I met with Greg L, manager of West Coast Beet Seed, at 7am Friday morning. The company work with farmers, to produce Beet seed, by giving the farmers the seed to grow, then the farmer delivers all the seed produced to the company. He was also a past president of the Willamette Valley Speciality Seed Growers Association, so has a very strong interest in the introduction of Canola into the Valley. He pointed out that it is not actually a GM issue, rather a Canola issue. Because all of the Canola grown will be GM, it becomes a GM issue. But seed growers are purely worried about the contamination of their brassica seed crops, with Canola pollen, which will lower the purity of the seed. Special seed crops have a huge gross margin, so it would be a huge income loss to these farmers if they were to lose their niche markets.
It's a really complicated system of farming here, with farmers working together to make sure all their crops are kept at the right distances apart to ensure purity. I cant quite comprehend how it all works but they seem to talk about it and work it out. The seed association is of the view that the canola growers will not work together with the seed growers to ensure adequate buffer zones. Unfortunately, I was not able to meet with anyone from the Canola growers point of view. But it does seem like it would be a real shame for these growers to lose these precious markets. I might add that many people I met believe it has become a political issue and the desire for the US governement to produce ethanol and biofuels is driving the push for Canola.
It was good to get back out into the paddock and meet with farmer Skip. He is an extremely busy man, growing over 60 different crops!!!! Special Seed Crops such as onions, cabbages, and sugar beet, consumable crops such as beans, hazelnuts, flower crops such as blue lupins and much more!
The photo below shows the bee hives they have set up all over the farm to ensure good pollintion. The problem they were having at the moment was all the bees wanted to go to the onions, and they wouldnt grow to the other crops! Hmmm, would you chose onions if you were a bee?
Onions going up into seed. They grow 2 rows of males and 3 rows of females, then they have to remove all the male crops before harvest. Sure makes the old wheat and sheep sound easy!
Just looks like a real mess to me, but this is a sugar beet crop grown for seed.
hazelnut trees, really cool!
Skip and his neigbours had gone in together and built this variable rate spreader, he hoped it would save their farm a lot of money on fertiliser. He is working on zoning his small paddocks
Skip, also is very against the growing of Canola in the valley. He almost kicked me out the door when I said we grew it :) He said his buyers had said they would not buy his product if there was Canola grown nearby.
After leaving Skip, I very stupidly thought I would try and take to coastal route up the west coast. It was a really beautiful drive through the forest up there, however very windy and took a long time. The coast was a little overcast, and reminds me why I love the west coast of Australia so much! The coastal highway was SO packed with people and traffic was slow slow. So I had about 4okms of beachline, then headed back inland to the motorway. Unfortunately this meant I hit Portland at peak hour, which was not a lot of fun. I had planned to stay in a little historic beach town further north, but had to settle for a roadside motel, as it just got too late!
Anyway - back accross the border this morning and here I am at the Vancouver Airport.
Trip Stats; 10,466kms (3800 with Shea)
13 hotels, 4 stayovers
17 different beds
13 different states in Canada and America; BC, Alberta, Sasketchawan, Nth Dakota, Sth Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebreaska, Colorado, Utah, Oregan, Washington.
Lots and lots of really nice, helpful, clever people!
An amazing, awesome trip!
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