Courtesy Army Corps of Engineers
Workers walk near the The Dalles downstream gate during last year's outage. The lock will be closed from Dec. 10 to March 18 to replace the two downstream miter gates.
While lock maintenance on the Columbia and Snake rivers will force some growers transporting crops to Portland's port to switch from barges to truck and rail, industry representatives say planning -- and a little luck -- have combined to make the closures less of a burden.
"The reality is we' ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 10:10 AM
Frustration with Obama administration inaction on Mexican tariffs is increasing among elected officials and people in industries hurt by the tariffs.
They blame the administration for playing politics with trade policy to mollify the Teamsters Union at the expense of ag industries and communi ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 10:14 AM
Federal regulators say they will decide by year's end on rules regulating production of biotech sugar beets for the next two seasons.
Unregulated production of Monsanto's Roundup Ready sugar beets was banned last month by a federal judge.
USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service s ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 12:39 PM
The linchpin of the Columbia-Snake transportation system is Tidewater Barge Lines, which expects to lose about 85 percent of its total revenue during the four-month river closure that starts Dec. 10, said assistant to the president John Pigott.
All of the company's business above The Dalles, ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:56 AM
HUBBARD, Ore. -- Dylan Wells, 21, and his brother Darren, 19, may grow and sell miniature pumpkins, but there is nothing small about the way they do business.
The brothers raise small ornamental pumpkins, gourds, winter squash and Indian corn that are sold across the U.S. and in Japan and Mex ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:54 AM
Washington farmers and ranchers fear the giant Palouse earthworm could become the next spotted owl if it is eventually protected as an endangered species, but a spokesman for the agency studying the elusive annelid advised them not to overreact.
Doug Zimmer, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wi ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:47 AM
Stripe rust hurt the performance of many wheat varieties during this year's Northwest university wheat trials.
In the spring wheat trials in which May and June rains ended suddenly, some trials dried out, researchers found.
"In many of those locations, there was a lot of stripe rust," Wash ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 10:59 AM
The 2010 Oregon hazelnut crop forecast shows a smaller crop than predicted earlier this season, which may push prices upward, a grower said.
Based on an unscientific grower survey conducted by the Oregon Hazelnut Commission earlier in 2010, the industry was expecting another good year, aroun ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:45 AM
WENATCHEE, Wash. -- One retailer basically said the new Glory cherry lived up to its name. Another and a wholesaler said it was good but not overwhelming.
That's the feedback Steve Castleman, salesman for Columbia Marketing International of Wenatchee, said he received on the first commercial ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 10:45 AM
DNA evidence has been used to solve a mystery on an Oregon dairy in a case of mistaken manure identity.
It turns out the cows weren't the culprit. It was the geese all along.
Wym Matthews, head of the state program that regulates dairies, turned to DNA after state investigators were stumpe ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:57 AM
SALEM -- The Oregon Department of Agriculture will use fees to cover some of the $400,000 it will lose from its general fund operating budget as a result of lower state revenue projections.
State economists on Aug. 26 announced state revenues were down $373 million from earlier estimates.
...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:38 AM
MOSCOW, Idaho -- Researchers at the University of Idaho are testing a 15-inch worm from the Chelan, Wash., area to determine whether it is a giant Palouse earthworm.
A homeowner found the worm on former farm ground and sent it to the laboratory, said Jodi Johnson-Maynard, an associate professor o ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:48 AM
Growers are being advised this fall to plant wheat varieties that are not susceptible to stripe and stem rust.
Stem rust was more significant in the Palouse region this year compared to last, particularly in Washington's Whitman County, said USDA Agricultural Research Service plant geneticist ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:49 AM
The Pacific Northwest is wrapping up its fourth-largest cherry harvest on record and prices are holding at a level much higher than a year ago.
"Growers did better but still a lot of them had light crops of only one-third or half their normal volumes," said Dan Kelly, assistant manager of Wa ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:50 AM
The U.S. apple industry is second in value only to pork among the agricultural commodities targeted in the latest Mexican tariffs resulting from a trucking dispute.
Virtually all of those apples come from Washington state.
Counting Mexico's own apples and what it imports from other nation ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 10:42 AM
SALEM -- Plaintiffs suing the state of Oregon over the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement have amended their lawsuit, now claiming the state didn't have the authority to enter into the pact.
Water For Life and several individuals in December 2009 filed a lawsuit accusing the state of acting ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:40 AM
The Oregon Association of Nurseries is in the final stages of its search for a new executive director.
According to a schedule released by the association, a search committee now is conducting interviews with an eye toward naming an executive director the first week of October.
Under the plan, ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:39 AM
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The federal government has declared a natural disaster area in the California-Oregon border region in an effort to bring relief to farmers and ranchers stricken by an ongoing drought, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced Thursday.
The declaration officially labe ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 5:29 PM
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The federal government has declared a natural disaster area in the California-Oregon border region in an effort to bring relief to farmers and ranchers stricken by an ongoing drought, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced Thursday.
The declaration officially l ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 5:09 PM
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A suspect in the deaths of a Salem farming couple found slain in their home has told police she helped the couple's son dispose of his bloody clothing just hours before she and the son were arrested.
The bodies of 61-year-old David Scott Jondle and his 58-year-old w ...
Wednesday, September 01, 2010 10:49 AM
Washington State University Extension's swine artificial insemination school will take place 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 20 at the Grant County Fairgrounds, 3953 Airway Drive NE in Moses Lake, Wash.
The school offers the basics of artificial insemination, according to a press release.
National exp ...
Thursday, September 02, 2010 10:09 AM
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) -- A proposed initiative to bar Klamath County from supporting removal of four dams from the Klamath River has failed to qualify for the county ballot.
The Herald and News reports that Klamath County Clerk Linda Smith said Thursday it does not meet state cons ...
Sunday, August 29, 2010 12:29 PM
PORT ANGELES, Wash. (AP) -- The National Park Service has picked a Bozeman, Mont., construction company to remove two massive dams on the Elwha River on Washington's Olympic Peninsula.
Officials say dam removal will allow fish to access miles of river that were blocked off decades ag ...
Sunday, August 29, 2010 9:29 AM
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- The cavernous stores in Costco's home state lack something you can find in its warehouses in California, Alaska and many other places: bottles of Maker's Mark, Absolut vodka and other popular brands of hard liquor.
But two ballot measures on the November ballot -- o ...
Sunday, August 29, 2010 9:09 AM
SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- For the ninth time in about two years, state economists have delivered bad news to the Oregon's political leaders: Tax collections are going to be even less than we told you a couple of months ago.
The string of dismal forecasts led to yet another round of patchwork ...
Sunday, August 29, 2010 9:09 AM
LONDON (AP) -- British scientists have decoded the genetic sequence of wheat -- one of the world's oldest and most important crops -- a development they hope could help the global staple meet the challenges of climate change, disease and population growth.
Wheat is grown across more of ...
Sunday, August 29, 2010 8:49 AM
