[PLUG-TALK] Oregon Dryland Wheat

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Ted" == Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm at portlandia-it.com> writes:

    Ted> Eastern Oregon is desert, full of wheat fields that were
    Ted> marginal producing 30 years ago but due to global warming
    Ted> today, are almost worthless.

Oregon dryland wheat is really only grown in North Central Oregon,
starting in about The Dalles and running east to Pendleton or so, and
extending south of the Columbia River for ~40 miles. The rest of eastern
Oregon is not terribly suitable for dryland wheat. The only thing that
makes it viable where it is grown is glacial Loess, a wind-blow silt
that holds moisture. It can store up enough water for a wheat crop about
every other year.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loess

The Palouse is a more famous, and perhaps more, extreme example:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palouse

I spent a lot of time driving through Oregon Wheat country in my youth,
because my grandparents lived in The Dalles and my grandfather took me
fishing a lot in places like Tygh Valley and the Deschutes. I only saw
the Palouse a few years ago, and it was impressively fertile considering
its location in the east-side rain shadow.

Last autumn, I did a drive from Philippi Canyon through backroads to
Condon, and there was still plenty of wheat growing there. There is a
lot more of eastern Oregon that's really only suitable for cattle
grazing because of the lack of water and really thin soils on top of
Columbia River Basalt. That would be much more suitable for solar
development than the wheat growing areas.

Scrolling around Wasco, Sherman, Gilliam and Umatilla Counties in
GoogleMaps satellite view you can see a lot of active dryland wheat
farming.

See also:

  https://smallfarms.oregonstate.edu/sites/agscid7/files/assets/dryland-farming-in-the-northwestern-united-states.pdf

Fun fact, Philippi Canyon is the site of an overtopping from ice-age
catastrophic floods down the Columbia River into the Johnday River
canyon. You can see the erosional scour scars in google maps:

  https://maps.app.goo.gl/qPBfb2iUHDohNJGX9


-- 
Russell Senior
russell at personaltelco.net