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His future is right now Colfax’s Cole Baerlocher is elected president of National FFA / Page 2

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MOSCOW-PULLMAN DAILY NEWS / LEWISTON TRIBUNE

| FUTURE FARMERS |

He’s got a passion for ag Cole Baerlocher, a WSU student who grew up in Colfax, was recently elected the national president of FFA

By Joel Mills For Farm & Ranch

I

t doesn’t take much prodding to get new National FFA President Cole Baerlocher to unleash his passion for the organization, and for agriculture in general.

“There’s a place for every single member, every single student, whether you come from an ag background or not,” the effusive Washington State University student said from Indianapolis, where he recently participated in a three-week training session.

“Agriculture is a part of all of our lives, every single day, whether we know it or not. So to be able to learn more about our industry is so important, and it’s something I’m a big advocate for because we all play a role in agriculture.”

Getting more students involved in FFA will be one of the main objectives of his year as president. He will take time off from his freshman year at WSU and travel to dozens of U.S. states and territories to meet with local chapters and spread the word about the importance of ag education.

“It’s something you’ve always dreamed about as an FFA member, but to actually see that come to reality is really such a weird feeling and a crazy experience,” Baerlocher said of his new role. “In my lifetime, and

National FFA

In this photo taken in October at the FFA’s national convention in Indianapolis in October, Cole Baerlocher of Colfax reacts to the announcement that he has been elected the group’s national president. in the lifetimes of a lot of other students in the state of Washington, they’ve not ever had that experience of having representation on the national level. And to be that person is something that’s crazy.”

Baerlocher, 20, was the state FFA president last year.

He is the first National FFA president from Washington, and the state’s first national officer in 20 years. According

to WSU, FFA is a youth organization that prepares members for leadership and careers in the science, business and technology of agriculture. Aspiring national officers go through a sixday series of interviews, speeches and meetings with agricultural professionals, and are ultimately selected by a committee of peers.

Baerlocher, a Colfax native,

was selected along with five other national student leaders in October at the national FFA convention in Indianapolis. He said being the first national president from his home state is an incredible honor, but was quick to add that he stands on the shoulders of those who came before him.

One in particular is Abbie DeMeerleer, a Whitman County Realtor who was

Washington’s last national FFA officer 20 years ago.

“It was because of the huge impact Abbie’s had on Washington FFA and National FFA, and more specifically on my life, that I really could see myself going through this process,” Baerlocher said. “She’s just been an incredible resource and friend and mentor for me these last four years. I get this

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Saturday, December 18, 2021 | 3

opportunity to lead because to see both sides of those I’ve had an incredible career paths. I’ll be with a lot person like her in my life.” of incredible chapters from all Baerlocher got his across the country and how start in agriculture by those operate, and what type showing lambs at the of role teachers are serving Palouse Empire Fair in But I’ll also have really the fourth grade through Agriculture there. cool opportunities to learn 4-H, according to WSU. He is a part more about the careers within joined FFA as a freshman agriculture and how I can at Colfax High School of all of continue to apply my passion and started competing our lives, for advocacy and being a in contests like public storyteller for our industry.” speaking, parliamentary every procedure and how to His mother, Melissa single day, Baerlocher, of Colfax, conduct a chapter meeting.

As a junior, he represented said her son’s rise in the whether Washington at the national organization has been a convention in a public we know it natural progression. She speaking competition. also noted that her brother or not.”

After his year as and sister-in-law, Nathan president, Baerlocher and Jessica Moore, are plans on returning to WSU — COLE ag educators in Whitman to complete a degree in BAERLOCHER County who helped push agricultural education.

Baerlocher along the way.

He’s considering two “He loves to speak, he career paths, one as a high school ag teacher loves to plan things, and ag has been or one in the industry, possibly a huge thing for Cole,” she said. as a public relations specialist.

“He’s worked his tail off. It’s a huge “So I’m not 100 percent sure exactly accomplishment, but he has worked where I’m going to end up yet, and this hard to get there. He’s ready for it.” year’s going to be a very big deciding factor in that plan,” he said. “I’m going Mills may be contacted at jmills@lmtribune.com.

“

Washington FFA

Abbie Kammerzell, now Abbie DeMeerleer, front row, far right, is shown here in a group photo taken when she was vice president of the Washington state FFA, from 1999-2000. DeMeerleer is now the office manager of Kincaid Real Estate in Colfax.

