Grass seed, nursery industries revive

Editorial Grass seed growers and nurserymen in Oregon's Willamette Valley were hit hard when the housing industry hit the skids, and they have had a tough go the last three years or so. There are signs that seed inventories that had been piling up in barns around the valley are starting to move, a ...

Roman EPA has PR problem

Editorial If any federal agency needs a good public relations firm, it's the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA needlessly gives itself more black eyes than any other federal agency. The Internal Revenue Service is warm and fuzzy compared to the EPA. Most recently, a video surfaced of a regi ...

Mom instrumental to farm's success

Mom has farmed with my dad in Madras, Ore., since 1989. They manage roughly 500 irrigated acres of carrot seed, grass seed, alfalfa, peppermint and wheat. To grasp how exceptional my mother is, you have to understand the path she took to become a farm mom. In the 1980s, my parents gave up a comfo ...

Bureau works to resolve issues

In little more than a month, the Bureau of Reclamation will celebrate 110 years of reclaiming the arid West. For 105 of these 110 years, we have been in this basin constructing, operating and maintaining the Klamath Project, which helps inject more than $600 million a year into the local economy a ...

The. Immigration. System. Is. Broken.

editorial board recommends that Congress fix the broken immigration system establishing a pathway to citizenship for all those who seek it. A version of that pathway would include: * A six-month sign-up period, when any immigrants who have entered the U.S. illegally and who have not been convicted ...

Family farms sigh with relief

Editorial The U.S. Department of Labor said last week that it is scrapping proposed child labor rules that critics say would have prevented teens from working alongside their parents and family members on the farm and ended work opportunities for most rural teens. It was welcome news that for now ...

'Pink slime' inventor did industry a disservice

Every comment so far, and there have been many, has touted lean finely textured beef, or LFTB, as safe and nutritious, that it is used to make ground beef leaner, that it has been in use for more than 20 years without any health or other issues, and that the loss of LFTB will cause hamburger price ...