January - Wheat Life

Transcription

WHEAT LIFE
The official publication of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers
JANUARY 2015
SOLVING
THE PUZZLE
Workshops help producers
piece together farm bill
program decisions
Also in this issue:
Professor defends biotechnology
WGC welcomes new commissioners
What does quality mean?
Lind residents ready
for their close up
Address Service Requested
Washington Association of Wheat Growers
109 East First Avenue, Ritzville, WA 99169
WHEAT LIFE
Volume 58 • Number 01
www.wheatlife.org
‘Tis the season for meetings and conferences
The official publication of
I hope everyone enjoyed the Christmas season, and you
are all ready to get back to work.
WASHINGTON
ASSOCIATION OF
WHEAT GROWERS
109 East First Avenue
Ritzville, WA 99169-2394
(509) 659-0610 • (800) 598-6890
WAWG MEMBERSHIP
(509) 659-0610 • (800) 598-6890
$125 per year
EDITOR
Trista Crossley • [email protected]
(435) 260-8888
AD SALES MANAGER
Kevin Gaffney • [email protected]
(509) 235-2715
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Devin Taylor • Trista Crossley
AD BILLING
Michelle Hennings • [email protected]
(509) 659-0610 • (800) 598-6890
CIRCULATION
Address changes, extra copies, subscriptions
Chauna Carlson • [email protected]
(509) 659-0610 • (800) 598-6890
Subscriptions are $50 per year
WAWG EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Michelle Hennings
WAWG EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
PRESIDENT
Larry Cochran • Colfax
VICE PRESIDENT
Kevin Klein • Edwall
SECRETARY/TREASURER
PRESIDENT EMERITUS
Nicole Berg • Paterson
APPOINTED MEMBERS
Chris Herron • Connell
Marci Green • Fairfield
Ben Adams • Coulee City
Wheat Life (ISSN 0043-4701) is published by the
Washington Association of Wheat Growers (WAWG):
109 E. First Avenue • Ritzville, WA 99169-2394
Eleven issues per year with a combined August/
September issue. Standard (A) postage paid at
Ritzville, Wash., and additional entry offices.
Contents of this publication may not be reprinted without permission.
Advertising in Wheat Life does not indicate endorsement of an organization, product or political
candidate by WAWG.
2 President’s Perspective
WHEAT LIFE JANUARY 2015
By Larry Cochran
As the legislative season gets underway, your WAWG
officers and committee members will be crisscrossing the
state (and nation), keeping our eye on issues important
to wheat growers. First up is the National Association of
Wheat Growers’ (NAWG) winter meeting in Washington,
D.C., where we’ll meet with our federal delegation and give input on NAWG’s
national advocacy efforts. Then we’ll be heading to Olympia to meet with the new
crop of freshman legislators, followed by our annual Olympia days on Feb. 15-17.
Please plan on traveling to Olympia with us; the more wheat growers that come,
the more impact we have. This is one of the most
effective ways to communicate how important
agriculture is to our state’s economy.
Besides the meetings with legislators, we’ve
also got AMMO (Agricultural Marketing and
Management Organization) workshops starting
soon, not to mention the direct seed conference,
the oilseed conference and Ag Expo. And don’t
forget, farmers must have four hours per year
of training to maintain their private pesticide
license. Generally, you can pick up those hours
at your local fertilizer company or through
Washington State University Extension classes.
There are even seminars at Ag Expo that can
help you meet the four-hour requirement.
Throughout December, Extension, with the
help and encouragement of WAWG, held several farm bill program workshops (see story on page 24). We got a look at one of the online decision
aid tools and heard some good information about choosing PLC or ARC. If you
missed those workshops, you can pick up DVDs at your local Extension office or
watch the presentations online at smallgrains.wsu.edu. Sign-up deadlines are not
that far away, and I know the FSA offices don’t want everybody waiting until the
last minute.
Your wheat growers’ association has been involved in an ag and water quality
group, along with the Washington State Department of Ecology, to work together
on developing guidelines that protect the “waters of the state.” The committee will
continue to meet during the coming year, but in the meantime, Ecology will be doing watershed assessments starting in March in Eastern Washington. Understand,
this is not just a “cow in the creek” problem, but all of agriculture’s problem.
Please be good stewards, and we all will benefit. To read more about the scheduled assessments, see page 8.
I know it’s only January, but it seems like spring is not far away, so have the
equipment ready to go, and the paperwork caught up. Let’s have another successful year.
All photos are Shutterstock images or taken by Wheat Life staff unless otherwise noted.
Inside This Issue
WAWG President’s Perspective
Membership Form
WAWG at Work
Policy Matters
Building a Foundation
Putting the pieces together
Workshops help producers puzzle out PLC/ARC
Counting on crop insurance
How some producers manage their risk
Defending biotechnology
It’s all about genetic diversity
2015 Legislative pullout
A look at our state, national delegations
Health and safety snapshot
Tips taken from OSHA convention break-out
WGC Chairman’s Column
WGC Review
Rolling out the welcome mat
New commissioners step up to WGC table
Left-coast bound
Export tour follows wheat’s path west
Steering a path to quality
It’s meaning depends on who’s talking
Sour soil
Acidification becomes a larger PNW problem
Wheat Watch
Lights! Camera! Action!
Movie features Lind friends, combine derby
The Bottom Line
Your Wheat Life
Happenings
Advertiser Index
Contributors
2
4
6
16
22
24
28
32
36
38
43
44
46
50
52
55
58
60
64
66
68
70
Larry Cochran, president, Washington Association of Wheat Growers
Steve Claassen, chairman, Washington Grain Commission
Scott A. Yates, communications director, Washington Grain
Commission
Kevin Gaffney, ad sales manager, Wheat Life
Kim Garland-Campbell, research plant geneticist, USDA-ARS
Jim Peterson, vice president, Limagrain Cereal Seeds
David R. Huggins, soil scientist, USDA-ARS
Carol R. McFarland, graduate student, WSU Crop and Soil Sciences
Mike Krueger, president and founder, The Money Tree
Tim Cobb, Hatley/Cobb Farmland Management
WHEAT LIFE JANUARY 2015 3
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WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT.
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WAWG’s current top priorities are:
✔ Protect funding for both the Washington
State University’s Ag Research Center and
• Sales tax exemption on fertilizer and pesticides
for the proposed Plant Sciences Building
• Ag wholesale B&O exemption
✔ Preserve the ag tax preferences:
• Off-road fuel tax exemption
• Repair parts exemption
✔ Advocate for short-line rail funding
Washington state continues to look for more revenue,
and farmers’ tax exemptions are on the list. If these are important
to your operation, join today and help us fight.
More member benefits:
Weekly Email correspondence
• Greensheet ALERTS • WAWG updates
• Voice to WAWG through opinion surveys
• National Wheat Grower updates
Washington Association
of Wheat Growers
109EastFirstAve.•Ritzville,WA99169
509-659-0610•800-598-6890•509-659-4302(fax)
www.wagrains.com
Call 800-598-6890 or visit www.wagrains.com
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Preserving ag tax exemptions
is WAWG’s top 2015 priority
Routine business took up most of the last board meeting
of 2014. President Larry Cochran appointed Ben Adams of
Coulee City to the executive board to replace Eric Maier
of Ritzville. Adams joins other appointed members Chris
Herron of Connell and Marci Green of Fairfield.
There’s also been some shuffling of committee chairmen. Past president Nicole Berg of Paterson will take over
as the national legislation chairman, while vice president
Kevin Klein of Edwall will take over the state legislation
committee.
The board also established their top priorities for the
year. Leading the list is preservation of the state’s ag
tax exemptions, followed by protecting the funding of
Washington State University’s (WSU) Ag Research Center.
The board also voted to support funding of the proposed
WSU Plant Sciences Building. Rounding out the list of
priorities is funding the short-line rail system in Eastern
Washington.
The next board meeting is scheduled for Jan. 13.
WAWG, state agencies update
Benton County wheat farmers
In mid-December, nearly 30 Benton County farmers
took the morning off to meet at the Horse Heaven Hills
Community Center to enjoy a hot meal and hear the latest
updates from WAWG, NRCS and the local conservation
district.
From WAWG, Outreach Coordinator Lori Williams
talked about the December farm bill workshops and the
upcoming AMMO schedule. She also answered PLC/ARC
questions from producers. Executive Director Michelle
Hennings touched on the importance of face-to-face meetings between farmers and legislators and asked members to consider joining the executive team during their
annual Olympia Days trip on Feb. 15-17. Hennings also
talked about the importance of preserving the state’s ag
tax incentives, telling farmers that losing them could cost
producers thousands of dollars a year in income.
Ray Gekosky, a resource conservationist with the
Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Prosser Service
At their December meeting, members of the Benton County wheat growers group heard updates from WAWG Executive Director Michelle Hennings and
WAWG Outreach Coordinator Lori Williams on farm bill program workshops, upcoming legislative trips and the Agricultural Marketing and Management
Organization program. Officials from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Farm Service Agency and the local conservation district also spoke.
6 WHEAT LIFE JANUARY 2015
254 E Main Street • P.O. Box 257, Dayton, WA 99328 • Office 509-382-3155 • Fax 509-382-3045
www.northwestfarmland.com
Dear Land Owners,
We hope that this finds you and
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Our approach remains the same. We treat every asset as though we personally own it, positioning it
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strategy and goals.
Please feel free to contact us any time or stop by and see us at Spokane Ag Expo on Feb. 3-5, 2015.
Thank you,
Thank you,
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509-520-5280
[email protected]
Mark Grant
509-520-1906
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WL
WAWG AT WORK
Center, updated farmers on EQIP and CSP sign-ups. He also congratulated the
group for their participation in the state’s recent air quality initiative, which
offered assistance for installing conservation systems designed to help producers meet air quality compliance requirements. He said that out of $1.4 million
available to Washington counties, Benton County had 7 applications approved
for about $1.2 million.
“This brought people in who have never direct seeded before,” Gekosky said.
With a round of applause, the group of producers thanked Farm Service
Agency County Executive Director Dennis Simmelink who is retiring after 20
years with the agency. The meeting wrapped up with the election of new officers. Anthony J. Smith will take over as president from Devin Moon, who will
stay on as vice president. Dave Moore was elected treasurer.
Ecology schedules watershed assessments
At the latest meeting of the Ag and Water Quality Advisory Committee, producers were notified of the Washington State Department of Ecology’s (Ecology)
2015 and 2016 planned watershed assessments, five of
which will be taking place in
Eastern Washington.
Meeting at the Washington
Wheat Foundation building
in Ritzville in mid-December,
the group heard from Dave
Knight, the manager of
Ecology’s Nonpoint Source
Watershed Unit out of
Spokane, that while the assessments would be focused
on livestock, any possible
source of pollutants will be
considered. The areas scheduled to be assessed in 2015
are:
• Blue Mountain streams
(Asotin, Alpowa,
Deadman, Meadow);
(From left) Vic Stokes, president of the Washington
Cattlemen’s Association, Washington State Department of
Ecology Directory Maia Bellon and Kelly Susewind, Ecology
special assistant, listen to comments from the Ag and Water
Quality Advisory Committee.
• North Fork and South Fork Palouse River;
• Hangman Creek; and
• Walla Walla River.
In 2016, three more watersheds will be added:
• South Stevens County (Chamokane/Upper Colville)
• Rock Creek/Middle Palouse River
• Tucannon River
Kelly Susewind, special assistant to Ecology Director Maia Bellon, told attendWHEAT LIFE JANUARY 2015
Back in November, Monsanto
announced they had agreed
to pay slightly more than $2
million to Northwest soft
white wheat farmers who can
document that they sold grain
between May 30 and Nov. 30
of 2013. Eligible farmers must
submit a claim form, along
with documentation, in order
to receive any payments. Those
claim forms must be received
online or be postmarked by
March 31, 2015. The claim form
is at swwsettlement.com, along
with information about the
settlement, contact information and answers to frequently
asked questions.
Recently, some area farmers have received letters from
attorneys offering to help them
fill out the claim form. As far
as WAWG can determine, these
attorneys are not officially
affiliated with the settlement.
WAWG would caution farmers to only deal with attorneys
contacted through the official
website.
• Whitman County Snake
River tributaries including Alkali Flat Creek;
8 Letters confuse
SWW settlement
ees that some of these watersheds
have had TMDLs (total maximum
daily load) done on them, and some
haven’t.
“Most of them were picked
because we know we have impairments on them,” he explained.
In the coming months, Ecology
plans to partner with other state
agencies and producer groups to
hold workshops to discuss water
quality in these watersheds. Bellon
said she wanted these workshops to
be a cooperative effort.
Transition Planning - Asset Protection
Getting the next generation ready in today’s environment
2015 Spokane Ag Expo
Farm Forum Schedule
Seminars held in the Doubletree Hotel Ballroom,
connected to the Spokane Convention Center
Tuesday, February 3
1:30 pm and 3 pm
Wednesday, February 4
Noon and 1:30 pm
For specific subjects and times, refer to the listings at Ag Expo Show
Other Brock Law Firm Seminars Coming Up:
Pasco, Wash.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015, 9 am, The Red Lion Hotel
Moscow, Idaho
Monday, January 12, 2015, 9 am, Best Western Plus
Kennewick, Wash.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015, 9 am, 3 Rivers Conv. Center
Quincy, Wash.
Thursday, January 15, 2015, 9 am,
Grant County Fire District #3
Dayton, Wash.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015, 9 am, Best Western Plus
Prosser, Wash.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015, 9 am, Clore Center
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WL
WAWG AT WORK
“We are trying to take guidance
from this group and advice from
this group and run a better program
and be engaged in a better way,” she
said.
Berg chosen as young ag person of year
The committee also heard
from Patrick Capper and Keva
Guszkowski of the Washington
Department of Agriculture (WSDA)
on the Manure Land Application
Program. The program was modeled
after the pesticide licensing program
and applies to manure that is land
applied to cropland, but doesn’t address pasture or grazing operations
or commercial fertilizer. The bill
would require, among other things,
that an applicator follow a fieldspecific manure application plan and
keep
records.
There
will also
likely be
enforcement,
inspection and
reporting
requirements. Capper said the bill
is still being finalized, but WSDA
is getting ready to reach out to
stakeholders to hear their concerns.
Currently, the bill will only apply
to Skagit, Whatcom and Yakima
counties, although the department
may designate a special protection
district in watersheds that have
documented water quality issues
and apply the bill there.
“You have demonstrated a selfless dedication and
generous contribution of time, financial resources
and expertise towards the support of both the
agricultural industry and the local community,”
the congratulations letter read. The honor will be
awarded to Berg at the Pasco Chamber’s REAL Ag
Show Luncheon in early January.
The next meeting of Ecology and
the Ag and Water Quality Advisory
Committee is scheduled for Feb. 19
at Ecology’s headquarters in Lacey,
Wash. Agendas and presentations
from each of the meetings are posted
on Ecology’s website at
ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/nonpoint/
Agriculture/AgWQACmtg.html
WAWG Past President Nicole Berg has been honored as the Young Agri
Business Person of the Year for the Mid-Columbia Agriculture Hall of Fame
2015 by the Port of Pasco and the Greater Pasco Chamber of Commerce.
“Nicole is a tireless supporter of WAWG and the
state’s wheat industry,” said Michelle Hennings,
WAWG’s executive director. “She’s been a huge
asset for the Association this past year. Along with
her passion for natural resource issues, she has a
great sense of humor that often masks a determination to help our farmers navigate the stressful and
difficult issues they face.”
Berg has been involved in WAWG for more than 10 years. Besides being past
president (2013/14), she is the national legislation and the natural resources
committee chairs. She also represents the wheat industry on the state’s Ag and
Water Quality Advisory Committee. Berg raises both irrigated and dryland
crops on her family’s fourth-generation farm near Paterson, Wash.
The Mid-Columbia Agriculture Hall of Fame was formed by the Pasco
Chamber of Commerce in 2000 to recognize and honor distinguished individuals who have made significant contributions to the agricultural community in
the greater Franklin County region and its immediate surrounding areas.
Falling numbers data available online
Camille M. Steber, a USDA-ARS plant research geneticist at Washington
State University, has released single repetition data for soft white winter
and soft white spring wheat on her falling number website at
steberlab.org/project7599data.php.
According to Steber, both the 2013 and 2014 data now include a tool that
allows visitors to look at the average falling number relative to the yield at
different locations by clicking on the falling number vs. yield link under
each section.
Grain with a Hagberg-Perten falling number below 300 seconds is discounted due to the fact that it can degrade the quality of wheat products.
Low falling numbers led to considerable financial losses for Washington
farmers in 2011 and 2013 due to weather patterns leading to either preharvest sprouting in response to rain or late-maturity alpha-amylase due to
cold shock during grain maturation.
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WL
WAWG AT WORK
AMMO kicks off
2015 by passing it on
Nationally known champion of agriculture, Jolene Brown, kicks off the Agricultural
Marketing and Management Organization’s
(AMMO) 2015 program
on Jan. 20 at the Northern
Quest Casino in Airway
Heights. Brown will
present “The Positives of
Passing It On,” focusing
on what successful businesses do now to ensure
the legacy of the business
tomorrow. From strong
Jolene Brown
family, work team and advisor connections to clear communications and
expectations, from legal paperwork to transparent transition, you’ll laugh while you learn that
if you want to honor the family, you’d better do
the business right!
Following Brown’s presentation, a panel of
advisors will answer financial, legal and accounting questions. Preregister for the workshop at lcammo.org. Lunch will be included.
Brown is a farmer, author and professional
speaker from West Branch, Iowa. She’s on a
mission to share leading-edge best practices, appreciation, laughter and celebration to increase
productivity, profitability and peace of mind.
Prices for dry pea revenue
endorsement announced
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk
Management Agency recently announced
harvest prices for the 2014 crop year for the
Dry Pea Revenue Endorsement for federal crop
insurance coverage in Idaho and Washington.
