TWCA® teams up with Mountain Meadows and the City of Ashland to reduce water footprint
Turfgrass Water Conservation Alliance® is teaming up with the City of Ashland and Mountain Meadows of Ashland on a pilot project aimed at reducing outdoor water consumption in the region. TWCA® qualified grass can reduce water consumption by up to 30% while providing all the benefits of turfgrass. One of the goals of the Mountain Meadows project is to preserve common space for gatherings and social events and the best ground cover to fulfill this need is turfgrass.
The Mountain Meadows Owner Association (MMOA) is a 55 + community in Ashland, Oregon consisting of 226 houses and condominiums built over a 27 acre area. It is owned and run by the resident owners through an elected Board of Directors. The area is well landscaped with trees, plants and lawns. Lawns are located throughout the community in parkways, front and back yards, and in a large park where outdoor events and celebrations are held. Included in this landscaping is 66,000 sq. ft. of lawn, which is expensive to irrigate. In 2013, the Board of Directors decided to reduce the amount of irrigation water being used, which would also assist in reducing costs due to the rising cost of water. A task force chaired by Gideon Wizansky was established to study and implement these goals. Driving this study is the fact that Mountain Meadows is one of the largest water users in the Ashland utility district with up to 60% of that consumption outdoor use.
City of Ashland (COA) Conservation Specialist and TWCA member Julie Smitherman has been working with MMOA to reduce water consumption. One of the approaches is a Lawn Replacement rebate to replace hard to irrigate, hard to maintain areas of turf with more water efficient landscaping.
“Julie approached us about working with Mountain Meadows in the fall of 2014,” says TWCA Program Administrator, Jack Karlin, “she set up the initial meeting with Mountain Meadows and has really just done a ton of the legwork to make this project happen.”
Local contractor Bill Bumgardner, owner of Bumgardners Landscape and past Chair of the Southern Oregon Landscapers Association (SOLA) will be doing all of the site preparation in advance of the seeding. The TWCA is donating approximately 1000 square feet of water efficient grass seed to the Mountain Meadow community for this pilot project. Focused on demonstrating the overall turf quality of water efficient grasses to the entire community the grass will be a spring plant 20th April 2015. If this pilot project is successful Mountain Meadows plans on replacing all their turf with TWCA qualified grass in the fall of 2016.
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Lead levels high enough to potentially harm children have been found in artificial turf used at thousands of schools, playgrounds and day-care centers across the country, yet two federal agencies continue to promote the surfacing as safe, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
Lead levels high enough to potentially harm children have been found in artificial turf used at thousands of schools, playgrounds and day-care centers across the country, yet two federal agencies continue to promote the surfacing as safe, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
The growing use of turf fields layered with rubber crumbs has raised health concerns centered mostly on whether players face increased risk of injury, skin infection or cancer. The U.S. has more than 11,000 artificial turf fields, which can cost $1 million to replace.
But largely overlooked has been the possible harm to young children from ingesting lead in turf materials, and the federal government’s role in encouraging their use despite doing admittedly limited research on their health safety.
Lead is a well-known children’s hazard that over time can cause lost intelligence, developmental delays, and damage to organs and the nervous system.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission, charged with protecting children from lead in consumer products, has promoted turf-and-rubber fields for nearly seven years with a website headline declaring them “OK to install, OK to play on.” A news release says, “Young children are not at risk from exposure to lead in these fields,” even though the commission found potentially hazardous lead levels in some turf fibers and did not test any rubber crumbs, which are made from recycled tires that contain roughly 30 hazardous substances including lead.
The commission has acknowledged shortcomings in its 2008 study, which spokesman Scott Wolfson says “was just a handful of fields and was not representative of the full scope of fields across the country.”
The Environmental Protection Agency has promoted the use of rubber crumbs in athletic fields and on playground surfaces since 1995 to help create markets for recycled car and truck tires.But the EPA didn’t investigate the potential toxicity until 2008 and now says in a statement that “more testing needs to be done” to determine the materials’ safety.
