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It has been a roller coaster ride for grass seed growers the last couple of years, as low yields triggered by drought and increased input costs have combined with dramatic shifts in demand to create significant swings in prices paid for seed, according to a market report at the 2022 Oregon Seed League Annual Meeting.
The yo-yo-like effects in the seed market started back in 2020 when COVID lockdowns drove consumers into garden centers and started an increase in seed sales that extended through the spring of 2021.
“There were reports of as many as 15 million new garden consumers, if you look at Lowes, The Home Depot, Ace Hardware,” said former Pennington Seed executive Mike Baker, now with NORAM Seed Consultants. “There were just a lot of new participants in the garden center. They needed something to do, because they weren’t going very far from home.”
The increases in demand combined with a drought that decimated seed yields in 2021 that sent prices skyward, Baker said.
“Prices soared to historic highs, as supplies restricted the flow of seed into the market,” Baker said.
Then companies began to hold seed back for fear they wouldn’t be able to meet demand, Baker said. “So, in the fall of 2021, sales started to contract,” he said. “People were saying, ‘these prices are way up,’ and things slowed just a little.
“But, fortunately for Oregon agriculture, farm income was higher due to this combination of strong demand and very high price,” he said.
The market then turned on a dime in the spring of 2022 when cold, wet weather in seed consumption areas halted demand.
“Most of the seed production areas and seed consumption areas experienced one of the coldest, wettest springs of the past 40 years,” Baker said. The effect was a dramatic slowdown in demand for turf and forage seed. “And it had a spillover effect into some of the cover crop business this past fall, because corn and soybean crops didn’t get off in time.
“The impact was that the spring of 2022 will go down as one of the worst cool-season grass and legume sales seasons since the Great Recession, and
maybe even worse,” Baker said. “That is because we just didn’t see much planting at all.
“Poor weather is likely a bigger impediment to usage than high unemployment or a deep recession,” he said. “In fact, we’ve usually seen that recessions, while they can impact us a bit, have a pretty good tail of usage of grass seed crops.”
Speaking at the Seed League Meeting in December, Mike Baker characterized the grass seed market as a roller coaster ride over the past two years.
Another effect was a carryover of high-priced seed in the supply chain, Baker said. “And that kept buying from May to November of this year at a very low level.”
The result was crop usage was down 31 percent below the previous two-year average, he said.
“I think on the good side, for the long term, is that removal of tall fescue production acres has been (continued on page 4)
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significant,” Baker said, “so supply can rebalance very quickly if demand this coming spring returns to normal levels. Because we can use a lot of seed if the weather allows it and people will go out and spend, as they seem to be continuing to do.”
A breakdown of the movement and prices paid for individual species mirrors the dramatic shifts in supply and demand that the industry has gone through of late. Tall fescue movement, for example, increased from 236 million pounds in 2018 to 323 million pounds in 2020, before dropping back down to 221 million pounds in 2021.
“Now, 221 million pounds is not an awful sales number,” Baker said. “But in comparison, it was a real shock. And, of course, we really didn’t have enough seed to have a great year because of the poor yield in 2021.”
Prices for tall fescue, meanwhile, fluctuated from 78 cents a pound in 2020 to $1.31 a pound in 2021, according to assessment reports.
Baker added that sales currently are slow, possibly due to the poor movement last spring.
“It was that hangover of seed from the really poor spring that brought us to this point,” Baker said. “It is why weather is so important this spring. We don’t want to see another devastatingly cold, wet spring across the country.”
In perennial ryegrass, the supply of high-quality seed coming out of Oregon and Minnesota is in good balance, Baker said. He added that quality standards for perennial ryegrass have changed significantly in recent years.
“When I got into this business, nobody said zerozero,” he said. “In fact, ten years ago, it was rare. Now it has become a standard term that a lot of buyers use (meaning zero percent crop and zero percent weed in the lot being purchased). So, if you are going to grow perennial ryegrass, you now know what you are shooting for if you want to capture high prices.”
Another significant issue surrounding perennial ryegrass is that Europe has dramatically scaled up
its production in recent years, going from a yearly average of 156,000 acres over the span of 2012-2017, to 240,392 acres in 2021, the last year for complete records.
“Crop year 2022 (in Europe) is probably similar, maybe down a little,” Baker said. “And the European values for perennial ryegrass are significantly lower. You can buy delivered East Coast perennial ryegrass, which is good quality. It is certainly not zero-zero, but it is as much as 40 to 50 percent lower in value than would be zero-zero seed.”
Baker said to expect that exports to Europe or anywhere outside of the U.S. to be minimal in the near future, unless a company has a captured market either through quality or brand.
“If you have something that people want, you are likely to get a good price for it if that market is accepting your brand or your quality and they need that quality,” he said. “But it won’t be a huge amount, because Europe is producing so much perennial ryegrass right now, they need to stay as motivated sellers.”
Annual ryegrass, while generating steady usage, is perhaps the most volatile among the seed species produced in Oregon when it comes to price, Baker said.
“Just to show you, from 2017 to 2021, the yearover-year average price roughly went up 27 percent, up another 17 percent, then down 34 percent in 2020 and up 63 percent in 2021.
“The volatility is likely due to short-term pressure, including things like space, cash flow, expectations on what the market will do and weather has a big impact, as well,” Baker said.
He added that current prices are well below the cost of production. “But buying volume remains below selling pressure and that is keeping prices low.”
Demand from China, which appears to be slowly increasing, could help considerably, he said.
Fine fescue saw strong usage in the 2018-2021 crop years, with the usage averaging 28.2 million pounds a year in that four-year stretch, up 33.7 percent over the previous four-year average of 21.1 million pounds. “So, that is really good for fine fescue,” Baker said.
Also, 2021 saw the highest average price paid for the species, he said.
“They also had a 110-degree day in northern Alberta and British Columbia, where they produce Canadian creeper,” Baker said. “And so, the price moved up to about three dollars a pound because they were oversold.”
Baker added that spring usage of fine fescue will be important as quarter one sales were slow. “It is the first time, I think, where we ever saw less than one million pounds of chewings and creeper go into the market in any period in recent history,” he said.
Overall, Baker said, grass seed movement has been slow and could be for several more months. To illustrate, he noted that when he got into the business in 1980 and through the 1990s, “there were buyers any day and there were buyers of significant amounts any day. And there were sellers almost any day.
“And that began to change in the early 2000s and we are now to a point where we went from there was always a buyer to where did the buyers go,” he said. “I heard from two different people recently that they haven’t had a call in six months.”
Baker noted that a reduction in open market products and an increase in proprietary products in the industry contributes to that issue. Still, he said, there is an impact to the market if seed is not moving, both for seed companies and farmers.
“That can really impact the cash flow that both farmers have if it is not moving and seed companies have if it is not moving and they have to pay for it and it is sitting in their warehouse,” Baker said.
To close, Baker said he often hears people say they need to be aware of
the cost of production. “When I hear that, I think, ‘No. You have to know what your change in cost is, because that very likely is going to continue to change.’ And so, the question is, what is that change and can you keep a handle on it.” F
Imagine, if you would, a grass seed variety that you didn’t have to spray for rust. Then imagine that resistance holding up for decades.
According to preliminary findings of a multi-year research project at the USDA Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit in Corvallis, the prospects of that occurring aren’t all that remote.
Preliminary findings from a multi-year research project indicate that if a stem rust resistant variety can be developed, the resistance could hold up to current strains of rust, according to USDA Agricultural Research Service Unit Leader Ryan Hayes and ARS research plant pathologist Hannah Rivedal.
Jumping off from research previously performed by retired ARS plant pathologist Bill Pfender, the two ARS scientists are looking into the durability of stem rust resistance as a precursor to spending time, energy and funds into developing perennial ryegrass and tall fescue germplasm resistant to stem rust.
“Bill had done work in host resistance in perennial ryegrass and had done some genetics. He identified sources of resistance and had some breeding lines,” Hayes said. “We wanted to advance that work, but before we did that, we wanted to know about the durability of that resistance.”
By durability, Hayes is referring to the ability of the resistant varieties to hold the resistance over many growing seasons, even decades.
“We wanted to answer the question that if we were to put out the germplasm, would it always be resistant or would there be new strains of rust that would come along to beat the resistance,” Hayes said. “And that is important to me because the work in developing resistant cultivars is expensive and time consuming.”
One approach the researchers are taking to answer the question is to learn as much as they can about the versatility of the fungus that causes stem rust.
Pfender had done some preliminary work to try and answer that question, Hayes said, and had some evidence that stem rust on the landscape had different strains or some diversity. Pfender also found that strains that infected perennial ryegrass plants behaved differently from strains that infected tall fescue.
Those findings triggered sufficient concern to investigate the durability further.
Other literature from work in stem rust in cereal crops shows that the stem rust pathogen that has adapted to cereal crops is using Oregon grape to create sexual recombination, which expands the diversity of the pathogen. “So that is an area of concern that we are interested in studying as well,” Hayes said.