Dry Pea Type
Harvest Price Projected Price
Spring Large
Kabuli Chickpea
$0.22/lb.
$0.30/lb.
Spring Small
Kabuli Chickpea
$0.19/lb.
$0.20/lb.
Spring Smooth
Green/Yellow Pea
$0.13/lb.
$0.16/lb.
Spring Lentils
$0.26/lb.
$0.22/lb.
Killer cold?
Farmers wondering if sudden freeze hurt their wheat
By Kim Garland-Campbell,
Research Plant Geneticist, USDA-ARS
The good news is that cold snaps in November and December
often coincide with the best-acclimated winter wheat and with
soil that is still relatively warm from the fall.
Winter survival depends on both the soil temperature 2 inches
below the surface and the available soil moisture. When the cold
snap hit in November, the winter wheat had been planted three
to eight weeks beforehand. Wheat planted earlier had experienced some colder temperatures, which acclimated it to cold, but
much of it was under stress due to lack of moisture at planting. In
the wetter parts of the state, the younger wheat wasn’t fully acclimated, but it had received better moisture. Much of the wheat
that was planted after Oct. 15 wasn’t even out of the ground yet.
The wheat that will best survive the cold snap were the fields
planted earlier and acclimated, but with some fall moisture in the
soil. The wheat that hadn’t yet emerged is also likely to survive
the cold snap. Wheat planted in October into dry ground that has
stayed dry will have the most trouble.
Variety choice also influences survival. Wheat cultivars from
the Oregon State University and Limagrain programs are
generally less cold tolerant, and those from the North Idaho,
Washington State University and Syngenta programs are generally more so. WestBred and Southern Idaho cultivars vary for
cold tolerance, but all breeding programs have released both
hardy and sensitive cultivars, so it’s best to review the seed buyers guide when making planting decisions.
At this point, the best recommendation is to wait to assess winter survival until late January or early February to see what the
rest of the winter brings. If survival is still under question, dig up
a few plants, bring them inside and wrap them in paper towels to
keep them moist. If they are alive, they will sprout roots within a
week. If not, it’s time to consider reseeding.
This article originally appeared on smallgrains.wsu.edu
For producers who purchased revenue protection for the 2014 crop
year, Dry Pea Revenue Endorsement for any of the spring types of
green or yellow peas, lentils, and chickpeas (large and small), the
harvest price is used to determine the calculated revenue. The harvest
price is multiplied by the appraised and/or harvested production to
determine the calculated revenue. The calculated revenue is subtracted from the final revenue protection guarantee to determine possible
indemnities (insurance losses). The final revenue protection guarantee
for spring lentils is determined using the harvest price (i.e., the greater
of price).
Producers should contact their
insurance agent to learn additional
program details related to these
price announcements.
Are you receiving
your ALERT?
With their annual membership,
WAWG members can receive industry updates through the weekly
digital Greensheet ALERT via email.
If you are not receiving this ALERT,
there are two possible problems.
Either we don’t have your current
email address on file, or our ALERT
is going into your spam folder.
Please check your email’s spam
folder for the ALERT and unspam it.
You can also call our office at (509)
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current email address.
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Life? Disagree with something
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“A story of
agriculture
will be told. It
would be better
if it were told
by you.”
— Jerry McReynolds,
past president of the National
Association of Wheat Growers
Northwest FCS customer Ryan Lankford
Northwest Farm Credit Services is a cooperative. When you become
a customer you also become an owner. You have a voice and a vote
in how our association does business. Plus, when we do well we
share profits with you in the form of patronage. No bank does this.
You borrow. You own. You earn. You grow. Learn more about the
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WELCOME TO AMMO
We are a group of your local suppliers, accountants,
attorneys, marketing companies, and lenders. You’ll know
many of us by name. Our goal is to help you increase your
profitability by making better farm management decisions.
Like us on
AMMO has provided farm management training programs
since 2009 and we are proud to offer these 2015 programs
for our customers and friends.
A program of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers
2015 AMMO MEMBERS
Ag Enterprise Supply
Les Schwab Tires (Davenport)
Ag Link, Inc.
Moss Adams LLP
AgVentures NW, LLC
Northwest Farm Credit Services
Almira Farmer's Warehouse
Pacific Northwest Farmers Cooperative
Almota Elevator Company
ProPartners Financial
Central Washington Grain Growers
Rainier Seeds, Inc.
CHS Connell Grain Growers
Reardan Seed
CliftonLarsonAllen LLP
Sterling Bank – Central Washington
Commercial Banking
Co-Ag
Columbia Bank
The McGregor Company
Davenport Union Warehouse
Union Elevator Company
Evergreen Implement
US Bank
Farm Commodities
Washington Grain Commission
Hatley/Cobb Farmland Management
Washington Trust Bank
Inland Empire Milling Co.
Wheatland Bank
JW & Associates, PLLC
2015 Farm Management
Training Programs
SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR EASTERN WASHINGTON PRODUCERS
2015 PROGRAM CALENDAR
1 The Positives of Passing it on! – Speaker: Jolene Brown
January 20th
Northern Quest Casino – Airway Heights, Washington
2 Young Producers Conference
January 27th
Red Lion Hotel – Pasco, Washington
3 Beginning and Advanced Quickbooks®
For advance registration
and more information:
Phone: 1-877-740-666
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.lcammo.org
Pick the Session that Fits Your Level
February 10th
February 11th
Big Bend Community College – Moses Lake, Washington
4 Marketing in the Top Third – Speaker: Mark Gold
February 18th
February 19th
Northern Quest Casino – Airway Heights, Washington
5 Crop Insurance, Price Risk and Commodity Programs
Under the New Farm Bill – Speaker: Dr. Art Barnaby
February 24th
Community Center – Davenport, Washington
February 25th
Big Bend Community College – Moses Lake, Washington
POLICY MATTERS
Ritzville wheat farmer elected
as Senate majority leader
Sen. Mark Schoesler
(R-Ritzville) was elected the Senate
majority leader in December for
the upcoming 2015 state legislative
session. He replaces retiring Sen.
Rodney Tom (D-Medina) as head
of the Majority Coalition Caucus,
a group of 25 Republicans and
one Democrat that will control
the chamber. Schoesler has been in
the Senate since 2007 after serving
seven terms in the House. The 105-day legislative session
begins Jan. 12.
New state representative to
serve on House ag committee
Rep. Michael Conaway (R-Texas), the incoming chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, has named
eight new Republican members
who will serve on the panel in the
114th Congress, including newly
elected Washington State Rep.
Dan Newhouse from Washington
state’s 4th District.
“I am excited to work with this
outstanding group of members
joining the agriculture committee,”
Conaway said in a news release.
“Our committee members have diverse backgrounds and unique skills that will be an asset
as the committee aggressively oversees an array of issues
that are important to all Americans.”
The other new Republican members of the committee include Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.); Ralph Abraham
(R-La.); Rick Allen (R-Ga.); Mike Bost (R-Ill.); Tom Emmer
(R-Minn.); John Moolenaar (R-Mich.); and David Rouzer
(R-N.C.).
Reauthorization of CFTC tops
House committee priorities
From Agri-Pulse
Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), the ranking member
of the House Agriculture Committee, said he expects
farm bill implementation to be a
chief concern for the panel in the
114th Congress, but reauthorization of the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission (CFTC) will
be the first thing on the agenda in
January.
Peterson, who will start his
sixth term as the committee’s top
Democrat in January, said he and
the incoming Republican chairman, Mike Conaway of Texas, have
briefly discussed priorities for the
committee and reauthorization of
the CFTC is at the top of that list.
Rep. Collin Peterson
(D-Minn.)
The panel has a great deal of
work ahead in overseeing USDA’s
farm bill implementation. After
Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas,
the chairman-elect of the Senate
Agriculture Committee, quashed
rumors of a potential re-opening of
the bill, Peterson said he’s hopeful
a Republican-led reconciliation of
Rep. Mike Conaway
the bill can be avoided. He said in
(R-Texas)
a reconciliation, Republican leaders “could decide to go in and take money out of the farm
bill, so it wouldn’t be actually reopening it as such, but
potentially, they could go after some parts of it.”
This content was extracted from Agri-Pulse, a subscription-only
e-newsletter. Free trial available at Agri-Pulse.com
Lawmakers reinstate
expensing allowance for 2014
Congress acted quickly before the end of the year, voting to pass a “tax extenders bill” that reinstated more than
50 expired tax breaks, including the Section 179 expensing
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POLICY MATTERS
allowance. The House passed H.R. 5771 by a vote of 37846, while the Senate vote was 76-16. The tax breaks will
expire at the end of 2014 because lawmakers were unable to reach a deal for a
longer-term extension.
The Section 179 provision would keep
the expensing limitation at $500,000 for
2014, reverting to $25,000 for 2015 and
beyond. Also included in the bill was an
increase to the barge diesel fuel user fee,
which was supported by many agricultural
groups. The provision, which was a part of
the “ABLE” Act that was combined with the tax extenders
language, increases the user fee by 9 cents, from 20 cents
to 29 cents. It will raise an estimated $260 million over
the next 10 years to make improvements and repairs to
America’s waterway system
USDA seeks public comment
on new EQIP rule
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is publishing a rule that outlines how it will improve the
Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP),
changes authorized by Congress in the 2014 Farm Bill. The
public will have 60 days to comment on the changes, and
comments are due by Feb. 10, 2015.
The changes are intended to simplify the EQIP regulation regarding conservation practice scheduling, payment
limitations and other administrative actions. Highlights of
program changes in this rule include the following:
•R
equires at least 5 percent of available EQIP funds
be targeted for conservation practices that promote
wildlife habitat;
•E
stablishes EQIP as a contributing program for the
Regional Conservation Partnership Program;
• I ncreases the advanced payment from 30 percent to 50
percent for eligible, historically underserved producers, including beginning farmers, to help purchase
material or contract services;
•T
argets assistance to veteran farmers and ranchers
including eligibility for the new 50 percent advance
payment and up to 90 percent of the cost to implement
EQIP conservation practices;
• I ncreases the payment limitation for EQIP from
$300,000 to a maximum of $450,000 for benefits received during 2014-2018 and removes the option for a
waiver to exceed payment limitations;
•E
liminates the requirement for a program contract to
remain in place for one year after the last practice has
been implemented, allowing practices to be scheduled
through the tenth year of a contract; and
• I ncorporates the Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program
functions into EQIP.
Pro side comes out ahead at GMO debate
Arguing that genetically modified crops have been
proven safe and are needed to feed a growing world
population, advocates for the technology won over far
more converts than opponents in a December debate
hosted by a National Public Radio program.
The panel consisted of two individuals for the use
of genetic tools in food production and two against.
Arguing for were Robert Fraley, CTO of Monsanto, and
Alison Van Eenennaam of University of CaliforniaDavis. Arguing against GMOs were Margaret Mellon,
formerly of the Union of Concerned Scientists and now
a consultant for the Center for Food Safety, and Charles
Benbrook of Washington State University.
The program, streamed online from a New York
studio, declares a victor based on the percentage of a
studio audience swayed by arguments. Prior to the debate, 32 percent of the audience agreed GMO crops are
necessary and 30 percent opposed them. A vote taken
afterward found 60 percent of the audience favored
GMOs and 31 percent opposed them, with 9 percent still
undecided.
Opponents argued GMO crops haven’t lived up to
promises made when they were introduced in 1996, and
the value of the technology has been undermined by the
rise of resistant weeds due to the overuse of glyphosate
herbicide on GMO crops engineered to withstand the
product.
Fraley described GMOs as one of many tools to feed a
global population expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050.
He emphasized Monsanto invests double the money
in conventional breeding as in developing GMOs but
considers it foolish to give up on the technology simply
because resistant plants are evolving.
You can listen to the debate at npr.org/series/6263392/
intelligence-squared-u-s or watch it at monsantoblog.
com/2014/12/09/the-npriq2us-debate-on-gmos/
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POLICY MATTERS
EQIP has touched the lives of many agricultural producers and forest landowners in Washington state since its
launch in 1997. From 1997 through 2014, NRCS has invested in 2,622 contracts for a total of nearly $78 million on
more than 1 million acres in Washington state. Comments
may be submitted through regulations.gov. For more
information about the rule, visit nrcs.usda.gov.
RMA rolls out whole-farm
revenue protection insurance
USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) recently
announced the release of the Whole-Farm Revenue
Protection (WFRP) program for the 2015 crop year. The
2014 Farm Bill gave RMA broad flexibility to implement a
new, whole-farm crop insurance policy.
The WFRP combines two popular and well-known
plans of insurance in the Pacific Northwest, Adjusted
Gross Revenue Pilot (AGR) and Adjusted Gross RevenueLite (AGR-Lite).
“AGR and AGR-Lite policies have proven to be successful risk management tools for Pacific Northwest farmers,”
said Ben Thiel, director of RMA’s Spokane Regional Office.
“WFRP combines the two programs and includes enhancements to coverage levels and whole-farm subsidies,
making this form of crop insurance more affordable to
producers.”
Policy enhancements include an expanded range of
coverage levels, coverage for replanting, provisions that
increase coverage for expanding operations, a higher
maximum amount of coverage and the inclusion of market
readiness costs in the coverage. WFRP is tailored for any
farm with up to $8.5 million in insured revenue, including
farms with specialty or organic commodities (both crops
and livestock).
WFRP is available in 45 states, including Alaska, Idaho,
Oregon and Washington. The whole-farm premium
subsidy is available to farms with two or more commodities that meet minimum diversification requirements.
Producers can purchase WFRP in conjunction with
individual crop policies as long as those policies are at a
buy-up coverage level.
Sales closing date for WFRP is March 15, 2015, for the
2015 crop year. Growers must make all of their decisions
on crop insurance coverage on or before the sales closing
date.
See rma.usda.gov/policies/wfrp.html for additional
details.
President announces Cuban
thaw; wheat could benefit
From NAWG
The National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG)
and U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) applauded President
Obama’s recent announcement that the U.S. will begin
discussions to renew diplomatic relations with Cuba,
which will make it easier for Cuba to buy U.S. agricultural
products, including wheat. We anticipate that these reestablished trade relations will help open a market for U.S.
wheat products in Cuba.
Cuba, which does not grow wheat commercially, is
the largest wheat market in the Caribbean, purchasing
almost all of its wheat from the EU and Canada. Cuba
could import at least 500,000 metric tons of wheat from
the U.S. each year but has not purchased U.S. wheat since
2011. Under the current embargo, the U.S. can export
agricultural products to Cuba through the use of thirdparty banking institutions, which makes facilitating trade
burdensome and often more expensive.
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BUILDING A FOUNDATION
(Above) Auction attendees participated in a “Heads or Tails” game, where they had to guess a coin flip. The last person
standing won half the pot. (Below) Auction attendees write down their bid during the silent auction.
Foundation auction
Going once, going twice, SOLD! Another
successful Washington Wheat Foundation
(WWF) auction is in the books. Numerous
donations were received for the annual
event held in conjunction with the Tri-State
Grain Growers Convention at Skamania
Lodge in Stevenson, Wash. Almost 180
donated items were received, everything
from gift baskets, game tickets and vacation packages to fertilizer, power tools
and farm equipment rentals, as well as
generous cash contributions. For years,
the live and silent auctions have been one
of the most highly anticipated and generously supported events of the convention.
This year was no exception, as bidders
vied for the various items up for grabs.
The highlight of the auction was a Fort
Collins, Colo., getaway package donated
by Limagrain Cereal Seeds. Proceeds from
this item were split between Washington,
Oregon and Idaho’s foundations. The
Foundation would like to extend a hearty
thank you to all of the donors and bidders
who helped to make the event a huge success. Proceeds from the auction go to benefit the wheat and small grains industry.
Annual meeting
The WWF held its annual meeting on
Nov. 14 during the Tri-State Grain Growers
Convention. The overwhelming enthusiasm for the Ambassador program was
evident as suggestions from the floor
Working to advance the
small grains industry
by building support for
programs and activities
that increase public
awareness of farming.
Calendar:
WWF meeting on Jan.
26 at the Foundation
building in Ritzville.
Reminders:
• Washington State
University students,
watch for Barbara
Pyne Scholarship
applications available
in spring of 2015 on
our website at
wawheat.org.
prompted a proposal to increase scholarship funding to the recipients. Funding for
the WAWG Ambassador representatives is
now $2,500 and $2,000. New trustee, Mike
Schrag of Ritzville, joined the board as
Wendi Kregger of Touchet stepped down.
Foundation meetings for 2015 will be Jan.
26, June 8, Aug. 31 and Nov. 13.
• The National
Association of
Wheat Growers’
scholarship winners
will be announced in
February.
• Remember the
Foundation in your
annual charitable
giving plans.
Ambassador shout out
The Foundation would like to congratulate our 2014/15 WAWG Ambassadors,
Morgan Adams of Coulee City and
Matthew Warren of Dayton. We are excited
to hear their story and plan to share their
message with you in the near future.
Washington Wheat Foundation: P.O. Box 252, Ritzville, WA 99169 • (509) 659-1987 • wawheat.org
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FEATURE
Puzzling out
program options
December farm bill workshops give producers
an opportunity to see online decision aids in action
By Trista Crossley
December is usually the season to be merry, but in 2014, it was also the season
to work through the farm bill program options available to farmers. A series of
workshops held throughout the month by Washington State University (WSU)
Extension, with cooperation from the Agricultural Marketing and Management
Organization and the Farm Service Agency (FSA), aimed to shed a little light on
the process.
More than 540 people took part in five workshops held across Eastern
Washington. Randy Fortenbery, a WSU ag economics professor, talked about
factors that can influence wheat prices and the perils of trying to forecast
those prices more than a couple of months into the future. Shannon Neibergs,
WSU Extension economist and the director of the Western Extension Risk
Management Education Center in Spokane, gave an overview of the new
programs: Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC).
