Farmers fielding less land to burn

The number of acres of Kentucky bluegrass stubble registered for burning on the Rathdrum Prairie is expected to be about half of what was burned last summer.

And last year’s 3,818 acres was an all-time low, part of a continuing 15-year trend of steep decline in field burning. Statistics kept by a state environmental regulatory agency show 12,522 acres were burned on the Rathdrum Prairie in 1989.

In recent years, insurance companies have shied away from writing policies for commercial grass-seed farmers who burn their stubble, citing fears they would be held liable for potentially huge payouts in lawsuits claiming health hazards suffered by people breathing the smoke,

Rathdrum farmer Bill Dole said the lack of insurance led to a family decision last Thursday to bail out on plans to grow a seed crop this year on some 2,000 acres.

“We lost our liability,” Dole said. “When we found that out . . . I wasn’t going to put my neck in that noose.”

The family tried to find an insurance policy from everyone, including Lloyds of London, Dole said, but wasn’t able to find one that was affordable and that offered complete coverage. Nearly every farmer on the Rathdrum Prairie is in a similar fix, Dole said.

Grass-seed farmers still have about two months to register fields for burning. Locals, however, say the trend for substantially fewer acres burned is already pretty clear.

“I’d be surprised if farmers even burn 2,000 acres this year,” Peter Erbland, a Coeur d’Alene attorney who has represented grass growers in a number of lawsuits, said last week. “I’d be surprised if anybody even notices the burn season this year.”

Word of this year’s expected decline comes just days before farmers, university researchers and clean-air advocates are scheduled to tour several area farms that show promising experiments into alternatives to field burning.

On Thursday morning, University of Idaho researchers will lead tours of two farms near Worley, Idaho, where the stubble is baled, mowed and harrowed. On some test plots the stubble is then burned, on others it is simply removed. On other plots, the crop was artificially suppressed for a year on the theory it would produce a substantially higher seed yield the next year.

Farmers use fire as the cheapest and quickest way to clear off stubble after harvest so sunlight will reach the seed crowns and the perennial plants can begin to grow the next season’s crop as quickly as possible.

Erbland said there appears to be a steep drop in acres registered for field burning from the Rathdrum Prairie all the way down into Benewah County. He sees a variety of reasons.

“Some farmers are getting out, some are no longer burning, some aren’t able to get insurance to burn, some have decided to go to rotational crops,” Erbland said.

Sherman Takatori of the Idaho Department of Agriculture said it is still too early in the growing season for his agency to have a clear sense of how many acres will be registered for field burning. The state doesn’t set a deadline for registering acres to be burned – the rule only says farmers must register before they burn – so Takatori said July is usually a better time to get a total.

Linda Clovis, spokeswoman for the North Idaho Farmers Association, said she spoke Tuesday with Dole about his decision to get out of the grass-farming business on 2,000 acres of mostly leased fields. Some of the land has been purchased by developers; remaining parcels have not attracted farmers, she said.

“With one fell swoop, that’s 2,000 acres gone,” Clovis said.

“We do think the tide is turning,” Patti Gora, director of the Sandpoint-based Safe Air for Everyone, said. “The important thing to know about that, I think, is the insurance companies have taken a very close look at the likelihood of field burning injuring people’s health, and they have concluded it does.”

SAFE has made strides in recent years redefining the smoke from burning fields as potentially harmful pollution instead of a traditional farming practice. As the population in North Idaho, especially on the Rathdrum Prairie, has increased, local doctors, federal and state regulatory agencies and judges have taken closer looks at the health effects of field smoke.

Three North Idaho deaths have been at least partly linked to smoke from burning grass field stubble.

Commercial grass-seed growers have paid as much as $2 per acre this year to help fund smoke-management programs and have agreed to make the burning process far more organized and scrutinized than it used to be. They still fight a rear-guard action in the Legislature, however, pushing bills for protection from lawsuits and making various aspects of the seed industry exempt from public records laws.

In this tense political climate, University of Idaho crop scientists have spent the last couple of years conducting tests on turf grass farms near Worley and Craigmont, Idaho, to explore ways to get rid of field residue that don’t involve just fire.

Researcher John Holman said Thursday morning’s tour of farms on Sun-up Bay Road north of Worley, will showcase a number of different treatments to reduce or avoid crop residue burning. With fire as a management tool, turf grass fields can often have a productive lifespan of 10 years or more. In Spokane County, where field burning was phased out in three years for public health reasons, grass-seed farmers have been unable to burn since 1999 and have found “stand life” has been reduced to three years or less.

One of the goals of the UI research, Holman said, is to find a way to boost seed yields enough that farmers will still find it economical to grow grass even if they must replace the stands every three years. After a grass stand is installed, there is no harvest until the second year.

Interest in the field tours and the research is high, Holman said, “Not only among Idaho growers. Washington growers are interested, too, because what they have currently working for them is not working.”

Gora, of SAFE, plans to be at both field tours and said she is especially looking forward to the June 11 demonstration near Craigmont where fire is not used at all to manage crop residue.