Hayes and a technician, Vicky Hollenbeck, today are developing a set of genetic markers to help the scientists understand how different collections of stem rust found in the landscape are related to each other and to see if there is recombination between the markers. Preliminary data from 80 to 100 different isolates from the Willamette Valley is promising in that it shows that sexual recombination is not occurring.
“So that means that what we see on the landscape propagates itself plant to plant, year to year through this clonal, or asexual, reproduction,” he said.
“The other thing that we found is that the collections from perennial ryegrass seem to be specialized for infection of perennial ryegrass, and what comes from tall fescue seems to be specialized for infection and spread on tall fescue,” Hayes said.
Ryan Hayes“One experiment, in particular, we had tall fescue and perennial ryegrass and even some fine fescue plots that were interplanted and we collected from across that experiment and then used the markers to see how the different isolates are related to each other. What we found is what comes from perennial ryegrass always clumped together as related to each other,” he said.
Those perennial ryegrass isolates had every opportunity to infect the tall fescue and the fine fescue and spread, but they didn’t.”
Ryan Hayes
“Those perennial ryegrass isolates had every opportunity to infect the tall fescue and the fine fescue and spread, but they didn’t,” Hayes said.
“So, our results are showing that the strains from the different grass species are pretty different from each other,” he said. “Additionally, the strains we find within a grass species aren’t identical, but they are similar. And at this point, there is no strong evidence that if we would release something with resistance, that it would be quickly defeated.”
Hayes and Rivedal said one key piece of evidence that the stem rust fungus is not that diverse comes from the fact that growers have used the same fungicides on the disease for years and years and the products still work.
“How long have folks been using Tilt?” Hayes asked. “Decades. And it still appears to be providing good control. There is no evidence that fungicides are breaking down.”
At this point, both Hayes and Rivedal appear fairly certain that resistance to stem rust in a grass plant would hold up. “I think we need to do more sampling to confirm what we found,” Hayes said, “but overall, for growers, I think this is good news.”
“It is a relief,” Rivedal said. “It is not like we are running toward a Septoria situation in stem rust in grasses for seed,” she said, referring to the fact that Septoria disease in wheat developed resistance to strobilurin fungicides in a matter of a few years. “But I think it is a time to stay vigilant and expand some of this research into the fungus so we have a better understanding as we move those breeding programs forward.”
Ultimately, Hayes said he hopes to release grass seed germplasm for public use that confers resistance to stem rust. “That way breeders and private companies could pick out what they want and run with it without having to test for stem rust resistance,” he said.
Asked how long before that occurs, Hayes said he couldn’t say but that he hopes to have something within the next five years.
“Developing host resistance is one of the pillars of plant pathology,” Rivedal said. “We are going towards trying to get resistant host plants if we can. It is one of our best tools in our tool belt for sustainable disease control. But it takes a lot of time. And being really regimented in looking into the durability of that resistance is incredibly critical.
“It takes a while,” she added, “but you want to be sure and you want to have someone as thorough as Ryan working on it, making sure he trusts it and feels good about it because he’s done all the work he can.”
“And it is a signal to private seed companies, as well,” Hayes said, “that this is an area to go after. That they shouldn’t worry about having to make an investment in a new variety that just gets defeated later on.” F
Hannah RivedalAlittle over two-and-a-half years ago, Jennifer Duringer, director of the Oregon State University Endophyte Service Laboratory, took over a lab that was facing a backlog of tests and had inefficiencies built into its operating system.
Those days are rapidly fading in the rearview mirror.
The lab today is turning over test results in six to ten days, as good or better than at any time in the past, and commercial clients can now view results online via a newly implemented website, an upgrade from when only hay results were posted online. Also, noncommercial clients are able to submit samples through an online form and several inefficiencies in operating procedures have been addressed.
Part of the OSU Experiment Station system, the Endophyte Service Laboratory is a vital resource for Oregon straw companies who use the lab to ensure their product is safe for animal consumption. Ingested at high levels, the endophyte alkaloids, ergovaline and lolitrem B, which are found in straw from grass seed fields, can create health issues in livestock.
In addition to testing straw, the lab has seen an increase in test requests for feed pellets made from seed screenings that may contain ergot alkaloids. And the lab is getting more samples from Europe of late in response to the European Union’s recent adoption of ergot limits in food crops.
“It is mostly food crops destined for human consumption,” Duringer said of the new European regulations. “But there are some regulations for feed, mostly for things like rye and wheat where ergot tends to be detected more frequently.”
She added that the OSU Endophyte Service Lab, which tests feed material for endophyte as well as for ergot, is one of only a few labs in the world doing this type of testing.
The lab also continues to receive pasture samples from clients sleuthing as to why their livestock are getting sick. The testing can determine if endophyte alkaloids are contributing to the clinical signs seen in affected animals. Usually, these clients are working with veterinarians, she said, a client base she refers to as clinical or non-commercial.
“Depending on the year, maybe ten to fifteen percent of our clients are clinical,” she said.
The lab also tests for endophyte in seed, she said. “It could be just someone wanting to check it out for their own seed stock for a new pasture,” she said. “It is not directly indicative of what is going to actually come out in the plant, but it is a good place to start.”
It is the hay samples, however, that make up the vast majority of the lab’s work. And it is the summer months when technicians are busiest. “We process around 3,500 samples a year, combining pellets and hay,” she said. “And about 2,800 are completed during the summer months.”
The summer also is when the lab bulks up its staff, when as many as 15 students can be working different shifts in the lab at any one time.
The testing backlog at the lab that Duringer encountered in 2020 was caused in large part by a protracted transition from the former director, Morrie Craig, who ran the Endophyte Lab for more than 30 years, to Duringer. Then, shortly after Duringer started as director, a long-time lab technician moved on, forcing Duringer to bring on and train a new technician.
Typically, the lab has two full-time technicians, a director and, depending on the time of year, between three to 15 students helping out. Adding to issues, Duringer’s start coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID presented a whole new set of criteria to navigate around as a supervisor,” she said. “But we did it. I think we managed to do a pretty good job. Most of us were home for maybe two or three weeks, then we needed to get back in the lab as summer harvest was approaching. We figured it out. We were able to plan a safe return, which included having different shifts for students. We worked early morning and late at night. But we got it done. Our turn-around time was good.”
In addition to its testing, the lab has a research arm that today is looking at, among other projects, finding alternative methodologies for testing of ergot alkaloids. In particular, Duringer said she is looking into the possibility of using a plate-based assay that can speed testing.
In the plate-based assay, results can be available within a couple of hours, she said, whereas under the current process, it can take two days just for the extraction process. “And that is after the samples are already prepped, namely, they have already been ground, logged in, weighed out and are ready to go,” Duringer said.
The plate-based assay test has been validated for wheat and corn, she said. “I am trying to work with a company to see if we can do an experiment to validate it for hay.”
Duringer is also working with OSU Extension Entomology Specialist Navneet Kaur on analyzing endophyte strains in certain grasses that could be
grown in pastures or wildlife rehabilitation centers with minimal maintenance.
Duringer, who hails from Chicago, received bachelor’s degrees in Zoology and International Studies from OSU in 1998. She obtained a Ph.D. in 2003, after which she entered into a postdoctoral program at the Endophyte Service Lab, working primarily on the research side, covering toxic plant projects.
“I wasn’t part of the day-to-day operations,” she said. “I knew about the Endophyte Lab and how things
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went and were facilitated, but didn’t have a direct role in it.”
The Endophyte Service Lab, which is funded in part by fees and in part by Experiment Station dollars, provides sustainability to the research arm, she said. “With research, funding can go up and down, but having a service lab allows you to maintain some stability with staff.”
The lab also provides valuable experience to students, she said. “It is hard for students to have experiential opportunities while obtaining their degree that reflects what they might see in the real world after graduation. They can go into a lab and take a course and learn about the instruments. But to actually work with real samples and within a lab’s quality control system, work with a team, show up for a job on a
regular schedule and work different shifts, that is experience that can be hard to come by.”
As director of the lab, Duringer oversees both the day-to-day operations and the lab’s research.
Duringer officially started as director in February of 2020, more than two years after Morrie Craig, the former director, left. It was during that interim that samples backed up.
“I had to come in, assess where things were at, communicate with clients and give them a projected timeline to try to get things caught back up,” she said.
The backlog came at a cost to the straw industry, she said.
“I know it caused backups in exports, which exacerbated the issue at the ports,” she said. “Clients were waiting on our answers to figure out which client their product went to and to make decisions for feed managers on whether they dilute the hay, and, if so, at what rates.
We have migrated everybody online now. It is easier for us as we can pull that information much more quickly.”
Jennifer Duringer, OSU Endophyte Service Lab“It doesn’t help if you’ve got material sitting here in the Valley for an extra two months,” she said. “You need to make decisions.”
It was during the interim when she also started noticing inefficiencies in the lab’s operating systems.
“There were a lot of things that needed some polishing, upkeep and modernization,” she said. “That is mostly what I’ve been working on the last couple of years, refining our standard operating procedures.
“We have migrated everybody online now,” she said. “It is easier for us as we can pull that information much more quickly. There are far fewer phone calls where we have to call people, trying to double check what test people want.
