Farming on display

SPOKANE — The agricultural community pulled out all the stops last week at the Spokane Ag Show, held at the Spokane Convention Center Tuesday through Thursday.

Experts from all areas of agriculture offered seminars on everything from vehicle regulations to wheat nutrient management to tax and estate planning. The keynote speaker was T. Randall Fortenbery, professor of economics at Washington State University, who gave an overview of the state of agricultural economics and what to expect in the coming year.

The 120,000-square-foot exhibition hall was teeming with 208 exhibitors showing their wares. High-powered farm equipment stood cheek-by-jowl with seed, pesticide and fertilizer vendors, insurance agents, banks, high-tech innovators and growers’ associations.

Tim Cobb, owner of the Farmland Company, had set up a crop duster flight simulator, where the user attempts to fly a small plane and – more tellingly – to land it. Touching down in a stubble field earned the player a certain number of points, Cobb said; landing on a county road earned more. 

The Farmland Company acts as a property manager for farms, Cobb explained.

“Let's say your family or you owned a piece of land, and you didn't farm it,,” Cobb said. “You'd want to have some expertise as to how to manage the land, even if you had a tenant farming it for you … Think about an apartment complex. The property manager there collects the rent, leases the property, takes care of maintenance, takes care of repairs, takes care of all of the financial (stuff), the collecting of rent, and then also anything that has to do with the money that's generated. We do that for farms.”

Not far away, Labor Consultants International offered its own expertise, in navigating the legal labyrinth of bringing in foreign temporary workers to the U.S.

“It is an elaborate process trying to navigate the rules, regulations, everything like that,” said LCI Client Manager Monica Thode. “So that's where we come in … We really just help on the employer side to get started with the certification process. Employers, businesses, they have to get approved to bring over the visa, so we help with all of that work. We don't do any recruiting, we just help get the visa issued to the businesses and then they can pick who they want to bring. Either we can pair them with recruiters to help find workers in that country or they know people they want to bring.”

The Teff Company, based in Boise, had samples and information about what’s been called the new supergrain. Teff is beginning to catch on in America, particularly in southern Idaho and parts of Washington and Oregon, said Charlie Fereday, who was manning the Teff Company’s booth.

“It's a grain originally from Ethiopia,” Fereday said. “It’s their cultural grain and it's actually the smallest cereal grain in the world … (We’re here to) expose people to a gluten-free, high-nutrient grain, potentially outside of the traditional Ethiopian use.”

Joel Martin may be reached at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com. A 25-plus-year employee with the paper, Joel lives in Moses Lake with his wife, children and a collection of dad jokes.

    Jett Cobb makes landing a simulated crop duster look easy at the Spokane Ag Show on Wednesday. His dad, Farmland Company owner Tim Cobb, set up the simulator as part of the display for his farm management service.
  

    Representatives from The Teff Company discuss the Ethiopian staple grain with attendees at the Spokane Ag Show on Wednesday.