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| ENTOMOLOGY |

WSU Information

Laura Lavine, chairwoman of the Washington State Univers ity entomology department, stands inside a greenhouse in Othello, the site where the WSU honey bee research program will be moving. The Othello site has the added benefit of being in the rich agricultural area of the Columbia River Basin.

Have wings, will travel

WSU bee program, honey production moving to Othello

By Kathy Hedberg For Farm & Ranch

T

he latest buzz around the Washington State University campus comes from the relocation of honey bees and honey extraction equipment from Pullman to Othello.

Brandon Hopkins, a professor of entomology at WSU, said the consolidation of honey bees and

equipment at Othello will support the school’s ongoing research into honey bees and honey production in central Washington.

“We’ve grown beyond our space in Pullman, so we had a fundraising campaign for a few years to get a new facility,” Hopkins said. When the price tag for a new Pullman research center came in at $26 million and continued to rise “it became clear we were not going to get enough money to build

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WSU Information

Brandon Hopkins, an entomology professor at Washington State University, poses for a photo next to bee hives. a building in Pullman. (The price) became increasingly far-fetched.”

When a facility became available in Othello and WSU received a large donation from a commercial beekeeping family in Washington and others, the decision was made to relocate.

Hopkins said the Othello site has the added benefit of being in the rich agricultural area of the Columbia River Basin. Each year, 15 to 30 undergraduates enroll in courses designed to further the study of honey bees, their environment and their sweet results.

The WSU honey bee program is in the process of moving equipment and materials from Pullman to Othello, including the large honey extractor that is used to separate honey from honeycombs. Hopkins estimates the facility will be in place and operating by the spring.

A large part of the WSU honey bee program involves research into colony collapse disorder that affects honey bee colonies through sudden colony death. The exact cause of colony collapse disorder is not known, although researchers suspect there are multiple reasons for it.

WSU has about 200 hives and each year transports about half of those to California, along with

other honey bee producers, to help pollinate the almond orchards.

Hopkins said some of the school’s research also takes place there.

In early spring, the hives are returned to the campus and honey is extracted about twice a year. It is sold online and at Ferdinand’s on WSU’s Pullman campus. Money raised from sales goes back into the bee program and allows students to work as they learn about bees. The money also funds the infrastructure that allows research to happen.

Although honey bee production in the United States has been around for hundreds of years, Hopkins said he has heard there are fewer people who are getting into the business.

“It’s a very difficult business,” he said. “A lot of beekeepers, if they have a bad year and lose their colonies, they have to make hard choices about investing millions of dollars in loans to build back up.”

As with other aspects of farming, smaller beekeepers tend to consolidate or sell out to larger corporations.

“The people that manage to keep their bees alive, it is profitable,” Hopkins said. “People that do it well make a good living.”

Hedberg may be contacted at kathyhedberg@ gmail.com or (208) 983-2326.

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| VETERINARY MEDICINE |

She wants to help animals heal Veterinarian resident doctor Sarvenaz Bagheri is training to perform surgery

By Kaylee Brewster For Farm & Ranch

A

s a child, Sarvenaz Bagheri found comfort in animals. Now she gives comfort to animals through medical care.

Bagheri is a student in residence doctor of veterinary medicine at Washington State University, specializing in neurology and neurosurgery.

Her journey to veterinary medicine began when she immigrated to the U.S. from France with her Iranian parents. Bagheri’s combination of Farsi, French and English languages made talking to people difficult, so she turned to animals.

Later she began an interest in biology that stuck with her. “I never fell out of love with biology,” she said.

However, she found human biology “gross,” so being a doctor for people was out of the question. “I thought the next best thing was to be a doctor, but for animals. I really enjoy working with animals and helping them feel better.”

Bagheri came to WSU in 2019 from Michigan State University after earning her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree. At WSU, she enjoys the opportunity for hands-on learning and surgery, as well as her interactions with the faculty.

“It’s so nice to work with people who are super passionate about medicine and what’s best for the patient,” she said.

Washington State University Bagheri works with Washington State student Sarvenaz Bagheri, studying to become a doctor of veterinary different doctors who have a medicine, poses with Mello, a pitbull mix. Bagheri is learning surgical skills through hands-on variety of methods for treating experience at WSU. patients. “I’m also learning

that there’s more than one way to do it the right way.”

