Ag Journal | Q1 2019

Ag Journal Daily Record Winter 2019

Windy N Ranch ■ Looking at this year’s snowpack ■ Scientists improve on photosynthesis ■

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Ag Journal

Table of contents

Editor Michael Gallagher

Publisher Heather Hernandez Advertising Contact us: Ag Journal 401 N. Main Street Ellensburg, WA 98926 509-925-1414 The Ag Journal is published three times a year by Kittitas County Publishing LLC. Contents copyrighted 2018 unless otherwise noted.

On the cover: Karl Holappa / Daily Record

Bradley Newhall feeds cattle at Windy N Ranch west of Ellensburg.

A look at the snowpack Page 4

Windy N Ranch Page10

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A look at the snowpack Too early to predict the summer water supply

Daily Record file photo

Snow covers the peaks above the Summit at Snoqualmie Pass in a previous year.

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T

By KARL HOLAPPA staff writer

his winter has proven to display inconsistent weather in the mountains, which has influenced both the snowpack and water levels in local reservoirs.

The January river operations summary from the Board of Reclamation brought mixed news for the outlook of the snowpack. The SNOTEL snow water equivalent in the upper Yakima is currently at approximately 80-percent of average, while the lower Yakima stands at approximately 90.

Precipitation in the Yakima basin has stayed roughly at the average mark, standing at 105-percent of average for October through December.

This was aided by heavy precipitation in December, clocking in at 125-percent of average.

The consistent precipitation through the winter months has played well for area reservoirs, which stand at approximately 92-percent of average storage levels. Lake Keechelus is currently at 49-percent of capacity, with Lake Kachess at 57-percent and Lake Cle Elum at 32.

The summary stated that although El Nino has not materialized as of the beginning of January, it is still expected to arrive in Central Washington. The report said there

is a 90-percent chance of El Nino conditions through the rest of winter and a 60-percent chance in spring.

As a result, the projection calls for warmer-than-average temperatures carrying into spring and average to below-average precipitation levels.

Bureau of Reclamation hydrologist Chris Lynch said January has had some ups and downs. He said precipitation for January has been 65-percent of average, and there aren’t many storms ahead in the forecast. He said the low numbers for this month will most likely drop the yearly percentage to just below 100-percent of average.

“We had some dry stretches and we had some storms,” he said.

“Nothing super productive, but at least we just had another storm this past weekend that helped us. I’m glad that we aren’t worse than where we are, which we would have been if we hadn’t gotten that last storm.”

Lynch said the most recent storm did help improve the snowpack, but the lack of storms on the horizon means the percentage of average

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will probably drop by the end of January. Early January saw its own fluctuations, with the SNOTEL percentages in the upper Yakima dropping 12-percent during a sevenday period. Lynch said fluctuations of that kind aren’t particularly abnormal.

“The snowpack in time generally climbs and increases this time of year,” he said. “The average is just going to steadily increase. What typically is going on is you’ll get a snow storm and things pile up.

They go up pretty steeply over like a day or however long the storm lasts, and the inches pile up, and then it flattens out while nothing is happening and then it happens all over again. It’s more of a stair step in the way storms come at us.”

Despite the heavy precipitation in December, Lynch said the reservoirs are a little behind on storage percentages. Despite this, he said that the trend is keeping pace, without falling further behind in numbers.

See Snow, Page 6

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Daily Record file photo

Snow and ice cover the water of Lake Cle Elum at the Cle Elum Dam in a previous year.

“We’ve been around this low 90-percent range for a while,” he said.

Lynch said the most recent climate prediction does not have a clear picture of what is in store for precipitation in the next 30 days. He said the modelling for the prediction shows an equal chance of precipitation being above, below or at average during that time.

“They don’t have a strong leaning one way or the other whether it’s going to be above average or below average or normal,” he said. “They do however have an indication that there’s a better chance for it to be above normal temperature wise in the next 30 days.”

If more rain than snow falls in the mountains, Lynch said reservoirs may be put into use earlier in the season, stretching out the usable water over more time than if snowpack was melting into the watershed longer. If the rain persists with consistency through the spring, however, Lynch said the stress on water reserves could be alleviated. Conversely, a dry spring such as the one in 2015 could further stress water levels. Lynch said this year is different, however, because there is more snowpack compared to 2015, and that it is too early to predict what will happen between now and spring.

Although Lynch acknowledged the coming months could go in either direction, he reiterated that it is too early to predict where water levels will be once irrigation becomes necessary.

“We will often see variations through the year that drop us below average,” he said. “I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll make it to the summer and have an adequate supply.”

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Spiraling out of control West Side developer falls in love with ranching lifestyle

Karl Holappa

Bradley Newhall feeds cattle at Windy N Ranch west of Ellensburg.

