Discovery

The USDA’s Economic Research Service released the latest series of state fact sheets today, based on the 2007 Census of Agriculture. As the son and grandson of  farmers, I’m always curious about the state of ag in our state, particularly for small farms. A few items caught my attention as I browsed Washington State’s stats.

The first surprise was the shrinking size of farms. Conventional wisdom tells me that farms are consolidating and growing larger, but the average farm size went from 426 acres in 2002 to 381 acres in 2007. The percent of very small farms (1-99 acres) grew, while the percentage of farms with 500 or more acres decreased.

The average age of farmers continues to climb. In 2007, farmers averaged 57 years old, up from 55 in 2002 and 53 in 1997.

Another fact jumped out: only 45.9 percent list farming as their primary occupation, down from 58.5 percent in 2002. 

A significant change was the number of women listed as principal farm operators. That number jumped from 5,632 in 2002 to 8,090 in 2007.

There are a lot of other stats to look at on the fact sheet. What do the numbers mean? Do they accurately reflect the state of agriculture in Washington? Are there longer term trends that are shifting, from farm size to ownership to gender to ongoing rural poverty?

Links

Washington State Fact Sheet (USDA/Economic Research Service)

USDA/Economic Research Service home page

Every year hard apple cider consultant Peter Mitchell treks from Britain to Mount Vernon teach a course in cider making to serious hobbyists and business owners. Last week 19 students from around the United States and Canada met with him at the Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center to learn everything from the history of cider production to fruit selection and fermentation.

I skipped the orchard management and yeast handling instructions, but on the last day nosed in on the sensory evaluation training. The students met at the picturesque La Conner Flats farm to sample ciders and even share some of their own homemade efforts. Under the green and white striped awning of the patio Mitchell stood in front of a table populated with bottles – tall and short, from cider businesses just five miles away and as distant as Spain and France.

To lay a tasting groundwork, Mitchell began with two simple samples that were made from apples grown at the WSU research station. The first was cider made from galas, which he called dessert apples. The sample filled our glasses with a bright yellow. He held it up and asked the students to describe the color. “Clear,” said one lady. “Light caramel,” said another. “I would very much describe this as straw,” he said peering down into his own glass. A few wrote that in their notebooks. Then he told them to look at the liquid. Is it thick, did it shine? Yes, and a little.

“Keep it still and see what you can pick up,” he said, “Then give it a good swirl.” The swirl brought up a “hint of cantelope,” and “citrusy.” It’s not complex, he noted, it’s more winey.  “And that’s about it. Not a lot. Don’t go looking for something that isn’t there.”

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Sometimes, figuring something out only deepens the overall mystery.

Take Pseudomonas fluorescens D7, for example.

Ann Kennedy, a USDA-Agricultural Research Service soil microbiologist at Washington State University, has isolated the native bacteria as a perfectly natural way to fight cheatgrass, also known as downy brome, scientific name Bromus tectorum. Recently, she and her colleagues were awarded a large grant to test the effectiveness of Pseudomonas fluorescens D7 on cheatgrass in rangeland.

Cheatgrass, which was introduced in the late 19th century as a forage crop, is an aggressive invader, a grass that has, according to botanist Washington State University Richard Mack, changed the ecology, if not the landscape, of much of the western United States. Cheatgrass crowds out other plants and changes the fire ecology of a region. Because it matures in early spring, it dries out and provides a hot-burning fuel for wildfires, to which its seeds are impervious.

The reason invasive species are so successful is they are out of context, out of their normal environment. Not all introduced plants are necessarily invasive. They may grow in a foreign environment, but not sufficiently well to crowd out native species. But if a plant does well in an environment and lacks native predators or enemies, then it can become aggressively invasive. Other very visible invasives in the Pacific Northwest are Scotch Broom and purple loosestrife. The reason they are so visible is they have no natural controls.

So it is with cheatgrass. Originally from Eastern Europe, it is not the problem there that it is here. In its native environment, it has no advantage over competitors and predators.

Kennedy and her colleagues imported soil from Turkey and Kazakhstan and found that 90 percent of the organisms in it were inhibitory to cheatgrass. Only 50 percent of organisms in domestic soil are inhibitory. (more…)

Thomas Henick-Kling, the new director of Washington State University’s viticulture and enology program, focused on wine from western Washington during a recent reception at the WSU Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center in Mount Vernon.

On the tables around him stood bottles holding wines made primarily from grapes grown in areas like Hoodsport, Bainbridge Island, Mount Vernon, and the San Juans. While eastern Washington regions such as Walla Walla and the Columbia Basin form the base of the state’s wine operations, there are now more than 50 commercial vineyards and 150 acres planted in wine grapes on the west side of the Cascades. The oldest vineyard represented was Bainbridge Island Vineyards, established in 1973. Most, though, have only started up in the past five years. They are very small operations, with just a few acres of grapes. The varieties include the Müller-Thurgau a Riesling-like grape, the Armenian Burmunk, and the Madeleine Angevine which comes from the Loire Valley.

“There are so many great varieties out there: Regente, Siegerrebe, Pinot Noir. And some we haven’t even tried yet,” says Henick-Kling. He is looking forward to helping with evaluating new varieties for the region and looking at interspecific hybrids – grapes that are the result of crosses between European varieties and one or more American species. That would involve using native grapes to breed new grapes with ripening qualities, disease tolerance, and winter hardiness suited to western Washington’s climate, he says. (more…)