Cooler temperatures have brought some relief to the Willamette Valley and a large swath of Western Oregon which were under heat advisories from the National Weather Service earlier this week. The hot, dry conditions coincided with three straight days of the hottest global temperatures ever recorded. Farmers and ranchers are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change as they contend with hotter and drier weather conditions, particularly during the summer months. Oregon produces more than 225 agricultural commodities which can be impacted differently by heat and water shortages depending on their growing seasons, according to the Oregon Farm Bureau. We hear from Lauren Poor, vice president of government & legal affairs for the Oregon Farm Bureau, about what is being done to help farmers and ranchers mitigate the effects of hotter and drier conditions on their livelihoods, and what the impact could be for them in the coming weeks and months.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Cooler temperatures have brought relief to the Willamette Valley and a large swath of Western Oregon, which were under heat advisories from the National Weather Service earlier this week. The hot, dry conditions coincided with what may have been the hottest three days globally in modern times. Farmers and ranchers are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change as they contend with hotter and drier summers. Lauren Poor joins us with more. She is the vice president of government and legal affairs for the Oregon Farm Bureau. Welcome.
Lauren Poor: Thank you.
Miller: Which crops have been most impacted by recent conditions?
Poor: Well, this time of year in the Willamette Valley, specifically, berries are going to be particularly vulnerable to heat spells. Especially right now, they’re right before their harvest or being harvested as we speak.
Miller: How likely are crop losses if we get more heat waves this summer?
Poor: It can be likely. We were fortunate that we did have a lot of moisture this fall, so we didn’t start the summer with as dry of soils as we have seen in the last few years. However, when it is hot like this, there is always the risk, specifically with berry crops, that the plants could draw some additional moisture from those berries before they’re harvested. So our farmers feel additional pressure to get those berries harvested sooner rather than later if they’re ready. So they have that sort of time crunch and a shorter window to harvest them when it’s this hot. That comes along with it some issues related to labor. Because of the heat conditions, there are specific rules that they have to abide by related to making sure that their labor is safe as well from the heat. They have to vary when they are harvesting and what hours they’re harvesting and breaks, and so that can get infinitely more complicated in making sure those berries get off the vine in time.
Additionally, some of our farmers are set up to do U-Pick. As you can imagine, when it’s hot like it’s been, we don’t see nearly as many families going out to experience picking berries off the vine because it’s kind of miserable for everyone. No one wants to be out in that heat picking berries.
Miller: So agritourism, various versions of it, could also suffer. I want to go back to what you’re mentioning in terms of labor. I think our listeners may remember newish OSHA rules based on heat that you were mentioning in terms of access to water or shade or differences in how many hours workers can be out. Overall, I’m sure there are a lot of different situations for a lot of different farmers growing a lot of different things, but how would you say these new rules are working from the farm owners perspective?
Poor: Specifically, once those temperatures reach 90 degrees, farmers and farms are taking extra measures to protect their labor. They’re working much earlier in the morning when the weather is a little bit cooler, and they’re stopping work closer to around noon before those temps get really high. They’re having to equip their farmers with more water stations in shade, so they really have to be on top of monitoring that heat index at their work site and making sure that their employees are taking those necessary additional rest and water breaks when they are out there working.
I think that before, of course our farmers were wanting to be safe with their labor, but now they have these work plans for the heat, to prevent heat illness. So they’re really making sure that they’re staying on top of that and following all those rules so that everybody is safe when it is hot like it’s been.
Miller: We’ve been focusing on farming so far, but obviously that’s just one part of agriculture in Oregon. What about ranchers? How does the heat affect them in particular?
Poor: Well, ranchers have to deal with making sure that their livestock is safe. Much like humans and our pets, animals, their cattle and their other livestock, they need additional water and shade when it’s hot like it’s been. They struggle with making sure that that happens and have access to that water. They also see some issues, on the eastern side of the state, with wildlife coming down also looking for some water and reprieve from the heat as well.
Miller: Are farmers or orchardists or nursery owners – are they still feeling the effects from the historic heat dome that was two years ago?