Rounding out the workshops was Aaron Esser, county director for LincolnAdams WSU Extension, who walked attendees through one of the online decision aids.
Neibergs said according to the feedback they’ve gotten, producers were getting the information they needed, and most importantly, they were also realizing the need to analyze their own numbers in order to make sense of what their
best program choices were.
“Because the decision set is so complex, producers are realizing that they need
to go to work with the decision aids and their own farm numbers in order to
take the next step,” he explained.
The workshops in December were all about presenting the big picture, an
overview of the new farm bill programs and some of the factors producers need
to consider before making a choice. Neibergs said they are considering another
set of workshops which would allow them to respond to individual questions
and circumstances. He said by doing a second set of workshops, it would give
producers an opportunity to go home, experiment with the decision aids and
Table 1: Who needs to make what decisions
Decision
Responsible Party
Deadline
Keep or update yield
Landowner
Feb. 27, 2015
Retain or reallocate base acres
Landowner
Feb. 27, 2015
Landowner/Leasee
March 31, 2015
Program choice
then come back with questions
about what they are seeing with
their farm numbers.
“Like many demonstrations,
things look easier when you see
someone with some skill doing
it,” he said. “But when you try to
wrestle with it yourself, you realize
there is more to it than what meets
the eye.”
Besides getting to see at least
one of the decision aids in action,
producers came away from the
December meetings with a couple of
main points. The first one was to not
wait until the last minute to try to
make a decision. Neibergs pointed
out that if producers don’t do some
number crunching before they
go to their FSA office, the options
might be overwhelming. Another
point that was made was that some
of these decisions have to be made
by the landowner, not the operator
(unless the operator has a power of
attorney), and if the landowner and
operator can’t come to a decision,
they will be forced into the PLC
option and lose any 2014 payments
they might have been entitled to.
FEATURE
The choice between ARC and PLC
comes down to what the producers
want to protect—yield risk or price
risk. Under the PLC option, payments are made when the effective
price of a commodity is less than
that commodity’s reference price. In
other words, PLC protects against
price risk. Under ARC, payments
are made when farm revenue falls
below a revenue guarantee. That
guarantee can be based on either an
individual farm’s average or on the
county’s average. There are some
other considerations that need to be
taken into account with ARC (such
as the fact that under the individual
ARC option, all crops are included
to calculate potential program payments), but ARC primarily protects
against yield risk.
As Fortenbery, in his Colfax,
Wash., presentation said, the relative
attractiveness of one program over
the other depends on future prices.
But he cautioned producers against
trying to use the futures market as a
price forecast because of its volatility.
“Think about your risk profile,”
he told producers. “What do you
want to guarantee? Don’t base your
decision on price forecasts. Nobody
knows what prices are going to do
(in the future).” He also cautioned
producers against making their decision based on maximizing government payments.
One of the things farmers can do
to help them decide between ARC
and PLC is to look at how their local
market relates to the national market. Fortenbery pointed to WSU’s
small grains website at smallgrains.
wsu.edu which has marketing and
economic tools to help producers.
In Neibergs’ part of the Colfax
workshop, he reminded farmers of
the three major decisions that have
to be made and who needs to make
them (see Table 1).
WL
Farmer makes decisions on each FSA Farm
Farmer
Base
FSA Farm 2233
Landowner
FSA Farm 1234
Landowner
FSA Farm 3333
Leasee
200 acres wheat
100 acres barley
300 acres wheat
100 acres canola
400 acres wheat
200 acres barley
Negotiate with landowner
Program
Options
wheat PLC & barley ARC-CO
or
Wheat ARC-CO & barley PLC
or
Both in ARC-CO or PLC
or
All Farm in ARC-IC
wheat PLC & canola ARC-CO
or
Wheat ARC-CO & canola PLC
or
or
All Farm in ARC-IC
wheat PLC & barley ARC-CO
or
Wheat ARC-CO & barley PLC
or
or
All Farm in ARC-IC
As part of Shannon Neibergs’ presentation at the farm bill workshops, he pointed out that farm bill
programs can be mixed and matched, to some extent, across different FSA farm numbers and by crop.
This is one strategy producers might use to spread their risk out.
He also talked about why the yield and base acre updates are so much more
important and complicated for Washington producers as opposed to Midwest
corn/soybean rotation producers. Some of the factors in Washington, he said,
were:
• A large change in crop rotation planted acres;
• The potential for base acre history to date to the 1990s;
• The adoption of new production technologies such as no-till;
• The potential to move from summer fallow to continuous cropping;
• The potential to dramatically increase counter cyclical yields on record with
the FSA; and
• The large variation in yield across counties.
When looking at updating yields, Neibergs said that if the calculated yield is
higher than the existing yield, then the yield should be updated. The formula
for calculating yields is 90 percent of the average yield between 2008 and 2012.
The yield can be updated for each crop on each FSA farm number. When considering reallocating base acres, a good strategy is to try to match base acres as
closely as possible to future intended plantings.
Neibergs also pointed out that farm bill programs can be mixed and matched,
to some extent, across different FSA farm numbers and by crop (see slide above),
which is a strategy some producers can use to spread their risk out.
Finally, Esser took to the Colfax stage to walk attendees through the Texas
A&M University online decision aid (smallgrains.wsu.edu has links to both decision aids, as well as other helpful tools and information). He cautioned growers that they needed to approach the decision aids with as accurate information
as possible.
WL
FEATURE
Producers from around Eastern Washington had the opportunity to learn more about their farm bill program choices in workshops like this one in Colfax. The
workshops were presented by Washington State University Extension.
“Garbage in is garbage out,” he warned, “so take the
time to organize your numbers first.”
Esser demonstrated the program by using information
from both the Wilke Research and Extension Farm and
the Lind Dryland Research Station and setting them up as
different units with different base acres and crops to show
how changing different variables affected the outcomes.
He told producers to look for scenarios that helped them
the least but to avoid getting caught up in the overall dollar amounts.
“You can make yourself blue looking at numbers,” he
said. “When comparing programs, don’t look at specific
numbers. Look at the overall answer (PLC good or ARCcounty option bad). Look at what the program is telling
you to lean towards.”
DVDs of the workshop segments will be available from
Extension offices and online at smallgrains.wsu.edu. You
will also be able to find a link to the online video by visiting wawg.org or lcammo.org.
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FEATURE
Counting on crop insurance
For farmers, it’s a simple equation—no crop equals no
paycheck—and the list of things that can threaten that
crop seems to change from day to day. So how do farmers protect their biggest investment? They rely on crop
insurance. We talked to five farmers from different parts
of Eastern Washington to find out how crop insurance fits
into their risk management plans.
Cris Kincaid, Colfax/Pullman
What do you do when a July hail storm wipes out 2,600
acres of ready-to-harvest winter wheat, spring wheat and
garbanzo beans? According to fifth-generation farmer Cris
Kincaid, you become mighty grateful for crop insurance.
“It was pretty hard,” Kincaid said, speaking about the
2014 storm that rumbled through his area. “If I hadn’t
had crop insurance, it would have put a real strain on the
financial condition of our farm. We might have had to
remortgage to keep going.”
Kincaid said the biggest threat in his area is drought and
adverse weather, such as the aforementioned hail storm.
His 2015 winter crop was seeded into very dry conditions,
and he said he is still worried about his soil’s moisture
profile.
“But we have revenue coverage,” he explained.
“Basically, that allows me to sleep at night in the
wintertime.”
Kincaid said he’s never considered not having crop
insurance, even encouraging his landlords to fully insure
themselves.
“I’d be a nervous wreck (without crop insurance) for the
amount of money we have invested on our crops,” he said.
“I believe in it strongly.”
Ron Jirava, Ritzville
In Ron Jirava’s neck of Eastern Washington, drought
and winter kill are the biggest threats to his crops that he
insures against.
“Pests are few and far between in this area, moisture
being the limiting factor,” he said. “We cover at 80 percent;
that seems to work out pretty good. It’s just part of the cost
of doing business.”
Jirava said he farms on fields that are pretty spread
out—some of them are five or six miles apart—and from
east to west, he said he can see big differences in field conditions. During his fall seeding, the area around his shop
saw enough rainfall that cheatgrass had started growing.
“A mile and a half away, there wasn’t enough moisture
to seed into,” he said. “We went from good seeding conditions to the moisture being 8 inches down.” He added
that across his operation, he’s got a little bit of everything,
some nice looking seeded wheat to acreage that he’s probably going to have to reseed in the spring.
With the volatility in today’s market, where grain prices
can move 30 cents or more in a day, Jirava said if you carry
an operating loan, the bank basically insists on crop insurance. Even with crop insurance, however, farmers are still
facing a loss of 15 to 20 percent of what they would have
had.
“It’s not the perfect solution to everything, but its probably the best we’ve got at the moment,” he said. “It would
be nice if we could have crop insurance be like our house
insurance, where if it burns down, they build us a new
house.”
Devin Moon, Prosser
Down in Benton County, one of
the driest wheat-growing regions of
the world, Devin Moon said dryland
farmers can be profitable mainly
because of two things: the summer
fallow system many of them follow and the fact that they have low
freight costs due to their proximity
to the barge system. Unfortunately,
the loss of a crop here can cut a little
deeper because those transportation
savings aren’t factored into growers’
insurance.
“I wish we had a price provision
for hard red winter wheat, and I
think it should correlate directly
with what we net at the elevator,”
Moon said. “In Benton County, we
have really low freight costs compared to, say, Ritzville. That’s part of
what makes us profitable, but when
your crop insurance check comes
in, it doesn’t reflect those low freight
expenses.”
Moon, who generally insures his
crop at the 70 percent level, mostly
against drought and winter freeze
out, doesn’t even hesitate when
asked if he considers crop insurance
a necessity.
“Absolutely. For me, personally, as
a young guy who is very leveraged
already, the bank definitely wants
me to be well insured,” he said. “I
can’t weather more than one bad
year without it.”
On average, Benton County fall
seeded into very dry conditions,
like most of Eastern Washington.
However, the area has since picked
up some precipitation. Moon said
most of his wheat is up, and recent
soil samples look good.
“We weren’t as far behind average
as we thought we were, and we’ve
had an inch to two inches of precipitation this fall,” Moon said. “I think
we went from bad conditions to
average conditions.”
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WL
FEATURE
Claude Pierret, Connell
For Claude Pierret, crop insurance
is there to help farmers through
those times when either prices are
low or yields are low, as was the case
in 2014 when his farm harvested
“the worst crop that we’ve ever had.”
Pierret farms in an 8- to 10-inch
rainfall area. He said the main threat
he insures against is drought, and
in fact, the area is in the middle
of a second year of below-average
moisture. Looking back to the fall of
2013, Pierret said his wheat came up
nicely, but then it just sat there.
“At the end of February (2014), the
wheat looked like it did at the end
of September (2013),” he recalled.
“It just survived. We had had good
rains that September, but any rain
we had thereafter, the wind just
blew it away, and it evaporated
before it could soak into the ground.
Along came February, and we got
some rain, and the wheat started to
grow, but it only produced about 16
bushels an acre. That’s where crop
insurance really helped us out.”
Pierret said his farm has carried
crop insurance since the mid-1970s,
but has only collected on it a half
a dozen times, including in 2014,
and the only reason he wouldn’t
continue to carry it would be if the
premiums became too high to be
affordable.
“In my mind, crop insurance
should take the place of disaster payments, because crop insurance is an
insurance,” he said. “It is the same
as car insurance or home insurance.
You carry it for those times when
you need it.”
The condition of Pierret’s 2015
crop is still up in the air. Although
his ground started out dry, some late
fall rains helped his seed along. He
said he got about 300 acres of early
seed up, and he’s fairly confident
the rest of his fall-planted seed has
germinated, although less than half
has actually emerged. The sudden
November cold snap seemed to cause only minor damage, although he won’t
know for sure for a couple of months.
Art Swannack, Lamont
For Art Swannack, who runs sheep and grows hay and grain in a 15” rainfall
zone near Lamont, the biggest concern he has with crop insurance is the subsidy
levels.
“You put out a $12,000 or $15,000 check, and every so often, you get a $20,000
check back,” he said. “You accept that. But if you are putting out a $25,000 check
every year, and you are rarely getting anything out of it or you are losing money
continually, then crop insurance wouldn’t necessarily be valuable. If it’s not going to end up at least breaking even over the long run, it’s not worth doing.”
Like most farmers, Swannack uses crop insurance as a risk management
strategy for his grain business, opting for an 85 percent revenue coverage level.
He said he and his wife continually evaluate their diversified operation and will
re-adjust their focus so they can maximize profit at the lowest risk.
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FEATURE
Also like most farmers in Eastern Washington,
Swannack fall seeded into dry conditions, but late autumn
rains helped the crop start to catch up. However, he wasn’t
sure how well his winter wheat will shrug off the sudden
November freezing weather.
“Some of the bottoms came up pretty well, but a lot of
the hillsides didn’t,” he explained. “Some of the bigger
wheat that got up earlier looks okay, but some of that little
stuff was only ½ of an inch out of the ground when it got
hit by the cold. I won’t know for a couple of months. I did
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take the winter replant option this year. I haven’t done that
before. I figured probably drought, but I didn’t plan on
subzero temperatures on open ground.”
Weather, not pests, is the normal threat Swannack uses
crop insurance to guard against. But starting in late summer, he said he saw a lot of grasshoppers coming down
from the north.
“The question is going to be, how well will they survive
over the winter, because there was enough numbers to
have a real big outbreak,” he said.
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WL
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WL
FEATURE
biotechnology
Genetic diversity is key to crop improvement
By Trista Crossley
Thomas Clemente, a professor of biotechnology at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), closed out the 2014 Tri-State Grain Growers
Convention with a simple message about crop improvement: it’s all about genetic diversity.
“We need to improve upon genetic diversity, and historically, how did we
improve genetic diversity? Through conventional crop breeding,” he said.
“Whatever the traits are within a wheat population, that’s what we were
restricted to. A soybean population? That’s what we were restricted to. A corn
population? That’s what we were restricted to. But with the tools of biotechnology, it is now unlimited.”
“What I like to tell the
people is that the products
that are on the market
today through the tools of
biotechnology are safe or
safer than any commodity
you’ve ever eaten because
no commodity has been put
through such rigorous safety
assessment.”
—Thomas Clemente,
Professor of Biotechnology,
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Clemente called biotechnology a complement to traditional plant breeding,
explaining that it doesn’t speed up the process of developing a new variety,
it just provides breeders with more access to genetic diversity. One gene, one
protein is a simple concept that’s at the heart of genetic engineering, he said,
crediting that idea to George W. Beadle, a corn geneticist who won a nobel prize
for the discovery.
To get a gene into a plant, Clemente explained that first you have to make it
more plant-like so the plant will recognize it. To do that, a piece of DNA, called
a promoter, is put in front of the gene. The promoter tells the gene where to turn
on, when to turn on and how much to turn on.
“A trait like herbicide resistance you want it on everywhere,” he said.
“Something like drought resistance you may only want it on the roots. There’s a
lot of people trying to make a blue rose. You’d only want that on the flowers.”
Another hurdle researchers had to cross was how to get the gene into a plant’s
cells. Back in the 1950s and 60s, research money was directed at the plant pathogen, Agrobacterium tumefaciens or crown gall, which was thought to be related to
human cancers due to the tumors it caused on plants. That research, Clemente
said, led to one of the most powerful tools for genetic engineering.
“Here’s another take-home lesson,” he said. “What’s basic today is applied
tomorrow. Some things that sound funny in 2014 may be an improvement for
agriculture in 2035.”
Researchers discovered that the agrobacterium was able to transfer DNA
into the nucleus of a plant cell where it was then integrated into the plant’s own
chromosome.
“At the same time this mechanism was being illuminated, people were coming to understand how we could cut and swap pieces of DNA,” Clemente said.
“And it came to these folks, let’s remove these disease-causing genes and put in
our genes of interest. We then mix the agrobacterium with the plant cells and
ask them to do it for us.”
Using biolistics, or a “gene gun,” to shoot small, gene-coated pellets into cells
FEATURE
is another technology researchers use to introduce new
genes into plants.
Building on his “one gene, one protein” statement
earlier, Clemente pointed out that soybeans have 45,000
genes. Roundup Ready soybeans have 45,001 genes, and
it’s that one gene that lets the crop tolerate glyphosate, the
active ingredient in Roundup herbicide. Editor’s note: After
the presentation, Clemente corrected the number of soybean
genes to 56,044 based on new models. Therefore Roundup Ready
soybeans have 56,045 genes.
In normal plants, glyphosate kills an enzyme that plants
need to grow, a pathway that humans and other mammals
don’t have. In Roundup Ready crops, a bacterium gene
that produces a very similar enzyme is inserted into the
plant. That enzyme, due to a variation in three of its amino
acids, is unaffected by glyphosate.
“So essentially, your Roundup Ready plant has two of
these genes that can carry out the same function (producing the enzyme),” Clemente said. “When you apply
Roundup on it, one of those enzymes is killed and one of
them is still working.”
Clemente, who heads the Plant Transformation Core
Research Facility at UNL also spoke about some of the
projects his laboratory is working on. Traits that will ben-
WL
efit growers, called input traits, include:
• Dicamba tolerance;
• Improving nitrogen-use efficiency in both wheat and
sorghum;
• Improving photosynthetic capacity of wheat and
translating that into an enhanced yield; and
• Virus resistance to barley mosaic virus.
Some of the traits to benefit consumers, or output traits,
his lab is working on include:
• High oleic soybeans. Oleic acid is the monounsaturated fat found in olive oil, and the soybean oil can be
used in food production as well as a biodiesel;
• Increasing the amount of omega 3 fatty acids in soybeans, so soybean meal can be used in aquaculture
feed; and
• I ncreasing the amount of oil in sweet sorghum and
sugar cane stalks so they can be used in biodiesels.
