Funding for a task force that will advise the Oregon legislature on biotech crops has been approved by a key legislative committee.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture’s request for $125,000 was recently backed by a subcommittee of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Ways and Means.

The subcommittee’s Feb. 13 recommendation means the funding will be included in a broader budget bill during the 2014 legislative session.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber vowed to form the task force last year, when the legislature passed a bill that pre-empted the regulation of biotech crops by local governments.

The task force will issue a report on consumer choice and coexistence among producers of genetically engineered, organic and conventional crops.

The 14-member committee will be headed by Dan Arp, Oregon State University’s dean of agricultural sciences, and Jennifer Allen, director of Portland State University’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions.

Other members of the task force, who will represent a wide array of consumer and agricultural interests, will be announced later in February, said Richard Whitman, the governor’s natural resources adviser.

Rather than issue recommendations, the task force’s report will be intended to inform the legislature’s policy decisions during the 2015 session, said Whitman.

“The likelihood of reaching a consensus recommendation on any of these issues is not very good,” he said during a recent hearing.

The goal will be to provide a neutral forum to flesh out GMO issues, Whitman said.

Its findings won’t have any bearing on possible ballot initiatives that call for mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms in food, he said.

Sen. Chris Edwards, D-Eugene, said that is difficult to find agreement on such a contentious issue, but the task force report will be “worth it” if it brings credibility to the debate.

The $125,000 would be appropriated to ODA but used by PSU’s Oregon Consensus Program to facilitate the task force, which is expected to hold seven to 10 meetings this year.

Click here for the original article published in the Capital Press.

Oregon’s agriculture leaders and innovators will be honored at the Agricultural Progress Awards dinner March 12.

The event, hosted by the Oregon Department of Agriculture, celebrates progress in agriculture made through partnerships among business, higher education and state government.

ODA Director Katy Coba will present the following awards:

Oregon Product Retailer of the Year:  Wilco, headquartered in Mt. Angel and the largest farm supply cooperative in the Pacific Northwest, for its service and support of Oregon agriculture.

Excellence in Marketing:  The Oregon Potato Commission, for its innovation and promotion of potatoes in local, domestic, and international markets.

Cooperator of the Year:  The Clackamas and Wasco counties Soil and Water Conservation Districts, for commitment to conservation and working with the Oregon Department of Agriculture to support its Agricultural Water Quality Program.

Excellence in Education:  The Summer Ag Institute, for its education of Oregon K-12 teachers about agriculture and its application in the classroom.

Individual Contributions to Agriculture: John McCulley of Salem, for his many years of leadership, promotion, and marketing efforts as administrator of several Oregon agricultural commodity commissions, associations, and organizations; Jim Krahn of Vernonia for his years of service to Oregon’s dairy industry as executive director of the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association; and Carol Mallory-Smith of Albany, for her work and research as a weed scientist with Oregon State University’s Crop and Soil Science Department.

The Agricultural Progress Awards Dinner will begins at 6:30 p.m. in the Spinning Room of the Willamette Heritage Center at the Mill, 1313 Mill Street SE in Salem, preceded by a no-host social hour and reception at 5:30 p.m.

For more information or to register for the event, please contact the Oregon Department of Agriculture at (503) 986-4550 or visit http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/Pages/ap2014.aspx

Click here for the original article from the Statesman Journal.

Oregon continues to lose farmland to development and other conversions, but the pace has slowed dramatically since statewide land-use planning kicked in, a state Department of Agriculture specialist says.

Data from aerial surveys done every three years by the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service show Oregon has lost 700,000 acres of agricultural land since 1982, or about 4.4 percent of the state total, said Jim Johnson, land-use specialist with the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

California has lost 2.6 million acres during that time, Johnson said, and Washington has lost 552,000 acres. Idaho figures were not immediately available. For the study, agricultural land is defined as land used for crops, pasture, rangeland or as conservation reserves.

Johnson said the impact of Oregon’s statewide land-use planning system is evident in the data. The system is intended to prevent urban areas from sprawling onto prime farmland, primarily through requiring cities to adopt comprehensive land-use plans and establish urban growth boundaries. While cities and counties may expand growth boundaries, the process is strictly defined, slow, contentious and subject to legal challenge.

The system has persistent critics, largely because it eliminates or restricts development options for many rural property owners, but there is no doubt it’s done what was intended. Travel outside any Oregon urban area and there is a sharply defined point where development ends and farm or forest land begins.

The loss or conversion of land for crops — usually the most valuable, flattest and easiest to develop — slowed as cities adopted comprehensive land-use plans in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Johnson said. Almost 400,000 acres of crop land was converted from 1982-87. About 60,000 acres of crop land was lost from 2007-10.

“You can tell when land-use laws kicked in, you can really tell,” he said.

Johnson said development pressure will continue in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, from Portland to Eugene, where most of the state’s people live and also home to extensive, valuable and diverse farming operations. As population increases and cities expand growth boundaries, “We’re going to lose a lot in the Willamette Valley,” he said.

Other rapidly growing areas, such as Hermiston in eastern Oregon, will face the same problems.

“Sometimes those cities forget why they exist in the first place — agriculture,” Johnson said.

Agricultural land also will be lost to “non-farm development” such as energy facility sitings, parks and recreation areas and gravel mining, Johnson said. The cumulative impact of such land conversion deserves attention, he said.

“It’s not just the footprint of the development, but the shadow cast by development” that has an impact on farming, Johnson said.

Click here to read the original article in the Capital Press.

Congressional negotiators reached a final deal Monday on a five-year, $500 billion farm bill that cuts $24 billion over a decade, with the largest cuts coming in the food stamp program.

WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators completed work on a new five-year $500 billion farm bill Monday, bringing closer to an end more than two years of struggles over the much-delayed legislation.

The farm bill would save an estimated $24 billion over 10 years, with about a third of the spending cuts coming from the popular food stamp program. The proposed legislation also would mark the end of $5 billion in annual direct payments, increase the number of crop insurance programs available to farmers and require farmers to follow conservation compliance measures to receive subsidies.

The 41 House and Senate lawmakers on the conference committee completed the legislation Monday, with the bill expected to advance to a vote in the full House Wednesday. The Senate could act as soon as next week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday that the farm bill is one of his top priorities.

“We are so close to having a new bill that we need to concentrate on getting it done,” said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat who is a member of the farm bill conference committee. “This is basically a sound, balanced, bipartisan bill.”

Craig Hill, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau, said a farm bill is “desperately needed” to provide a stable source of funding for nutrition programs and give agriculture producers a strong safety net while allowing them to more easily make long-term plans.

“We support swift movement forward on this immensely important legislation, because so much is hanging in the balance when it comes to food production and food security of our nation,” Hill said. “We cannot keep delaying a farm bill passage; the time to act is now.”

Final passage of the farm bill would cap a lengthy process that has seen discussions collapse more than once, most recently last summer when the GOP-led House and the Democratic-controlled Senate were far apart on how much to cut food stamps — officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The program is used by an estimated 47.5 million people. The House had been looking for nearly $40 billion in cuts while the Senate targeted $4.5 billion.

The compromise on food stamps was settled by farm bill negotiators weeks ago. Lawmakers are expected to cut about $8 billion during the next decade in food stamp spending by making changes to a heating assistance program used by some states to determine whether an individual qualifies for the SNAP program.

In some states, if a resident receives as little as $1 a year in heating assistance, they automatically qualify for an average of $1,080 annually in additional food stamps. The farm bill is expected to set the new minimum at $20, limiting potential abuse of the food stamp program.

Originally published by USA Today on 1/24/2014: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/01/27/farm-bill-deal/4947383/