“There is a lot of stuff like that where we have tried to improve the efficiency,” she said. “I feel like bit by bit, we have been chipping away at it and holding fast to our mission to deliver quantitative results on mycotoxins of concern for the grass seed and forage industries of Oregon.” F
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For Rose Kachadoorian, who retired October 1 as Pesticides Program manager for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, having an abundant supply of safe, affordable and nutritious food has long ranked high in importance.
“One of my grandmothers came here in the early 1900s very hungry and I never forgot the lesson of how important safe and affordable food is,” Kachadoorian said.
“I think that has to do with why I went into this field,” she said.
Kachadoorian, who spent 26 years with the ODA, including the last ten as Pesticides Program manager, forged a career around helping farmers produce food, fiber and forage in a safe and affordable manner. And for many in the Oregon seed industry, her work has been vital in ensuring that they had the tools necessary to produce high-quality crops.
“That was something I really enjoyed,” Kachadoorian said. “I liked working with farmers and making sure they had the tools they needed to grow healthy crops. And I like the fact that we in Oregon are growing crops for a lot of reasons, like soil stabilization, food security, seed and animal feed.”
Kachadoorian grew up in Michigan and obtained an undergrad degree from Michigan State University. She came to Oregon from Wisconsin, where she earned her master’s degree in entomology from the University of Wisconsin and worked with the university’s Extension service coordinating integrated pest management in turf, Christmas trees and cranberries.
Working in IPM both in Michigan and in Wisconsin resonated with her, Kachadoorian said, and she carried that interest into her work in Oregon and specifically into her work with the Oregon seed industry.
“One of the basic tenants of IPM is to start with clean, pest-free, high-quality seed,” Kachadoorian said.
“That way you’re not spreading weeds, you’re not spreading disease or insect pests to other states or other areas.”
Kachadoorian started with ODA as an investigator before moving into the pesticide registrations team, where she served as a technical specialist from 1998 to 2013.
Rose Kachadoorian addresses participants in a field day in 2006 on Glaser Farm near Tangent. The former Pesticides Program manager for the Oregon Department of Agriculture frequently spoke at conferences and field days.
During her time at ODA, Kachadoorian was active in several national organizations and became a nationally recognized expert of FIFRA Section 24(c) Special Local Need (SLN) registrations.
“We have far and away more SLNs than any other state,” Kachadoorian said, noting that the state had 269 SLNs as of last fall. The department also provides funding each year to the IR-4 Program, a federal program that helps secure pesticide registrations for minor crops.
During her time at ODA, Kachadoorian nurtured many admirers within the seed industry, including Nicole Anderson, statewide Extension Seed Production Specialist for Oregon State University, who worked with Kachadoorian often to help the industry.
“Rose cares deeply about Oregon agriculture and has always tried to find ways to be supportive, even when the pesticide regulatory environment has been very difficult to navigate,” Anderson said. “She is someone who thinks outside of the box and works with others to find practical solutions to complicated problems.”
Steve Salisbury, research and regulatory coordinator for the Oregon Seed Council, who also worked regularly with Kachadoorian, also speaks highly of her.
“I’ve always appreciated her approach and willingness to have a discussion, even if the topics are
difficult and seemingly unworkable,” Salisbury said. “Her leadership in the Pesticide Program at ODA will truly be missed.”
Kachadoorian has been replaced by Gilbert Uribe. Uribe first joined ODA in 2017 and worked as a pesticide registration and certification licensing specialist for three years before serving as program manager of the ODA Organic Certification Program for the past two years.
While at ODA, Uribe also has worked with the Oregon Bee Project, where he participated in the project’s steering committee and helped with outreach. He also has worked as outreach specialist with the Pesticides Program’s Worker Protection Standard.
Uribe holds a bachelor’s degree in general biology from Cal State Bakersfield and a master’s degree from the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at the University of California, Riverside.
“In returning to the Pesticides Program, I plan to use all my previous experience to continue working within the ODA’s mission, focusing on collaboration, customer service, compliance assistance and continual improvement to help promote agriculture, while
protecting Oregonians and our natural resources,” Uribe said. “Any one person or agency cannot do it alone. It will take continued collaborative efforts with all of partners in government, education, industry and the public.”
Looking back, Kachadoorian said she has enjoyed working with the seed industry.
“I always respected and admired the professionalism of the seed industry here and their willingness to collaborate with us to make things happen,” she said. “They will step up and talk about what they need and ask for it, whereas some others won’t. And I’ve always viewed grass seed as a good crop for the Willamette Valley.”
Asked what she will miss most about her job, Kachadoorian said it will be the people she has worked with, including the farmers and her co-workers.
“I’ll also miss making positive change and helping people,” she said. F
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Roger Beyer, who has lobbied for the seed industry for the past 15 years, helped launch Oregon Seed Magazine and instituted an annual tour to educate state agriculture officials about the seed industry, has announced he is retiring as Executive Director of the Oregon Seed Council.
Beyer will be leaving June 30. A search is underway for his replacement.
Before joining the Seed Council in 2008, Beyer served a dozen years in the Oregon Legislature, including two terms in the House and two in the Senate. His long-run in politics started innocently enough, he said, when in 1985, a neighbor invited him to be a citizen lobbyist for the Oregon Small Woodlands Association.
Beyer, who owns and operates a Christmas tree farm and timber interests in Molalla, agreed and a decade later he decided to run for the Oregon House. That decision shaped much of his professional life, but according to Beyer, his career path was nearly derailed before it started.
hands in the General Election.
Hayden, in fact, asked Beyer to step aside so he could reclaim his seat, but Beyer refused and eventually emerged victorious. “So, I was the only person that cycle to beat an incumbent,” he said.
In 1996, when he decided to run for a House seat vacated by Cedric Hayden, he was relatively unknown and the Republican leader came out in support of former Silverton Mayor Ken Hector. Beyer even had a closed-door meeting with the majority leader at the time, Lynn Lundquist, who asked him to meet with Hector before throwing his hat in the ring.
“I met with Ken Hector and I just decided the voters deserved a second choice,” Beyer said. “I didn’t know at the time that three others decided to get in the race, too.”
Relying on family, friends and volunteers who campaigned by knocking on doors, Beyer emerged victorious from that crowded primary field. “We didn’t have any money,” he said. “We sent out one mailer.”
But Beyer’s struggles weren’t over. Hayden, who lost his primary race for the state Senate, wanted back into his House seat and ran as an Independent in the General Election. And Beyer had another tough fight on his
Land-use and water were among hot-button issues Beyer dealt with in the Legislature and Beyer frequently found himself in the minority as he fought for property rights in a Democrat-controlled Statehouse during his second term in the Senate. Beyer also fought to get co-generation and hydropower included as renewable energy resources when lawmaker’s established Oregon’s renewable energy portfolio in the mid-2000s, achieving only partial success when lawmakers made co-generation a renewable resource only if it was established after 2005.
His tenure in the Legislature also included a stint as Republican leader the final two years of his first term in the Senate. He stepped back from that in 2005. “It
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was a lot of extra work, no extra pay and honestly I just didn’t enjoy it,” he said.
In 2007, nearing the end of his second term in the Senate and facing another race to hold his seat, Beyer’s career took another turn when Oregon seed industry leader Bryan Ostlund asked him to apply for the soonto-be vacated executive director position of the Oregon Seed Council.
“(Former OSC Executive Secretary) Dave Nelson had announced he was going to retire, and Bryan called and asked if that was something I would be interested in,” Beyer said. “I decided I was.” Beyer applied and came on board in March of 2008.
As executive director of the OSC, Beyer was back in the Capitol, this time as a lobbyist advocating for the seed industry. And with a bill to ban field burning one of the biggest issues in his first session, Beyer was thrown into the fire early on.
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Lawmakers in that 2009 session pushed through that legislation banning field burning on all but a portion of the Silverton hills, handing the industry a significant setback, but one most believe was inevitable.
Another big fight for Beyer early in his tenure occurred when the Oregon Grass Seed Bargaining Association brought a bill to lawmakers in 2011 that sought to institute a payment deadline for seed companies. Called the slow-pay, no-pay law, the proposal elicited heated debate among growers and dealers in a contentious public hearing. “I had a lot of people come up to me afterward and say that was an ugly public hearing,” Beyer said.
After the hearing, Beyer convinced legislative leaders to convene a series of meetings with growers and dealers, which helped the industry hammer out a compromise that formed the basis of the current slow-pay, no-pay law. “We were able to successfully broker a compromise that the Legislature ended up passing. It was a compromise reached by both dealers and growers that all parties could live with,” Beyer said.
“One of my goals has always been to try to harmonize the industry and stop controversies before they get outside of the family, so to speak,” Beyer said. “We haven’t always been successful, but many times we have.”
Among his accomplishments over the past 15 years, Beyer said helping launch Oregon Seed Magazine.
“With Bryan Ostlund’s help, we launched Oregon Seed Magazine and I think it is an overwhelming success,” Beyer said.
Beyer also views the Seed Council’s Annual Farm Tour and Reception as a success story. The tour, which helps educate Oregon Department of Agriculture personnel on the seed industry and its issues, has become a model that department officials have said they wish other industries would follow.