Clemente also touched on the rules and regulations
that govern biotechnology and the release of genetically
engineered plants. On the research and development side
of the process, he said meticulous records have to be kept,
detailing how seeds were planted, how seed containers
were disposed of and what precautions were taken to
Thomas Clemente, a professor of biotechnology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), answers question after his keynote presentation at the 2014 TriState Grain Growers Convention.
WL
FEATURE
ensure that there were no volunteer
plants or crossing with other plants.
He decried the lack of common
sense in some of the regulations he
had to follow during a field trial of
camelina, a plant that can remotely
outcross with some wild relatives.
“Three years ago, we did our first
field trial of Camelina in the state of
Nebraska,” he said, describing a plot
that was the size of several tables put
together, an area maybe 10 yards in
diameter. “I had to buy 20 acres for
two years around it. I had to send
people to scout those 20 acres once
a month for two years (looking for
any wild relatives). I tried to tell the
regulators that I could do it easier
by spraying some herbicide around
there to kill everything, but they
told me I had to walk it. That little
trial cost me $20,000.
“I’m not going to sit here and tell
you that we don’t need regulations,
but they have to based on common
sense.”
Launching a genetically engineered product is no walk in the
park either. Clemente said that if a
product isn’t going to gross at least
$200 million a year, most companies aren’t going to be interested in
bringing it to market because the
development and regulatory costs
are so high. In the U.S., companies
have to demonstrate to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, the
Food and Drug Administration, the
Environmental Protection Agency
and the Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service that the product
is safe. Once the company has done
that, the product can be deregulated.
But any new products, even if they
use the same technology as a deregulated product, have to go through
the same safety assessment.
“If the world regulatory agencies
would come to the understanding that the way we deliver those
traits—through agrobacterium or
the gene gun—is just as safe or safer than conventional breeding because we
know exactly what we are doing, it would open the door for a lot of technology
to get on the market and open the door for generic versions once these technologies came off patent,” he said. “But I can’t go to my laboratory and deliver to you
a Roundup Ready wheat, which I should be able to because the technology is off
patent, because I’d have to go through regulations again.”
One of the most important things the regulatory agencies want to know, he
said, is if the new protein being made in the plant is a potential food allergen.
Companies test that by putting the protein in a fluid that mimics stomach acid
and measuring how long it takes the protein to degrade. Allergic reactions can
happen when proteins survive the stomach acid and pass into the intestinal tract
where they can activate a body’s immune system. The Roundup Ready protein,
Clemente said, is completely degraded in digestive fluid within 15 seconds.
Once the company has proven the product is safe and produced a biosafety
dossier, in the U.S., the product is deregulated and treated like any other
commodity. But many foreign countries require those biosafety dossiers to be
renewed regularly.
“For Roundup Ready 1 in soybeans, there should now be a generic version at
a fraction of a cost,” Clemente explained. “It should be able to be sold through
foundation seed. But given that Monsanto is the only one to have the biosafety
dossier, they are the only ones that can keep renewing it.”
Clemente closed out his presentation by briefly discussing GMO labeling,
saying that when a laboratory can’t differentiate between a conventional and a
GMO version of the same product, a label may cause undue concern. He also
pointed out that there is already a GMO Free label being used.
“What I like to tell the people is that the products that are on the market today
through the tools of biotechnology are safe or safer than any commodity you’ve
ever eaten because no commodity has been put through such rigorous safety assessment,” he said, and then added a new spin on the labeling argument. “Now,
if the high oleic material comes on the market, you are going to want to label
that because you are going to be proud to have it. That’s when you put a label on
it because its not soybean anymore, its high oleic soybean. It’s different, it’s better, and you are proud to label it.”
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R-Vancouver
R-Vancouver
R-Battle Ground
R-Camas
D-Longview
D-Longview
R-Chehalis
R-Kalama
D-Edmonds
D-Mukilteo
D-Tumwater
D-Olympia
D-Poulsbo
D-Poulsbo
D-Sequim
D-Sequim
State Representatives
25(R)
47(R)
What WAWG is
watching for in 2015:
• Ag tax exemptions
Sen. Tim Sheldon (DPotlatch) has sided with
Senate Republicans in
what’s known as the Majority Coalition Caucus (MCC).
The MCC controls the
Senate with 26 votes to the
Democrats’ 23.
24D)
State Senate
51(D)
State House of Representatives
What the 2015 state
legislature is going to
look like (on paper):
Rosemary McAuliffe
Randi Becker
Andy Billig
Mike Padden
Mark Mullet
Michael Baumgartner
Brian Dansel
Sharon R. Brown
Mark Schoesler
Barbara Bailey
Bob Hasegawa
Linda Evans Parlette
*Judy Warnick
Curtis King
Jim Honeyford
Mike Hewitt
Don Benton
Ann Rivers
Brian Hatfield
John E. Braun
Marko Liias
Karen Fraser
Christine Rolfes
James Hargrove
Bruce Dammeier
*Freshman legislator
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
Jan Angel
Jeannie Darneille
Steve O’Ban
Steve Conway
*Mark Miloscia
Pam Roach
Maralyn Chase
Karen Keiser
Sharon Nelson
Tim Sheldon
Jeanne Kohl-Welles
*Pramila Jayapal
John McCoy
Kirk Pearson
Kevin Ranker
Steve Litzow
Doug Ericksen
Jamie Pedersen
Steve Hobbs
Andy Hill
David Frockt
Joe Fain
*Cyrus Habib
Annette Cleveland
R-Port Orchard
D-Tacoma
R-Tacoma
D-South Tacoma
R-Federal Way
R-Auburn
D-Shoreline
D-Kent
D-Maury Island
D-Potlach
D-Seattle
D-Seattle
D-Marysville
R-Monroe
D-Orcas Island
R-Mercer Island
R-Ferndale
D-Seattle
D-Lake Stevens
R-Redmond
D-Seattle
R-Auburn
D-Kirkland
D-Vancouver
The first settlement in
Washington was New
D-Bothell
R-Eatonville
D-Spokane
R-Spokane Valley
D-Issaquah
R-Spokane
R-Republic
R-Kennewick
R-Ritzville
R-Oak Harbor
D-Seattle
R-Wenatchee
R-Moses Lake
R-Yakima
R-Sunnyside
R-Walla Walla
R-Vancouver
R-Vancouver
D-Raymond
R-Chehalis
D-Mukilteo
D-Olympia
D-Kitsap County
D-Hoquiam
R-Puyallup
State Senators
www.leg.wa.gov
LOOKING
for your district,
state senators or
state representatives?
*Melanie Stambaugh
Hans Zeiger
Jesse Young
*Michelle Caldier
Laurie Jinkins
Jake Fey
Dick Muri
*Christine Kilduff
David Sawyer
Steve Kirby
Linda Kochmar
Vacant
*Drew Stokesbary
Christopher Hurst
Cindy Ryu
Ruth Kagi
Tina Orwall
*Mia Gregerson
Eileen L. Cody
Joe Fitzgibbon
*Dan Griffey
Drew C. MacEwen
Reuven Carlyle
Gael Tarleton
Sharon Tomiko Santos
Eric Pettigrew
June Robinson
Mike Sells
Dan Kristiansen
Elizabeth Scott
Kristine Lytton
Jeff Morris
Tana Senn
Judy Clibborn
*Luanne Van Werven
Vincent Buys
Brady Walkinshaw
Frank Chopp
Hans Dunshee
*Mark Harmsworth
Roger Goodman
Larry Springer
Gerry Pollet
Jessyn Farrell
Mark Hargrove
Pat Sullivan
Ross Hunter
*Joan McBride
Sharon Wylie
Jim Moeller
*Freshman legislator
49
48
47
46
45
44
43
42
41
40
39
38
37
36
35
34
33
32
31
30
29
28
27
26
25
R-Auburn
D-Enumclaw
D-Seattle
D-Lake Forest Park
D-Normandy Park
D-SeaTac
D-Seattle
D-Burien
R-Allyn
R-Union
D-Seattle
D-Ballard
D-Seattle
D-Seattle
D-Everett
D-Everett
R-Snohomish
R-Monroe
D-Anacortes
D-Anacortes
D-Mercer Island
D-Mercer Island
R-Lynden
R-Lynden
D-Seattle
D-Seattle
D-Snohomish
R-Mill Creek
D-Kirkland
D-Kirkland
D-Seattle
D-Seattle
R-Covington
D-Covington
D-Bellevue
D-Kirkland
D-Vancouver
D-Vancouver
R-Puyallup
R-Puyallup
R-Gig Harbor
R-Port Orchard
D-Tacoma
D-Tacoma
R-Steilacoom
D-University Place
D-Tacoma
D-Tacoma
R-Federal Way
Patty Murray (D)
448 Russell SOB
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-2621
54(R)
246(R)
The highest point in Washington is
Mount Rainier. It was named after
Peter Rainier, a British soldier who
fought against the Americans in the
Revolutionary War.
44(D)
U.S. Senate
188(D)
U.S. House of Representatives
What the 2015 Congress
is going to look like:
Maria Cantwell (D)
311 Hart SOB
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-3441
Suzan DelBene (D)
District 1 - Whatcom, Skagit, Snohomish,
King counties
2329 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-6311
Rick Larsen (D)
District 2 - Whatcom, San Juan, Skagit,
Island, Snohomish counties
108 Cannon HOB
202-225-2605
Jaime Herrera Beutler (R)
District 3 - Pacific, Lewis, Thurston, Wahkiakum, Cowlitz, Clark, Skamania, Klickitat
counties
1130 Longworth HOB
202-225-3536
Dan Newhouse (R)
District 4 - Okanogan, Douglas, Grant,
Adams, Franklin, Benton, Yakima counties
1641 Longworth HOB
(202) 225-5816
Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R)
District 5 - Ferry, Stevens, Pend Oreille,
Lincoln, Spokane, Whitman, Walla Walla,
Columbia, Garfield, Asotin counties
2421 Rayburn HOB
202-225-2006
Derek Kilmer (D)
District 6 - Clallam, Jefferson, Grays Harbor,
Mason, Kitsap, Pierce counties
1429 Longworth HOB
202-225-5916
Jim McDermott (D)
District 7 - Snohomish, King counties
1035 Longworth HOB
202-225-3106
Dave Reichert (R)
District 8 - Chelan, Kittitas, Pierce counties
1730 Longworth HOB
202-225-7761
Adam Smith (D)
District 9 - Pierce, King, Thurston counties
2402 Rayburn HOB
202-225-8901
Denny Heck (D)
District 10 - Pierce, Thurston, Shelton counties
425 Cannon HOB
202-225-9740
U.S. Senators
?
That you can find your federal senator or
representative by going to one of these
sites: www.senate.gov or www.house.gov
Market (now known as
Tumwater) in 1846.
U.S. Representatives
DID YOU
KNOW
• Maintaining WSU Ag
Research Center funding
• Short-line rail funding
WL
FEATURE
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Bend, Ore
What is OSHA?
The Occupational Safety and
Health Act (OSHA) was passed
in 1970 and is the nation’s
primary law governing workplace health and safety. OSHA
sets mandatory safety and
health standards, inspects
workplaces, assesses citations
and penalties for violations
and establishes time periods
for employers to fix identified
hazards. OSHA also:
• Provides education and
consultation programs and
oversees the 25 states (including Washington) and two territories that operate their own
health and safety programs.
• Assists employers and employees in safety and health
matters.
• Helps employers evaluate
their work environment and
implement changes to enhance workplace safety and
health.
• Helps firms develop their
own occupational safety and
health programs.
Does your operation
come under DOSH’s
jurisdiction?
In Washington state, two
types of companies are
exempt from DOSH’S
oversight:
• Any agricultural operation involving only family
members does not fall
under DOSH’s jurisdiction, even in the event of
an injury or death. What
constitutes family can be
subjective, but in general,
immediate family members including in-laws
and step-relatives who
are not covered under
worker’s compensation
are considered family.
• Companies with 10 or
fewer employees are
exempt from scheduled
inspections, but can still
be inspected due to an
injury or death; a complaint being filed against
it; or if a danger is observed.
What to expect from an inspection?
DOSH officials may not give advance notice
of a safety/health inspection without prior
approval. You have the right to ask for identification, and if the inspector can’t present
credentials, you can ask them to come back.
You can also request that the inspector obtain
a warrant. In most cases, this warrant will be
granted that same day or the next day. During
the inspection, you can expect:
• An opening conference. The inspector will
explain the reason for the visit, your rights
and responsibilities and what records will be
needed.
• The inspector may take photos and/or
videos.
• Samples of chemicals may be taken, especially for a health inspection.
• Employees may be randomly interviewed in
private.
• Review of safety and health records. If your
company had 10 or fewer employees at all
times during the last calendar year, you do
not need to keep injury and illness records
unless the Washington Industrial Safety and
Health Act (WISHA), OSHA or the Bureau of
Labor Statistics informs you in writing that
you must keep records. However, all employers covered by WISHA must report any
workplace incident that results in a fatality
or the hospitalization. If your company had
more than 10 employees at any time during
the last calendar year, you must keep injury
and illness records unless your establishment
is classified as partially exempt.
• A walk around.
• Closing conference where the inspector will
talk about issues and concerns that were
identified, and if there are alleged violations,
penalty amounts and correction times will
be discussed. Citations will be issued even if
violations were immediately corrected.
• After the inspection, you can appeal citations.
CHENEY:
509-235-2006
17005 W SR 904
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WILBUR:
509-647-5365
555 NE Main St.
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© 2014 CNH Industrial America LLC. All rights reserved. New Holland Agriculture is a trademark registered in the United States and many other countries,
owned by or licensed to CNH Industrial N.V., its subsidiaries or affiliates. New Holland Construction is a trademark in the United States and many other
countries, owned by or licensed to CNH Industrial N.V., its subsidiaries or affiliates.
©2014 CNH Industrial America LLC. All rights reserved. New Holland Agriculture is a trademark registered in the
United States and many other countries, owned by or licensed to CNH Industrial N.V., its subsidiaries or affiliates.
New Holland Construction is a trademark in the United States and many other countries, owned by or licensed to
CNH Industrial N.V., its subsidiaries or affiliates.
WL
FEATURE
Records that an inspector
might ask to review
How are risks
assessed?
• Emergency action and medical
plans that include emergency contact numbers.
• The probability of
an incident—low or
unlikely, medium or
likely, high or very
likely
• Training records. Although these
aren’t always required to be in
writing, it’s a good idea, even if
your company isn’t required to hold
safety meetings.
• Company policy and procedures.
• Maintenance and inspection
records.
• Hazard communication. This covers
all the chemicals that aren’t covered
by worker protection standards,
such as automotive chemicals, fuels
and solvents. Training records and
safety data sheets should be kept.
Safety tips
• The severity of a
possible injury—
other than serious
(small cuts, bruises),
serious physical harm (broken
bones, stitches,
amputation) or
death.
• Have an emergency plan that identifies the
location/address of each field so workers
can direct emergency personnel to the
right location.
• In places with limited cell phone coverage,
have a plan to periodically check in with
workers out in the field, such as twoway radios or actually driving out to that
location.
• Before going into a confined space, test the
atmosphere. Also make sure equipment is
locked out if it has any mechanical hazards,
such as auger, fan or belts.
• Lockout/tagout procedures and a
written program to include training. If you have equipment that is
fixed, which means you can’t just
unplug it, it is required to have
lockouts if you are going to have
somebody work on it. If equipment has multiple energy sources,
including gravity, it is required to
have lockout. If the equipment has
been hardwired into the wall, it has
to have lockout. If equipment is
shut off at a breaker panel, that is
where it needs to be locked out.
• Confined space procedures. Space
is considered confined if it isn’t
designed to be occupied by a human being, has limited access and
egress and has any kind of potential hazard, such as lack of oxygen,
chemical residue, a moving piece of
equipment, anything you have to
crawl into, etc.
• Monthly safety meetings are required or
when significant changes in job assignments occur. Short-term operations that
last less than a month, such as harvesting,
do not require foreman-crew safety meetings, but only require initial safety orientation for the operation.
• Keep a list of all chemicals used for 25
to 30 years in case a former employee is
diagnosed with a condition that could be
traced back to a chemical used in your
operation.
• Dust explosions are a major hazard in the
grain industry. If you can place a paper clip
in a dusty area, and the paperclip is level
with the dust, that’s a hazard. Keep ventilation systems clean and keep flames and
sparks away from dusty areas.
Contact info
rm
• If you have any questions about a possible
safety hazard, talk to your local L&I office
about a consultation or call your worker’s
comp carrier and have them come take a
look.
ation
For more in
formation a
bout DOSH
at lni.wa.go
, visit their w
v.
ebsite
The federal
OSHA websi
te is at osha
.gov/index.h
tml.
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Spokane,
Spokane, WA 99202
NwGrainAugers.com
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Rock Steel Structures, Inc.
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Contact Scott Rock
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509-764-9700
Moses Lake, Wash.
1375 acres currently in a wheat/bluegrass
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Pomeroy Agronomy 509-843-1394
Farm Commodities-Colfax 800-424-5056
By Steve Claassen
As an organization, the Washington Grain
Commission doesn’t generally get involved in the farm
bill debate or the implementation of programs that come
afterwards. That work is in the Washington Association
of Wheat Growers’ (WAWG) court. But seven of your 10
WGC commissioners are also farmers, and let me say,
we are as confused and disappointed with the roll out of
information about the latest farm bill as anyone.
I’m not sure what the answer is. It’s been a long time
since Washington state has had any kind of clout on
agricultural policy in the U.S., and as long as that continues, we’ll be an asterisk in the upper left hand corner
of the nation. Although I am pleased to see that Dan
Newhouse, our former Washington State Director of
Agriculture, who recently won election to retiring Doc
Hasting’s 4th District seat, has been appointed to the
House Agriculture Committee alongside Washington 1st
District Rep. Suzan DelBene.
