07/12/06 Oregon Field Burning Season

Oregon's field burning season. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Field burning season is about to get underway in Oregon's Willamette Valley. While burning is an important tool for many farmers, not all states allow it. Washington State does not allow grass field burning but does allow cereal field stubble burning. Idaho allows burning and will start later in the season. Residents of the Willamette Valley should begin to see the familiar smoke plumes but according to John Byers of the Oregon Department of Agriculture`s Smoke Management Program they shouldn't be affected by it. BYERS: Field burning season is on target. They are starting to harvest now, which means that we will burning fields typically mid-July. We will occasionally burn after October first, but most of the fields are burned by the end of September. ODA will once again watch for ideal weather conditions before giving growers a green light to torch the fields they have registered to burn: BYERS: Meteorology is the most important aspect of this program. The goal is to protect the public from smoke impacts as best we can while allowing the burners to get the smoke up and out and away from the valley as easily as possible. The practice has helped growers eliminate straw residue and rid fields of weeds, insects, and diseases. Byers says the ideal situation is to get as much of the field burning done as possible in a short period of time. BYERS: Surprisingly enough, 50 percent, typically, of all of our fields are burned within four days. We get the perfect weather, and that`s when we burn. The goal is not to affect the general public with smoke impacts. The past few years, growers have developed new methods of dealing with waste straw, which has decreased the dependence on fire as a management tool. Successful alternatives to burning waste straw currently include the export straw market. What was once scorched is now sent overseas and used as a cattle feed supplement and for animal bedding. More than a half million tons of baled straw is normally shipped to Pacific Rim countries each year. Some growers employ the practice of flail chopping, in which the straw residue in the field is chopped and either left on the surface of the ground as a kind of mulch, or, with annual grasses, plowed into the soil for improved tilth. Byers says despite a dramatic downturn in the amount of field burning allowed in the Willamette Valley, many grass seed growers still need to do it. BYERS: Field burning is a valuable management tool for a $350 million a year industry in this valley. It sanitizes the fields, eliminates the use of pesticides and herbicides. Byers expects growers to burn about 50-thousand acres of grass this summer, hopefully well before the weather changes in the fall. The mandated limit is 65-thousand acres, a far cry from two decades ago when a quarter million acres went up in smoke. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.