“People at the ODA have told me that they wish other industries would copy that model and provide their folks an opportunity to get to know the people and the industry,” Beyer said.
Beyer said he launched the tour after witnessing how little ODA personnel knew about the industry while on a tour promoting Oregon seed in Korea. “It became very apparent very quickly on that tour that we had to do something different with ODA, because they did not understand the industry,” Beyer said.
Beyer has also played a key part in helping coordinate industry response to export and import issues over the past 15 years. “Anytime there is a hiccup in an export, whether it is because of dirt or a nematode or a weed or a pesticide, the Seed Council is the first place that ODA, or whatever the regulating entity is, reaches out to now and we start a discussion,” Beyer said. “We do whatever we can. We work with the regulators and the importers or exporters, whoever it is to try and resolve the issue for the industry.”
In recent years, prior to COVID disruptions, Beyer also has helped lobby for the IR-4 Program, a federal program that helps register pesticides for minor crops. The lobbying trips are a commitment that he, Ostlund and Steve Salisbury, who serves as research and regulatory coordinator for the Seed Council, agreed to in order to secure a position for Salisbury on the IR-4’s Commodity Liaison Committee, which guides program decisions about which pesticide registrations the program will pursue.
“In addition to meeting with congressmen and senators on those trips, we would also meet with USDA and EPA about pesticides and issues in general,” Beyer
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In a presentation at the Oregon Seed League’s Annual Meeting and Trade Show, December 6 in Salem, Roger Beyer, executive director of the Oregon Seed Council for the last 15 years, was handed both the Voice of industry and Seedsman of the Year awards.
“This is an honor that is almost incomprehensible to me,” Beyer said in accepting the awards. “I see the people on the list who have received these awards in the past. To even be considered for either of these awards is really incredible.
“I come from a farm family and I know how exceptional Oregon agriculture is,” Beyer said. “But I didn’t know how exceptional the Oregon grass seed part of Oregon agriculture is until I started in this industry 15 years ago.
“Working with you the producers in this business has been an honor for me,” he said. “I appreciate this very much.” F
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added. “And it was in one of those meetings where we found out that the ARS Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit in Corvallis was set to be closed. They hadn’t had a leader in a couple of years and faculty was retiring and they hadn’t done much research for a period of time.
“When we found that out, we took it upon ourselves to build it back up,” Beyer said. “And with (Research Leader) Ryan Hayes’ help, we’ve seen that unit come back in a very strong way. Without that work done by the Seed Council and the (grass seed) commissions, we probably would have lost that unit in Corvallis.”
Ostlund, administrator of the three Oregon grass seed commissions, who has worked closely with Beyer over the past 15 years, said he has appreciated what Beyer has brought to the industry.
“Roger has been a great addition to the seed industry family,” Ostlund said, “and he has survived some of the roughest times in our industry’s history. We got him to resign from the Oregon Senate early in 2008 and take over as executive director of the Seed Council. That timing proved challenging as the economy was cursed that fall and the Legislature took on field burning in the 2009 session.
“Fortunately, Roger is a very quick study and got to know this complicated industry in a very short period of time,” Ostlund said. “Just like in his legislative days, he’s great at strategy, building trusted relationships while
avoiding the potholes that can come with this line of work.”
Looking back at his time on the Seed Council, Beyer said he has enjoyed his run and feels fortunate to have worked in the industry.
“This industry, like most farming communities, is made up of probably the greatest people in this state,” Beyer said. “They are just the nicest, most welcoming people I’ve ever been around. And I would really like to thank the community for the way they welcomed me and embraced what we’ve stood for and have tried to do for them.”
Beyer, 62, works with his wife, Barb, at the Seed Council and works with his family on his Christmas tree farm. He expects the tree farm will keep him busy in retirement. “As producers will tell you, when you own a farm, you never can really retire,” he said.
But, he said, come July 1, he plans to spend more time doing the things he loves. “My definition of retirement is I don’t want to have to say no to a fishing trip,” he said. “But seriously, I just look forward to the next chapter in our life. Barb and I have eight grandkids now. We want to spend more time with them and other family.”
In the meantime, Beyer said he plans to continue advocating for the seed industry both in the Capital, in what promises to be another contentious session for natural resource industries in 2023, and in other capacities, until he retires June 30. F
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where he worked on classes of genes that control growth in grasses.
“It is relevant experience for us,” Hayes said. “Development of grasses and tillers and how that turns into flowers and seeds is relevant in this field. We like that about him.”
Gallagher also worked with cotton genomics in his studies, another endeavor that should help him in Corvallis. “That may not seem like a connection, but cotton is a polyploid like many of our grass species, so he has good, solid molecular genomic skills working with polyploids and we like that about him, as well,” Hayes said.
“We like his strengths in polyploids, molecular biology, identification of genes that control development,” Hayes said. “That is all relevant experience. And he’s worked with grasses, which is obviously something we are interested in because almost all of the work we do is in grasses.
“We were looking for a person who had many of those experiences and we found a person who will
is something the unit hasn’t done in quite a while.
“You can do a lot more with seven than you can with three,” Hayes said.
Hayes noted that at one point, the ARS unit was proposed for termination, a designation that resulted in a hiring freeze and led to the unit’s loss of positions.
“When a unit or project is proposed for termination, the agency won’t let you recruit scientists for vacancies because they don’t want to hire someone into a position that could be terminated,” Hayes said.
“So, we had that going against us. And then there was a hiring freeze with one of the administrations, and on top of that, we had people retiring. So, we had accumulated a large number of vacancies,” Hayes said. “With support from stakeholders like Bryan (Ostlund) and people who work with him, we were able to get off that list by showing that what we do is still needed by people who grow grass seed and who want to breed varieties of grass seed.
“So, that whole situation lifted and we began filling positions and we are now nearly done filling positions,” he said.
Hayes said he expects the unit’s eighth and final scientist, a research geneticist, to be on board in 2023. F
In a presentation at the 2022 Oregon Seed League Annual Meeting, Southern Illinois research agronomist John Pike said, many, if not most, Midwest farmers are by now aware that incorporating cover crops into production systems improves soil health and helps address water quality issues.
But going from that thought to actually planting cover crops is a step many have yet to take. While many farmers have planted some cover crops to this point, it is a relatively low percentage that actually manage cover crops as a central part of their overall crop management system, Pike said.
“From what I’ve seen from talking to farmers in Illinois and Indiana for the last several years, most farmers are aware that they need to be moving in that direction (of planting cover crops),” said Pike, who contracts with the Oregon Ryegrass Commission to promote usage of annual ryegrass in cover crops.
“But finding the confidence or identifying the best starting point can be a challenge,” he said.
“Adoption of a planned cover crop system is key to realizing the maximum benefits cover crops can offer,” he added.
While cover crop usage in Midwest corn and soybean production systems has steadily increased over the years, several issues have aligned to slow the increase, Pike said, including the positioning of some of the initial Natural Resources Conservation Service cover crop programs.
“While initial NRCS cover crop programs were successful in achieving the goal of reducing erosion with more cover crop acres being planted, the NRCS goal
A long-term cover crop strip trial in Hamilton County, Illinois, showed a 29 bushel advantage one year for strips with cover crops over those without.
fell short of the farmer’s goal of converting those acres back to productive and profitable cash crop acres in the spring,” Pike said.
“Without adequate technical assistance and information related to cover crop management, such as termination and nutrient management strategies, there were problems encountered,” he said. “Although these problems were the result of inadequate planning due to a lack of management information, the cover crop was usually blamed, rather than the poor plan. The psychological effect of these experiences and observances have been difficult to overcome and have slowed the rate of overall adoption.”
Also, he said, at times it is hard to see the benefits of cover crops.
“We have a lot of aspects of cover crop management and improvements of the soil that can’t easily be seen,” Pike said. “And it makes it hard for producers to get their arms wrapped around these improvements. You don’t notice them by just looking across a field and you aren’t able to measure them in a lot of cases until the end of the year, and in some years these benefits are going to be more pronounced than others,” Pike said.
One of the challenges, he said, is that when conditions are ideal for crop growth, yield differences between cover crop acres and those without cover crops often are small or nonexistent. “That doesn’t mean that
we are not realizing the benefits from cover crops,” he said. “Conditions just weren’t right for those benefits to show up as yield increase.
“But if we experience stress and we’ve got the improved soils under the cover crop management, it is not uncommon to see a 5, 10, 20, 30 bushel difference,” he said. “But even then, we don’t always know that and we can’t measure that until the end of the year.”
Also, improvements in crop genetics and herbicide programs can mask issues with soil compaction and water retention in a good growing season.
“We are seeing pretty steady yield increases in the corn and soybean world that are coming about because of the many genetic improvements in our seed and some of our herbicide programs,” Pike said. “So, things like water retention, compaction, those types of things many times have been masked by some of the genetic improvements that we’ve seen due to improved stress tolerance.”
In his presentation, Pike outlined some of the benefits growers can achieve when using cover crops, including improvements in soil health, water retention and water quality preservation, goals becoming increasingly important of late.
