Nik Wiman, an entomologist with extensive experience in integrated pest management, is Oregon State University’s new orchard crops extension specialist, a position designed to focus on hazelnuts.

Wiman, 38, started in his new position Sept. 16. He is based out of the North Willamette Valley Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Ore.

Wiman replaces Jeff Olsen as the lead hazelnut extension specialist in Oregon. Olsen served the hazelnut industry for nearly 30 years as a Yamhill County Extension agent before he died unexpectedly in January of 2014.

Wiman, however, will have more research responsibility than did Olsen, according to Mike Bondi, regional administrator of the Clackamas County Extension Office and director of the North Willamette Valley Research and Extension Center.

“Nik has more of a research expertise background (than Olsen did) and will be able to fill a role that more fully integrates the applied research as well as the extension and outreach piece,” Bondi said. “And because he has worked in the research realm as much as he has, we believe he will be in good position to bring in significant grant-contract funding, which will allow him to expand or to grow his program with faculty research assistance and or other program assistance.

“We ultimately decided, in conjunction with the hazelnut industry, to realign the position and relocate it at North Willamette, so the person would have more of a research community to work with and the facility to do the research,” Bondi said.

The college conducted a national search to fill the position, Bondi said, reviewing what he characterized as a small but relatively strong pool of candidates.

“We really felt that Nik was by far the strongest candidate,” Bondi said. “And we are very, very fortunate to get someone who has been working some with hazelnuts, because, obviously, it is hard to find people with a background with that crop.”

Bondi said Wiman is expected to invest about 80 percent of his time on hazelnuts, with the remaining 20 percent focused on tree fruits and other orchard nut crops.

Wiman holds a doctorate in entomology from Washington State University, where he worked extensively in tree fruits, and holds a master’s and a bachelor’s degree from Montana State University.

Wiman, who spent the past three years working as a post doctorate in Oregon’s brown marmorated stink bug project, said he already has started working with hazelnut growers to identify and prioritize research projects.

“I plan to be involved in issues like irrigation, weed management and cover crops. There are so many different interesting experiments to be done,” Wiman said.

“But the biggest thing I think is needed is effective communication to growers, particularly new growers coming on. There is really good information out there that OSU has put together. And also the hazelnut commission has good information, but there is not a one-stop place people can go and find out everything they need to know,” he said.

“I’m real excited,” he said. “You couldn’t pick a more exciting industry.”

Funding for the position was allocated in 2014, Bondi said, and is not part of the $14 million in additional funds lawmakers provided OSU’s statewide public services in the 2015 Oregon Legislature.

BOARDMAN, Ore.— The Oregon Department of Agriculture plans to create about 26 new positions with an increase in funding from lawmakers.

The agency fared well during the 2015 legislative session, with total funds growing to nearly $106 million over the next two years. That’s up from $97 million during the previous biennium, ODA Director Katy Coba said.

ODA will hire five new regulatory laboratory employees and upgrade its testing equipment, which is long overdue, she said at the Sept. 23 meeting of the Oregon Board of Agriculture in Boardman.

Three new people will also be hired to implement the agricultural water quality program, Coba said. Under that program, the agency uses aerial photography to identify problems in selected watersheds known as strategic implementation areas.

Landowners are encouraged to seek help from local soil and water conservation districts to correct problems on their properties, but ODA does have enforcement authority to issue fines.

Seven new strategic implementation areas were established this year, and ODA will identify six more next year, Coba said.

Concerns about pesticides led the legislature to devote more than $1.7 million in additional money to the agency’s pesticide program.

Those funds will be dedicated to four new pesticide investigators, a customer service representative and a case reviewer, she said.

As the federal government rolls out its new food safety rules, ODA will fund three full-time natural resource specialists.

To fully implement the Food Safety Modernization Act, which was signed into law in 2011, Congress will need to appropriate substantially more money to help states with outreach to farmers, Coba said.

