that we can readily improve soil fertility on both large farms in the U.S. and on small subsistence farms in the tropics. I no longer see debates about the future of agriculture as simply conventional versus organic. In my view, we’ve oversimplified the complexity of the

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the global population on hand at any one time. This simple fact has critical implications for society. So how do we speed the adoption of a more resilient agriculture? Creating demonstration farms would help, as would carrying out system-scale research to evaluate what works best to adapt specific practices to general principles in different settings. We also need to reframe our agricultural policies and subsidies. It makes no sense to continue incentivizing conventional practices that degrade soil fertility. We must begin supporting and rewarding farmers who adopt regenerative practices. Once we see through myths of modern agriculture, practices that build soil health become the lens through which to assess strategies for feeding us all over the long haul. Why am I so confident that regenerative farming practices can prove both productive and economical? The farmers I met showed me they already are.

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land and underutilized the ingenuity of farmers. I now see adopting farming practices that build soil health as the key to a stable and resilient agriculture. And the farmers I visited had cracked this code, adapting no-till methods, cover cropping and complex rotations to their particular soil, environmental and socioeconomic conditions. Whether they were organic or still used some fertilizers and pesticides, the farms I visited that adopted this transformational suite of practices all reported harvests that consistently matched or exceeded those from neighboring conventional farms after a short transition period. Another message was as simple as it was clear: Farmers who restored their soil used fewer inputs to produce higher yields, which translated into higher profits. No matter how one looks at it, we can be certain that agriculture will soon face another revolution. For agriculture today runs on abundant, cheap oil for fuel and to make fertilizer – and our supply of cheap oil will not last forever. There are already enough people on the planet that we have less than a year’s supply of food for

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