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Winter is time to focus on ag
research
By TAM MOORE Oregon Staff Writer
12/30/03
TULELAKE, Calif. – The wind is blowing. Soil is
saturated from fall rains, and a storm on the way
hints of snow. It’s not the kind of day for field
work, here or almost anywhere.
At the workroom and laboratory of Intermountain
Research and Extension Center, talk is on the
future.
Superintendent Harry Carlson is doing what he
calls “focus groups.” It’s part of the process
that shapes practical research priorities for
coming years.
In one form or another at universities and
agricultural research facilities across the West,
Carlson’s counterparts are doing some form of the
same process: getting in touch with the farmers
who turn practical research into commercial
applications for their businesses.
At the University of California station in
Tulelake, Carlson has completed two focus groups.
One dealt with needs of those farming leased lands
on Tulelake National Wildlife Refuge; the other
looked at potato production and marketing.
A Dec. 16 session with onion growers and
dehydrator operators targeted another high-value
crop. On Jan. 6, Carlson calls in mint growers,
buyers and processors.
The focus groups supplement advice from a broader
group of growers who advise the UC station and
Carlson. It’s different from academic research
requests and proposals from county extension
faculty, who often divide trial plots between
station experiments and larger-scale tests in
commercial farm fields.
Carlson launched crop-targeted focus groups last
winter with a session on potatoes.
“We liked it so well that this year we expanded
it” to four groups, he said.
Three farmers, three Oregon State University
scientists who cooperate on spud research, the OSU
row crop extension agent and two reporters joined
Carlson and his lead worker, Don Kerby, in the
free-wheeling discussion.
John Cross, manager of Castlerock, a Tulelake
farming operation, said many suggestions from the
focus group parallel priorities of the California
Potato Research Advisory Board, on which he
serves. In the Klamath Basin, Cross uses a five-
member committee – four are farmers – to approve
allocation of research money. Much of the
scientific work will be on contract to UC, carried
out at the Tulelake station.
OSU has a similar farmer advisory group to shape
work at its Klamath Experiment Station. Brian
Charlton, the research assistant who oversees
OSU’s potato variety research, said Oregon farmers
expressed similar priorities when they met earlier
this fall.
Continuing regional variety trials, setting up a
disease alert system that uses the Internet, and
finding ways to control white mold, nematodes and
viral disease top the spudgrowers’ lists.
Tam Moore is based in Medford, Ore. His email
address is cappress@charter.net.
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