She also is able to use both her surgical skills and her passion for medicine. One of the ways she is combining those two areas is a study on spinal cord injuries in dogs and treating those injuries with an antioxidant drug, N-acetylcysteine. The antioxidant can help prevent tissue damage from unstable molecules called free radicals.

The study will evaluate if the drug helps in recovery of spinal cord injuries, which mostly come from slipped discs or disc stroke.

Dog owners can sign up for the study at bit.ly/3y7d10k.

Most of Bagheri’s training is with spinal surgery, but she was also attracted to WSU because of the department’s brain surgery program. One of the common types of brain surgery is removing tumors.

Most are done on dogs and cats, and Bagheri said they can recover in a couple of days.

“I’m still training and still learning,” she said, so during her surgeries faculty members are there to offer assistance. “It’s nice to know I have people to back me up.”

Brain surgery isn’t as common as spinal surgery and WSU is one of the few veterinary programs that has surgeries on the pituitary gland, which require specific equipment and experience.

“People come from all over the country because their pets are really badly affected, so they want to do what’s best for them,” Bagheri said.

Brewster may be contacted at kbrewster@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2297.

Northwest Farm and Ranch | WINTER 2021

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Kentucky farm sector could reap record receipts and trade conflicts during Donald Trump’s presidency. Now, a surge in exports, combined with strong crop yields and high demand for Having endured bumpy seasons meat products, are driving the farm of global trade fights and slumpsector’s strong rebound, Snell said. ing commodity prices, Kentucky Hornback, a Republican state agriculture appears poised to reap senator, said the improved market record-setting cash receipts this conditions are a relief for farmers. year — fueled by strong crop yields “You hear it all the time, they would and surging grain exports, agriculmuch rather have a good market that tural economists said recently. they can make money at, that they can Kentucky’s world-renowned survive on” rather than getting govhorse industry had a strong perforernment payments, he said. “Farmers mance, while livestock producers do not like getting those payments. benefited from high global demand But sometimes the market forces those for meats, a team of University of Kentucky ag economists said.

Associated Press things to have to happen because we’ve got to have a stable food supply.”

Statewide farm cash receipts this The sun rises Nov. 10 on a farm north of Bowling Green, Ky. Tobacco used to be the king of year are projected to exceed $6.7 billion, Kentucky ag, but its decline has resultwhich would eclipse the $6.5 billion U.S. farm economy “has not only surcosts and favorable weather. ed in a highly diversified farm sector. record set in 2014, they said. The past vived, but has experienced remarkable “My yields were the best I’ve Corn and soybeans are tied with poulfive-year average has been $5.5 billion. growth,” said UK ag economist Will ever had and yields make a lot try as the state’s top agricultural comKentucky’s net farm income — the Snell. Kentucky’s farm sector has mir- of difference,” he said in a phone modities in 2021, with each accounting amount left after farmers’ expenses rored those national trends, he said. interview Thursday. “And it for 18 percent of all projected sales, — is expected to approach $2.5 billion Paul Hornback, who raised about was a great growing season.” the UK economists said. The equine in 2021, which would be the highest 3,000 acres of corn and soybeans In recent seasons, government industry is close behind at 16 percent, level since 2013, the economists said. in Shelby County, said several facpayments were boosted to help Despite ongoing challenges from tors aligned for a good year on the cushion U.S. farmers from the painful while the cattle sector is next with 11 percent of projected sales, they said. farm, including lower production the global COVID-19 pandemic, the combination of low commodity prices

By Bruce Schreiner Associated Press

This holiday season, AGPRO wants to thank America’s great farmers. Because of your dedication, sacrifice, and relentless hard work, the rest of us are able to feed our families.

We’re proud to be a small, local, family business who supports the people who are the backbone of our country. We also want to extend our appreciation and respect to the men and women in blue, the firemen and first responders and our unparalleled military who put their lives on the line every day so that we can live in peace. It’s been famously said: “If you eat today, thank a farmer. If you eat in peace, thank a veteran.” We can’t thank you enough. Here’s our heartfelt “thank you” and best wishes for a happy, healthy, and safe Christmas and New Year. In our book, you’re all essential.

Thank you!!

