By MITCH LIES

Capital Press

SALEM — Mainstream Oregon farmers and their allies voiced support in a Senate hearing March 12 for a bill that would prohibit local government bodies from enacting laws regulating crop production.

In a hearing that stretched into the evening, farmers said Senate Bill 633 would protect them from a hodgepodge of regulations that would create a logistics nightmare and uneven playing field.

“We need Senate Bill 633 to avoid having 36 counties and hundreds of cities in Oregon all with their owns rules and regulations covering agriculture,” said Rodney Hightower, a Junction City farmer.

“If we begin to have local government setting regulations, this would very quickly create a nightmare for me as a producer,” said Brenda Kirsch, a Woodburn farmer. “Not only do some of our farms reach through more than one county, but we also farm in different towns. It would be a logistics nightmare.”

Environmentalists and their allies, conversely, said SB633 would unfairly strip counties of their ability to protect organic crops from infestation by genetically engineered crops.

“We have a large number of organic farmers in the Rogue River Basin area,” said Sen. Alan Bates, D-Ashland, “and they cannot sell their products if they are contaminated by GMOs (genetically modified organisms).

“We are concerned what this (bill) will do to our valley from the point of view of losing those markets and putting those people out of business,” Bates said.

Bates represents Jackson County, where voters are scheduled to consider a measure to ban the production of genetically engineered crops in May, 2014.

The Senate Rural Communities and Economic Development Committee took no action on the bill.