It is interesting that the 2014 Farm Bill, which was
negotiated and renegotiated over a period of two years,
was finally signed into law just as the bottom was beginning to fall out of prices. That’s not as unusual as you
might think. Look back over history. Farm bills passed
at the height of prices and optimism about the future
frequently wind up serving as the blueprint during
downturns.
Speaking of which, I wonder whether Congress would
have been so willing to buy off on the elimination of
farmers’ program payments if the price of corn had been
$3 a bushel at the time? Wheat farmers too had a harder
time defending the payment a couple of years ago. But
after a poor crop and with prices trending down, I’ve
talked to more than one farmer who has said the payment would come in handy right now. But it’s gone, a
victim of a period of prices that, for now anyway, is in
the rearview mirror.
While I’m on the subject of the farm bill, let me say
Since I’m in a griping mood, let me switch gears here
to say it is absolutely inconceivable to me how so many
smart people have so many wrong-headed ideas about
our crop. I mention this because, in addition to the WGC,
I serve on another board of directors. These people make
me look like a 40-watt lightbulb next to their 75-watts. So
explain why so many of them believe GMO wheat is already being grown? And while you’re at it, explain why
they think there’s something wrong with that as they’re
downing soft drinks and chewing gum, both sweetened
with corn syrup made from the GMO commodity!
Whether it’s debating the farm bill or debating a colleague, friend or even a stranger on an airplane about
the merits of our favorite crop, we need to be armed with
the facts. Scott Yates, our director of communications
here at the WGC, is putting together a new Wheat Facts
publication that is intended to point out our industry’s
contribution to the state and refute the myths that have
grown up around our commodity in the last five years.
This publication will be available Feb. 1, and WAWG will
be taking it with them on their annual visit to legislators
and their aides in Olympia. The WGC also distributes
copies to elevator companies, and I often see the stacks
sitting on front counters of the offices I visit.
WASHINGTON GRAIN COMMISSION
I’m generally a glass-half-full kind of guy, but it’s hard
to be optimistic when faced with making decisions without adequate information under deadline pressure about
a program that will impact the way my brother and I do
business for the next five years. Do the bureaucrats in
Washington, D.C., not understand we don’t grow corn
or soybeans in Eastern Washington? Do they not realize that comparing farm program tools using crops that
aren’t grown is a kind of insanity?
that I’m not in favor of splitting out food stamps and
other nutrition programs from farm policy. A PowerPoint
slide I saw during a speaker’s talk at the Tri-State Grain
Growers Convention illustrated the dilemma farmers
face. The five top wheat growing states in the nation—
Washington included—have just 17 congressmen. That’s
out of 435. Without nutrition programs and the political
allies they generate in cities, we wouldn’t have any hope
of passing a farm bill with a shred of common sense.
Make sure you get a copy of the new Wheat Facts (it
will also be available on our website at wawg.org/wgc).
You might learn a few things as it makes you feel proud
about our crop’s contribution to civilization and feeding
the planet. Take a few, and if you need more, call the office at (509) 456-2481.
Mark Twain is credited with saying a lie can travel
halfway around the world before the truth can get its
boots on—and that was back in the 1800s! The truth
needs all the help it can get. Don’t be afraid to speak it.
We live in an information society, and if we don’t do
everything we can to refute our critics, they’ll wind up
running the asylum. Can you imagine the farm bill that
would come out that?
From
small seeds...
Au Revoir, mon ami
44 Shannon Schlecht, vice president for policy at U.S.
Wheat Associates (USW), is leaving the Arlington,
Va.-based organization to follow his wife as she
pursues an opportunity to start a new company
in Minnesota. Schlecht, who has been with USW
for nearly 14 years, started with the company in
Portland in 2001 and served in Egypt as USW’s second in command of that office between 2005 and
2009. Randy Suess, former chairman of USW, called
Schlecht a “trade expert extraordinaire” and said he
will be especially missed as various trade negotiations heat up around the
world. Other changes at USW include Ian Flagg being promoted to regional
director of the North Africa and Middle Eastern Office, based in Casablanca,
following Mark Samson’s decision to return to Idaho where he was appointed as state executive director of the Farm Service Agency.
You can’t discern a trend in two inquiries,
but after hearing nothing about organic
wheat for the last five years, the Washington
Grain Commission fielded two calls during
the same November week from companies
asking about a potential supply. One of the
calls was from Ardent Mills, a new company
that is the consolidation of ConAgra, Cargill
and CHS milling assets. Unfortunately,
there’s not much to say about organic
wheat. There is very little production in
the Northwest, unless you count Montana,
which is the state with the largest footprint.
That’s too bad, because big retailers are
piling into organic products. Sales of organic
products at Costco have doubled in two
years to $3 billion a year. Walmart is next up
with the company promising to sell organic
food at the same price as nonorganic, even
though in most places, organic commands a
25 percent premium.
Letter lays it out Looking for answers
Steve Claassen, chairman of
the WGC, and Larry Cochran,
president of the Washington
Association of Wheat Growers,
sent a letter to Farm Service
Agency State Executive Director
Judy Olson on Nov. 24 asking
for more relevant and accurate
information about the implementation of the 2014 Farm Bill.
Even as deadlines loom, the pair
wrote, “Farmers do not have the
decision tools available which
will allow them to make the
best decisions for their farms.”
Claassen and Cochran urged
Olson to “apply pressure at the
federal level to ensure that U.S.
Department of Agriculture farm
bill decision aids are complete
with tools and data applicable
to Washington state.”
At the urging of Mike Miller, the WGC has established a committee to investigate
the challenges that will come with the introduction of genetically engineered wheat.
Speaking on behalf of the idea at the commission’s
November meeting, Miller said it is inevitable GMO
wheat will enter the market. But how and when it enters
the Northwest is still up in the air. “I think we owe it to
the state’s farmers to begin planning a strategy to address the logistics, infrastructure and customer acceptance” that will be required with the release of a biotech
variety in wheat, Miller said. Although two groups on
the national level—the Wheat Innovation Alliance and
the Joint Biotech Committee of U.S. Wheat Associates
and the National Association of Wheat Growers—are
wrestling with the eventual introduction of GMO wheat,
Miller said it is important for Washington to have a voice since upwards of 90 percent
of the state’s wheat crop is exported. “Part of our job is to assure customers that we will
deliver the wheat they want, be it GMO or non-GMO,” he said. As with corn and soybeans, segregating GMO from non-GMO is paramount. But as a food crop, it is expected wheat will be held to a higher standard than the feed crops when it comes to cross
contamination. The WGC’s current stance on GMO wheat can be found in a statement
from the commission in 2002, at which time, GMO research was encouraged, but not
varietal release “until such time as buyers indicate a willingness to accept the technology.” Brit Ausman and Ty Jessup are the other members of the committee.
WGC REVIEW
Two bad years?
About time!
One of the most trusted names in the evaluation
of products and claims has come down firmly on
the side of gluten. The January 2015 edition of
Consumer Reports not only busts gluten-free
diets, but suggests those attempting them are
doing so at their peril. Here’s the magazine’s six
reasons for rethinking the gluten-free juggernaut:
No. 1: Gluten-free isn’t more nutritious (and may be less so);
No. 2: You’ll probably increase your exposure to arsenic (by eating more rice);
No. 3: You might gain weight (you’ll be eating a lot more sugar and fat);
No. 4: You’ll pay more (more than three times more);
No. 5: You might miss a serious health condition (by thinking gluten is the
problem); and
No. 6: Y
ou might still be eating gluten, (because 5 percent of certified glutenfree products still have gluten).
Nevertheless, the magazine reported that since 2012, sales of gluten-free products have risen 63 percent, with 4,599 products introduced last year. Why? “It’s a
gold mine.” Potato growers have especially taken advantage of the fad diet with
sales of gluten-free labeled potato chips increasing 456 percent since 2012.
Why farmers plant GMO crops
Despite referendums around the country that are trying to restrict genetically
engineered crops, a review of research on the crop’s impact to farming found
the technology overwhelmingly positive. The analysis by PLOS ONE, a peerreviewed scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science, included
all studies of the agronomics and economic impacts of GM crops published in
English between 1995 and March 2014. Among other things, the review found
that the increase in yield for both herbicide tolerance and insect resistance resulted in 69 percent higher profits for farmers who used them (despite the high
cost of seed). And GM crops do better in poor countries with yields 14 percent
better than rich countries (because pests and weeds are a bigger problem in
poor countries).
Farmers: We’ll see about that
Investors and trading firms that bet on the price of commodities declining
didn’t count on Midwest farmers holding onto their corn and soybeans
rather than selling at depressed prices. Their decision to hold off selling
crops fanned a 15 percent rise in corn futures and a 10 percent jump in
soybean futures between September and December, and their decision has
also been supportive of wheat prices. Flush with cash from five good years,
farmers are forcing grain processors, food makers and importers to pay a
premium to part with their crops. “Farmers are able to create a shortage at
a time of plenty just by refusing to sell,” said the principal of a Chicago commodity trading firm. Bigger on-farm storage capacities for both grain and
oilseeds has helped farmers exert more control over those markets.
John Anderson retired as manager
of Ritzville Warehouse at the end of
October, but a comment he made during a meeting with Japanese millers
last August continues to resonate. “Bad
crops usually come in pairs,” he said,
explaining that the poor moisture conditions affecting the 2014 crop would
likely bedevil the 2015 crop too. Now
in the ground, that crop is looking very
susceptible. Smaller plants are more vulnerable to the extremes of weather, and
winter kill is expected. Speaking at the
commission’s November board meeting, Tom Zwainz related his drive home
to Reardan from the Tri-State Grain
Growers Convention in Skamania. “It’s
the worst winter wheat crop I have ever
seen,” he said. Brit Ausman said many
farmers in his area didn’t start seeding
until Oct. 16, hoping to catch moisture.
What wheat that is out of the ground is
small, and there was still a lot that hadn’t
germinated. “Fall wheat looks pretty
poor,” he said. But not every part of
Washington looks bad. Kevin Whitehall,
manager of Central Washington Grain
Growers, said you could almost confuse
the Waterville Plateau with the Palouse.
“Farmers got some rains in August and
some good rains in September and
October. Douglas County might have
some of the best-looking wheat in the
state,” he said, adding, “Unfortunately,
it’s a small part of the total.”
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Eat. Whole. Grains.
There are few healthier things a person can
eat than whole grain products, and yet 10
years after the first Whole Grains Council
conference, with 10,000 products now bearing the Whole Grain Stamp, only about 4
percent of Americans consume the required
amount. Once more, for the record, whole
grain foods have been shown to reduce the
risk of cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes and
heart disease.
REPORTS
WA S H I N G TO N G R A I N CO M M I S SION
WGC welcomes new (and old) commissioners
By Scott A. Yates
There’s an inside joke among those who serve
on the Washington Grain Commission (WGC).
With a smile, they tell prospective candidates interested in running for open positions that there’s
only five meetings a year.
While that’s the truth, it’s not the entire truth. In
addition to regular two-day meetings in January,
March, May, September and November, commissioners serve on various committees scheduled
throughout the year. Then, there’s the national
and international conferences, conventions, workshops and travel to meet specific customers.
Needless to say, commissioners’ calendars
wind up including many more than five meetings. Multiplying the number by five would come
closer. Fortunately, the industry always has individuals who are willing to step up to help guide
the organization. This year, three new commissioners and one who was reappointed, take their
seats. Welcome!
Washington Grain Commission districts in Eastern Washington
District IV
District I
District II
District V
District III
Illustration by Parker Dawson
WGC REPORTS
Eagle soars onto WGC board
Mike Eagle
District I
When Almira-area farmer Mike Eagle says he’s been
farming all of his life, he really means all of his life.
Fifty-four years old
now, Eagle is planning
to master yet another
farming operation with
his election as the WGC’s
representative for District
1, which includes Ferry, Lincoln, Pend Oreille, Spokane
and Stevens counties. Why now?
“We always worked seven days a week on the farm,
so there was never time for the Lions or things like that,
although I am a volunteer as a District 8 commissioner
for the fire district,” Eagle said. “It just seemed like the
right time.”
Not to mention Almira Farmers Warehouse, on whose
board he also serves, wanted an individual from the
region on the commission. It’s been more than 10 years
since farmers in the Almira/Hartline area have fielded a
commissioner. Eagle also serves on the Highland Grain
Board, the group of several Highway 2 elevators that is
developing a new shuttle train loading facility outside of
Cheney.
Eagle said he’s particularly interested in the educational component of the WGC’s focus.
“Last year on vacation, I almost got into a fight with
a couple of ladies who started in on GMOs and glyphosate,” he said. “Education is the key to everything. People
are so uneducated, and they take what science opponents say hook, line and sinker.”
But he’s careful with his words when it comes to discussing genetic engineering.
“I’m not saying it is good or bad, but given the world’s
growing population, we will need it one day because we
are going to get to a point where we simply can’t produce
enough food,” he said.
Speaking of food, in addition to Eagle’s farming duties,
he helps his wife out with her catering business, JoAnn
Eagle Catering. He has a mobile barbecue pit 22 feet long
which was cooking 285 pounds of prime rib as he spoke.
He doesn’t, however, have any cattle, and he’s stopped
growing hay “which was a good feeling for me.”
Farming in an area with an average 9 to 11 inches of
annual precipitation, he has both summer fallow and a
three-year rotation of spring wheat or barley. He practices a three-pass minimum tillage system followed
by seeding, but hopes to work toward direct seeding
if he can figure out how to do it economically. The key
to whatever system he uses is cost, and he questions
whether spraying glyphosate for Russian thistle three or
four times would meet his threshold.
Although he comes from an area that is known for
growing club wheat, Eagle doesn’t actually grow any of it
himself. He said the subclass of soft white wheat doesn’t
grow well at the higher elevation on his farm because of
its harsher winters.
“I don’t have a club agenda,” he explained. “I’m going
to try and do my best for all of the wheat growers in the
state.”
Filan focuses on marketing
Damon Filan
Wheat Industry Representative
When Kevin Whitehall, manager of Central
Washington Grain Growers and the WGC’s current industry representative, contacted Damon Filan, manager
of Tri-Cities Grain about
serving in the position, he
found fertile ground.
Filan had good memories about a trip he’d
taken to Japan and the
Philippines in 2008 with
former WGC CEO Tom
Mick. He came away
from the journey with
a renewed appreciation
for the demands that
comes with the final link
in the grain chain. He
was also impressed by his meetings with the U.S. Wheat
Associates’ overseas team.
He started driving hay wagon in the Columbia Basin
when he was five, and while he couldn’t put the machine
in gear himself because
his feet wouldn’t reach
the clutch, once it was
started, he could steer
as well as anybody. By
the time he was 10, he’d
pretty much done all the
operations on the farm.
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“Marketing is very important. It’s all about customers
and repeat business after all,” he said. “What I’ve been
doing for 30 years is managing positions, logistics and
quality and trying to get the right product on time for
WL
WGC REPORTS
the right boat or the right feedlot.”
After graduating from Washington State University
(WSU) with a degree in business marketing in 1980,
Filan’s first job was selling dairy feed. He subsequently
went to work for Continental Grain, and when that company was sold to Cargill in 1999, he put together the deal
that formed Tri-Cities Grain.
The business is owned by Northwest Grain Growers
in Walla Walla, Central Washington Grain Growers in
Waterville and Tidewater Barge Lines in Vancouver.
Filan markets grain and provides market intelligence to
a network of 500 farmers and commercial companies in
the Pacific Northwest, Montana and Canada. The business markets 20 to 25 million bushels of grain a year.
“Our job is to provide our customers good information
to help them market their grain. We have lots of experience and have been fairly successful at it,” he said. Although he looks forward to fulfilling his role providing market analysis at WGC meetings, Filan doesn’t
want to be limited to marketing. He looks forward to
opportunities to meet more customers, and he intends to
get involved in the commission’s research and education
mandates as well.
“I like the commission’s Magna Carta,” he said, referring to the WGC’s mission statement which has the goal
of developing tools for small grain producers and industry to build measurable success. “You’ve got to have as
many tools in your toolbox as possible.”
Filan, 58, came to agriculture honestly. He grew up on
a farm outside of Hay, Wash., and he expected to be a
farmer himself one day.
“When I got my first job in the grain business, I told
my family to give me 10 years. But after 10 years, I didn’t
look back. We still have the family farm, and it might
be a great retirement someday, if I can talk my wife,
Jennifer, into moving to Hay,” he said. Given the way he talks about managing an elevator facility, however, it’s hard to believe Filan would ever leave.
“Every given moment is unpredictable,” he said, “but
you have a plan, and you try to go with the plan in organizing your positions to make money and do a good job
for your customers. It almost keeps you young. It’s like
the business is alive.”
Johnson picks up the reins
Eddie Johnson
District IV Barley
With no one filing to assume responsibility as the
District IV barley representative on the WGC, Eddie
Johnson, who served on the Commission in the
1980s, submitted his petition to the Washington State
Department of Agriculture.
“We had some younger growers who we were trying
to convince to run, but they just couldn’t do it. It was
too much load on them
at this time,” Johnson
said, explaining why he’s
returned to the commission after a 23-year
absence. “My goal is to
help them take over my
seat eventually.”
Johnson doesn’t,
however, intend to be a
seat warmer, but then,
he never has been. He
has been one of the only
former commissioners
who attends WGC meetings on a sporadic basis. He has
also attended nearly every research review held since he
left the board. A library of research books he keeps at his
home nine miles north of Wilbur attests to that fact.
Although Johnson concedes he doesn’t understand everything he reads about today’s science of small grains,
he’s not shy about calling up researchers to find out
exactly what they’re doing.
“In this day and age of genetics and other new things,
you’ve got to get them to explain it to you. It’s a different
world,” he said.
Research has been a love of Johnson’s since taking his
first soils class at WSU. But he doesn’t intend to limit
himself to a single subject. As a result of previously serving on the commission, he said he’s got a wide-eyed view
of why funding for marketing is needed.