“In a lot of states, especially Illinois, Indiana and Iowa, basically throughout the corn states, there is growing emphasis about water quality issues and nutrient runoff, whether it is through tile-line drainage, surface runoff or soil erosion, and trying to get to the root of that because of potential regulations that some parts of the country are already experiencing,” he said.
Also, he said, “Erosion control is a big thing in this part of the country where
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(continued from page 27)
we have fragipan soils that limit root growth and water management is a huge thing.
“So, anything we can do to increase the rooting depth of our corn and soybean crops and wheat, in some cases, goes a long way in sustaining through periods of water stress that we tend to see throughout the summer at one point or another in this part of the country,” Pike said.
“Anything we can do to add organic matter will improve our water holding capacity of the soil and the ability of those cover crops to scavenge excess nutrients and even add fertility, especially nitrogen, and provide overall better nutrient cycling in the soil, is a huge benefit,” he said.
Pike said cover crops, particularly those containing annual ryegrass, are particularly beneficial in fragipan soils, which are soils that contain a cement-like layer often 30 or so inches beneath the surface that inhibit root penetration.
“We have found through the work of Mike Plumer, Junior Upton and Lloyd Murdock that there is a root exudate that is unique to annual ryegrass that helps to penetrate or break the bonds that cements the fragipan layers together,” Pike said.
“What we’ve seen where the soil has been in intensive cover crop management for nine years with heavy utilization of annual ryegrass in a cover crop mix, we’ve got roots that are going down as deep as 60 inches,” he said. “And where we don’t have a cover crop, we’ve only got a 30-inch rooting depth.
“That makes a big difference in certain years,” he said.
Pike added that Murdock has found that there are about 50 million acres of cropland in the Midwest and Southern U.S. that are influenced by fragipan soils.
“So, we can see that there is a huge potential there,” Pike said. “If we can just put in programs that would increase the yield potential on those acres by five percent, it would make a huge impact on farm profitability and production across this part of the country.”
Because benefits aren’t always obvious, Pike said it will continue to be important to educate Midwest
farmers on why cover crops provide benefits, rather than just emphasize the benefits themselves.
“We are explaining why these things work and giving farmers information on how to put together the best plans and how to evaluate their programs,” he said.
Pike also is working with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Ames, Iowa, where they are monitoring the impacts of cover crops on available soil moisture in a long-term field trial.
“We have a field that includes several strips showing the difference cover crops can make,” he said. “In one corn rotation, we saw a 29 bushel difference between strips. It was the same corn hybrid, same management. The only difference was cover crops.”
Pike added that there have been years where there wasn’t any difference. “But the years where there is moisture and heat stress, we are seeing differences.”
Pike said it also is important for cover crop grower organizations to combine their efforts.
“Because there is no silver-bullet solution with any single cover crop, anything that can be coordinated as far as marketing and research amongst the different cover crop grower associations are going to be key to the overall successes for the producers, as well as the supplying industries,” he said.
He also advised grower organizations to make sure they are at the table partnering with USDA projects. “If projects like the USDA Climate Smart Partnership are to meet their goals, it is going to take a lot more cover crop acres and reduced tillage. So, maybe partnering or being at the table as a cover crop seed industry will help to make sure we are available to work with those programs to help increase and ease challenges of adoption,” Pike said.
Also, Pike said, the more university research that occurs, the better the understanding of cover crop management that can be passed on to growers.
“There is still inadequate understanding and research in university circles,” Pike said. “But I think there is still good research going on that tends to look at components of the cover crop system, such as covercrop species, mixes, planting dates, nutrient management. But there is very little understanding at that level about developing programs of a whole entire cover crop system and how to implement that across our region.” F
Reports of high bluegrass billbug pressure in tall fescue this past growing season unfortunately are not a one-off. According to Oregon State University Extension Entomologist Navneet Kaur, last year’s heavy billbug pressure is part of what appears to be an ongoing trend.
“We see numbers increasing almost every year,” she said.
Even last year, when heavy spring rains helped lower pressure in the spring, Kaur fielded multiple reports from growers and fieldmen of high billbug pressure during harvest and into the fall.
“Since August, we have been hearing more complaints,” Kaur said in October. “And I recently have found sites that have both larvae and adults present.”
The bluegrass billbug, long a significant pest in Kentucky bluegrass in Eastern Oregon, only recently has emerged as a significant pest in tall fescue.
“Three or four years ago, (OSU Extension Seed Production Specialist) Nicole Anderson and others started a monitoring network, which was funded by the Oregon Seed Council, to see which species we have in tall fescue grown for seed,” Kaur said. “Before that, we only anticipated to see one species, and that was in orchardgrass only, so this was new when they reported the occurrence of bluegrass billbug in tall fescue.
“So, this bluegrass billbug species, which formerly was known to occur only in Eastern Oregon bluegrass production systems, is now well established in our tall fescue stands,” Kaur said.
The monitoring program started by Anderson, then an Extension agronomist in the northern Willamette Valley, and others concentrated on spring baiting when billbug adults emerge from their pupal stage to begin feeding on the leaves of grass plants and lay eggs.
Although treatment is considered more effective in fall months, the spring does offer an opportunity to treat for billbug, Kaur said. In the spring, growers
should treat after adults emerge and before they lay eggs, she said. Also, Kaur said, it is important when treating in the spring to avoid harming beneficial predators, such as ground beetles and parasitoid wasps. Among products registered for grasses grown for seed, diamides is a chemistry that is considered IPM compatible and is effective at controlling the adult stage of billbug.
“Diamides in general work great on lepidoptera insects, which are sod webworm, billbug, armyworm, cutworm and grasshoppers,” Kaur said. “It is good chemistry to target multiple pests.”
Fall is considered the optimal timing because it is easier to penetrate the reduced biomass present in the fall, which can improve pesticide performance, she said, and because there are fewer beneficials present.
When treating in the fall, at least a half-inch of rain is needed to move the pesticide into the crown, where billbugs are present. Growers need to treat prior to when adults enter their overwintering stage, typically by late October at the latest.
Synthetic pyrethroids, which also are registered in grasses grown for seed, offer another alternative for controlling billbug, although they are considered more harmful to beneficials than diamides. Alternating chemistries is important, Kaur said, to help slow buildup of pesticide resistance.
“We want to avoid overusing broad-spectrum pyrethroids, both because of their propensity to harm nontarget pests and the risk of development of pesticide resistance,” Kaur said.
Lorsban, the former product of choice for controlling billbug, is being phased out as part of the chlorpyrifos phase out.
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The bluegrass billbug actually is among at least two species of billbug now inflicting damage on grass seed crops. Another species, the orchardgrass billbug, has inflicted significant damage to orchardgrass over the years. The Denver billbug also is present and can damage grass seed crops, but it hasn’t caused significant damage to date, according to research.
Adult billbugs cause some damage to grass seed by feeding on leaves, but the larval stage is when billbugs are most damaging to seed crops, Kaur said. Billbug larvae feed on the crowns and roots of seed plants. The pest has only one generation per year.
Billbugs can be difficult to distinguish from other lepidoptera insects, such as sod webworm, another pest that appears to be increasing in importance in grass seed production. Both billbug and sod webworm larvae produce a sawdust-like material that can help producers determine if they are present, Kaur said.
And, she said, pest control tactics are similar for both insects.
Research on the orchardgrass billbug has shown it prefers hot, drought-like conditions, such as conditions Oregon experienced in 2021, when billbug populations spiked in the spring. But even in wet springs, such as 2022, the pest continued to be a pest of concern in grasses grown for seed.
“We saw high billbug damage because of drought conditions in Western Oregon in the spring of 2021,” Kaur said. “This past spring, since it was too wet and cold, our billbug numbers in our monitoring network were not super high.”
Still, Kaur said, reports from growers and fieldmen during harvest and into the fall, provided significant evidence that the pest was present in high numbers again this past summer and fall.
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An abrupt termination of the Oregon Grass Seed Bargaining Association’s (OGSBA) annual price negotiations last summer left growers and seed companies without minimum contract prices, creating upheaval in a marketplace already fraught with uncertainty.
The Oregon Department of Agriculture terminated negotiations on August 5 after it discovered a breach of confidentiality. Under the rules governing the proceedings, negotiations must remain confidential and participants must sign nondisclosure agreements.
“The minute we found out that a breach was happening, it really left us no choice but to suspend the negotiations,” said Lauren Henderson, acting director of the ODA, who made the call to terminate. “The best thing to do at that time was to stop, get people out of the room so that we didn’t have the continuing breaches.”
Mark Simmons, executive director of OGSBA, said he learned of the breach after dealers and growers had met twice when an OGSBA board member told him a non-OGSBA grower had called him with information of the proceedings. “This fellow already knew what had gone on at the meeting,” Simmons said.
Simmons then informed ODA of the breach.
Still, Simmons questioned whether ODA needed to terminate the negotiations and, in fact, claimed the department “exceeded their authority and violated their own past practices by doing so.”
“We believe Oregon statutes and rules are very clear and that once price negotiations begin, a price must be set or the ODA can set it,” Simmons said.
He added that OGSBA counsel has said that the organization could sue ODA for unlawfully terminating negotiations. “But we wouldn’t get a decision until next spring, and by then, it is too late after the fact to make any difference,” Simmons said.