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Northwest Farm and Ranch | WINTER 2021

| CRAFT BREWING |

The science of better beer with them, Walsh said.

“If the damage is great enough, it can lead to rejection by the hop merchant,” he said.

Walsh will also explore the potential of predatory mites in limiting spider mites, a technique pioneered in the California strawberry industry. If that works, it could help any other crop damaged by spider mites, Walsh said.

By Elaine Williams Another issue in the hops For Farm & Ranch industry are two hop-latent viruses, one from Europe and ops used to be such an one from America, Walsh said. obscure crop that 15 The viruses are transferred years ago an annual by aphids, which are so convention for the prevalent the viruses are in all commodity attracted about hops because there’s no way 100 people at a Holiday Inn to limit their spread, he said.

Express in the Yakima area.

Researchers would like In contrast, just before the pandemic started in 2019, to know if farmers can get about 700 people attended better yields in plants not the same gathering. It had infected by the viruses. moved to California, where Some of the other work the entire Monterey Bay involves looking at 12 years Aquarium was rented out of input and output data from for one of the events. one hop merchant to identify The proliferation of craft Associated Press file what combination results in breweries has sparked an This photo taken in 2011 shows a pile of hops waiting to be sorted at Perrault Farms in the best yields, quantifying elevated demand for hops, Toppenish, Wash. A majority of the hops used in beer in America is grown in central Washington. the carbon footprint of hops which are responsible for bitter and measuring the willingness and crisp flavors in beer, said of consumers in Europe and from the USDA, total hops acreage 32-gallon barrel, Walsh said.

Doug Walsh, a professor in the United States to pay more WSU and other from 30,000 to “They’re kind of like Washington State University’s institutions, including for sustainably produced beer.

54,000, he said. a McDonald’s,” he said.

Department of Entomology Lena Le, director of the the University of The transition is “They want it to be and also works with the Idaho and Oregon caused by demand consistent every time.”

WSU Social and Economics school’s extension agency.

State University. from craft breweries, The team will complete Sciences Research Center, Walsh, who works at Their work comes Walsh said. numerous projects to help the will do surveys to see if WSU’s Irrigated Agriculture at a critical time for “We’ve had this evolving industry, Walsh said. hops farmers changed their Research and Extension U.S. hops producers, renaissance of beer Kayla Altendorf, a new practices because of the Center in Prosser, is the Walsh many of whom are brewing,” he said. hops breeder at the USDA’s research, which will help principal investigator concentrated in Producers of small- Agricultural Research Service, the government understand for a $4.8 million, foura 30-mile radius around batch beers typically use about for example, will work on if it invested its money year grant from the U.S. Sunnyside, Wash., on land 8 pounds of hops in every developing varieties of hops wisely, Marsh said.

Department of Agriculture irrigated by the Yakima River 32-gallon barrel, Walsh said. resistant to spider mites Marsh expects that National Institute of Food and its tributaries, where “The craft brewers are and viruses in cooperation farmers will be receptive and Agriculture Specialty about 75 percent of U.S. hops always looking for that next with Walsh and Scott to the project’s findings.

Crop Research Initiative. are grown, Walsh said. unique flavor,” he said.

Harper, a WSU virologist.

“The hops industry has The money will support In the past decade and a In contrast, makers of Spider mites feed on been very supportive of us wide-ranging hops research by half, a number of Washington high-volume, American-style the leaves and flowers, the as scientists,” he said. a team of more than two dozen state farmers have replaced pilsners such as Budweiser part of the hop plant that is professors, scientists, graduate concord grapes with hops, and Miller Lite, use about harvested, decreasing the Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@ students and technicians helping push the state’s lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261. half a pound of hops in every quality of the beer brewed

Washington State University professor will lead a federally funded study of hops, which have gained in popularity thanks to the rise of craft beer

H

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| FRUIT GROWING |

The quest for bigger, better

apples How trellises — which can be expensive — are transforming Washington’s apple orchards

By Hal Bernton Seattle Times

U ABOVE: This scene from Douglas County shows what trellised trees look like in the spring, before they fill out. They are pruned to maximize fruit production.

RIGHT: Trellised trees in this Pink Lady orchard in Yakima County are easier for workers to pick than the old bigger trees. These apples are being picked in November, at the tail end of the harvest at the orchards of grower Aaron Clark.