“We’re using your children as part of the poison squad,” said Bruce Lanphear, a leading researcher on lead poisoning at Simon Fraser University in Canada, who suggests a moratorium on installing artificial-turf fields until their safety is proved.
The health threat is substantial enough that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists artificial turf as one of seven sources of children’s lead exposure along with well-known items such as paint, water and toys.
The CDC in 2008 said communities should test recreational areas with turf fibers made from nylon, and they should bar children younger than 6 from the areas if the lead level exceeded the federal limit for lead in soil in children’s play areas.
But some communities have refused to test their fields, fearing that a high lead level would generate lawsuits or force them to replace and remove a field, which costs about $1 million, according to a 2011 New Jersey state report.
“If you’re exposing children to some potentially harmful compounds, whether it’s organic compounds or metals, you’d think you’d want to know so you can take some action instead of putting your hands over your eyes and saying, ‘I don’t see a problem,’ ” Shalat said.
STUDIES ON RISKS WIDELY DEBATED
Industry groups have touted the federal endorsements, which have helped vastly expand the nation’s use of artificial turf. It now blankets more than 11,000 fields, from NFL stadiums to elementary-school plots, and millions more square feet at resorts, office parks and playgrounds, according to the Synthetic Turf Council.
“There is tremendous growth in all sectors of the industry,” the council says, calling turf a durable, year-round playing surface that needs no watering, pesticides or fertilizers.
The council says turf materials are safe for people of all ages who may absorb particulates through ingestion, inhalation or skin contact. Government and academic studies “all have concluded” that a turf-and-rubber field “does not pose a human health risk to people of all ages,” the council says in a PowerPoint presentation.
But the council mischaracterizes some studies and ignores scientists’ warnings about children possibly ingesting lead in turf fibers and rubber crumbs.
The council quotes a supposed statement in a 2002 EPA report saying that children who play for years on turf-and-rubber fields face only minimal increased cancer risk. The statement actually is from a Rubber Manufacturers Association report and is not in the EPA report. Council spokeswoman Terrie Ward said the inaccuracy was “an honest mistake.”
Only a few studies have investigated the possible harm to young children from ingesting turf fibers or rubber crumbs, which can be as small as a pencil tip or as large as a wood chip. The studies analyzed a small number of turf materials.
A widely cited study by California officials in 2007 did not consider health effects of children ingesting rubber crumbs or turf fibers. The study analyzed three playground surfaces made of crumbs fused into a solid rubberized surface and found negligible risk from children ingesting rubber dust that might get on their hands or from swallowing a rubber chunk once in their lifetimes.
“Research consistently supports the safety of recycled crumb rubber,” said Mark Oldfield, a spokesman for the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery. Nonetheless, the department is planning a new study on health effects of artificial turf and crumb rubber that will look at children ingesting crumb material chronically.
Connecticut state toxicologist Gary Ginsberg says turf materials would not be a “major source of lead” for young children given the limited amount of time they spend on a field or playground.
Others are worried. The Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection in January stopped giving communities money to build playgrounds and fields with crumb rubber. “There are no large-scale, national studies on the possible health issues associated with inhalation, ingestion or contact,” the department said. “Research to date has been inconclusive, contradictory or limited in scope.”
CDC: ‘No safe lead level’ in children
At least 10 studies since 2007 — including those by the safety commission and the EPA — have found potentially harmful lead levels in turf fibers and in rubber crumbs, USA TODAY found.
Researchers flagged fibers and crumbs that exceeded the federal hazard level of 400 parts per million (ppm) of lead in soil where children play. The limit aims to protect children if they ingest lead-contaminated soil — either by swallowing soil directly or by putting dirty hands and toys in their mouths.
But some scientists say that the limit, established in 2000, is too high and ignores recent research showing, as the CDC now says, that “no safe blood lead level in children has been identified.”
“Every turf field has to be analyzed in detail to be sure it doesn’t have a problem,” said Paul Lioy, a professor of environmental and occupational medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.
California has set a much lower standard for lead in soil: 80 ppm.
