Northwest agriculture

(Runtime 4:07)In Pasco at RDO’s annual customer appreciation event, hundreds of people lined up for tri-tip.RDO sells tractors. Long tables were set and…

(Runtime 1:04)At a recent “field day,” about 100 Northwest farmers and scientists from across Washington and Oregon scuffed through sand, walking between…

(Runtime 3:54)It’s hot! It hit about 110 degrees in the Columbia Basin this week. So how do dairy cows, with no air conditioning, stay cool? Turns out one…

Blueberries, raspberries and blackberries from Oregon to Washington to British Columbia are baked on the bush and vine. Growers are calling the heat damage widespread and catastrophic.

Learn how sheep ranchers in the late-nineteenth century in Eastern Oregon were already a part of complex agricultural and industrial systems that provided food, clothing and commodities to markets across the U.S.

Much of the Northwest’s high country is still deep in good snowpack but short on rain this spring. That has dryland wheat farmers and cattle ranchers fretting. Cold, wind and dust are even wreaking havoc with produce farmers in the region.

“Now basically, we have Mexican fruit coming in from March all the way to June. We start getting Peruvian fruit come August,” says Rob Dhaliwal, a blueberry grower from Lynden, Washington. “Even in July. Then we start getting fruit from British Columbia. So there is a good 10 months of foreign product coming into the country.”

Farmworkers continue to pick Washington apples in the height of the state's harvest – even as the sustained smoke makes it hazardous to be outside, especially while doing strenuous work or exercise.

The latest harvest estimates say Washington ranchers will harvest nearly 153 million bushels of wheat and Oregon 44 million bushels. That’s around average for both states. A typical barge holds around 122,500 bushels of wheat — meaning 44 million bushels would be about 360 barges full of grain on the Snake and Columbia Rivers heading toward export terminals.

From The Dalles, Oregon to Brewster, Washington, Northwest cherry growers are checking their orchards now, just before harvest. Infected trees have to be cut down. And the disease can spread like wildfire from tree to tree until an entire orchard is just stumps.