It’s currently unclear what role ODA employees will play in on-farm inspections of produce operations, she said.

It’s possible the agency may focus on education and leave enforcement to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, she said.

With recreational marijuana now legal in Oregon, the agency will also hire a marijuana policy analyst, Coba said.

While the Oregon Liquor Control Commission has primary jurisdiction over recreational marijuana, ODA will likely be involved in the regulation of pesticides and edible products, she said.

Currently, no pesticides are registered for marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law, she said.

However, some pesticides have such general labels that they likely could be used on the psychoactive crop, Coba said.

The agency is considering developing a list of such products, she said.

The ODA is also facing an unusual situation with its regulation of industrial hemp, a related but non-psychoactive crop, Coba said.

Contrary to expectations, currently licensed growers are producing hemp for medicinal compounds rather than industrial products like fiber, she said.

“The things that have come at us are nothing we could have ever predicted,” Coba said of legalized marijuana and hemp.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Post Holdings plans to spend $90 million to buy an egg producer that serves the Northwest in a deal announced a few months after the cereal maker’s egg supply took a hit from a deadly bird flu outbreak.

St. Louis-based Post said Wednesday that Willamette Egg Farms LLC will be combined with its existing Michael Foods egg business after the deal is completed. The company expects that to happen early in its first fiscal quarter of 2016.

Willamette owns two egg production facilities in Oregon and Washington.

Post Holdings Inc. said in May that roughly 20 percent of its egg supply had been impacted by a deadly bird flu outbreak that hit the Midwest.

In June, Michael Foods sued an Iowa egg farm, accusing it of breaching its contract after bird flu disrupted the egg supply.

Michael Foods primarily supplies extended shelf-life liquid and precooked egg products and eggs used in food ingredients.

Shares of Post Holdings closed at $67.33 on Tuesday and have soared more than 60 percent so far this year.

IMBLER, Ore. — The spark from a cutting machine that ignited a blaze at Barenbrug USA’s seed-cleaning facility near Imbler earlier this year did more than damage the facility. It also served as the catalyst behind the purchase of the facility by Blue Mountain Seeds.

After the March 31 fire, Barenbrug decided to stop cleaning seed at the facility, creating an opportunity for Blue Mountain to expand.

“We needed room to expand,” said Bill Merrigan, manager of Blue Mountain Seeds. “We were right at capacity, both cleaning capacity and storage, and we were out of land to build on. We viewed this as a good opportunity.

“If growers choose to increase grass seed acres in Union County, we’ll have the facilities to handle it,” he said.

The purchase includes the plant’s 4-acre lot and 5 acres connecting an existing Blue Mountain seed-cleaning facility and the former Barenbrug plant.

The purchase also includes a slightly damaged seed-cleaning line, which Blue Mountain plans to refurbish and use for cleaning fine-leaf fescue and bluegrass seed. A second line was destroyed in the fire.

Blue Mountain has already begun storing seed in the west end of the Imbler facility, which was not damaged in the fire, Merrigan said. That section alone adds about 2.5 million pounds of seed storage capacity to Blue Mountain’s current capacity of 12 million pounds, he said.

Depending on how much of the facility Blue Mountain rebuilds, it could increase its storage capacity by another 2.5 million pounds, he said.

“We may not rebuild that facility the way it was,” Merrigan said. “We may put up a new building, or we may try and change the design of that building. That is something we are discussing right now.”

After the fire, Barenbrug USA decided to reinvest in a seed cleaning facility it operates in Boardman, Ore., rather than rebuild the Imbler plant, said company CEO and President James Schneider.

The Tangent, Ore.-based company has since added square footage to its Boardman plant and installed a third seed cleaning line, which is dedicated to cleaning bluegrass seed.

“Overall, it increases our capacity because it makes it more centralized,” Schneider said. “We will actually be able to clean more product.”

Adding to the incentive to sell the facility was its age, Schneider said. “It was an old facility, and because of our strategic plans, we felt it better to reinvest in our Boardman facility.”