Hal Bernton/Seattle Times

NION GAP, Wash. — This irrigated slope used to be covered in big, stout apple trees with leafy canopies that could support a heavy crop of Golden Delicious apples.

More than a half-decade ago, excavators yanked them from the ground.

In their place, grower Aaron Clark planted spindly, shallow-rooted stock that needs to be attached to trellises to keep the fruit trees from collapsing under the weight of the Pink Lady apples they bear each year.

This dramatic makeover is part of a broader transformation of Washington’s apple orchards driven by the quest to get bigger per-acre yields of high-quality fruit from trees that are easier to pick.

This shift has been underway for several decades, and intensified in recent years as growers turned to new varieties of apples that, when splayed on trellises, can start to bear commercial crops of fruit in as little as three years time. And the long, neat rows of densely

planted trees have helped spur industry change, including experimentation with machines able to pluck fruit without an assist from human hands.

The cost of developing these orchards is steep, and can run $50,000 an acre or higher.

This has raised financial barriers for small growers seeking to expand and remain competitive, and increased the risks — and debt loads — for larger ones in a more unsettled climate, which included record heat this past summer that damaged some of the crop.

But the big dollars required to bring these acres into production have not discouraged a new wave of orchard acquisitions by outside investors in an industry that produced $2.1 billion worth of fruit in 2020.

One of the biggest sales came in February 2019 when the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan of Canada purchased Broetje Orchards, which spreads across more than 6,000 acres around Benton City, Benton County, and Wallula and Prescott, Walla Walla County, and ranked as one of the nation’s largest family-owned See APPLES, Page 10

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Northwest Farm and Ranch | WINTER 2021

Apples from Page 9 operations. While the total sale price was not disclosed, the real estate brought in $288 million, according to a tax affidavit cited by the Tri-City Herald.

This year, a lot more orchard acreage is on the market and prices are sometimes being driven up beyond what can be justified by the annual harvest revenue from the trellised orchards, according to Clark, who is vice president of Yakima-based Price Cold Storage & Packing.

“It’s perplexing to us. I think they are banking on the long-term appreciation of the land,” Clark said. “There’s a huge wave of that coming.”

“A wall of fruit” The 58-year-old Clark is a fourth-generation Yakima Valley fruit grower who grew up in a bygone era when Red and Golden Delicious apples grown on deep-rooted trees dominated the east-of-the Cascades apple industry. As a teenager, Clark initially wanted nothing to do with orchards, but after one year of junior college, he decided to return to agriculture. Today, he leads field operations of Price Cold Storage & Packing, which grows fruit on some 2,700 acres.

Clark says that the older generation of big trees did have some advantages, such as greater resistance to diseases like fire blight.

But they often yielded fruit of uneven quality, as apples grown deep within the shaded canopy lack sugar content.

Developing trellised orchards — where most of the fruit receives ample sunshine — has involved a lot of research and experimentation.

Clark seeks to match an apple variety with a soil and slope elevation that will enable it to thrive. The cutting, known as a scion, must be grafted on compatible root stock.

These plantings are carefully pruned and their water closely rationed. The goal is to put these trees under a little stress so

ABOVE: This automated apple harvester developed

by FFRobotics, an Israel-based company, was tested in Washington state this year.

LEFT: On a Yakima County orchard tract that once was filled with big, stout-branched Golden Delicious trees, grower Aaron Clark checks out a crop of Pink Lady apples that were produced by a more intensively cultivated new generation of trellised trees.

Courtesy of FFRobotics, Hal Bernton/Seattle Times

So Clark does some small field trials to see how things work out before opting for bigger plantings.

On a crisp November day, Clark showed the payoff for all this work, an orchard filled with prime ripe Pink Ladies, a “wall of fruit” ready for harvest.

An automated future?

they put all their energy toward making fruit.

“If you just make a tree happy, all it wants to do is grow wood,” Clark said.

Things can go wrong with this intensive orchard cultivation.

Fire blight can decimate some varieties of apples in a trellised orchard if the root stock is planted in poorly drained soils, according to Clark. And a poor match of soil, root stock and variety can produce a lot of mediocre fruit.

In the orchards Clark oversees, pickers still climb up and down ladders to pick the apples. But it’s a simpler task than in older orchards, where some workers would break with safety protocols by climbing off the ladder and onto the branches to try to reach all the ripe fruit in the far-flung canopy.