When the Los Angeles school district in 2008 tested turf-and-rubber play areas in its preschool facilities, it used 60 ppm as a safety level. After two play areas recorded lead readings in the low 60s, the district removed the turf-and-rubber surfaces from all 54 preschools and replaced them with solid rubber or asphalt at a total cost of several hundred thousand dollars.
“Because of the physical development of younger children, lead has a greater propensity to be absorbed,” said Robert Laughton, the school district’s environmental health and safety director. “They’re the most at-risk population we have.”
Artificial turf at a Nevada day care had 8,800 ppm of lead — 22 times the federal soil hazard level, according to a 2010 study led by a scientist at the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. In 2008, New Jersey health officials found lead levels eight to 10 times the federal level in both school athletic fields and in turf marketed for residential use.
Turf-and-rubber fields typically contain about 200,000 pounds of rubber crumbs, made from thousands of former car and truck tires that may have varying levels of hazardous substances. A single field can have “substantial variability” in its materials and in the “concentrations of contaminants,” the EPA wrote in a 2009 study, listing 32 potential contaminants including arsenic, benzene, mercury and toluene.
“You pick up rubber off a field and you don’t know what that piece of rubber came from,” said health advocate David Brown, Connecticut’s former head of environmental epidemiology and occupational health. “It’s not a manufactured item. It’s a waste. There isn’t quality control.”
Lead in rubber crumbs under scrutiny
The presence of lead in turf or rubber crumb does not automatically endanger children. Health damage depends on how much lead children absorb into their bloodstream after ingestion. And absorption depends on whether the lead is tightly bound to the turf or crumb — or easily extracted during digestion.
The EPA’s 2009 study said that more than 90% of the lead in rubber crumbs tested was “tightly bound” to the rubber and “unavailable for absorption.” The results “do not point to a concern” about artificial turf-and-rubber crumb harming human health, the agency said.
The absorption finding was contradicted by a 2008 study in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology that found lead from rubber crumbs was “highly bioaccessible.”
“When people ingest this (crumb rubber), the gastrointestinal tract, the bile fluids, will get the lead out. That means it will be getting into the body, not just passing through,” said the study’s chief author, Jim Zhang, a Duke University environmental health professor.
Scientists and health officials havewarned also about older turf fibers. Many contain a lead-based pigment that adds vibrancy and colorfastness, and which could release lead particles as fibers get worn, cracked and abraded.
“Fibers deteriorate after five or six years. You’re going to get leaching,” Lioy said.
The CDC’s 2008 advisory says that as turf ages and weathers, “lead is released in dust that could then be ingested or inhaled.”
In California, after health advocates measured high lead levels in artificial turf at schools and public areas in 2008, the state attorney general sued manufacturers, which agreed to stop using lead-based pigments in turf. Manufacturers began using only lead-free pigments by the end of 2009, the turf council says.
“After our settlements, we think the industry has pretty much cleaned up,” said Charles Margulis of the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, which tested the turf. “But that leaves a lot of older fields out there.”
It is unclear how many recreational areas have older fibers with lead-based pigment. Turf companies and consultants say a turf field lasts 10 to 15 years. In 2009, before turf manufacturers phased out lead, the U.S. had approximately 4,500 turf fields.
Internal warning surfaces at EPA
Federal regulators began focusing on possible health damage from turf-and-rubber fields in 2008, at least a decade after their installation began. The EPA had been promoting the use of rubber crumbs for various applications since the early 1990s as a way to recycle millions of discarded automobile tires.
The agency didn’t consider toxicity until parents began calling its Denver office concerned about children coming home from sports practice covered in rubber crumbs, said Suzanne Wuerthele, a retired EPA toxicologist in Denver who raised concerns within the agency in 2007.
A 2008 memo by the Denver office noted the rubber’s potential harm, the inadequacy of research — including industry-touted studies — and suggested a “formal risk assessment of risks to children playing on tire crumb surfaces.”