Poor: I wouldn’t say that they’re necessarily feeling from that two years ago. I did have one of my farmers reach out to me and express that one of the things they’re feeling this summer, that is a little bit unique, [is] that we had some dry conditions in April that are playing a role now. But also, if you recall, we sort of had this lack of a spring. It was very much cold and wintry, and then all of a sudden it was summer. They’re seeing that that is playing a role in decrease yields as well. So not something we anticipated seeing, but is definitely playing a role in what they’re seeing on the ground for our farmers and ranchers here in the valley, specifically.
Miller: Have you seen changes in what farmers are interested in growing or when they might plant based on drought and heat in recent years?
Poor: I think that, for our farmers and ranchers, there’s a lot of different things that play a role in what they decide to plant. Obviously they work in a commodity market, so what is going to ideally have the best profit margins for them plays a role. But also their labor costs… what’s gonna take the most fertilizer. We’ve seen in recent years the cost of fertilizer rising, so if they can get away with crops that require less fertilizer, they may lean towards that to help increase their profit margins. It all really varies.
We are fortunate in Oregon that we’re one of the most agriculturally diverse states in the nation. We produce over 225 different commodities across several different growing regions. Specifically in the Willamette Valley, you can probably grow almost all 225 of those commodities here. So there [are] a lot of options for our farmers in the valley to choose from as they’re trying to figure out each year what they wanna do as far as crop rotations. But you also know in the Willamette Valley our top commodity in the state is nursery stock. We have a lot of that here, and that doesn’t really vary.
Miller: What can the Farm Bureau do to help farmers or ranchers to deal with the changing climate?
Poor: The Farm Bureau’s number one thing that we do to help them is we’re an advocacy organization on behalf of our farmers. We work at the state and at the federal level to help bring these issues to our legislators and try to find ways through policy and funding to help make their ability to adapt to our changing climate and their water needs easier. We constantly are advocating for more funding for drought programs and for more funding towards water infrastructure projects so that we can get more water to our farmers because that is one of the things that, across the board, all of our farmers are asking for – that they need as we see increased drought in the state. So we work towards that.
Also, at the federal level, a lot of our natural disaster programs are not designed for a specialty crop state like Oregon and some of the natural disasters that we see here related to heat. So we bring that [to] the attention [of] our federal legislators and also to the American Farm Bureau to point out how some of our USDA programs that provide natural disaster assistance don’t really meet the needs for our farming community and try to help make changes to those programs so that our farmers can access them as well.
Miller: Just before we go, speaking of the Legislature, it was a strange session to say the least, with a lot of delays because of the Republican Senate walkout and then a flurry of activity that was hard to keep track of at the very end. What did lawmakers pass that is gonna have the biggest impact on farmers and ranchers when it comes to the issues we’ve been talking about – heat and drought?
Poor: Yeah. I would say the number one bill that would relate to heat and drought would be House Bill 2010, which was the water package. At the end of the legislative session, there was a lot of water policy bills that needed funding that had been sent down to Ways and Means. They took the approach this year of sort of packaging them all together into one bill. That ended up being House Bill 2010.
Housed in that water package were a few things that we think will be helpful: some funding that we have advocated for, including the establishment of an agricultural water management technical assistance program through the Oregon State University Extension Service program – the extension offices that we have all around in our different counties. Hopefully that’ll help. They’ll look at different irrigation techniques that will help our farmers in the event of drought and look at different crop types and drought resistant crops and ways that they can help mitigate some of the effects of drought moving forward through agricultural water management techniques. We advocated for that.
That bill also had support for place-based planning funding so that our local communities can do more water planning, which is needed so that we can better plan out Oregon’s water future. It also had funding for us to look at barriers to the development of water reuse and recycled water programs so that we can access some of that water as well.
Miller: Lauren poor, thanks very much.
Poor: No problem. Thank you.
Miller: Lauren Poor is the vice president of government and legal affairs for the Oregon Farm Bureau.
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