He added: “We are thankful that good came out of such an unfortunate event. Blue Mountain Seeds has always been a great neighbor, and we can’t think of a better outcome than for the sale to allow both our companies to continue to invest in future growth.”

Barenbrug plans to continue contracting with growers to produce seed in the Grande Ronde Valley, Schneider said.

“We’re not abandoning the Grande Ronde Valley,” he said. “We still have a field man based there and we are contracting directly with growers there. But we are now cleaning that seed in Boardman.”

Among its plans for the facility, Blue Mountain is considering redesigning the plant’s seed storage facility with modern specs, improving the company’s capacity to handle modern seed production.

“Most of our warehouses were designed in the ’60s and ’70s,” Merrigan said. “They were set up for small trucks, smaller combines and smaller fields. And back then, harvest used to last a month.

“Today it is big combines and big trucks and harvest lasts about two weeks, and these warehouses aren’t designed for that,” he said. “We have small bins and a lot of labor involved in filling those bins.”

The sale leaves Blue Mountain Seeds as the only commercial grass seed cleaner operating in the Grande Ronde Valley.

AURORA, Ore. — In considering the ideal vegetable, a farmer will often desire different attributes than a chef.

Yields and disease resistance are generally top of mind for the farmer, while the chef may focus on flavor and appearance.

The Culinary Breeding Network, managed by Oregon State University, aims to help plant breeders bridge this divide by getting farmers and chefs to communicate what they’re looking for in a vegetable.

“There’s a lot of power in bringing these people into the same room together,” said Lane Selman, an OSU agricultural researcher who helped start the network.

The network organizes events such as the upcoming vegetable variety showcase, scheduled for Sept. 28 in Portland, where the participants from various sectors of the food industry can compare notes on new cultivars.

“A lot of it is focused on flavor and culinary applications,” said Timothy Wastell, a chef who consults for the network.

The network was spawned in 2009, after breeder Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed released open-pollinated new pepper varieties to replace a popular hybrid cultivar that was discontinued.

Seed companies frequently drop hybrid vegetable varieties if they don’t generate enough sales, even if the cultivars are important to some growers, said Selman.

Open pollination allows farmers to save seed, as they’re not dependent on the two parent cultivars used to produce hybrids.

When Morton developed several new pepper varieties, chefs tended to prefer those without a sunken stem, as it eases cutting in a busy kitchen environment.

“These are things plant breeders don’t necessarily think about,” said Wastell.

The episode convinced breeders and OSU that chefs and retailers should be involved in the variety development in an organized manner.

“We started realizing, ‘Wow, this is something missing,’” Selman said. “We know what farmers want, but we don’t know what end users want.”

Breeders often focus on developing cultivars that are “true to type” — that fit the vegetables traditional characteristics — but these traits may not necessarily be important to buyers, she said.

By getting input from chefs and other end users, the breeders can incorporate information that wouldn’t otherwise be on their radar, Selman said.

Flavor and other attributes that are important to chefs don’t conflict with agronomic qualities because the Culinary Breeding Network doesn’t showcase varieties that would be unappealing to growers, she said. “I don’t bring the dogs in.”

Oregon State University is involved in other cooperative programs with seed producers.

The university is paid by several seed companies to grow out vegetable varieties at its North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Ore.

The plots serve as a “learning farm” for new growers while providing breeders with information about how the cultivars perform at that location, said Nick Andrews, small farms extension agent at OSU.

Unlike a farmer, OSU doesn’t harvest the vegetables, which allows seed companies to see how well plants hold up in the field past maturity, he said.

Seed companies can also bring their customers to the location to demonstrate new varieties, Andrews said. “It’s a public location.”

 

June 1, 1929 – Sept. 13, 2015

June 1, 1929 – Sept. 13, 2015

2015 Prefontaine Memorial Run

2015 Prefontaine Memorial Run

0-9 Female: 1. Analise Miller, Bandon, Ore., 58:33; 2. Millee Brick, Coos Bay, Ore., 1:31:41.