Simmons added that the termination couldn’t have come at a worse time.
“Some dealers have said this is the worst possible time to not have a price, because there is always
Mark Simmons at OGSBA’s booth during Seed League, questioned whether ODA had authority to terminate price negotiations last summer.
uncertainty in the world, but the uncertainty seems to be heightened right now,” Simmons said. “We are in a recession economically, we have potential for a significant war, and no one knows the effect these things are going to have on the future of seed sales.”
“It makes things challenging for growers and dealers to invest in the future of grass seed if we are uncertain about where the price should be, especially with all of the uncertainty in the economy,” said Jayson Hoffman, a Washington County grower and vice president of OGSBA. “If we had a stable minimum price, we could have a realistic understanding of the value of our seed.”
Formed in 1994 as the Perennial Ryegrass Bargaining Association, OGSBA today is operating under a statute lawmakers passed in 2001 when, coincidentally, Simmons was Speaker of the House. OGSBA brought tall fescue under its fold in 2008 and changed its name to the Oregon Grass Seed Bargaining Association.
Simmons noted that a breach in confidentiality was uncovered at least one other time in OGSBA
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negotiations. That time, however, the department allowed negotiations to continue after identifying the source of the leak and removing that person from future negotiations.
“But this year they terminated and they had no statutory authority to do that,” Simmons said. “But we couldn’t keep meeting because they needed to be in the room to provide antitrust immunity to participating dealers.”
Henderson, who was in the ODA Director’s Office during that first breach, said at that time, the department believed it could address the breach in a way that would allow the proceedings to continue. This time, however, Henderson said the department determined there was more than one breach and for the negotiations to continue, there needed to be a thorough and time-consuming investigation.
“We had information that there were multiple problems that were outside this supervised process,” Henderson said. “It wasn’t just one focus and to get to the bottom of it we would’ve had to stop everything and work into an investigative process that I didn’t think was good for anybody.”
Henderson added that the previous breach actually contributed to ODA’s decision to terminate negotiations last year.
“I would say that the fact that we’ve had failures in two different processes tells me that I don’t think there is a good understanding of how serious this is for folks and why you don’t want to be in violation of the federal antitrust and that state immunity,” Henderson said.
“We take our role very seriously,” he added. “We are there to provide oversight and state-action immunity by overseeing it and to make sure that everybody is provided that immunity and not seen to be in violation of the federal or state antitrust laws, because they come with serious penalties.”
OGSBA negotiations started later than usual last year, Simmons said, as growers and dealers hoped to get a better understanding of the 2022 crop size before initiating talks. The parties had an initial meeting in late June and then sat down to negotiate in earnest at the end of July.
“There were fieldmen in the Valley telling farmers in the spring that $1.50 tall fescue and $1.60, $1.65 perennial ryegrass ought to be pretty doable prices for this year,” Simmons said last fall. “And then we get into negotiations and dealers offered significantly less than that.”
Simmons added that a frustration had built up in growers in recent years as contracted prices were often below the open market price for seed.
“Growers have felt left behind,” Simmons said.
In a prepared statement, the Oregon Seed Association Board of Directors stated that it heard from dealer-members of OGSBA that grower expectations “did not reflect market conditions.”
“There were concerns of a slowing economy and poor exports due to: 1) a strong U.S. dollar; 2) extremely poor market conditions in China; and 3) competitiveness in Oregon production cost,” the Board wrote.
Further, the Board wrote, “When negotiations ceased, our members moved quickly to negotiate with individual growers. Prices were agreed upon and dealers moved as much seed as possible into a difficult and shortened fall season.
“We have high respect for the grower community and greatly look forward to our continued relationships,” the Board wrote.
When negotiations ceased prior to establishing a minimum contract price, several developments came into play, Hoffman said, including a potential for growers to sell at below the cost of production. “If we had an OGSBA price, we would have a floor and we could negotiate above that. But without a minimum price, some dealers can offer less than others and it just puts the onus onto the grower to know where the market is.
“And that is challenging, because there is not a good USDA report out there as far as commodity trading like there is in wheat,” he said.
Also, because ODA terminated negotiations after price discussions were initiated, seed companies may have gained an advantage in their contract negotiations, Hoffman said.
“I personally feel that the way it played out gave dealers an opportunity to come together and talk with no recourse, and gave them an advantage by enabling them to understand other dealers’ positions,” Hoffman said.
“I am not calling any dealer unethical by any means,” Hoffman said. “But I think they gained an advantage.”
Next steps for OGSBA, according to Simmons, include crafting and passing state legislation that will change the role of ODA from supervisory to
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monitoring and make clear that the department cannot terminate negotiations.
“The goal is to get the bill passed and enacted before we meet again,” Simmons said.
Simmons added that “OGSBA isn’t going anywhere.”
“There is already agreement from a number of dealers that we really do need this process,” he said. “And we need to figure it out and do things differently if possible and have a price set in 2023 that works for the industry and keeps everybody on an even playing field.”
Henderson, meanwhile, said ODA has not decided how the department will approach future OGSBA price negotiations.
“We have not made any conclusions about next year,” Henderson said. “We are looking at the rules and trying to find how we can tighten this up. But I can say that because we’ve had these two failures does not automatically preclude us from ever negotiating this again.”
“I think there is a definite place for OGSBA in the industry,” Hoffman said. “And if you talk to many dealers, they also believe in OGSBA because it gives certainty to the market.
“Let’s put it this way,” Hoffman said, “I don’t see the advantage of not having OGSBA. The alternative is worse than the current situation.” F
Two pillars of the Oregon seed industry died within eight days of one another this past November.
Don Fisher, a long-time Junction City farmer, former Seedsman of the Year, Voice of the Industry award winner and a founding member of the Perennial Ryegrass Bargaining Association, died November 19 at the age of 91.
And Halsey-area farmer Liz VanLeeuwen, who served 18 years in the Oregon House and was a founding member of both Oregon Women for Agriculture and American Agri-Women, died November 27 at the age of 97.
Fisher, who grew many crops over the years but mostly grass seed, was described as a man who wasn’t afraid to try new production practices and one who readily shared what he learned with others.
“He was a great man, very kind and generous,” said Rodney Hightower, who worked with Fisher for many years.
Fisher was born in Silverton, Oregon, but moved to Junction City when he was five and graduated from Junction City High School where he served as FFA Chapter President in his senior year. He went on to graduate in four years from Oregon State College (now Oregon State University) before joining the Marine Corps where he eventually rose to the rank of Captain after leaving active duty and serving in the Marine Reserves.
After his military service, Fisher farmed briefly with a friend in northwest Colorado before returning to Junction City in 1956 where he went to work for Carey Strome at Strome Grass Seed Farm. In 1970, the farm was reorganized as Strome-Fisher Farm with Don and his wife, Mary, becoming partners with Carey and Gayle Strome.
“Farming was Don’s passion,” Hightower said, “and he loved growing grass seed, but he would grow any crop that would make money and he was willing to experiment and try new things.”
Fisher was involved in many agricultural and community organizations, Hightower said, including the Oregon Tall Fescue Commission, the Junction City School District Budget Committee and the OSU Seed Lab Advisory Committee.
“He was always willing to give his time to make the industry and our community better,” Hightower said.
Fisher also was a board member of the Manhattan Ryegrass Growers Association and the Tee-2-Green Corporation and a past chairman of the Junction City Water Control District.
In 2008, Fisher was honored as a member of the OSU College of Agriculture Diamond Pioneer Agricultural Achievement Registry, an honor bestowed to those who have been graduated for 50 years and made significant contributions to the agriculture industry.
Fisher is survived by his wife of 60 years, Mary. He and Mary had one son, Ben.
Liz VanLeeuwen
VanLeeuwen got her start in politics by fighting a proposal from then Governor Robert Straub to create a greenway along the Willamette River from Eugene to Portland.
“The state was preparing to use eminent domain to make a park on both sides of the Willamette and my grandpa’s and grandma’s farm was to be part of
Don Fisher
a 500-spot RV camping ground,” said VanLeeuwen’s granddaughter Arwen McGilvra, who cared for VanLeeuwen in her final years.
“Liz, along with John Blake of Salem, led the fight that stopped the greenway,” McGilvra said.
“That is kind of what pushed her into politics,” McGilvra said.
“She had to run three times before she was elected, but she kept at it,” McGilvra said. “Like everything in her life, she wasn’t going to give up easy.”
VanLeeuwen never lost another election, but due to a voter-passed initiative that was later thrown out, the nine-term representative was term-limited out in 1999.
“She was not as much a politician as a stateswoman, because she cared what her constituents thought, how bills and government actions affected them,” McGilvra said. “And she read every page of every bill. That is how she caught the fact that one year someone had stuck a clause in a big bill that they were going to close all the rural DMVs. And she stopped that.
“Because she read every page of every bill, she caught that,” McGilvra said.
VanLeeuwen also started Linn County CASA, which pairs court appointed special advocates with foster children, and ran the organization out of her office in Salem the first two years of its existence.
