Anyone who maintains that Washington’s carbon credit mandate will have a minimal impact on consumers need only look at the results of the first auction. The take — $299.7 million — was 50% higher than the state had estimated.
Wow! That about sums up our reaction to the plans to remodel Portland International Airport’s terminal and top it off — literally — with an engineered wood roof.
THE CONVERSATION — After three years of extreme drought, the Western U.S. is finally getting a break. Mountain ranges are covered in deep snow, and water reservoirs in many areas are filling u…
Recently, I traveled to the famous Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania observing the prices of milk in stores. I wanted to see how the gallons of whole milk were moving. I am very concerned becau…
In the late 1930s, Clatsop County became the first county in Oregon to deed forestland to the state. It did so under the promise that land would be managed to benefit the local community.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)
There’s politics, and then there’s Washington state politics.
The agricultural press is all aflutter over the earth-shattering news that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is going to redefine the standards for affixing a voluntary “Product of the USA” o…
For years, the dairy industry has been trying to get the manufacturers of non-dairy beverages to stop calling their products “milk.”
American leaders should follow the example of Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who spoke publicly in favor of cultivated meat.
I take umbrage on several points with your editorial on wild cows and horses.
When we heard that the U.S. Forest Service, with the support of environmental groups, plans to send sharpshooters in helicopters to dispatch troublesome animals in New Mexico’s Gila National F…
The year was 1967. In South Africa, a young doctor named Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant, placing the heart of a 25-year-old woman killed in an automobile acciden…
This present tension over solar siting gives Gov. Jay Inslee the opportunity to really lead us into a carbon-free future.
In light of the recent lawsuit by Center for Biological Diversity and its demands for a funding guarantee for canal piping by the farmers and ranchers, is it really the farmers and ranchers wh…
FDA this week released draft recommendations for manufacturers of plant-based milks to voluntarily label the product with its nutrient content if it is different from dairy milk's.
The odds are overwhelmingly against a large swath of eastern Oregon ever being patriated to Idaho. Yet, the idea persists and a lot of urban Oregonians can’t understand why.
A member of the Oregon Legislature is curious. He wants to know whether seeding clouds could produce more snowpack — and river runoff — that will benefit Oregonians.
Last week, news outlets around the country had wall-to-wall coverage of a spy balloon sent by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) transiting across America.
In the Netherlands, the government is putting out of business thousands of livestock farmers it describes as “peak polluters.” The goal is to reduce the number of farm animals in that nation b…
It’s unusual to get bipartisan agreement on anything, let alone a piece of legislation regarding wolves. So when we hear there’s a bipartisan wolf bill in the Washington legislature that has t…
If Washington state is going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars by auctioning off carbon credits, those auctions need independent oversight.
Suppose a farm hosted a wedding and no one noticed.
Stock-holm syn-drome: noun; feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor.
Government is populated by two types of people. We’ll call them the showboats and the worker bees.
Could anyone have been surprised when the Center for Biological Diversity announced its intent to sue against the habitat conservation plan for threatened species in the Deschutes River Basin?
In our currently partisan legislative landscape, it is momentous to see a bipartisan bill that takes into consideration the concerns of everyone at the table.
In a recent copy of the Capital Press you covered solar farms and wind farms and some of the problems that come with them.
Not long ago, our all-knowing government agency, the USDA, first proposed to require all farm animals to be individually identified with electronic identification. We know this as radio freque…
Well-intentioned legislation and regulation often yield unintended consequences that hurt the people they are meant to help.
It’s hard not to like Derrick Josi. His deadpan delivery, his plainspoken manner and his self-effacing sense of humor have made him one of the major voices for agriculture on social media.
Mom picked up our family’s copy of The Farming Game at Cenex in Quincy, Wash. I always wanted to be “Roza Ray” or “Sunnyside Sidney” — two of the six Central Washington-themed names of the far…
Tom Vilsack wants farmers to make more money.
The American Farm Bureau Federation has signed a memorandum of understanding with Deere & Co. guaranteeing farmers and ranchers the right to repair their own equipment.
SPOKANE — The U.S. Department of Agriculture runs three agencies in Washington to support ranchers, farmers, forestland owners, and producers across the state. We pride ourselves on working cl…
Another administration, another Waters of the U.S. rule. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t appear to be farmer friendly.
Anyone who has run afoul of the federal government knows how quickly the administrative state can bring down its hammer.
As Oregon and Washington set climate policies that simultaneously increase the demand for electricity and reduce supply, a recent report lays out some sobering prospects for the next decade.
It is not often that we find ourselves speechless, but when it comes to the fiction that foreign guestworkers are taking agricultural jobs from Americans, there really isn’t much to say.
Numerous meatpacker-oriented economists helped shepherd the decades-long transition from many packers to few packers, many cattle producers to far fewer cattle producers, and from competitive …
When it comes to predators, there is great irony in the stances of various alarmists and activists among the environmental and animal rights groups.
Oregon farmers are already wary of how they will cope when farmworkers become eligible for overtime on Jan. 1. They won’t be comforted by the experience of Washington growers, who have already…
If our political leaders are serious about addressing the climate crisis, they should support increased public funding for cultivated-meat research.
Throughout history, there have been two political parties: one for the people, and one for the aristocracy. At times, the party for the people has been snuffed out. This is one of those times.
My neighbor, Paul Rich, bought his first generator in the spring of 1993 for his dairy in Powell Butte, Ore. It was a 60 kW PTO-powered Katolight. It powered the equipment he needed for milkin…
Tens of millions of pounds of Oregon grass seed was used for the eight stadiums and 71 practice fields for the recent 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, but none is used on the Oregon State Univers…
Let us forever lay to rest the popular fiction that family-owned and -operated farms are a small minority and the accompanying corollary that corporations are taking over U.S. agriculture.
The new and improved River Democracy Act was introduced last week by Oregon’s two U.S. senators, and it’s a lot like the original.
What happens when electrical power generation and distribution systems are mandated by politicians, instead of designed by engineers?
Regarding the Nov. 18 article, “Snake River ag stakeholders comment on Klamath dam removal.”
Substance abuse, homelessness, mental illness. What’s it got to do with us?
As many as 828 million people today are facing hunger across the world and projections indicate that this crisis will grow even more dire, afflicting as much as 8% of the world’s population by 2030.
Consider the plight of the salmon that pass along the Washington state coast and through the Salish Sea north of Puget Sound. As they head to and from their spawning grounds, they have to dodg…
Once in a while, someone says something that so eloquently states the obvious commonsense that it cannot be improved upon.
When I think of Oregon, I think of vineyards in the Willamette Valley. Sagebrush in Central Oregon. Working forests and rocky shores on the Coast. Ranches and farmland in Wallowa County.