“I think research and marketing are equal strength,
and both are needed. And it’s hard to exempt education
and information too, given that most people don’t realize
where their food comes from. So, whether you’re looking
at research, marketing or education, it’s hard to prioritize
one over the other in the world that’s coming at us in the
next 10 to 15 years. All of them are going to be important,” he said.
As the barley representative on the grain commis-
WGC REPORTS
sion, Johnson said he’s yet to read the bylaws outlining
his role. The Washington Wheat Commission he served
on previously only had wheat as its responsibility. But
he’s excited about the potential for barley’s fortunes to
turn around given the proliferation of small breweries
using large amounts of malt barley, not to mention the
opportunities available for food barley as a heart healthy
alternative to oats.
“We farm the original family homestead and also
rent other land. Cropping systems in the farm’s 13-inch
precipitation zone include annual cropping, a three year
rotation and summer fallow,” he said. “Protection of
natural resources is vital to maintaining production.”
customers are key for miller
Mike Miller
District IV Wheat
Crucial events have occurred during the four years
Mike Miller has served on the WGC. Among other
things, the group authorized WSU to institute
royalties on new varieties, hired a new CEO and
helped navigate the closure of Japan and Korea’s
soft white wheat markets
due to the isolated discovery of biotech wheat in
Oregon.
But when you ask
Miller to describe the
single biggest event of his
first term on the board,
none of those get mentioned. Instead, he immediately describes a meeting he and WGC Chairman Steve Claassen
had in China during an overseas mission taken with
Washington Governor Jay Inslee.
“Because of that opportunity, we met with a customer
not even U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) had been able to
meet. Sitting in an ornate room with an individual of
that stature, addressing issues that will have a profound
impact on our crop—that was one of the most intense
experiences of my life,” he said.
For a man who acknowledges he knew little about the
journey wheat takes beyond
his farm before joining the
WGC board, Miller has been
a quick learner.
“I have learned how little I
knew about the handling
and shipping of our
product and the complexity that is involved
in moving grain from the
farm to customers, whether
domestic or overseas. And I’ve
learned that decisions we make on our farms can impact
the industry on a larger scale. Quality does matter. I’ve
also learned that on a worldwide basis, wheat carries
a big hammer when it comes to food and feeding the
planet. I didn’t appreciate before how important our crop
is—vital is a better word,” he said.
Although research will always remain important to
wheat farmers, Miller believes marketing deserves more
focus by the WGC, and that’s part of the goal he has set
for himself during his upcoming three-year term.
“I want Northwest farmers to understand the relationship that exists with our customers and to chart a clear
direction about what we can provide each other,” he
said. “We are entering uncharted territory and need to
tread lightly.”
He is concerned, however, over the loss of institutional
memory on the commission as long-time members like
Hal Johnson and Tom Zwainz leave the board this year,
and Dana Herron, Randy Suess and Steve Claassen have
terms coming to a close at the end of next year.
Johnson, who is second cousin to Hal Johnson, the
District 1 wheat commissioner who has just completed
10 years of service on the Commission, has been farming
most of his life. After graduating from WSU with a degree in agriculture mechanization, he spent a few years
in the fertilizer industry before returning to the fourthgeneration farm his great-grandfather homesteaded in
the late 1800s.
WL
“Their knowledge of the industry is irreplaceable,”
Miller said.
Although he was encouraged by fellow farmers to
throw his hat in the ring again, Miller said his real
motivation for seeking a second term was a desire to
continue his international trade education and “ride it
out through these changing times.” Miller serves as the
WGC’s representatives on the USW board of directors.
“Washington farmers are paying an assessment to
benefit from growing and selling more wheat safely and
efficiently. That’s the bottom line. Farmers expect to get
a return on their investment, and they’ll do that by customers buying more of our grain,” he said.
WGC REPORTS
ilizing
Ut
Ma
rk
Portland
port tour
enjoyable,
educational
ing
et
Shippin
g
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By Kevin Gaffney
For wheat farmers and other industry associates who desire to learn more
about how grain is shipped, marketed
and utilized after it leaves the local grain
warehouse, the annual Wheat Export and
Wheat Quality Workshop tour is just the
ticket.
Sponsored by the Washington Grain
Commission (WGC), the three-day event
is full of informative tour sessions at
locations that play an integral part in
the Pacific Northwest grain export trade.
Organized and hosted by WGC Vice
President Mary Palmer-Sullivan, the tour
is designed to be as enjoyable as it is educational. This year’s activities ranged from
baking and sampling tortillas and crackers to watching a master chef hand-roll
noodles before they were prepared and
served with an authentic Chinese dinner.
(Above) The view from the helm of a Shaver
Transportation tugboat as two barges are
transferred. The twin-diesel engines and
sophisticated controls provide surprising
maneuverability. (Left) A chef prepares handtossed noodles for the tour group’s dinner at
the Mandarin House restaurant in downtown
Portland. (Below) Part of the fish ladder system at
Bonneville Dam, which allows salmon and other
fish to pass through the dam safely.
The 2014 tour group of 22 was composed of wheat growers, landlords, a
WGC commissioner, U.S. Department of
Agriculture employees and other wheat
industry participants.
Major tour stops included Bonneville
Dam, the Mondolez (Nabisco) Bakery,
Columbia Grain Export Terminal, the
Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS),
the Wheat Marketing Center (WMC) and
the Shaver Transportation Barge Facility.
The lock facilities on the dams on the
Columbia-Snake River System enable
Shirley Schaeffer (left), Touchet, and Linda Bailey, St. John, sample the noodles rolled and
prepared at the Wheat Marketing Center facility.
WGC REPORTS
WL
barges to efficiently transport millions of tons of grain to the ports
from up to 465 miles up the river
at the Lewiston-Clarkston port
facilities. In Portland, meanwhile,
ships from all over the world come
to load their cargo. Before any ship
leaves, all cargoes must be sampled,
inspected and approved by FGIS.
(Top) Saltine-type crackers come off
the oven portion of the “biscuit line”
at the Wheat Marketing Center. What
we consider cookies or crackers in the
U.S. are classified as sweet or savory
biscuits in other parts of the world.
(Left) Kathleen Gehring, WMC lab
technologist, displays tortillas made
by tour participants. Some looked
better than others, but were all rated
as delicious.
More tasty treats were sampled
at the Nabisco bakery tour stop. Six
production lines operate in the vintage building. Products produced at
the Portland facility include Wheat
Thins, Chips Ahoy, Chicken In
A Biskit, Ritz Crackers and Oreo
cookies. The general consensus of
the group was that the best cookie
or cracker is one eaten hot off the
production line.
Riding aboard a Shaver tugboat
as it traded an empty barge for a
loaded one on the Columbia River
was another highlight of the tour.
Terry Harding (left) and Travis McKay, both Sprague wheat producers, learn about the research and
marketing activities at the Wheat Marketing Center in Portland, Ore.
The WMC is housed in a converted mill facility and has an enormous impact on exports by promoting the use of soft white wheat flour
globally. The WGC tour group was
able to see firsthand what expert
millers, bakers and trade teams
from all over the world experience
at the center. This included handson production of noodles, crackers,
tortillas and flatbreads.
The final stop on the trip home
was a tour of the Full Sail Brewery
in Hood River, Ore. Lunch in their
adjoining restaurant followed, with
the opportunity to sample beers
highlighted during the tour. It was
a satisfying way to taste barley,
another grain product raised by
Pacific Northwest wheat growers.
At Full Sail Brewing Company, the group enjoyed a brief tour. Learning more about the brewing
process are (from left) Damon Filan, Washington Grain Commissioner; Rachel Trego, U.S.
Department of Agriculture; Brian Kiesz, Ritzville; and Mitch and Diane Sorenson, Almira.
For more information or to sign
up for the 2015 export tour, contact
Mary Palmer Sullivan at the WGC
at (509) 456-2481 or via email at
[email protected].
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?
WGC REPORTS
Limagrain’s
Jim Peterson
talks quality
Editor’s note: As varieties developed by private companies
take a larger share of Eastern Washington’s wheat acreage,
the Washington Grain Commission has invited them to periodically submit articles to the WGC section of Wheat Life.
?
Yield
What are
the costs?
I view quality as a multidimensional box and not just a “target.”
In my box, each axis has a different quality trait, with acceptability defined by leading
historical varieties. At Limagrain, our primary breeding
goal is simply to “stay in the box.”
Improving quality is a long-term goal, along with
improving yield and disease resistance. How to pursue
it, in light of the complexities of quality and related traits,
is much less clear. Not to mention, messages from the
industry are often inconsistent.
That’s because we in the grain chain have different
goals. The milling and baking industry has the need to
satisfy customers’ tastes and respond to product performance issues, both with a view often based on experiences within the last one or two crop years. In contrast, a
breeder has a 10-plus year development timeline to manage. His and her programs are shaped with long-term
vision. We cannot change direction at will.
A history with quality
My involvement in wheat quality research began as a
master’s student at the University of Nebraska. I learned
about small-scale milling and baking tests from Paul
Mattern, a true “breeders’ cereal chemist,” who had keen
?
Questions
on quality
Who
defines
it?
?
Vice President of Research,
Limagrain Cereal Seeds
Research is an evolutionary process. In order to separate the “wheat from the chaff” with regard to quality, a
breeder must have an understanding of not only cereal
science and genetics, but crop production systems, the
domestic and export grain trade and the milling and
baking industries, to name a few. This knowledge comes
from years of experience.
52 End-use
By Jim Peterson
We all understand and appreciate the importance of wheat quality. Defining “quality,” however, is
another matter.
What
affects
it?
What is
acceptable?
Blending
insights into the milling and baking industries.
The majority of my research and publications since
then have involved some aspect of wheat quality. With
Bob Graybosch, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA),
we published a series of fundamental papers documenting genotype by environmental influences on hard
wheat quality. We began, somewhat naively, expecting
that if we measured “everything,” from environmental
conditions during grain fill to grain biochemical composition to commercial bake performance, we could fully
understand and better predict end-use quality.
Instead, we learned that end-use quality is very complex, shaped and confounded by large numbers of correlated traits of low heritability. With a full breakdown
of protein, lipid and starch compositions, we could only
explain a modest portion of the observed variability in
baking quality. We found our small-scale milling and
baking tests, while descriptive and repeatable, could not
reliably predict commercial bake performance. In the
end, environmental variation such as soil and weather
conditions had a major influence on all quality traits.
In fact, overall, environmental variation had a greater impact than anything found for genetics.
A breeder’s view of quality
Many influences help shape how a breeder conducts tests, interprets data and makes selections for
quality. Cereal chemists—those allied with breeding
programs and with the USDA-ARS Regional Quality
?
s
WGC REPORTS
WL
Laboratories—are a crucial link. Their support goes far beyond the screening of breeding
stocks. They provide valuable insights into
complex datasets.
For insights about the export market, nothing
can replace sitting across the table from our international customers. Learning of their needs,
expectations and frustrations face to face is
critical, as is gaining a global view of the wheat
market. I believe U.S. wheat breeders all recognize the U.S. isn’t the “lowest-cost” provider of
grain and must continue to provide a superior
quality grain to remain competitive.
The ‘cost’ of quality
Have no illusions—there are significant
“costs” to meeting end-use quality standards. It
is one of the most expensive steps in variety development. Direct costs include labs, lab equipment, labor, services and the supplies needed to
screen thousands of samples each year. Indirect
costs include impact on breeding efficiencies,
decision timelines, length of breeding cycles,
gain from selection and resource allocation.
Less evident are the “genetic costs” of meeting quality targets. This includes using more
conservative breeding strategies, which reduces
the rate of gain in other important traits such
as yield. You must “breed for quality,” which
means choice of parents, crossing strategies and
population sizes are all impacted by quality
targets. Introducing new genetic variation, new
traits and new disease resistances adds to the
challenge. And, as one who knows, it really
does hurt a breeder to discard the most exciting, high-yield selections when discouraging
data comes back from the quality lab.
Improving quality
Improving end-use quality is, and should be,
an obvious goal for wheat breeders, just like
increasing grain yield. And, we can improve
Photo courtesy of Limagrain Cereal Seeds
quality through breeding and genetics. But “moving the bar”—
that is, redefining the historically acceptable range for key traits—
is much more complex, and the industry is not exactly aligned on
definitions, value-points, products or directions about what that
means.
Lessons and perspectives on quality also
come from interacting with our domestic milling and baking partners. This frequently occurs
during winter Wheat Quality Council meetings. Millers have a particularly unique and
broad view of wheat quality, from economics of
sourcing and blending grain through the use
of flours and additives to solve bakery production problems. They provide a critical “reality
check” for what is acceptable, what is needed
and what has value in the ever-evolving food
industry.
My first question is always “whose definition of quality are we
using today?” “Quality” is not something that can be adequately
represented in a single number or by a single trait. Instead, tell me
what traits are being targeted, and what is their economic value?
What are the added costs to variety development? What are the
added costs or potential returns to our growers? Then, remember that “consistency” is one of the most important of all quality
targets.
Commodity grain marketed from the U.S. is always a blend
of varieties. As such, the “best” quality varieties, even if widely
grown, may improve market quality only incrementally. This also
means that a “poor” quality variety, if grown on limited acreage,
will have essentially no impact on market quality. The problem
occurs when “poor” or damaged quality grain is widespread, and
there is lack of ability or opportunity to blend.
WL
WGC REPORTS
Photo courtesy of Limagrain Cereal Seeds
One should never underestimate the importance, value
and impact of blending on end-use quality. Blending
can “cover up” sins, improve consistency and provide
qualities that are otherwise impossible to source. In fact,
significant competitive advantage goes to the company
that can better and more economically source, transport
and blend grains to meet customer needs.
Creating, capturing value from quality
It has been gratifying to see the impact of varieties
developed over the course of my career. If I were to point
out a career disappointment, however, it would be the
failure to create, capture and share value from many
R&D investments in wheat quality. Every year, breeders
identify lines with unusually strong/more extensible gluten, better milling yields, lower/higher water absorption,
modified starch profiles or novel combinations of quality
traits. But in the end, there has not been sufficient incentive, based on quality alone, to bring these to market.
There is little or no reward for growers to grow “the
best” quality varieties, much less those with novel qualities. The cost of segregation, marketing and delivery
outweighs the value of novel or improved quality traits.
And, we often don’t have the infrastructure needed to
deliver Identity Preserved (IP) grain, anyway.
I have not given up hope, and I expect wheat will
evolve from a commodity to being managed as an “ingredient.” Consumers are increasingly conscious about
food quality and safety. I expect quality traits that can
reduce the use of costly additives and produce a “clean”
food label to increase in value. Quality inconsistencies
in the open market may push millers to IP or contract at
least part of their grain supplies.
Keeping quality in perspective
For my money, U.S. wheat breeders have done a remarkable job of “maintaining” quality standards, while
continually improving grain yield, stress tolerance and
disease resistance. During both my trips to Asia as part
of U.S. Wheat Associates’ breeder quality teams, the message from our export customers was clear: “The quality
of Pacific Northwest soft white wheat is just fine. Don’t
change it. Don’t screw it up.”
While we can applaud the broad goals of improving
quality, one must appreciate the cost and potential consequences of “moving the bar,” and the impact on all the
products and segments of the industry as a result. As for
those who are quick to point fingers over quality, there is
not one program, public or private, that has not “pushed
the boundaries” of market-acceptable quality, even if unintentional. At Limagrain Cereal Seeds, we are strongly
committed to meet, or exceed, market-quality standards
in our varieties. In fact, one of our first major investments
was to build and equip our own wheat quality laboratory. The lab now provides rapid assessment of quality
for all of Limagrain’s U.S. wheat market classes.
In the short term, our focus is on developing quality
commodity wheat varieties while managing a global
germplasm base with diverse quality attributes. Long
term, we look to move beyond commodity wheat, to
build innovative partnerships that can create and capture value from variations in end-use quality.
Perhaps by then, a different economic model will
emerge such that we can all benefit from our investments
in, and our commitment to, wheat quality.
WGC REPORTS
WL
Soil acidification impacts growing
Liming may be a solution all pacific northwest farmers eventually face
By David R. Huggins and Carol R. McFarland
Pacific Northwest dryland wheat farmers are increasingly confronting the negative impacts of soil acidification on crop yields, nutrient availability, disease, herbicide persistence and related issues.
• What are the best methods to diagnose the severity
of your soil acidification problem?
• What liming materials are best suited to address
your particular situation?
• How will you determine the optimal amount of lime,
time of application and placement?
Because N fertilizers are applied near the soil surface,
soil acidification is often stratified, that is the lowest soil
pH occurs in the upper six inches and then increases
with depth. Our research near Rockford and at the
Palouse Conservation Field Station (PCFS) near Pullman,
shows soil pH values with depth, typical in continuous
direct-seeding (Fig. 1).
Figure 2. Relationship between KCl (potassium chloride) extractable
Al and soil pH for research sites near Rockford and at the Palouse
Conservation Field Station in Pullman, Wash.
With minimal soil mixing, soils are most acid where
nitrogen fertilizers are deep-banded. But even with
tillage, soil acidity will develop in the tilled zone, but
will not be as stratified as in continuous direct-seed.
Sampling soil to diagnose acidification problems, as well
as liming strategies, will need to be tailored to these different situations. Farmers can use commercially available
pH meters to assess soil pH stratification which will help
inform soil sampling methods for more complete soil
testing.
One effect of declining soil pH is the possibility of
aluminum (Al) toxicity. Research at the Conservation
farm, Rockford, the Cook Agronomy Farm (CAF) and
elsewhere has shown that KCl extractable aluminum
increases exponentially as soil pH starts to drop below
5.0 (Fig. 2). Clear thresholds for toxic levels of extractable
aluminum have not been developed for our region, but
anything above 10 ppm (parts per million) is a concern.
Ultimately, the most efficient use of liming materials will
involve targeting the soil where acidity needs to be corrected. This is not an easy task, however, as considerable
variation in soil acidity can occur with soil depth as well
as spatially across a given field.