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G

By KARL HOLAPPA staff writer

reg Newhall and his son Bradley oversee dayto-day operations at the Windy N Ranch. Greg, a builder and developer from the West Side, purchased the ranch in 2002 with his partner Gary Jones. The land, which originally totaled approximately 1,000 acres was purchased with the intention of developing a portion of it. As a recession began to loom a few years after the purchase, Greg realized he needed a way to make the land pay for itself, so he hired someone to live in one of the houses on the property and manage the growth and export of timothy hay. Greg said he noticed the synergy between growing hay and raising cattle, and the benefits that could be gained from doing both on the same land.

“At first, it seemed logical that we would get a few cattle,” he said. “A few cattle turned into a few goats, a few sheep and a few chickens. It just got out of control, crazy.”

At first, Greg would come over every three months to escape the weather on the West Side and check up on the operation. Those trips eventually became more frequent and Greg found himself out at the ranch virtually every week.

“We just saw it as commutable and a growing area,” he said. “Over the years we just fell in love with the area.”

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Karl Holappa

Bradley Newhall brings feed to his goats and sheep at the Windy N Ranch west of Ellensburg.

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Ranch Continued from Page 9 Despite the growth of the ranch to its current operational state, Greg said he had no clue that he would find himself in his current occupation when he embarked on the purchase with his partner.

“It was an investment,” he said. “We weren’t supposed to be ranchers.”

Greg’s son Bradley was previously a project manager at a mechanical company in Las Vegas before living life on the ranch. He joined his father approximately seven years ago when he was offered the opportunity to eventually take over operations. He, like his father, said he would never have conceived that he would someday have the opportunity to work on a functioning ranch. He said one of the challenges was not having inherent knowledge about agriculture that many people in the valley learned while growing up.

“I’m sure 80 percent of the 12-year-olds that grow up here in the valley would walk on this farm and have a lot more knowledge than I would when I did,” he said. “I didn’t know what a harrow bed was, I didn’t know how a baler worked. I didn’t know what a swather was. Just starting from ground zero and kind of learning from the ground up.”

See Ranch, Page 13

Karl Holappa

A cow stands guard at the Windy N Ranch west of Ellensburg.

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Ranch Continued from Page 11 The Newhalls currently graze approximately 300 head of cattle on 800 acres of the ranch. Along with cattle, the family also raises sheep, goats, chickens, pigs and turkeys. In the past, they have also experimented with raising ducks and pheasants.

Greg said the learning curve has been steep and mistakes have been made along the way, but they have mentors who work with them in the different animals they raise.

“We’re learning all the time,” he said. “The farming and ranching community is very collaborative.

They want to share, they want to help. It’s just the nature of the people that are in that business. We’ve been very fortunate to have people that we can ask questions of, to hopefully learn from their mistakes and not make too many of our own.”

The ranch sells approximately 60 percent of its product to customers

on the West Side, with the remainder of the product staying in the Ellensburg-Wenatchee-Yakima area.

They also ship their products as far as Northern California. Greg said they are trying to keep their production at a level that is manageable for him and Bradley. They have two seasonal employees, but they have no plans to expand beyond their current size.

“It’s kind of at the numbers that we want and need to make the wheels go around,” he said.

The ranch is fully certified organic and Animal Welfare Approved.

Greg said the ranch has the largest number of species under AWA certification of any operation in the United States.

“That probably says that we are crazier than others,” he said. “We are extremely sold and very much flag wavers of the AWA model. It’s just an incredible organization.”

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Bradley said plans for the future of the operation include expanding and streamlining their shipping procedures in order to keep up with consumer purchasing trends.

“With the changing times, people aren’t going to grocery stores anymore,” he said. “You’ve got Amazon Fresh and everything comes to you. We’ll never be able to have the fast turnaround that an Amazon customer might expect, but we can facilitate the shipping to the door of a client.”

Another plan is to incorporate short-term stays at the ranch for people who want to see how an operating ranch works. Greg said the ranch is ideally suited for such a purpose.

“The educational aspect that can be gained here is pretty unusual and pretty unique,” he said. “Having people up here on a regular basis for

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Greg said the evolution of the operation to what it is now would not be possible without the participation of the family as a whole. Both his and Bradley’s spouses help out with day-to-day operations, making the operation a true family affair. He said the rural setting of the ranch provides a remarkable environment for both family and business to thrive.

“Being able to work with your son is just one of the incredibly rich rewards of being here,” he said.

“Having two of the four grandkids being able to walk 150 feet across the un-trafficked road, just pop in and say hi how are you doing, it’s just the small-town environment of Ellensburg.”