“Our biggest problem

was keeping the guys on the ladders. They would want to jump up in the tree, and we’d have to get them down and say quit doing that.

But it was just quicker and easier for them,” Clark said.

In the trellised orchards, the trees are essentially two-dimensional. So the pickers can place a ladder on either side of the tree, and from that perch quickly reach most of the apples.

“I like this better,” said Oscar Salgado, 37, a Yakima resident who has been picking apples since he was 17.

On a typical day in these orchards, Salgado picks up to six bins of apples, which can earn him $240.

Salgado is part of an orchard workforce that

Northwest Farm and Ranch | WINTER 2021 swelled to 300 at the harvest peak and by early November had tapered down to about 100. Their wages are on average slightly more than $20 an hour. The top pickers, however, may make as much as $35 an hour, according to Clark.

While many growers have turned to workers brought in from Mexico or other countries under temporary H-2A visas, Clark has been able to attract enough local workers from the Yakima area to get the apples off the trees. He plants varieties timed to ripen in a progression stretching from August to November.

But the cost of labor, and the chronic shortages of U.S. farmworkers, has helped to drive harvest automation, which can more readily be accomplished in the uniform layouts of the trellised orchards.

Already, some growers have invested in elevated platforms, which move slowly down the rows on selfdriving machines and enable pickers to do away with ladders. In some models, the apples can be put directly into bins that sit on the platform.

During the past five years, there also has been a push to figure out a way to harvest the apples with mechanical pickers. This is a difficult task as, even with the aid of artificial

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Saturday, December 18, 2021 | 11

image processing technology” to identify ripe apples that are picked by six arms that snip off the fruit.

“They were in an orchard that was not known to the public so they could work the bugs out. At the end of the the season, we had several field trials,” said Ines Hanrahan, executive director of the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, which has worked cooperatively with that company as well as others to develop robotic pickers.

“We have to start automating if we are to sustain the businesses.

We have learned from the failures and we feel confident we will be able to have a commercially viable solution within the next decade and probably earlier than that.”

Clark is not eager for Hal Bernton/Seattle Times that day to come.

“It would be good for business, In this arid acreage north of Wenatchee, workers installed a massive grid of I think, but it would be a sad day trellises. The trellises set the stage for more automation of the harvest. for me,” Clark said. There’s a lot of things about harvest I like, and all intelligence, some machines have traction necessary to support its of them involve the people that we had problems, such as bruising. business during the pandemic,” have coming here to work ... I don’t One high profile startup launched according to a July 1 liquidation have any interest in shaving every in 2016, California-based Abundant memo that put assets up for sale. (expletive) nickel out of everything I Robotics, used a mechanical arm to Other companies continue to try to can. These folks are my neighbors.” vacuum apples off trees and send commercialize automated harvesters, As he spoke, Mexican music blasting them into bins. It was tested in New including FFRobotics, an Israel-based Zealand in 2019 but this summer from a radio resonated through the company that tested its machine shut down operations because it in Washington orchards this past orchard rows as pickers filled bag “was unable to develop market summer. This harvester uses “advanced after bag with Pink Lady apples.

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Northwest Farm and Ranch | WINTER 2021

| THE ENVIRONMENT |

Lexi Peery/KUER-FM via Associated Press

Trent Brown, longtime farmer and rancher, stands Oct. 6 next to a ditch that brings water from a nearby reservoir to his farm and others nearby in Beaver County, Utah. He used a grant from the state’s Water Optimization Program to replace the cement in the ditch earlier this year, making it more efficient.

Trying to stay afloat with no water Utah farmers try to adapt to drought in a changing climate

By Sonja Hutson and Lexi Peery KUER-FM

B

EAVER COUNTY, Utah — Climate change is making droughts more frequent and intense.

This summer, the southwestern U.S. had the worst drought on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That has limited Utah farmers’ ability to grow crops. So, in the past two years, a growing number of farmers have signed up for a state program that helps fund projects to increase their water use efficiency.

Trent Brown is one of them. One early October morning, he was standing on a wide expanse of land with cows grazing nearby. Brown is a longtime rancher and farmer in Beaver County. He’s also the county assessor since farming doesn’t pay all the bills.

It’s a family tradition: His father and grandfather were ranchers and farmers and worked government jobs too. Brown said juggling both is a lot of work.