0-9 Female: 1. Analise Miller, Bandon, Ore., 58:33; 2. Millee Brick, Coos Bay, Ore., 1:31:41.

Marty Myers, the general manager of a diversified dairy and crop farm in Boardman, Ore., has been appointed to the Oregon Board of Agriculture.

The company he operates, Threemile Canyon Farms, has about 50,000 cows and also raises potatoes and organic produce on more than 90,000 acres in the Columbia River Basin.

“I’ve got a diverse background in agriculture,” said Myers, noting that he worked on farms through high school and college.

Myers said Oregon Gov. Kate Brown asked him to join the advisory board, which makes policy recommendations for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, due to his past experience with task forces on dairy air quality and biotechnology, as well as his involvement in international trade programs.

“I try to find solutions rather than take hard line positions,” he said.

The appointment is not without controversy, however.

Friends of Family Farmers, a group that advocates for environmentally responsible agriculture, criticized Brown’s choice as misguidedly bending to corporate farming.

“For us, it shows the governor wants to take agriculture in the direction of industrialization,” said Ivan Maluski, the group’s policy director.

Maluski said Threemile Canyon Farms isn’t representative of sustainable farming in Oregon because it’s a “mega-operator” that causes air pollution and generates large amounts of manure.

It’s also concerning that Myers will be able to guide ODA policies that affect his company, which could create a conflict of interest, said Maluski. “They don’t need special access.”

Myers said it was offensive to label his operation as a “factory farm,” as it’s run by two families.

“It’s a group of families that have come together and we’re farming,” he said.

The dairy has a digester that captures methane from manure and turns it into renewable energy, Myers said. “When you look at air quality, we’re very proud of what we do.”

The company employs 300 full-time employees and is regularly subject to customer audits to ensure animal welfare and other best practices, he said. “Large does not mean it’s bad. It gives the critical mass to do things the right way.”

BEND, Ore. (AP) — The power company PacifiCorp is asking Oregon to change green power rules so as to reduce contract lengths and lower the amount of renewable power it is required to accept.

The Bulletin in Bend reports that the company has asked the Oregon Public Utility Commission to lower contract terms for qualified renewable power generators from 15 years to three. It has also requested to lower the limit on renewable power projects that the utility must connect to its system from 10 megawatts to 100 kilowatts.

Critics of the request say it will stifle growth of renewable energy sources by making them difficult to finance.

PacifiCorp officials argue that the fixed-price, long-term contracts don’t work with the short-term nature of the energy market.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service is planning to cut down trees that are encroaching on meadowland at Marys Peak.

The Statesman Journal reports timber company Georgia Pacific is paying over $175,000 to harvest about 3,000 trees Tuesday in the popular recreation area east of Corvallis.

Retired Siuslaw National Forest ecologist Cindy McCain is a member of the Corvallis-based Marys Peak Alliance who says noble fir reduce meadowland by about a half meter each year. The tree growth has fractured what was a single meadow in 1948, impacting habitat and views.

Five years of studying the issue led the federal agency to collaborate with the Marys Peak Alliance to remove the trees.

Work will cause periodic closures of camps, trails and roads.

LANGLOIS — Around the country, old schools are closing as student populations decline or new structures are built. In many cases, the buildings could still be useful, but instead sit vacant until the elements take their toll.

Not every member of the military served directly, or even indirectly, in Vietnam. Some, like Mark Beecher, were hundreds of feet beneath the waves, defending the United States from other enemies.

Not every member of the military served directly, or even indirectly, in Vietnam. Some, like Mark Beecher, were hundreds of feet beneath the waves, defending the United States from other enemies.

LANGLOIS — Around the country, old schools are closing as student populations decline or new structures are built. In many cases, the buildings could still be useful, but instead sit vacant un…

SATURDAY, SEPT. 19