The EPA study fell far short of that goal. The study is “very limited,” the EPA said when it was released, and “it is not possible to extend the results beyond the four study sites.”
The agency has said recently that the study was intended only to determine how to test crumb rubber, “not to determine the potential health risks of recycled tire crumb.”
In 2013, following a complaint by an environmental group, the EPA qualified the news release for its 2009 study with a note stating, “This news release is outdated.” Yet the note directs readers to a Web page that contains the same study.
“They need to stop promoting it and find out if it’s safe, or make a statement that we don’t know if it’s safe,” Wuerthele said, referring to recycled-rubber crumbs. “You just don’t put children on a finely ground surface that contains organics, fibers, latex and heavy metals, particularly lead.”
The Consumer Product Safety Commission launched its probe in 2008 after New Jersey health officials found high lead levels in three artificial turf athletic fields and told the commission that more than 90% of the lead could be absorbed into a human bloodstream. “It’s a special concern for children who are already exposed to lead,” New Jersey state epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz said at the time. “This could add to their lead levels.”
The commission tested 26 turf fibers from four manufacturers and has neither conducted nor cited research on rubber crumbs.
By contrast, a 2007 commission investigation of possible lead poisoning from vinyl baby bibs tested 81 samples from 40 bibs. Although the average lead concentration in the bib samples was less than half the average lead concentration in the turf fibers, the commission warned about “potential risk of lead exposure from baby bibs.”
The turf study showed that two fibers would release potentially harmful amounts of lead into a child’s bloodstream — 9.9 micrograms and 6.6 micrograms.
“That’s a huge concern,” Lanphear, the lead expert said, noting that children can ingest lead from a range of sources such as household paint, dust and drinking water.
The Food and Drug Administration says children should ingest no more than 6 micrograms of lead a day from all sources — food and nonfood.
The commission says children can safely consume 15 micrograms per day of lead.
But the commission backtracked when the environmental group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility asked it to rescind the “OK to play on” headline. The commission added a note to the release acknowledging it never tested for toxic substances other than lead and advising readers to “read and interpret the following press release carefully.”
The commission did not change the headline because that might imply new research had been done, said Wolfson, the commission spokesman.
“They’re making broad claims that aren’t supported by the very limited information they have,” said Jeff Ruch, the environmental group’s executive director. Industry groups citing the commission “end up bordering on false advertising.”
Photo: Grass seed is harvested in a Willamette Valley field.
After recovering from the recession, Oregon grass seed production is holding steady.
Oregon grass seed acreage available for harvest this summer is about the same as last year, indicating the industry has stabilized after some rough years during the recession.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service in Portland estimated farmers will harvest 125,000 acres of annual ryegrass, 109,000 acres of perennial ryegrass, 125,000 acres of turf type tall fescue, 16,000 acres of forage type tall fescue and 11,000 acres of K-31 and other types of tall fescue. The figures closely match 2014 harvest totals.
Oregon leads the nation in grass seed production, but the industry was hit hard by the recession starting in 2009. Grass seed demand often parallels development, as it is used for lawns, sports fields, parks and pastures.
In years past, Oregon farmers planted up to 190,000 acres in annual ryegrass alone. Industry officials don’t expect a return to those levels, as some grass seed fields have been replaced by permanent crops such as hazelnuts and blueberries.
Grass seed production is worth an estimated $411 million annually, ranking fifth among Oregon crops in 2013, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture.
Sprague Pest Solutions Professionals
Earn National and Company Recognition
Tacoma, Wash. (March 12, 2015) – A quartet of Sprague Pest Solutions service professionals have earned recognition for their dedication and professional prowess in solving their clients’ pest management problems.
Technical Director Jeff Weier, National Accounts Manager Ray Mannello and Service Technician Jeremy Lesser were honored recently as Operations Manager, Salesman of the Year and Technician of the Year, respectively, at the Copesan annual meeting in St. Augustine, Florida. Copesan is a national pest management service provider that sells and service national commercial facilities.
Sprague also honored Adam Grendon, a service technician in the company’s Seattle, Wash., service center as Sprague Pest Solutions’ 2014 Technician of the Year recipient.
