Fight over canola pits biofuels vs. organics

JONATHAN J. COOPER

Asso­ci­ated Press

SALEM, Ore. — Wet win­ters and cool, dry sum­mers make Oregon’s Willamette Val­ley one of the best places on the globe to pro­duce seeds for organic broc­coli, cab­bage, cau­li­flower, Brus­sels sprouts and a vari­ety of other veg­eta­bles known as brassicas.

That means the fields south of Port­land are also an ideal place to grow canola, another bras­sica whose seeds can be pressed to extract oil for food or renew­able fuel.

But you won’t find any canola here. It was banned from the Willamette Val­ley to pro­tect the del­i­cate veg­etable seeds from being con­t­a­m­i­nated by pollen from canola or destroyed by the pests and dis­eases it brings.

Demand for renew­able energy, how­ever, has helped fuel a push to grow canola in the region, rais­ing a tense con­flict between pro­duc­ers of organic foods and renew­able energy in a state that cher­ishes both.

Seed farm­ers fear canola would cross-pollinate with their plants, destroy­ing the value of the pure seeds they pro­duce. They’re joined in their fight by organic-food lovers, small-farm advo­cates and oppo­nents of genet­i­cally mod­i­fied crops.

“This is an exis­ten­tial threat,” said Frank Mor­ton, who farms about 12 acres of spe­cialty seeds in Philo­math, about 90 miles south­west of Port­land. “If canola comes here, it’s the begin­ning of the end of this industry.”

Canola pro­po­nents say Mor­ton and his col­leagues are over­re­act­ing. With the right con­trols, they argue, Canola can co-exist with­out harm­ing other bras­si­cas. Some wheat and grass-seed farm­ers are eager to use canola as a rota­tional crop to inter­rupt dis­ease and pest cycles. They used to burn their fields at the end of the sea­son, but recent pol­lu­tion con­trols have severely lim­ited that option.

“It comes down to good stew­ard­ship and coop­er­at­ing with your neigh­bors and good man­age­ment prac­tices,” said Kathy Hadley, who grows grass seed and other crops in the Salem area. “Every­one does those things on a reg­u­lar basis already, and I feel like, in this spe­cific case, things are being blown out of proportion.”

The state Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture has pro­posed loos­en­ing the ban on grow­ing canola in the Willamette Val­ley, reduc­ing the exclu­sion zone from 3.7 mil­lion acres to 1.7 mil­lion, with some restrictions.

The agri­cul­ture agency will hold a pub­lic hear­ing Fri­day to hear from fired-up advo­cates on both sides of the fight. The agency direc­tor is expected to make a final deci­sion by the end of the year.

“They can grow this stuff any­where else,” said George Kim­brell, a lawyer from the Cen­ter for Food Safety rep­re­sent­ing spe­cialty seed farm­ers. “It’s just this one area that’s being pro­tected for many very good rea­sons. It’s not like Ore­gon or any­where else is say­ing you can’t grow your canola. It’s one area.”

Spe­cialty seed farm­ers grow veg­eta­bles not for the food but for their seeds. They’re shipped to farm­ers around the world, espe­cially in Asia and Europe where there’s higher demand for foods that aren’t genet­i­cally mod­i­fied. This region pro­duces nearly all of the world’s Euro­pean cab­bage, Brus­sels sprouts, rutabaga and turnip seeds, accord­ing to a 2010 study by Ore­gon State University.

Canola, by con­trast, is uncom­mon in Ore­gon, where farm­ers planted just 6,500 acres of it this year, most of it in East­ern Ore­gon, across a moun­tain range from the bras­sica seed fields.

Seed farm­ers here describe the expan­sion of canola as a Pandora’s Box that, once opened, will destroy their industry.

Wind can carry pollen up to five miles. Seed farm­ers worry that genet­i­cally mod­i­fied canola plants will pol­li­nate with organic bras­si­cas, pro­duc­ing seeds with no value. They’re espe­cially con­cerned that canola would become a weed that takes root far and wide, pro­duc­ing pollen even inside the canola-free zone.

They also worry about cab­bage mag­gots and white mold, a fun­gus that can destroy root veg­etable crops.

Given those risks, the 2010 Ore­gon State study con­cluded that “pre­cau­tion sug­gests not allow­ing canola pro­duc­tion at this time.” Those con­cerns haven’t changed, said pro­fes­sor Russ Karow, the study’s author.

Con­cerns about cross-pollination can be mit­i­gated with a sys­tem to track the loca­tion of var­i­ous crops, he said, but there’s no way to know how wide­spread pests and dis­eases would be with large-scale canola fields.

“Peo­ple keep ask­ing, ‘Is there a sci­en­tific answer?’” Karow said, “and there is not.”

The state’s pro­posed rules would require canola grow­ers to remove stray plants near their fields. They’d be lim­ited to grow­ing the crop on any field for more than two of every five years. An elec­tronic map­ping sys­tem would keep track of where crops are being grown in an effort to pre­vent cross-pollination.

Canola advo­cates include farm­ers who want to grow it and com­pa­nies that want to crush it, extract­ing oil for food or biodiesel and sell­ing the byprod­ucts as live­stock feed. They insist they can man­age it effec­tively, point­ing out that 2 mil­lion acres of the Willamette Val­ley would still be off-limits to canola.

“I think it’s rather insult­ing to the grass-seed grow­ers and the wheat grow­ers, who are excel­lent farm­ers, to say they’re not going to be able to con­trol it on their prop­erty,” said Tomas Endi­cott, vice pres­i­dent of Willamette Bio­mass Proces­sors Inc., a com­pany that crushes seeds in Rick­re­all, west of Salem.

As the clos­est proces­sor, Endicott’s com­pany would likely be a top buyer for canola grown in the Willamette Valley.

Posted by AP News on Sep 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.