Potato Commission dealing with spud issues

Photo: Pat Boss, executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission, said that the Commission is working on a number of things for potato growers and companies in the industry.

There's good news and a couple challenges on the horizon for the Washington State Potato Commission.

The organization recently got involved with several issues that have some impact on the state's potato industry, said Pat Boss, executive director of the Potato Commission.

One is the government's requiring Idaho to take water out of their reservoirs from the upper Snake River area, flush it to the Columbia River and then out into the ocean, Boss said.

He said that the Idaho groups that recently filed a lawsuit over the Snake River situation are concerned that the use of their water in the summer is not a good use, and also that their reservoirs are being drained at a time when they need the water for irrigation.

"There's a lot of groups questioning why we're taking water out of the Columbia River Basin — and I'm talking about the entire Basin that covers seven states — when Northwest Power Planning Council concluded that only about 14 to 15 wild fish were being saved by millions and millions of gallons of water being flushed down the river at a taxpayer expense of over $100 million a year," Boss said.

Washington is concerned for related reasons, Boss said, because the state also has reservoirs that could be targets for the government to draw down if they feel they need more water in the river in the summertime.

Boss said a recent decision by the NPPC to curtail summer spill showed that the government is waking up to the fact that the summer spill program doesn't work. He said the government would be experimenting with different regimes on the Columbia River, beginning soon with lowering the amount of water spilling over the dams.

Because the Columbia River has so many tributaries, Boss said the proposal by the federal government to change the program should have positive benefits for taxpayers, power rates and for fish, most of which are already in the ocean during August spill.

Another issue at hand is a recent award by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to an Alaskan company to export seed potatoes to China.

Boss said the Potato Commission doesn't have an issue with an individual company promoting seed potatoes in China, but does have a problem with the USDA giving companies money to help China grow potatoes that would essentially be competing against Washington growers and processors.

"We believe that China is going to progress; they're going to be competitive, but our government should not help them to speed up the process to be competitive," Boss said. "It doesn't make any sense."

He said that the Commission called the USDA and found some people who were not aware of what was going on.

The Commission is trying to work internally with the USDA to stop the next part of the grant to the Alaskan company from going through, and see the USDA money be put to better use for other programs, Boss said.

The Potato Commission has also joined the Washington Farm Bureau in asking Judge John Coughenour to reconsider an order blocking the use of many common farm chemicals within 60 to 300 feet of rivers and streams, and asking the Ninth Circuit to overturn the order.

"The information that we have is showing that the problem does not lie in the fact that these chemicals hurt salmon," Boss said. "The problem lied in the fact that the agencies that were supposed to be reviewing these chemicals had not been consulting each other."

The Potato Commission's issue is to get the agencies to start talking to one another and not hurt the farmers who are using the chemicals under rigorous regulations, he said.

"EPA tests these chemicals for effects on aquatic organisms and aquatic wildlife, and so the fact of the matter is, in the end the chemicals are not hurting salmon," he said. "It's more of a problem with the bureaucracy, so we're hoping that we can appeal to common sense here and have people take a step back and take a look at this whole thing."

If farmers do have buffers put alongside irrigation canals, rivers and streams, it would hurt their ability to farm in many cases, Boss said, because many parts of land would be taken out of production and take away protection of the outsides of the farmers' fields from pests.

The Commission wanted to bring grower reasoning and grower arguments to the table, Boss said, adding that many of the chemicals are applied to the soil and do not pose a risk to the salmon.

Boss was expecting responses to the Commission's request for a stay and from the Ninth Circuit soon.

"The Potato Commission's goal is to bring good information to the table here, get all of the sides together and get a decision that is objective in nature and helps both the farmers and the salmon," Boss said. "We're not interested in having extreme decisions that hurt one or the other. We want something that's good, practical regulation that will allow farmers to still be able to protect their crops, but also still protect salmon."

Regarding the movement by the city to house an economic development and marketing position for the USDA, Boss said that the Pasco Chamber of Commerce sent in a letter last week supporting location of the position in Moses Lake, to help companies and farmers throughout the area promote their products.

Boss also hoped to hear back regarding that position soon.

"The Commission is getting ready on a number of fronts this upcoming year where we're really putting a lot of effort into international trade issues," he said of other aspects of the industry the Commission is looking at getting involved with.

The organization is currently evaluating challenging a potato anti-dumping order in British Columbia, where a duty is added for every shipment from the state, to see the feasibility of winning.

"There's a hearing next summer in 2005 that we're going to be looking to see if we can mount an aggressive challenge," he said.

Boss also said that Japan is on the verge of lifting its import ban on potatoes within the next year to 18 months and that Korea recently raised its quota on potatoes from 18,000 tons to 26,000 tons.

Boss said the exporting of potatoes to Korea from the area is up 6000 percent from last year, and credited that to the combined efforts of the Commission, Gov. Gary Locke and the Grant County Economic Development Council.

The upcoming year (the fiscal year for the Commission begins in July) will bring a focus on making big pushes in countries like Korea, Japan and Taiwan to keep removing trade barriers and bringing more buyers over to meet with growers, Boss said. Ten thousand tons of potatoes were shipped to Mexico last year for the first time, too, he said.

"So (there's) a lot of good things on the horizon," Boss said. "Exports, fighting trade barriers, opening up new markets — those are all things that we think will help the economy around here, and we're going to continue to work on those."