All four honorees bring extensive experience to their positions offer more than 60 years of combined pest management sales, service and technical know-how to bear on behalf of Sprague’s clients. Weier, one of the pest management industry’s foremost experts on stored product pest management, is no stranger to national recognition as he was named by Pest Control Technology magazine as a Crown Leadership Award winner in 2006.
“The recognition of Jeff Weier, Ray Mannello, Jeremy Lesser and Adam Grendon speaks volumes to the commitment each has to their profession, their clients and to the respect they have earned from their peers both inside Sprague and across the country,” says Alfie Treleven, CEO and president of Sprague Pest Solutions. “We are fortunate to have such talented, dedicated individuals on our team.”
Sprague Pest Solutions provides vital pest management and consulting services to leading food service and processing, healthcare, hospitality, education, agriculture, education and multi-family housing facilities in the Pacific Northwest and Inter-Mountain regions. It operates service centers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Colorado.
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About Sprague Pest Solutions Founded in 1926, Sprague Pest Solutions (www.spraguepest.com) is a fourth-generation, family-owned company. It is the 29th largest pest management company in the United States on the 2014 Pest Control Technology magazine Top 100 List, an annual compilation of the leading pest management companies in the U.S. and Canada. It is Copesan partner (www.copesan.com) and specializes in providing preventive and remedial pest management services to clients in the highly regulated food processing and service industries.
Media Contacts: Carrie Thibodeaux Sprague Pest Solutions
253-405-2590 / carriet@spraguepest.com
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If you’re looking for an internship where you can apply what you’ve learned in the classroom and gain hands-on, relevant experience, consider CHS.
Choosing an internship with CHS gives you the opportunity to apply what you’ve learned while doing work that makes an immediate impact.
Each year more than 250 students join CHS in a variety of internships ranging from in-the-field sales and agronomy internships to in-office marketing, accounting internships and more. Many of interns return for a second year and land a full-time career in our growing organization.
College juniors and seniors interested in summer internships with CHS Inc. should apply online at chsinc.com/careers by March 1.
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The Oregon Seed Association’s Scholarship Committee recently recognized eight young men and women as recipients of three distinct awards: five for the Oregon State University/Oregon Seed Association Scholarship, one for the American Seed Trade Association Scholarship Award and two for the William Kent Wiley, Jr. Memorial Fellowship Award.
Tanner Holland, Chase Cochran and Andrew Altishin, three Corvallis residents, were among the recipients selected for these scholarships.
Holland, a freshman at Linn-Benton Community College and Oregon State University majoring in agricultural sciences, received the Oregon State University/Oregon Seed Association Scholarship Award for $1,000. He became interested in agriculture at Crescent Valley High School. Last spring, he decided to dual-enroll in the LBCC/OSU program, where he made the dean’s list his first term. He is most interested in agronomy and plans to pursue a career as a field representative.
Cochran, a junior at OSU, received the American Seed Trade Association Scholarship Award for $1,000. Recently he had the opportunity to intern as a field scout with responsibilities that included soil sampling, moisture tests and disease identification in many crops. This experience confirmed his goal of becoming a field representative for an agricultural company in the Pacific Northwest providing chemicals and fertilizer recommendations to growers, or working as a field representative for a seed production company.
Altishin, an instructor/seed certification specialist for the OSU seed certification service, received the William Kent Wiley Jr. Memorial Fellowship Award for $3,000. He would like to become a full-time service agent in Oregon upon graduation. He has been an assistant superintendent in the golf industry, and prior to that worked on a valley farm, producing grass seed along with some mint, wheat, field beans and corn.
Recipients were invited to receive their awards during OSA’s 2015 Mid-Winter Meeting, held Jan. 13 at the Salem Convention Center.
Read the original article on the Corvallis Gazette-Times here.
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U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., called for President Barack Obama to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act soon if longshore workers and West Coast port operators can’t reach a resolution on a new contract. (Michael Lloyd/The Oregonian)
Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader and representatives from Washington and California called on President Barack Obama on Thursday to invoke the federal Taft-Hartley Act to resolve congestion at West Coast ports.