“So not too many vacations or things like that, but you have to love it for sure,” he said. “It’s hard to explain. It kind of gets in your blood.”

The drought this summer was hard on Brown.

He finished the switch from growing alfalfa to grass five years ago to save water, but it wasn’t enough to overcome this summer’s drought. Brown said he only produced about a quarter of what he usually does.

“We always try to be a little bit aware of it and try to prepare for it,” he said. “But these last couple of years and this year, especially, it’s been far worse than even anything we were probably prepared for.

Northwest Farm and Ranch | WINTER 2021 So we’re trying to look even farther outside the box and into the future.”

Brown stood next to a ditch that brings water from the nearby Manderfield Reservoir to him and other farmers in the valley. He used a grant from the state’s Water Optimization Program to replace the cement in the ditch earlier this year.

“The concrete ditch was put in in the ’60s, and it was just falling apart, failing,” he said. “We were losing a lot of water. We figure probably 20 percent. (Conserving water is) important all the time, but especially (with) this drought we’re in and the way it looks like that we’re going to continue.”

Utah established the Water Optimization Program in 2020. It got $3 million in state funding that year and another $3 million in 2021.

During the latest round, the program got 81 applications totaling $10.6 million — more than triple the money they had to spend, according to the program’s director Jay Olsen.

“That shows you what the need is and the increased interest that we’ve had in the water optimization program at the department, especially with drought conditions that we’ve had,” Olsen said. “There’s just a need to save water.”

Olsen said that can be hard for farmers to do without some help.

“Farmers are very strapped for cash,” he said. “They have a lot of assets, but they have a real tough cash flow.”

Getting farmers to conserve could also make a big difference for the state overall. According to state data, 82 percent of Utah’s water is used by the agricultural industry.

The projects from the program’s first round of funding saved an estimated 8.8 billion gallons, according to Olsen. That’s about the same as the average volume of the East Canyon Reservoir in Morgan County.

He said he’s hoping the state Legislature will give the program more money in the coming general session that starts in mid-January.

Matt Yost is an agroclimate extension specialist at Utah State University. He works with farmers to use water more efficiently.

Water storage projects like Brown’s ditch are important, Yost said, but there’s also a lot of work to be done to change the way farmers water their crops. That can include using new equipment like drip irrigation or sprinklers instead of flooding a field.

But that new equipment can be expensive. Farmers can get grants to help pay for it, but Yost usually tries a different approach first.

“Where we start generally with a

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The ditch that carries water from the Manderfield Reservoir to Trent Brown and other farmers in Beaver County, Utah, is shown Oct. 6. Brown used a grant from the state to replace the cement in this ditch to conserve water during a historic drought.

Lexi Peery/KUER-FM via AP

producer is a program that’s free,” he said. “It’s called Irrigation Scheduler.”

It’s basically a calculator that figures out the total water use of a certain crop.

“A farmer can input their field and input their soil type, and it estimates what the water use is and then what you would need to put to replace that water,” Yost said.

But Yost said data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service shows most farmers aren’t using a system like that. Instead, they’re watering based on what they see their crops doing.

“They farm the field for decades, some of them,” he said. “So they’ve learned what amounts of water they need and when they need it. When we do educational programs in the state, we do try to emphasize that there’s probably better approaches.

Because when you start to see stress in a crop, then it means that you’ve already lost some production. It’s hard to regain that production.”

Water calculators help farmers only use how much water the crops really need and keep the plants from losing some output.

If more farmers start using water calculators, Yost said they could eventually move to even more advanced systems.

“They include using things like a soil moisture sensor that you put in the ground,” he said. “You can use weather data to help track the evapotranspiration of crops and then adjust your irrigation accordingly. ... Some sprinkler companies and manufacturers have developed some models that can estimate water need and then adjust the irrigation system.”

The biggest barrier is cost, Yost said, especially in the

middle of a drought that’s eating into farmers’ revenue.

“The drought is not really the time to address the issue,” he said.

“It’s much, much better to address it before we go into a drought. ... That’s the constant challenge that we face is, when we’re not in a drought, it’s really hard to think about drought.

When we’re in the drought, we can’t think about anything else.”

Brown, the farmer from Beaver County, said he’s going to keep trying new things to keep his farm afloat.

