Oregon Ripe for Aggie Bonds?

This news brief first appeared in the Eugene Weekly on February 21, 2013. For more on the problems facing young farmers, you can read my article Part-time farmers, from the November/December 2012 edition of In Good Tilth, the magazine of Oregon Tilth. I am currently working on a in depth piece on farm financing. 

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It’s no big secret that Oregon’s farmer population is aging. On the other hand, increasing demand for locally produced food provides opportunities for a new generation of sustainably minded growers to develop successful farms — if they can get financing, that is.

A group of farmers and agriculture experts recently testified before the state Legislature on the difficulties small farmers, especially those new to the profession, face getting the credit necessary to purchase farmland or farm equipment. Though some Oregon farmers may qualify for the federal Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Loans program, the state does not have its own credit program to assist inexperienced farmers break into the business.

On Feb. 12, the Oregon House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources held a hearing on HB 2700, which would create a Beginning and Expanding Farmer Loan Program to help farmers with less than 10 years experience buy land, equipment, livestock and seed. The program would utilize private bonds exempt from federal taxes, known as “aggie bonds,” which can be bundled with existing FSA lending programs and can lower loan interest rates by as much as 25 percent. Sixteen states already offer aggie bonds.

Hanford: A nuclear disaster in slow motion

A version of this article first ran in the December 2010 edition of the Oregon Insider, a private monthly digest of environmental management and regulatory news. With Hanford in the news this month for a newly reported single-shell container leak, it seems appropriate to publish an updated version of the story.

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On Friday, February 15, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced the first confirmed leak of high-level radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear site since 2005. The site of America's first nuclear reactor and one of the largest nuclear waste sites in the world has drawn relatively little of the renewed press scrutiny other nuclear facilities have faced in the wake of Japan's Fukushima meltdown. On the other hand, you might say that Hanford is always in the back of the Pacific Northwest’s mind. The name Hanford has become synonymous with the atomic age and radiation pollution. But how much does the region know about the intricacies of the massive and massively expensive ongoing cleanup effort?

Covering hundreds of square miles of sage-brush filled backcountry on the Columbia River in southern Washington, Hanford is the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere. Known by various names, including the Hanford Engineering Works, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and finally the Hanford site, the complex comprises multiple nuclear reactors, processing plants, laboratories and associated buildings and waste dumps. Because of the nature of nuclear research and production undertaken during Hanford’s four decades of operation, the site’s contamination presents a hugely complex long term problem. While progress has been made, the $2 billion-per-year cleanup is behind schedule and over budget.