“Well, this is clearly the greatest threat our nation faces, except for the stuff that’s going on overseas,” Schrader, D-Oregon, said.
The Taft-Hartley Act would allow President Obama to intervene in the contract negotiation between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association, a coalition of 29 West Coast operators including ICTSI Oregon. Schrader and Southwest Washington Rep. Jaime Herrera-Beutler, a Republican, stressed that the recent withdrawal of Hanjin Shipping Co. from the Port of Portland show that port congestion has reached a breaking point.
“It is time for the Pacific Maritime Association and the ILWU to recognize that the consequences of their actions reverberate far beyond their own personal concerns,” Schrader said. “They need to immediately conclude their negotiations before they do any further harm to the economy.”
More than 40 percent of Oregon’s agriculture products are exported either overseas or across the country. As work at the West Coast ports slowed, farmers started eating the cost of produce and other products not making ships on time.
Earlier Thursday, 350 Oregon agriculture companies sent a letter to Schrader and the rest of Oregon’s federal delegation to push for a conclusion to the negotiations.
“In January alone, Oregon cherry growers lost over $250,000 of export sales directly related to port disruption; if not resolved, it will lead to a sales loss of $5 million in 2015,” Schrader said.
Herrera-Beutler’s district encompasses Southwest Washington’s portion of the Columbia River canal. It also includes Weyerhauser’s Longview facility, where 180 lumber workers were recently laid off. The Oregonian/OregonLive reported in January that the timber company’s officials said the slow West Coast ports were the culprit.
“That might not sound like much in a metropolitan area, but in a small town that’s been struggling to make it economically, it’s everything,” she said.
In labor disputes involving unions, there is not much legislators can do at a state or Congressional level. The Taft-Hartley Act is usually used as a last-ditch effort when the U.S. economy is lagging because of the strife.
Taft-Hartley was a Republican-led response to New Deal legislation that conferred a range of bargaining rights to unions. Taft-Hartley added provisions that tipped the scale back in the direction of employers, adding right-to-work provisions and permitting employers to oppose the unionization of a workplace.
The act gave the president the right to intervene in labor disputes that threatened the national interest, requiring employers and employees to reach agreement within 80 days.
The act was passed in 1947 over the veto of President Harry Truman. Presidents have invoked the emergency injunction 35 times, but only three times in the last 35 years. Before President Bush in 2002, President Carter used it in in 1978 in an unsuccessful attempt to end a strike by coal miners and President Reagan used it in 1981 to break the air traffic controllers union.
In 2002, the lockout of longshore workers by West Coast port operators caused congestion that damaged manufacturers, retailers, growers and others who rely on exports and imports. Bush declared operation of West Coast ports was “vital to our economy and to our military,” leading a federal judge to issue an injunction that reopened ports. News reports at the time estimated the 11-day shutdown had cost the economy more than $10 billion.
It ended when President George W. Bush invoked the 1947 Taft-Hartley to order up to an 80-day cooling off period, which led to a settlement shaped by federal mediators. Some expect a replay of those events this year.
Unions still resent Bush’s actions, referring widely to his invocation of the “anti-union Taft-Hartley Act.”
In this case, politicians are saying that the stalled ports are also vital for outside economies.
Amata Coleman Radewagen, the Republican non-voting Congressional delegate from American Samoa, said that her tiny country is dependent on shipped exports because there is no trucking or rail.
“There’s only one lifeline and it is sea shipping,” she said. “Our shelves are bare, our people are getting hungry and the price of goods has skyrocketed.”
Port of Portland Executive Director Bill Wyatt said Wednesday that he expects a lockout in the next few days if the ILWU doesn’t accept the Pacific Maritime Association’s most recent offer, laid out earlier this month.
Rep. Janice Hahn, D-California, said the suspension of work is as unproductive as some allege the union’s actions of slowing down or stopping work. Hahn’s district includes many longshoremen who work at the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports — the biggest on the West Coast.