Figure 1. Distribution of soil pH with depth under continuous
direct-seed (samples from Rockford and Palouse Conservation Farm,
Pullman, Wash., research sites).
This problem has been accelerated by the long-term
use of ammonia-based fertilizers such as anhydrous ammonia and urea, and we believe it will inevitably lead all
farmers in the region to address soil acidification. While
correcting the problem with lime is not new to agriculture, it is new to the region and will require the development of strategies for our unique soils and conditions,
which is what our research has been investigating. Key
questions include:
Lime is not very water soluble which means placement
and timing of applications are important. Under directseeding, we are testing liming strategies that might
correct typical stratified acidity using surface applications (unincorporated) of two different lime sources. One
is a very finely ground fluid lime from Columbia River
WL
WGC REPORTS
Although liming
is not new to
agriculture, it has
not been practiced
extensively in the
Pacific Northwest.
Placement, timing
and the type of
liming materials
used are all being
investigated as
part of research
looking at ongoing
acidification of soils
due to the use of
ammonia-based
fertilizers. Photo
courtesy of WSU
Carbonates. We are also using sugar lime from Moses
Lake. These were surface applied in the fall of 2013 at
rates varying from 200 to 2,000 lbs/acre calcium carbonate equivalent (CCE).
We fall applied before spring planting chickpeas (PCFS)
and canola (Rockford), thinking that fine liming materials might physically move with winter precipitation and
correct near-surface soil acidity. Our spring soil sampling,
however, revealed not much of the lime had gone beyond
the surface inch of the soil, and acidification at three to
four inches remained uncorrected. Consequently, no crop
response was measured in 2014. Nevertheless, we will
continue to monitor surface liming effects.
Other strategies for addressing stratified acidity include placement of relatively low quantities of lime with
the seed at planting and surface broadcasting lime in
Figure 3a (left).
Relationship between
soil buffer pH and
the lime requirement
for six-inch samples
from the Washington
State University (WSU)
Cook Agronomy Farm.
Figure 3b (right).
Relationship between
soil pH and the soil
buffer test for six-inch
samples from the WSU
Cook Agronomy Farm.
combination with shallow tillage. We are also developing
a new applicator that injects fluid lime behind V-sweeps
that travel about three to four inches deep. Research with
low amounts of seed-placed lime (200 lbs/acre CCE) at
the PCFS (2001 through 2010), as well as last year at the
Cook Agronomy Farm, showed no crop yield response.
This may be due to the treatments not adequately correcting soil acidification or that the acidification problem
is not yet serious enough to impact yields.
Determining soil pH levels where crop yield responds
to lime applications was part of an investigation in
conventional tillage situations at the University of Idaho
during the 1980s. Soil pH thresholds for grain legumes
are about 5.5, whereas wheat and barley yields are impacted as soil pH falls below 5.2.
Commonly, a soil pH buffer test is used in combina-
WGC REPORTS
WL
Figure 4. Tons/acre of lime required to obtain a target soil pH,
given initial soil pH levels between 4.4 and 5.3. The average is for
all ten soil types tested, while the Santa and Southwick soils were
the extremes.
We believe these tests are not well calibrated for
our region and are overpredicting the lime actually
needed to correct our soil pH. Consequently, our
research is evaluating lime requirement tests that
will be calibrated to our soils and will provide a more
realistic lime requirement. To do this, we conducted
laboratory incubations of 10 major agricultural soils in
the region with varying amounts of calcium carbonate
to determine how different quantities of lime would
change soil pH.
Preliminary results show much less lime is required
to change the soil pH (0 to 6 inches) from an initial
soil pH of about 5 to a more realistic target soil pH
of 6 (Fig. 4) than these tests recommend. In fact, the
data shows that given the range of lime requirements,
precision application of lime becomes more relevant.
Another dimension of our research effort is to assess
field variability in soil pH and to determine if variable
rate lime applications are practical.
Our sampling has shown that many fields have soil
pH tests varying by at least a full pH unit (see Fig. 3b
for the Cook Farm) and often two or more units (Fig.
5). If the range in lime requirement is from one to four
tons/acre, then targeting lime to match the spatial
variability in soil pH may be advisable. Otherwise, an
initial application of one ton/acre could be followed
Figure 5. Spatial map of soil pH from a 55-ac field near Kendrick, Idaho,
developed from one-acre grid soil sampling of surface six inches.
by further soil testing and subsequent variable lime applications limited to locations that still need a pH correction.
Other lime-related research and demonstration projects
underway include:
•T
esting of different materials (sugarbeet lime, ground
limestone, prilled and fluid lime) and rates incorporated
under reduced tillage (Kurt Schroeder and co-workers
at the University of Idaho).
tion with initial soil pH values and a target final pH
to determine how much lime is required. Common
soil buffer tests include Adams and Evans, SMP and
Woodruff. Soil is mixed with the buffer solution, and
the change in solution pH is related to how much lime
is needed to reach a given target soil pH. For example,
six-inch soil samples from geo-referenced points
across the CAF indicated that three to six tons/acre
CCE are recommended to raise the soil pH to 6.5 (Fig.
3a). In this case, the range in lime requirement recommendations is due to the wide field variability in soil
pH (4.3 to 5.3) (Fig. 3b).
•O
n-farm lime demonstrations evaluating variable-rate
strategies and different materials (Tabitha Brown, Latah
Soil and Water Conservation District and Washington
State University (WSU)).
•S
oil acidification and liming effects on grain legumes,
and county-level assessment of soil acidification and associated soil tests (Paul Carter and co-workers, WSU).
With a liming program in the future for many Pacific
Northwest farmers, we believe these efforts will provide
new insights into soil acidification and how best to address
the problem while maintaining soil health in general.
Dave Huggins is a USDA-ARS soil scientist with the Northwest Sustainable Agroecosystems Research Unit in Pullman, Wash. Carol
McFarland is a WSU graduate student in the Department of Crop
and Soil Science. Tabitha Brown, a WSU graduate student in the
Department of Crop and Soil Science, contributed to this article.
WHEAT WATCH
Market bounces off the bottom
By Mike Krueger
Corn and soybeans get most of the
media chatter while the wheat market
is an afterthought for many analysts,
the result being that wheat can be harder to analyze or trade.
There are a lot of reasons for this.
First and foremost, corn is corn and soybeans are
soybeans. But there are six distinctly different classes
of wheat in the U.S. that have different grading factors
and different end uses. In addition, there are nongrade
factors that can have a profound effect on wheat values,
including protein, falling numbers, etc.
There are also three wheat futures markets in the U.S.
alone. Chicago (soft red winter wheat), Kansas City (hard
red winter wheat) and Minneapolis (hard red spring
wheat). That means you aren’t trading just wheat, you
must also have an opinion on what these intermarket
wheat spreads might do as well.
Durum and white wheat typically have no relationship
to any of the wheat futures markets and trade like flatpriced grains. That means hedging is almost impossible
for these classes of wheat.
The world has produced two consecutive record wheat
Chart 1: Chicago March wheat chart
crops—and not by a little bit. The two record crops were
records by more than 50 million metric tons (mmt).
That’s the equivalent of almost an entire U.S. wheat crop.
These record crops were the result of superb, back-toback crops in the EU, Black Sea, India and China.
Record world wheat crops coupled with record world
corn crops is bearish, and, of course, prices collapsed as
everyone exited long positions and the traditional funds
put on record short positions in Chicago wheat. That
forced Chicago December wheat futures to drop to a low
of $4.66 on Sept. 25 following a 2014 year high of $7.65 on
May 6.
In my November Wheat Watch article, I suggested
wheat had bottomed, and although it would be hard
to sustain any significant rally during this time period,
the fundamental wheat outlook was starting to change.
The Chicago March wheat chart (Chart 1) clearly shows
the move wheat futures have made since the lows were
established back in late September and early October.
There have been a number of recent issues that have
pushed wheat prices sharply higher:
•C
oncern with the winter wheat crops in Russia
and the Ukraine. Planted acres are down from last
year plus the fall planting season was very dry, and
recent cold temperatures have prompted talk about
potential winter kill. Some analysts are predicting
a 15 percent to 20 percent decline in Russian wheat
production in 2015.
•T
here have been recent reports that Russia will
tighten phytosanitary requirements for wheat
exports. The net result would keep more high
quality wheat in the domestic market, limiting
wheat exports.
•T
he total collapse of the Russian currency
(ruble) has led to talk that Russia might curtail
wheat exports in an effort to hold domestic
prices down.
• I t’s been very cold across the U.S. as far south
as Oklahoma and Texas. This has prompted
talk of potential winter kill.
•B
razil’s wheat crop was damaged by a wet harvest. That will result in another year of largerthan-expected wheat imports.
WHEAT WATCH
• Australia’s wheat crop is smaller than
expected.
WL
Table 1: World wheat production vs. usage
• There were low protein and quality issues
with North America’s spring wheat crop.
• Argentina’s wheat crop was also smaller
than expected, further exacerbated by
economic issues that make it an unreliable supplier.
Also, despite world record production,
world wheat consumption has expanded to
record levels.
Early 2015 world wheat production estimates had been
hovering near the previous two years’ records, but those
estimates are now starting to retreat. My very quick
“off the cuff” number for 2015 world wheat production
today stands at about 690 to 695 mmt. That compares to
last year’s world wheat crop of 720 mmt. I’m estimating
reductions in production in the U.S., Canada, the EU, the
former Soviet Union, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India
and China. Table 1 shows the steady upward march in
the trend line of world wheat production, albeit with
periodic declines, much as we are predicting for 2015.
The problem with a bullish market based in large part
on potential winter kill problems is that we won’t know
the extent of any damage until late March and April. It
does, however, appear that the wheat market has lost
its bearish grasp for now. In addition, there have been
recent reports that China has or soon will announce their
approval for the banned GMO corn variety MR 162. That
ban has eliminated corn exports to China and threatened
to stop distiller dried grain (DDG) exports there too. The
potential for increased U.S. corn exports will be supportive of the wheat market.
Mike Krueger is president and founder of The Money Farm,
a grain advisory service located in Fargo, N.D. A licensed commodity broker, Krueger is a past director of the Minneapolis
Grain Exchange and a senior analyst for World Perspectives, a
Washington, D.C., agricultural consulting group.
WHEAT LIFE JANUARY 2015 WASHINGTON GRAIN COMMISSION
World wheat ending supplies have expanded, but only marginally considering the enormous increase in production. Additionally,
more than 40 percent of the world’s wheat
ending supplies are held in China and India,
and those stocks will stay there. Throw in the
quality problems around the world, especially
in the hard wheat classes, and there is not much of a
surplus in good quality milling wheat.
59
WL
FEATURE
LIGHTS!
CAMERA!
ACTION!
“Dryland” documents combine demolition derby, farming through eyes of Lind friends
By Trista Crossley
Little did Josh Knodel and Matt Miller know, that by
participating in a local combine demolition derby, they’d
end up anchoring a movie about dryland farming and
rural communities.
and on their way to starting families of their own, Knodel
and Miller say the experience of having cameras following them everywhere took some getting used to. Most of
the filming happened during busy seasons, such as spring
spraying, harvest and derby time. Both men said it was
hard to give the filmmakers their undivided attention
when so many other things were going on around them.
Knodel and Miller have known each other most of
their lives, growing up less than five miles apart in Lind.
“They did a good job filming what they thought they
Wash. They both attended Lind High School
needed filmed and interviewing us afterand graduated from Washington State
wards,”
Miller said.
“Because
of
Josh
and
University. They both come from multi-genAfter having seen the completed film,
erational farming families and are deterMatt, we realized we
both
Knodel and Miller said that while it
mined to make a living by “scratching dirt.”
were going to be doing
was hard to watch themselves on screen,
Knodel and Miller were first approached
something different
they were happy with how the movie
by Sue Arbuthnot and Richard Wilhelm of
than we thought.”
portrayed dryland wheat farming and
Hare in the Gate Productions, a Portlanddocumented the hardships that rural com—Sue
Arbuthnot,
based film production company, in 2003.
munities often face.
Filmmaker
They were initially only interested in filming Lind’s combine derby, something both
the Miller and the Knodel families have long
participated in.
“At first they (Arbuthnot and Wilhelm) wanted to
come visit and take some pictures of the derby combine,”
Knodel remembered. “They were nice people and became
friends with our families. After the derby, they kept coming around and pretty soon it was, ‘Can we come take a
look at harvest? Can we come out in the spring?’”
“They wanted to see what our lives were like, and what
we did,” Miller added. “They just followed us around. We
didn’t do anything special for them.”
The movie, “Dryland,” ended up following Knodel and
Miller for 10 years, documenting their high school and
college graduations and the struggles they faced trying to
join their families’ farming operations. Now both married
“We’ve gone to a couple of screenings
(outside of rural Eastern Washington), and
those people are really fascinated by the film,” Knodel
said. “I’d hope that what they got from it was that this isn’t
an easy way of life. It’s not a guaranteed way of life.”
To underscore that point, the film documents how
Knodel decided to take a job back east with Deere and
Company because the family’s farm wasn’t big enough to
support him. Knodel said that he had some great experiences during his time with Deere and was able to travel
quite a bit, but he didn’t hesitate to return to the family’s
farm as soon as he could.
“You just can’t pass up a farming opportunity. That
doesn’t wait for anybody,” he explained. Miller, on the
other hand, said he was fortunate enough to be able to
return to farming right out of college.
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WL
FEATURE
Lind residents Matt Miller (left) and Josh Knodel are the subjects of “Dryland,” a movie about dryland wheat farming, rural communities and the Lind combine
demolition derby.
Both young men say the biggest obstacle they face is the
opportunity to either lease or purchase land.
“The last 5 years have been really good in farming, so
there’s a lot of money in agriculture right now,” Knodel
said. “Outside money sees that too, that agriculture might
be pretty good place to make money. So, I’m having to
battle that where I don’t have a lot of my own capital be-
cause I’m just starting out.”
Miller is able to supplement his farm income by selling used combine parts. In fact, he and Knodel rebuilt
the combine, named “Jaws,” they would both drive in
the combine derby. The film circles around the annual
derby during those 10 years, and viewers get to see both
Miller and Knodel win, and then watch as younger family
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Lind’s combine derby has been
attracting lots of attention, with film
crews from ESPN and CMT visiting,
as well as write ups both locally and
nationally. Knodel said the derby
hasn’t really changed much in the
last 14 years, other than drawing a
bigger crowd.
“It’s still wrecking old combines,”
he said, laughing.
Both he and Miller are still involved with the derby, although in
different ways.
“We used to have all the time in
the world to work on it (their derby
combine),” Miller explained. “Now
we are farming. We are both Lions
Club members as well, and now
we want to help put on the event
instead of just running combine.”
For the filmmakers, Arbuthnot
and Wilhelm, finding Miller and
Knodel turned what was originally
going to be a 10- or 15-minute short
film on an extreme sport (the combine derby) into something much
more. Arbuthnot said upon meeting
the two friends, she was immediately impressed with how gracious,
thoughtful and articulate they were,
not to mention how strong their
friendship was.
“Because of Josh and Matt, we
realized we were going to be doing something different than we
thought,” she said.
Dryland has been shown at film
festivals across the nation, as well
as at many community screenings
throughout the Pacific Northwest.
The film will be shown at the
Spokane AgExpo in February
before making its way to screenings in Northern Idaho and at the
University of Montana. For more
information about the movie, visit
drylandmovie.net.
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THE
BOTTOM LINE
Things to consider in farmland leasing
By Tim Cobb
Hatley/Cobb Farmland Management
With today’s agricultural economics, many farmers
must rely upon more than just “family-owned” land to
keep their business viable and growing. Conversely, many
long-term landowners who have stepped away from agriculture rely upon quality tenants to keep the land productive and provide a return on assets. When considering
these two needs and the amount of dependency on leased
land, it is vital that both the progressive producer and the
considerate landowner use a fundamental approach to
reach equitable positions through the leasing process.
There are many variables for BOTH parties to consider
when leasing farmland. Here are some examples:
• Farm production potential: the quality of the land,
rainfall potential, soil type, etc.;
• Proximity of land to crop markets: the cost of freight
and equipment transport;
• Terms: crop share versus cash rent versus flex rent
based on production and commodity price;
grow their business while allowing for the owner to create
a healthy, stable return. Each farm is unique, and terms
should be settled on a case-by-case basis.
Marketable lease terms, such as the length of a lease,
play a critical role, specifically with payment timing and
input cost per acre.
The majority of farm leases that utilize crop share range
from three to five years depending on the rainfall area.
They can trend even longer as an owner becomes more
comfortable with the producer’s farming abilities.
Cash rent leases in the Northwest average between two
to four years at a specific price per acre depending on the
crop type and rotation schedule for the land. Longer lease
terms normally have a specific reason for their length,
such as infrastructure improvement with cost borne by
the tenant or crop rotations that require a very specific
series of crops. In many cases, there will be a “market
adjustment” clause that can allow for fluctuation in rental
amount based on rental and crop market performance
agreeable by both parties.