“There’s times it gets discouraging,” he said. “But I think it just makes you dig your heels in a little bit more, be a little bit more persistent and resilient.

You don’t really have a choice, Brown said, especially in really bad drought years like this one.

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Northwest Farm and Ranch | WINTER 2021

| FRUIT GROWING |

Strawberries that keep forever U.S. companies announce plans for gene-edited fruit that will stay fresh longer

By Keith Ridler Associated Press

BOISE — An Idaho company that successfully brought genetically modified potatoes to the market announced an agreement recently to help a Californiabased plant breeding company grow strawberries they say will stay fresh longer and have a longer growing season.

J.R. Simplot Company and Plant Sciences Inc., both privately-held companies, said they expect to launch the first commercially available, gene-edited strawberries within a few years.

U.S. growers produced $2.2 billion in strawberries in 2020, mostly in California, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But consumers discarded an estimated 35 percent of the crop because of spoilage.

Simplot and Plant Sciences officials said genetically modified strawberries will help reduce waste, and make them available to

modifying technique on Simplot potatoes. Now, more than 1.1 billion pounds of the potatoes are sold in some 40 states and 4,000 supermarkets and 9,000 restaurants.

Cole said the company submitted information to the Agriculture Department that determined the gene editing being used on strawberries replicates a natural process and doesn’t need regulatory approval before the strawberries are brought to the market. The company is also using that gene editing technique on potatoes.

Steve Nelson, president and chief executive officer of Plant Sciences, said the company over the past 35 years has developed five distinct breeding populations of strawberries that do best in various growing areas and climate types.

“They possess complex genomes that contribute to long and complex breeding Associated Press cycles,” Nelson said. “You’ve Gene-edited strawberry plants grow Oct. 22 in a J.R. Simplot Company greenhouse in Boise. got to look at large populations of seedlings on an annual basis to make progress with consumers much of the year. potatoes,” said Doug Cole, are unsafe to eat, but traditional plant breeding.”

The strawberries will director of Marketing and changing the genetic code Gene editing could speed contain genes from only Biotech Affairs at Simplot. of foods presents an ethical that up. Nelson said the strawberries, selecting “We have the opportunity to issue for some. The U.S. goal of the partnership with desirable traits that have do that with this technology.”

Environmental Protection Simplot is to improve the been cultivated over decades.

There is no evidence Agency and U.S. Food horticultural performance “It’s the same technology that genetically modified and Drug Administration we’re working on with of strawberries, enhance organisms, known as GMOs, approved a previous gene-

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Saturday, December 18, 2021 | 15 This photo, provided by the J.R. Simplot Company, shows a gene-edited strawberry plant at a greenhouse in Boise in August.

J.R. Simplot Company via Associated Press

first part of an acronym for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.” The technology speeds up the traditional process of breeding generation

after generation of plants to get a certain desirable trait, saving years in developing new varieties that are as safe as traditionally developed varieties, scientists say.

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Craig Richael, director of research and development at Simplot, said the strawberry genetic code has been mapped, but it’s not clear what traits are associated with all the

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various parts of the code. He said the company is working with parts of the code that are known, raising genetically modified strawberries at a Simplot greenhouse.

Plant Sciences, headquartered in Watsonville, Calif., and its affiliates have proprietary rights for more than 50 strawberry and raspberry varieties.

The company supplies plants to growers in more than 50 countries.

Simplot and Plant Sciences will make money by selling the genetically modified strawberry plants to growers, who pay a royalty for the rights to grow and sell the strawberries. Terms of the deal weren’t released.

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(208) 746-6447 2275 Nursery St., Moscow

(208) 883-3007

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pest and disease tolerance and resistance.

He said for growers, who can spend $35,000 an acre to plant strawberries and another $35,000 per acre to harvest them, gene-edited strawberries could reduce the risk of a crop failure.

Simplot, a multinational agribusiness company with headquarters in Boise in 2018 acquired gene editing licensing rights in an agreement with Corteva Agriscience and the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, developers of a gene-editing technology called CRISPR-Cas9. Simplot was the first agricultural company to receive such a license.

The technology allows scientists to make precise changes to the genome of living organisms and has wide-ranging applications for improving plant food production and quality. It’s been likened to using a searchand-replace function while editing a written document.

CRISPR-Cas9 is the

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Northwest Farm and Ranch | WINTER 2021