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Scientists improve on photosynthesis by genetically engineering plants E

By JULIA ROSEN Los Angeles Times

ver since Thomas Malthus issued his dire prediction in 1789 that population growth would always exceed food supply, scientists have worked to prove him wrong. So far, they’ve helped farmers to keep pace by developing bigger and better varieties of crops and other agricultural innovations.

Now researchers are taking an even more audacious step: reprogramming plants to make photosynthesis more efficient. And it seems to be paying off.

Tobacco plants that were genetically engineered to optimize photosynthesis outgrew their conventional relatives by up to 40 percent, according to a study in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

“It’s beautiful, really, in its elegance,” said Christine Foyer, a plant biologist at the University of Leeds in England who was not involved in the work.

Scientists have homed in on photosynthesis because it offers one of the few remaining options for drastically boosting crop yields.

Plant breeders have already selected vigorous varieties that produce more

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of whatever we want to eat — be it leaves, fruit, roots or seeds — when grown under ideal conditions.

“We really need to be able to manipulate photosynthesis, because it’s really all that’s left,” said plant biologist Don Ort of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the study’s senior author.

Fortunately, there’s plenty of room for improvement — theoretically, at least. Despite its ability to build towering redwoods and vast coral reefs, photosynthesis is a fairly inefficient process. Only a tiny fraction of available light gets used to produce sugars and other carbohydrates.

“The photosynthetic system has evolved to be very flexible, rather than fully optimal,” Foyer said.

“There was a compromise.”

Part of the problem is that plants spend a lot of energy compensating for a bug in their operating system.

It involves an enzyme called RuBisCO whose job is to grab carbon dioxide molecules and send them down the assembly line.

The process worked great when photosynthesis first evolved billions of years ago, because there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. But once it built up — thanks, of course, to photosynthetic plankton — RuBisCO

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began latching on to the wrong gas by accident.

The resulting compound was not just useless but toxic. So plants had to find a way to convert it into something safe and functional.

Unfortunately, Ort said, “the way that plants picked to do turned out to be both very complex and very energy-intensive.”

Their solution involves shuttling the undesirable molecule outside the chloroplast, where photosynthesis occurs, and into another organelle called a peroxisome. From there, it goes into the mitochondria before retracing its path to the chloroplast in a more tolerable state.

This cumbersome process, known as photorespiration, eats up some of the energy the plant has already stored as sugar and reduces crop yields by 20 percent to 50 percent.

“That fixing of an oxygen is really like anti-photosynthesis,” Ort said.

So his team decided to update the photorespiration algorithm.

They took tobacco plants — which are easy to work with — and inserted

new genes into their DNA that created a shortcut for processing the unwanted compound. They tried three alternatives, two of which had been developed by other scientists.

The researchers also silenced a gene to keep the molecule from leaving the chloroplast in the first place.

“It’s really a very, very complex piece of engineering,” Foyer said.

The modification worked wonders. In greenhouse experiments, the engineered plants put on almost 25 percent more biomass than their unaltered counterparts.

Field trials — the gold standard for testing new crops — had even better results, with some plants outproducing their relatives by 40 percent.

“Some of that, we think, was due to compound interest,” Ort said. Young plants grew faster and increased their leaf area, which allowed them to photosynthesize even more.

The researchers have started making the same changes in food crops such as soybeans and potatoes.

“There’s no reason to suspect that you wouldn’t have a similar result,” Foyer said. However, it won’t work on crops such corn and sugarcane, which have a different way of fixing carbon.

Ort’s team is also collaborating with another group at the University of Illinois that engineered tobacco plants to utilize more light, resulting in a 15 percent increase in productivity.

“We’re now in the process of what we call stacking those two traits,” Ort said. Models suggest that the benefits will add up, boosting productivity by more than 50 percent. But, Ort cautioned, “until you do the experiments, you don’t know.”

Both efforts are the fruit of the RIPE project, which stands for Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency. Its motivation is simple: to increase crop yields and combat food insecurity. (The $70 million initiative has received much of its funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which requires

that any crops developed through the program be made accessible to farmers around the world.)

Today, growers still manage to squeeze more food out of every acre of land by using more productive crops and supplying them with plenty of nutrients and water.

But gains have slowed to just 1 percent to 2 percent per year, and some scientists expect the trend could reverse as a result of climate change.

That will make it difficult to tackle the challenges facing humanity in coming decades: growing enough food to feed an estimated 9.7 billion people by 2050, and doing so without destroying the planet. The first Green Revolution succeeded in dramatically increasing food production, but it also brought a host of environmental problems, including increased use of fertilizer and pesticides, water pollution, soil degradation and erosion.

“It really isn’t possible to continue the way that we are going,” Foyer said.

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