Timing of rental payment is a lease term that will help
or hurt the cash flow and overall input costs of the producer. Additionally, consideration should be given to gen• Working relationship: what is the communication
eral obligations of the owner and the sensitivity to their
level between lessor and lessee?;
timing as income from the farm may be a large portion
of overall income. With crop share, the timing of rental
• Lease contract structure: verbal versus written lease;
payment is based around harvest and
• Commodity market and crop
delivery of the percentage of the crop
pricing awareness: managing risk
which makes for a consistent timing
among many variables; and
Sponsored by the
expectation. On the other hand, it is
•C
rop production cost knowlAgricultural Marketing
common with cash rent leases to have
edge: legitimate knowledge of
50 percent in the spring and 50 percent
&
Management
production cost for both parties to
in the fall. The added flexibility to the
Organization.
consider.
producer for two payments allows for
For more information and
This list could go on as we consider
some interest savings as well as cash
a schedule of classes visit
the complexity of variables that go into
flow to put into the crop. There are
a farmland-leasing scenario, but let’s
www.lcammo.org.
circumstances when 100 percent of
focus on two.
the rental payment may be required
at the beginning of the year, perhaps
Farmland lease terms
due to the crop type, however, that is
The terms of any lease for both
more uncommon. I recommend to my
sides are not mutually exclusive. They
owner clients in any cash rent scenario
will set the tone for the ability of an
to request 50 percent in the spring.
operator to budget, create a profit and
• I mprovements and existing equipment condition:
irrigation systems, grain storage, etc.;
THE BOTTOM LINE
Working relationship
Collaboration is key in any business partnership, especially when it comes to leasing farmland. The word “partnership” is intentional as producers and owners shouldn’t
necessarily be at odds in this process as both are attempting to achieve the most the land will equitably provide.
Some honest questions to ask yourself:
• How is my relationship with ownership or farm tenant, respectively?
•D
o I communicate more than once a year?
•D
o I update by sending pictures of the land or invite
inspections on our progress?
•D
o I, as a tenant, bump the rent up in good times
without being prompted by ownership or do I hunker
down and hope they don’t notice?
•A
s an owner, am I sensitive to yields and returns and
back off the rent when times are tight?
• I s there an open dialogue as to the things I am doing
to improve the land?
•H
ow is our mutual trust?
WL
Careful consideration of your communication levels,
whether too much or not enough, when adjusted properly
will add to a more comfortable conversation about leasing.
There is always uncertainty in agriculture, however, risk
in leasing can be mitigated using quality communication.
Over the past decade, agriculture has felt stronger
undertones in commodities as well as overall liquidity
in farming operations which has caused some very good
times for all involved. As we head into the next decade,
there are some signs of moderation and demand easing as
well as global improvements to production that have the
potential to pressure some previous margin levels. It will
be more critical in times of pressure to have a clear understanding of your lease terms and an ability to communicate effectively the consideration that will be required in
farmland leasing.
Tim Cobb grew up on an Upper Columbia Basin hay, grain
and cattle farm. He currently manages farms with Hatley/Cobb
Farmland Management in Spokane. Hatley/Cobb manages
farms for absentee land owners and provides farmland appraisals, along with real estate brokerage and consulting services.
Visit HatleyCobb.com for more information.
CROP ROTATION PAYS
INCREASE YIELDS :: BREAK DISEASE CYCLES :: REDUCE WEEDS
ENJOY DOMESTIC MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES INCLUDING BIOFUELS
CANOLA –
A PROVEN
ALTERNATIVE
Canola can replicate benefits that Vertical Tillage does for soil.
Roundup Ready :: Clearfield :: New IMI Tolerant Claremore
Liberty Link Herbicide Tolerant :: New SU Tolerant Sumner
Conventional Varieties :: Falstaff Winter Canola
SUNFLOWER :: SAFFLOWER
CAMELINA :: TRITICALE
PLOW-DOWN MUSTARD
Curtis 509-659-1757
Todd 509-641-0436
SPECTRUM
CROP
DEVELOPMENT
:: RITZVILLE WA
Your wheat life...
Eleven-monthold Luna Olivia
Hatten, the
daughter of
Abby Hatten and
Frank Horak,
takes a turn in
the combine with
Kevin and Shan
Hayes of Timmco
Inc., just east of
Harrington.
The Kile/Dickerson harvest near St. John.
Photo by Gracie Dickerson
Photo by Shan Hayes
Harvest on Ledgerwood Farms, in Pomeroy.
Photo by Makayla Brown
An August sunset over Chaos Farms, owned by Ryan and Deborah Peha, in Almira.
Photo by Alison Viebrock Steveson
Send us photos
of your wheat life!
Email pictures to [email protected].
Please include location of picture, names of
all people appearing in the picture and ages
of all children.
(Above) The first day of the 2014 Mills Canyon
Fire from the edge of Waterville. On the left
is Jordan Farms’ equipment being prepped for
harvest. (Right) Seahawks fans Bob and Chad
Clements of Waterville during the 2014 Wheat
Harvest for JBS/Clements Farms.
Photos by Jacque Clements
HAPPENINGS
All dates and times are subject to change.
Please verify event before heading out.
January 2015
13 WAWG Board Meeting. Meeting
starts at 10 a.m. at Washington Wheat
Foundation Building, Ritzville, Wash.
(509) 659-0610, wawg.org
13 Washington Grain Commission
Meeting. Meeting starts at 2:30 p.m.
at the Residence Inn in Pullman, Wash.
(509) 456-2481
14 Washington Grain Commission
Meeting. Meeting starts at 8 a.m. at the
Residence Inn in Pullman, Wash. (509)
456-2481
14-15 2015 Northwest Hay Expo.
Three Rivers Convention Center,
Kennewick, Wash. For more information
visit wa-hay.org/convention
16-25 Lake Chelan Winterfest. An
event for the whole family! Winterfest is
two weekends of ice sculptures, music,
wine tasting, ale tasting, kids activities,
polar bear splash, beach bonfire, fireworks and more! Chelan, Wash.
lakechelan.com/winterfest/
17-18 Bavarian Ice Fest. Chili crawl,
games and fireworks. Leavenworth,
Wash. leavenworth.org
20 The Positives of Passing It On.
AMMO workshop featuring nationally
known speaker Jolene Brown who will
talk about family succession. Workshop
will also include a panel of local experts. Northern Quest Casino in Airway
Heights, Wash. Preregister by phone at
(877) 740-2666 or email [email protected].
More information at lcammo.org
20-22 Direct Seed & Oilseed
Cropping Systems 2015
Conference. Three Rivers Convention
Center in Kennewick, Wash. Registration
and more info at directseed.org/events/
annual-conference/
25 Winterfest. Experience the fun and
excitement of winter games in Deer Park!
A community celebration with events
for the whole family. Deer Park, Wash.
deerparkchamber.com
27 Young Producers Conference.
AMMO workshop focusing on financial
analysis, working with your banker,
government programs, etc. Red Lion in
Pasco, Wash. Preregister by phone at (877)
740-2666 or email [email protected]. More
information at lcammo.org
email [email protected]. More information
at lcammo.org
27-29 NW Ag Show. Everything for ev-
21 Women in Agriculture
ery farmer under one roof. Portland Expo
Center, Portland, Ore. nwagshow.com
February 2015
3-5 Spokane Ag Expo. The largest
farm machinery show in the Inland
Northwest. Held at the Spokane
Convention Center. agshow.org
(509) 659-0610, wawg.org
Conference. Presented by Washington
State University Extension. Registration
info will be found at womeninag.wsu.edu
24 Crop Insurance, Price Risk and
Commodity Programs Under the
New Farm Bill. AMMO workshop
featuring Dr. Art Barnaby, a Kansas
State University professor of ag economics. Davenport Community Center in
Davenport, Wash. Preregister by phone at
(877) 740-2666 or email [email protected].
More information at lcammo.org
10 Beginning and advanced
25 Crop Insurance, Price Risk and
your level at this AMMO workshop.
Morning session will cover beginning
QuickBooks, while afternoon session will
cover advanced QuickBooks. Red Lion in
Pasco, Wash. Preregister by phone at (877)
featuring Dr. Art Barnaby, a Kansas State
University professor of ag economics.
Big Bend Community College in Moses
Lake, Wash. Preregister by phone at (877)
QuickBooks. Pick the session that fits
11 Beginning and advanced
QuickBooks. Morning session will
cover beginning QuickBooks, while
afternoon session will cover advanced
QuickBooks. Red Lion in Pasco, Wash.
Preregister by phone at (877) 740-2666 or
at lcammo.org
18 Marketing in the Top Third.
AMMO workshop featuring Mark Gold,
managing partner with Top Third Ag
Marketing in Chicago, who is a former
20-year member of the Chicago Board
of Trade. Red Lion in Pasco, Wash.
at lcammo.org
18-19 Washington Grain
Commission Research Review.
Event begins at 2:30 p.m. on day one, and
8 a.m. on day two, at the Residence Inn,
NE North Fairway Road in Pullman,
Wash. For more information and to RSVP,
contact Mary Palmer Sullivan at (509)
456-2481 or [email protected]
19 Marketing in the Top Third.
AMMO workshop featuring Mark Gold,
managing partner with Top Third Ag
Marketing in Chicago, who is a former
20-year member of the Chicago Board
of Trade. Red Lion in Pasco, Wash.
Commodity Programs Under the
New Farm Bill. AMMO workshop
March 2015
1 Sausage Feed. All you can eat from
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Menu includes sausage,
sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, green
beans, roll, applesauce, pie and beverage.
There is also a beer garden. Uniontown
Community Center, in Uniontown, Wash.
uniontown.us/activities_events.html
6-8 Spring Arts and Crafts Show.
Features 300 professional artists and
crafters from across the U.S. Spokane
Fair and Expo Center, Spokane, Wash.
custershows.com
(509) 659-0610, wawg.org
18-19 Washington Grain
Commission Meeting. Spokane, Wash.
(509) 456-2481
Submissions
Listings must be received by the
10th of each month for the next
month’s Wheat Life. Email listings to [email protected]. Include
date, time and location of event,
plus contact info and a short
description.
Equipment
Considering
Selling Your
Turbo-Max®
Now
available
in 35’
& 40’
Seeding
and
Tillage
widths, in addition to 12’, 15’,
18’,Equipment
24’ and 30’
FARMLAND?
Take It To AUCTION!
• 7.5” blade spacing, offsetting gangs
• Gang angles adjust from 0º to 6º on-the-go
• Unmatched seedbed preparation
Turbo-Max
Turbo-Max®®
Vertical Tillage Taken To The
• Intense, accelerated marketing builds excitement
about your property.
• Seller is in control—no buyer contingencies or
extended negotiations.
• All qualified buyers have the same bidding
opportunity.
• Competition helps to maximize the market value
of your property.
Now available in 35’ & 40’
Next
Level!
fromto12
ft.15’,
widths,
inSizes
addition
12’,
18’, to
24’40and
30’
wide
ft. wide.
C.D.
“Butch”
Booker
C.D.
“Butch”
Booker
Broker/Auctioneer
Broker/Auctioneer
Turbo-Till®
• 7.5”
7.5” blade
blade spacing,
spacing, offsetting
offsetting gangs
gangs
•
• Gang
Gang angles
angles adjust
adjust from
from oº
0º to
to 6º
6º on-the-go
on-the-go
•
3S-4000
HD 40'
Min-Till Drill
• Unmatched
Unmatched
seedbed
preparation
•
seedbed
preparation
809 N. Main
Colfax, WA 99111
509-397-4434
C.D. “Butch” Booker [email protected]
Broker/Auctioneer www.kincaidrealestate.com
CLASS 8 TRUCKS
Turbo-Chisel
Turbo-Till® ®
2N-3010
Drill
3S-4000
HD30’
40'No-Till
Min-Till
Drill
®
Turbo-Chisel
Flex Harrow
2N-3010
30’
No-Till
Drill
3S-4010
HD
40’
No-Till
Drill
521 N. EASTERN • SPOKANE, WA
(509) 534-9088 • [email protected]
TRAILERS, TRAILERS
AND MORE TRAILERS
IN STOCK!
7000 Series Disc Harrow
Maintenance Free Bearings!
Zero Grease Zerks – Other Features:
• Increased Transport Clearance
• Low Profile Hitch
• Improved Hydraulic & Leveling
Systems
Flex
Harrow
Great Plains
Disk Harrow
3S-4010 ®HD
40’ No-Till
Drill
Yield-Pro
YP825
Corn Planter
New 50-Foot Min-Till Drill!
• Cover More Acres Efficiently With 50’ Width
• Regular or Heavy Duty Models
• HD Models Feature Constant Hydraulic
Down Pressure
• Superior
Flexibility
and
Narrow
Transport
Flex Harrow
Great
Plains
Disk
Harrow
®® YP825
3S-5000HDF
50’ Min-Till
Drill
Yield-Pro
Corn
Yield-Pro
YP825
Corn Planter
Planter
For
these
implements
andDrill!
many
more, contact your local Great Plains dealer.
New
50-Foot
Min-Till
New
50-Foot
Min-Till
Drill!
We have multiple brands of top
quality trailers. Grain trailers,
flatbed trailers, dolly trailers,
curtain side trailers, livestock
trailers, low boy trailers, even
reefer units are in stock now!
Marc B. Lange (509) 991-9088
Gary Evans (509) 456-2687
Butch Johnson (509) 990-3153
NOT JUST TRUCKS,
TRAILERS TOO!
www.class8trucksales.com
•Cover More Acres Efficiently
With 50’ Width
• Regular
or Heavy
Duty
Models
Odessa,
— 509-982-2644
• Regular
orWA
Heavy
Duty Models
• HD
Models
Feature
Constant
Hydraulic
• HD
Models
Feature
Constant
CENTRAL
MACHINERY
SALES
Down
Pressure Down Pressure
Hydraulic
Moses
Lake,
WA
—
509-765-1257
•Superior
flexibility
and Narrow
Transport
• Superior
Flexibility
and Narrow
Transport
• Cover
More Acres
Efficiently With INC.
50’ Width
WALTER
IMPLEMENT,
CENTRAL MACHINERY SALES
Pasco, WA — 509-547-8920
Sunnyside, WA — 509-837-3833
3S-5000HDF
50’ 50’
Min-Till
Drill
3S-5000HD
Min-Till
Drill
MORROW COUNTY GRAIN GROWERS
FARM & HOME SUPPLY
Wasco,
ORGreat
— 800-824-7185
Pomeroy,
WA — 509-843-3395
For
these implements
and many more, contact your
local
Plains dealer.
WALTER IMPLEMENT, INC.
Lexington, OR — 800-452-7396
Odessa, WA — 509-982-2644
FARM EQUIPMENT HEADQUARTERS
CENTRAL
MACHINERY
SALES
Pendleton,
OR — 541-276-6222
Pasco, WA — 509-547-8920
Pomeroy, WA — 509-843-3395
FARM & HOME SUPPLY
Wasco, OR — 800-824-7185
Lexington, OR — 800-452-7396
FARM EQUIPMENT HEADQUARTERS
Pendleton, OR — 541-276-6222
Moses Lake, WA — 509-765-1257
Sunnyside, WA — 509-837-3833
Advertiser Index
Ag Enterprise Supply Inc . . . . . . . . . 39
AGPRO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
AgraSyst Inc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Ag Trucks & Equipment. . . . . . . . . . . . 5
ATI Solutions LLC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Battery Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Blue Mountain Realtors. . . . . . . . . . . 61
Brock Law Firm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Bronco Farm Supply. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Butch Booker Auction. . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Byrnes Oil Co . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Carpenter, McGuire & DeWulf PS. . 31
Churchill’s Steakhouse. . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Class 8 Trucks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 69
Connell Grange Supply Inc . . . . . . . 34
Country Financial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Diesel & Machine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Dow PowerFlex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Edward Jones. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Evergreen Implement Inc. . . . . . . . . 62
Farm & Home Supply. . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Great Plains Equipment Group. . . . 69
Heartland Capital Funding Inc. . . . 39
HUB International. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Inland Oil & Propane . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Jess Ford. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Jones Truck & Implement Inc. . . . . 35
Kincaid Real Estate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Landmark Native Seed . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Les Schwab Tire Centers. . . . . . . . . . 11
Micro-Ag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Northern Quest Resort & Casino. . 23
Northwest Ag Show. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
NW Farm Credit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
NW Farmland Management . . . . . . . 7
OXARC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
PNDSA Conference. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
PNW Farmers Cooperative. . . . . . . . 71
Perkins & Zlatich PS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Pioneer West Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Pomeroy Grain Growers Inc. . . . . . . 42
RH Machine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Rainier Seeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Ramada Airport. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Rock Steel Structures. . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Scales NW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Seedmaster Drills-Kevin Klein. . . . . 41
Spectrum Crop Development . . . . 65
Spokane Ag Expo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Spray Center Electronics. . . . . . . . . . 21
SS Equipment Inc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
State Bank Northwest. . . . . . . . . . . . 31
T & S Sales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Walter Implement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Windermere
Coeur d’ Alene Realty Inc . . . . . . 42
Thank you to all of our advertisers.
Support those who support your industry.
Insurance for
Whatever You Grow
Whether you raise cattle or grow nursery
stock, row crops, grain, hay or fruit,
COUNTRY Financial® has got you covered.
Your local financial representative can help
balance your need to protect what you have
with your desire to build for the future. We
offer great coverage for farm vehicles, too.
Grow your own way with COUNTRY Financial.
Laurie Mooney
Wenatchee
(509) 663.3800
James Penning LUTCF
Yakima
(800) 741.6135
Martha Kramer
Walla Walla
(509) 525-9781
Paul Koethke LUTCF
Moses Lake
(800) 689.9259
Joe Shannon
Ellensburg
(509) 933.3000
Policies issued by COUNTRY Mutual
Insurance Company®, Bloomington, IL.
1114-511HO
Broadleaf weeds and grasses can’t take over winter wheat fields if
they don’t have the opportunity. So don’t give it to them. PowerFlex® HL
herbicide from Dow AgroSciences delivers powerful postemergence
control over the toughest invaders like downy brome, wild oats and
non-ALS-resistant Italian ryegrass. The high-load formulation provides
excellent crop safety and rotational flexibility. For maximum crop
potential, deploy the power of PowerFlex HL.
PowerFlexHLHerbicide.com
800-258-3033
Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) or an affiliated company of Dow. PowerFlex HL is
not registered for sale or use in all states. Contact your state pesticide regulatory agency to determine
if a product is registered for sale or use in your state. Always read and follow label directions.
©2014 Dow AgroSciences LLC M38-888-007 (01/14) BR 010-33683 DAAGPWFX2055
®

January - Wheat Life

Transcription

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