“She was an interesting mix of compassion and toughness,” McGilvra said. “She wasn’t going to back down on anything, but she really cared about people.”
And VanLeeuwen started the Foreign Student Host program with a goal of having an American host family for every international student attending OSU. “If they did not totally succeed in that, they came very close to it,” said James VanLeeuwen. He added that many local farm families were involved in the program, which continued operating until the mid-1970s. “It was a very good way for us kids to grow up, being exposed to people from all around the world,” he said.
Liz VanLeeuwen was born in Lakeview, Oregon, where she lived until attending Oregon State College (now OSU), where she received a bachelor’s degree in Home Making Education with a minor in English. She married George VanLeeuwen in June of 1947 and served as a farmer and an educator for many years.
“She and George met when during World War II when Liz was in college and came out with some other
co-eds to weed on the farm on the weekends,” McGilvra said. “She was the only one who kept up with grandpa and, apparently, he decided that one day he was going to marry her.”
George and Liz bought the VanLeeuwen farm from George’s parents in 1956 and spent years revitalizing the operation. “My great grandfather had a stroke and the farm was not doing well,” McGilvra said. “George and Liz dug it out of a bad situation.”
The farm is currently being farmed by their son James.
“The fifth generation of our family is working on the farm now,” McGilvra said. “If George and Liz hadn’t taken the farm when they did, we wouldn’t be here today.”
VanLeeuwen was preceded in death by her husband, George. She is survived by three sons, one daughter, five grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. F
The Oregon Seed League has awarded scholarships to three Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences students.
Ivan Mametieff, Christian Lessey and Lane Marsh were presented with their scholarships in a presentation at the Seed League’s annual meeting December 6.
Mametieff, who hopes to own a cattle farm one day, is completing his undergraduate studies with an agronomy focus and plans to work as an agronomist in forage production and range management. “His intent is to provide sustainable approaches to other farmers while contributing to clean, healthy food in his community,” said Lucas Rue of Victor Point Farms, who presented the award.
Lessey, a senior in Crop and Soil Science, has applied to graduate school and if accepted will be working on a project researching cover crops in hazelnut production. He has worked at the USDA-ARS in a crop and soil research lab for a year on researching the effects of tile drainage on soil respiration and carbon cycling in grass seed production. Lessey hopes to one day work as an ag consultant in the Willamette Valley.
Marsh, a junior, is working on his bachelor’s degree in Crop and Soil Science with an emphasis in agronomy. He also recently added a certificate in Geographical Information Sciences to his program. Marsh grew up in Silverton in an agricultural setting and recently worked for Pratum Co-op as a field scout intern, as well as in the co-op’s seed cleaner. Marsh plans to get an ODA crop consultant’s license after graduation, as well as an FDA drone pilot’s license and an ODA commercial applicators license. “His dream career is to be a crop advisor and work with GIS technologies,” Lucas said.
The scholarships were made possible thanks to contributions from Victor Point Farms, Doerfler Farms and Columbia Bank. F
Sabry Elias, a professor of seed science and technology in the Department of Crop and Soil Science at Oregon State University and a supervisor in the OSU Seed Testing Laboratory, has been named recipient of the Crop Science Society of America’s 2022 Seed Science Award.
The award, for outstanding contribution in ag education, extension and research, is typically awarded annually to no more than one scientist.
Elias is an internationally recognized educator and researcher in seed science, according to a news release from the society. Among his accomplishments, he is senior author of “Seed Testing: Principles & Practices,” a widely used textbook in seed testing, and he has written several handbooks, book chapters and scientific journal articles on seed testing.
Elias also is an active member of national and international seed organizations. He is a longstanding member of the Association of Official Seed Analysts, currently serving as chair of the Research and Statistics committees, and he has served as chair of the C-4 Division of the Crop Science Society of America.
Elias also has served as visiting professor in Brazil, Uruguay and Nepal in the past and recently received another offer to return to Brazil in that capacity.
“He is highly sought after,” said OSU Seed Testing Laboratory Manager Dave Stimpson in a July interview. “We just got an email from Brazil inviting him to speak at
the twenty-first Brazilian Seed Congress in Curitiba. They want him to come down and give some lectures. He will probably go down and spend a week in September.”
Elias, who received his masters and Ph.D. degrees from Michigan State University, came to OSU in 1999. In the OSU Seed Lab he supervises test development and runs all the research projects the lab performs for the industry, according to Stimpson.
Stimpson, who came on as Seed Lab manager six years ago and has known Elias for 30 years, described him as a consummate scientist. “Sabry is really good at looking at things from a scientific perspective,” Stimpson said. “I always respect his opinion because he researches issues thoroughly and has a lot of experience.”
“This award is well deserved,” said Dan Curry, director of Seed Services at OSU. “Sabry has worked tirelessly his whole career for the Oregon seed industry. I personally feel very proud of his work and I hope the growers in Oregon appreciate his work because he is always thinking about the growers as he does his testing and his scientific research and teaching.”
Elias was nominated for the award by seed scientists from the University of Florida, Cornell University, UC Davis and Virginia Tech.
“These professors are the top seed scientists in the United States of America,” Elias said. “To get their support and their nomination means a lot to me. It is great to know how they feel about me and how they feel about my academic performance and my contributions to the field of seed testing and seed biology.”
Elias received his award, along with a check for $2,000, at an awards ceremony during the Crop Science Society of America’s annual meeting, November 9, in Baltimore, Maryland. F
My name is Pete Berry and I am the new Assistant Professor of Weed Science at Oregon State University. Although I am not native to the Willamette Valley or Oregon, I spent six years in Corvallis as I was getting my Ph.D. We recently moved back to Corvallis from Central Illinois where I worked as a research and development field scientist for Syngenta. Coming back to Oregon, the Willamette Valley and Corvallis feels like coming home.
During my time in graduate school in the Weed Science program at OSU, I stumbled into the science of geographic information systems (GIS). GIS is the spatial relationship of different objects and how these objects relate in space and/or time. Some examples are precipitation or temperature over time in different locations, weed populations in a field, the movement of insects during migration or disease severity throughout a growing season. Each example can be mapped to better understand the spatial relationship between objects or data points. For example, I could take GPS points of different weeds in a field and then map where the weeds are to determine the exact locations, different concentrations and different species in the field. GIS science has a lot of applications in agriculture and I was fortunate to study some of these systems at Oregon State University.
My background in GIS and applied weed science opened up the opportunity for me to work for Syngenta at a research site in Central Illinois. I had the responsibilities of a traditional research and development weed scientist assessing herbicide efficacy on different weed species or phytotoxicity on crops but was also exposed to new application technologies. These technologies included individual nozzle activation for the purpose of just spraying a weed(s), “spot spraying.”
Individual nozzle control and how the nozzles are activated are pushing advances in application
technology. There are spray systems with the ability to identify weeds in crops in real time, “green on green” systems. The “green on green” technology is currently used in corn, soybeans and cotton and will continue to trickle down to other larger acreage row crops like canola, rice and wheat. Due to the relatively low acreage of grass seed compared with corn, soybean and other row crops, it may take a while for companies to update their current sensors to identify weeds in grass seed production. My program will be addressing these needs. Specifically, utilizing the differences among weeds and crops for the purpose of isolated applications. There are several different approaches to this: one is the long-term goal where identification and application are in real-time. This requires training computers to identify differences between the crop and weeds through color, shape, spectral, size, etc. differences. Imaging has started in my lab and the library of information will be published as the data is created. This will take some time as creating the library and using artificial intelligence for identification can be very time consuming.
With the success of some of the “green on green” sprayers from companies like John Deere, other sprayer manufactures are changing their technology in order for their systems to also spot spray weeds in crops. My program will also focus on utilizing existing technology and determine how it can be modified to spot spray weeds in seed crops. This means working with the manufacturers to calibrate their sensors for Willamette Valley crops as well as testing herbicide efficacy and crop phytotoxicity through these systems. Modifying current technology is an exciting part of my position because weed isolation allows for assessing non-selective herbicides, tank mixes, pre-mixes and different rates applied through specialty spot sprayers.
The use of GIS technologies like specialty spot sprayers is an exciting field to be a part of. The technology is advancing quickly and the opportunities to spray herbicides that are not normally sprayed during active crop growth allows for better chemical stewardship by increasing the number of active ingredients in rotation. Willamette Valley growers already deal with the “trickle down” of herbicides made for larger acreage crops and the use of specialty sprayers could be very helpful in weed management.
I am excited to take some of the sprayer technology work I did for Syngenta and bring it to Oregon State University. I look forward to presenting the research at different meetings and collaborating with other researchers, Extension agents and growers. I also have the opportunity to teach classes in the Crop and Soil Science Department and look forward to engaging with students in the Weed Management Course being taught in the winter term. I took the same course ten years ago as a graduate student under my adviser Dr. Carol Mallory-Smith. I am honored and humbled to be sitting in her old office
and teaching her courses and will strive to live up to the legacy that she has in the weed science community and at Oregon State University.
If there are any questions about ongoing or upcoming projects, please do not hesitate to contact me at 541-737-5754 or pete.berry@oregonstate.edu. F
As we enter 2023, there are a lot of unknowns in the world, the country, the state and the grass seed industry.