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Oregon food and forestry products are shipped all over the world to sustain the agriculture industry. Hundreds of Oregon agriculture companies signed a letter asking for federal intervention in the longshore worker dispute with West Coast port operators. (Molly Harbarger/The Oregonian)
Oregon agriculture companies want the state’s Congressional delegation to push port operators and the longshore workers union to reach an agreement on a new contract.
The Agriculture Transportation Coalition, a lobbying group based in Washington, D.C., sent a letter Thursday to the Oregon’s federal legislators asking them to be more vocal to the port operators association and the longshore union about the harm they are causing and to press President Barack Obama to intervene.
The letter comes two days after the Port of Portland’s container terminal lost nearly 80 percent of its business when Hanjin Shipping Co. withdrew its service. The container terminal handles most of the agricultural products moving between Portland and Oregon’s biggest trade partners in Asia. Hanjin was the only shipping line that traveled to China, Korea and other large Asian consumers of Oregon-grown food.
Port of Portland Executive Director Bill Wyatt said Wednesday that Hanjin likely won’t be replaced for at least two years.
“It is important that you recognize that there is nothing that we produce in Oregon in agriculture and forest products that cannot be sourced from somewhere else,” the letter said. “We can grow and process the best in the world, but if we cannot deliver our Oregon products affordably and dependably, the foreign customers will go somewhere else and may never return.”
Agricultural products — fresh vegetables, hazelnuts, frozen french fries — are a huge part of Oregon’s export economy. As a group, agricultural products come second only to computer and electronics. Wood products also rank in the top 10.
A Hanjin Copenhagen ship sat in port four days waiting to be unloaded, while another Hanjin ship steamed up the Columbia River. Portland is an inland port, which makes it more expensive than Seattle or Long Beach, California, to access. However, it served as a vital link for shipping companies and farmers in Oregon, southern and eastern Washington and western Idaho.
State officials worry that now farmers and other small and medium-sized companies that depend on trade with Asia will spend money on trucking and air freight that could have been used to hire more people, invest in land or machinery or expand their businesses.
“This creates tremendous new burdens on all Oregon agriculture and forest products explorers who must now transport all the way up to Puget Sound ports, at considerable cost and delay,” said the letter that included dozens of family farms, insurance companies, manufacturers and industry groups as signatories.
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Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber will suggest legislation to create a framework that will allow conventional and GMO crops to coexist. The devil will be in the details.
Aides to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber say he will propose legislation later this month to facilitate the coexistence of conventional, organic and genetically modified crops within the state.
It’s a promising announcement, but unfortunately short on details.
Producers of Oregon’s high-value specialty seed crops and organic producers have legitimate concerns about the potential for cross-pollination with GMO crops. Farmers who grow, or who may in the future want to grow, GMO crops must be allowed to produce crops approved by the federal government.
They are not mutually exclusive objectives.
During a special session late in 2013, the Oregon legislature pre-empted most local governments from restricting genetically modified crops at Kitzhaber’s urging. The bill was part of a legislative package that also included corporate tax increases and was known as the “grand bargain,” which the House and Senate leaderships worked out in advance with Kitzhaber.
The idea was to avoid a patchwork of county regulation, and to give the Oregon Department of Agriculture time to work out a reasonable scheme that addresses legitimate concerns of organic and conventional growers of high-value crops who fear contamination from genetically engineered pollen.
The governor then appointed a task force to frame the controversy over genetically modified organisms and inform lawmakers’ decisions on possible statewide legislation later.
The task force consisted of stakeholders representing all camps, who predictably found it difficult to agree on much except there needs to be more clarity in the role of the state in regulating production of genetically modified crops.
Clarity is in the eye of the beholder.
The state loses any power to restrict where genetically modified crops can be grown once they are deregulated by USDA.
Proponents of stronger regulation say the state could pass legislation giving the ODA the authority to establish restrictions on where and how GMO crops could be grown. They point to a mapping system used by seed growers in the Willamette Valley.
