Oregon Growers Will Meet Burn Limit

With field burning season less than two weeks away, Oregon’s grass seed farmers are right on target in meeting the Oregon Legislature’s order to limit the acreage they burn every year.

Farmers have notified the state Department of Agriculture that they intend to burn 87,949 acres this summer. That’s down from the 103,097 acres registered a year ago.

But because fewer acres normally are burned than are registered, state officials expect this year’s actual burn total to fall well short of the 76,417 acres burned in 1996.

Under terms of a 1991 agreement worked out among legislators, environmentalists and the 740 Oregon grass seed growers, only 40,000 acres will be available for burning next year. The maximum burn total for this year remains at the 100,000-acre limit used last year.

Open field burning began in the late 1940s, when Oregon State University scientists found it to be an effective method of controlling fungous diseases, weeds and other contaminants.

But decades of sparring between growers and residents of smoke-affected communities turned a corner in 1988 after smoke from a wildfire touched off by a regulated field burn caused an Interstate 5 pileup that killed seven motorists and injured 38. The resulting legislative agreement gave growers eight years to find suitable alternatives.

Bob Wagar, spokesman for the Agriculture Department’s smoke management program, predicts that this year’s burning season will begin sometime shortly after July 7, depending on rainfall and humidity. If weather patterns seen last year hold true, Wagar said, the majority of the fields will be torched between Aug. 15 and Sept. 15.

Farmers have scrambled in recent years to develop alternative crops for the 390,000 acres of grass seed fields now in production in the Willamette Valley. They also have helped find new uses for the straw left over once seed species such as tall fescue, highland bent grass and perennial ryegrass are harvested.

Growers sold about 310,000 tons of straw to foreign markets in 1996 for uses including livestock feed and animal bedding. They sold another 30,000 tons domestically.

“The growers have made an awful lot of progress in helping with the phase-down,” Wagar said.

Even so, many growers remain concerned that alternatives to open field burning will drive up the cost of their product.

“There are still a lot of people trying to burn as much as they can under the limitation because fire and heat are such great and cost-effective tools for us,” said Nick Bowers, a Harrisburg-area farmer. “Without burning, we simply can’t produce seed for the same money we did in 1985.”

Ultimately, he added, buyers will decide whether they want to pay the additional price for Oregon grass seed. Currently, the $240 million business accounts for about 65 percent of the world’s production of grass seed.