The worldwide economy seems to be in a downward spiral, and if past history tells us anything, it is that the demand for grass seed follows the economy pretty closely.
We last witnessed this in the 2009 Great Recession when we saw a lot of demand leave the industry. The shining light at that time was the export market, and specifically China. It came forward and picked up a lot of the surplus grass seed.
The difference we have right now is that it is not just the U.S. economy that is in a downward spiral. It is the world economy. China may be in worse shape than we are, and the strong dollar has greatly affected the export market.
On top of all this, the lack of price agreement within the Oregon Grass Seed Bargaining Association negotiations hasn’t helped.
Suffice to say, there are a lot of unknowns for the grass seed industry at this time.
Oregon Seed Council along with the commissions will do what we can to help in this arena, but not a lot can be done when worldwide economic issues are in play. By working with our neighbors in the state and federal government, we will do what we can, though, to make sure exports occur as smoothly as possible.
On the domestic market front, the shipping issue is
obviously a big concern. As we have seen record-high fuel prices in the past year, it makes shipping across the country more expensive. Hopefully the opening of the Mid-Willamette Valley Intermodal Center in Millersburg will help get rail shipments flowing smoothly. We’ve done all we can to help get the intermodal center up and running, so we hope that helps.
There are also a lot of unknowns in the 2023 Oregon Legislative session that just launched. There is a new governor, a new Senate president for the first time in twenty years and a question of what all this will mean for grass seed producers. We don’t know the answer to that at this point in time, but we are hoping to work with all parties and all legislative members to have a positive agenda and a positive outcome for not just grass seed producers but all agricultural producers in Oregon.
We expect that there are a few legislative items that will need to be cleaned up from the recent past, and there will be significant issues coming forward, including proposals for product registration bans for different chemicals. Efforts to ban chlorpyrifos and glyphosate come to mind as issues we’ve been facing and working on diligently to have a successful outcome, or at the very worst, a soft landing, so we have other products that can take the place of products that are taken away from us.
All this is painting a pretty bleak picture for 2023, but hopefully, as we move through the year and work with the industry to bring on new leadership at Oregon Seed Council, they will be able to hit the ground running, and be able move the industry forward in a positive direction. F
n this column, I’d like to address the changes that we in the seed industry will be experiencing in 2023. There are some, such as the retirement of Roger Beyer as Executive Director of the Oregon Seed Council on June 30, that are very apparent and that we all are aware of. There are others that are less apparent, but also significant.
One of these lesser apparent, but significant, changes we will be experiencing in 2023 has to do with state oversight of Oregon’s commodity commissions.
Kris Anderson, who has been with the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s commodity commission program for more than nineteen years, retired at the end of 2022. Kris has been a key cog in helping manage not just our seed commissions, but all of the 22 commodity commissions in Oregon that encompass the abundant diversity of Oregon’s ag industry, from the Oregon Trawl Commission, to the Oregon Sheep Commission, to the Oregon Potato Commission.
Coupled with the departure of Lisa Hansen slightly more than a year ago, the state has lost an incredible
amount of knowledge on the workings of Oregon’s commodity commissions. Lisa left the department as deputy director but worked with the commissions program in the 1990s and had a tremendous wealth of knowledge of the inner workings of the commodity commissions, both from the legal standpoint and the practicality of what is required in the position. These positions have a significant amount of complexity.
So, losing Lisa and now Kris, it is a new day.
I have confidence that the Oregon Department of Agriculture is on track to rebuild these programs. And of course, as two doors close, others open. So that burden now shifts to people like Jess Paulson, director of Market Access and Certification for ODA and Acting Director Lauren Henderson to work with the industry and understand what our needs are as we rebuild the program, because the program we build today will probably be in place for the next twenty years or so. It is very significant.
Another much more apparent change that we are facing this year is, of course, the retirement of
Roger Beyer and the loss of his incredible depth of institutional knowledge, knowledge he gained in more than a decade in the Oregon Legislature and over the past fifteen years working in our industry.
Roger joined the Oregon House in 1997 and left the Legislature as a senator in 2008, and during that period of time Roger worked on a number of commodity commission issues.
In the 2001 and 2003 sessions, Roger was an absolute rock star in retooling the state structure of commodity commissions in response to Supreme Court cases. Without Roger, I think the landscape here in Oregon for commodity commissions would be very different. To have someone like Roger in a very key position helped to keep things on an even keel and we were able to come out of that with new legislation that kept us all going forward.
Roger has a very clear understanding of the state landscape, in regard to the roles of the Legislature, the Governor’s office, the Department of Justice, the
state agencies. And all of these pieces have a finger in what we do as commodity commissions and even more important, what ag producers deal with every day. It can be challenging to keep all in check and moving forward.
So, losing someone like Roger, who has that incredible background, is going to be a big change. We will see who comes in behind him, but those are going to be big shoes to fill.
The Seed Council is a very integral part of what we do and how we keep our standing with the state of Oregon healthy. A lot of our programs dovetail together, and it takes a very coordinated relationship between our office and the Seed Council to ensure the industry gets the most out of our organizations.
We now have an opportunity to rebuild and put in place programs for the next generation, and it is incumbent on us to show strong leadership in 2023 and put in place a solid structure that keeps us all moving in a positive direction. F
Diuron herbicide has been a long-standing and cost-effective herbicide option available to grass seed growers. It was first registered for use in the U.S. in 1967 and has provided both broadleaf and grassy weed control. Over 50 years later, it is still being used and remains an effective tool for grass seed producers. Today, diuron is on the chopping block at the EPA, which has published a proposed interim decision to eliminate all herbicide uses in both food and non-food agricultural sites as well as revoke all food and feed tolerances.
So, what are the concerns with diuron?
Essentially, it comes down to diuron’s nature of demonstrating long persistence in the soil coupled with the EPA’s risk assessment concerns with dietary exposure and drinking water quality. Of course, these are serious concerns for everyone, but there may be further discussion on the assessment and interpretations of the data and the model’s depictions of risk.
It is always important during these regulatory reviews that our use is accurately described and represented. Oftentimes minor crops like grass grown for seed are not completely understood and this offers a good opportunity to educate regulators and avoid misunderstandings. How does our use in grass seed production here in Oregon compare to other crop usage in the U.S.?
The U.S. use of diuron as an herbicide and harvest aid has been estimated to be over 2.3 million pounds of active ingredient applied to over 4.4 million acres. The crops topping the chart are cotton (1.55 million lbs), oranges (350,000 lbs) and alfalfa (240,000 lbs). Grass seed was not listed in the assessment, but locally an estimation of use was calculated. There are approximately 150,000 acres of
grass seed production that receive one application of diuron per crop year. The total use, of course, depends on the use rate, which varies depending on the specific grass type, but certainly this puts grass seed at a use level of significance with these other crops.
The use and importance of diuron to grass seed producers was conveyed to the EPA in public comment on the proposed interim decision. Now, commodity groups are awaiting the EPA’s review of the public comments and their announcement of the interim decision. This interim decision was originally planned to be released in the fourth quarter of 2022. This may not happen due to several factors that are suspected to delay the review of diuron within the agency. However, it may occur on time or soon thereafter.
With the interim decision looming, we can assume the possibility of two routes of action that may be taken. One, the EPA could stick with their original plan of eliminating all herbicide uses and revoke food and feed tolerances as outlined in the proposed interim decision. In this case, the use of diuron on grass seed crops would quickly be terminated. The alternative action would be to implement risk mitigation measures on the use labels. If this is the decision, then we would expect use patterns and restrictions to be revised and become more restrictive to protect the elements of concern (water, people, etc.).
This alternative route would be preferred as it would likely preserve the effective usefulness of diuron in our grass seed crops. Our uses may have further restrictions, but it would remain in place to some degree. Further, this would allow us to work closely with our local authorities, the Oregon
Department of Agriculture (ODA), to manage and preserve our use of diuron while mitigating risk to our local waters and other natural resources.
So, do we have a water quality issue with diuron? Upon asking that question it was shared that the ODA along with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality have been collecting water samples for several years from some surface waters in the Willamette watershed. The data does indicate the presence of diuron in the samples. However, the data does raise some questions regarding how it is being interpreted and what are the actual sources of diuron in the water based on the location of samples and levels observed. There are organizations that are either discussing or interested in discussing this data and the interpretation of the results. In the end, we hope that conversations regarding potential regulations surrounding this will include the agriculture community so that honest and transparent communications can lead to fair and equitable resolutions.
In summary, it is important to understand that EPA is not leaning favorably toward the continued use of diuron. At the very least, it is expected that mitigation changes will be made and will affect uses of diuron as an herbicide. Yes, there is the possibility that diuron may be entirely eliminated from use for most of U.S. agriculture. As an industry we need to continue to engage the regulatory authorities so that our needs and desires are accurately represented. In the meantime, I would encourage growers to begin devising herbicide strategies without the use of diuron.
Over the years, there have been some good herbicide options developed that may be helpful in your plans going forward. But it does take some planning ahead to implement new and effective strategies. F
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