They would also like a mechanism for compensating farmers if their crops are cross-pollinated.
Supporters of GMO crops favor a more voluntary approach. They say neighbors should be able to work out the particulars among themselves with minimal regulation.
We prefer as soft a touch as possible. But once the Legislature is involved, we’re past the point where neighbors can reach accommodations. The issue has become too polarizing.
We still have hope that common sense can prevail to the benefit of all in agriculture. Farmers who grow conventional or organic crops can be protected without denying others the choice of growing genetically modified crops already approved, or capitalizing on the opportunities that lie in the next advancement.
https://oregonseed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/osa-logo.png00Adminhttps://oregonseed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/osa-logo.pngAdmin2015-01-23 10:51:172015-01-23 10:51:17Coexistence possible for all crops
The issue of seed testing uniformity is a complex and convoluted problem with many players and facets involved. There’s thousands of seed species, nearly a hundred labs, multiple testing methods, governance and compliance.
After having been in the seed testing industry for 34 years, I’ve seen just about everything. While I applaud the Association of Official Seed Analysts, the Society of Commercial Seed Technologists and the American Seed Trade Association for under-taking this issue, I caution that it’s not just about the diversity of seed species and testing methods.
From my perspective, the bigger issue is whose “truth” does a labeler use? But in reality, it doesn’t matter if a labeler chooses to use test results from Lab A versus Lab C because it’s the regulatory lab’s test results that are the “truth.” Right or wrong, perhaps more examples of wrong than right, the regulatory lab has the last say, and the company that printed the label either has to over label with that “truth” or remove the seed for sale, in addition to paying a fine.
“The bigger issue is whose ‘truth’ does a labeler use?”
— Sharon DavidsonTesting Within Tolerance
Testing Within Tolerance
A recent example is a label developed from a blend sheet. Regulatory picked up a box to test and found that the percent annual ryegrass was out of tolerance, which led to the issuance of a stop sale. This same sample was sent to the federal laboratory in North Carolina and a private lab only to find that the federal laboratory, the private laboratory and the seed tag were well within tolerance. It was the regulatory lab that was out of tolerance.
When questioned, the regulatory lab reported that it followed the method in the AOSA Rules for Testing Seeds handbook, however the technician only tested 200 seeds instead of 400. This leads me to wonder what other short cuts are taken? Is there a dark room for fluorescence testing? How old is the blue black light used? Is the media Whatmans No. 1 filter paper? But all of these questions are irrelevant because the regulatory lab is always right.
Again, whose “truth” should be used for labeling because by the time all this was discovered, the seed was mislabeled to meet the stop sale demand and sold out.
The concept of achieving uniformity among seed testing laboratories is admirable but I believe a critical piece of the puzzle all comes back to dollars — funding for state mandated regulatory labs. In my conversations with folks from state mandated regulatory labs, I hear “we can’t do that; we don’t have funding, space or personnel.” While they might not have the funding, space or personnel, their reports are used to issue a stop sale. And that is a lot of money and in some cases results in the loss of a sales window.
I agree that there needs to be some kind of a “fix” to the whole system. There needs to be a way to remove regulatory authority from labs that are constantly out of tolerance. There needs to be a mechanism by which all labs are held accountable for their laboratory results. Besides those labs accredited by the International Seed Testing Association, there is currently not a mechanism in place. There needs to be a way to tease out the true quality of a lot when a discrepancy occurs instead of stop sale, re-label and fining a company.
What about sampling? Several organizations have sampling protocols, all of which include a trier that reaches at least the middle of the container, yet time and again, photographic proof that 6-inch thief triers are still being used. A test result is only as good as the sample provided.
What about the companies that purposefully shop tests? They know which labs do not find noxious weeds, always get higher purities and the highest germination. There are “go to” labs when the risk of a fine is less than the profit margin they stand to gain. Buy on one lab test, sell on another test is common practice in commerce.
There are a lot of pieces to this multi-dimensional puzzle, and uniformity is just one piece of one dimension.
