3-01: Water, power shortages threaten planting in Idaho

Winter-weary Midwesterners and Southerners may be surprised that the snowpack in the Pacific Northwest was at 40-year lows as the winter season slogged towards spring. Not only does western drought threaten water supplies for irrigated crops, it could choke the electricity that runs pumps and dairy farms. And about 75% of Northwest power is hydroelectric.

The situation had Dan Moss, who grows potatoes, sugar beets and wheat near Declo, Idaho, penciling out a program from Idaho Power to buy back electricity from growers. Under the plan, which still needs final approval from the Idaho Public Utility Commission, growers could bid a buyback price per kilowatt hour that Idaho power would pay them to turn off the pumps in 2001.

On his own farm, supplied with canal water, irrigation costs are a relatively low $20/A, so he didn't plan to bid in any of his 5,800 irrigated acres. But for farms with wells deeper than 400 feet, a bid of about 18 cents/kwh would bring in $400 an acre, he says.

"A lot of growers are saying that at $400 an acre, I'm not planting grain," says Moss, who heads the contract bargaining committee for Potato Growers of Idaho.

In Washington state, the Bonneville Power Administration, the federal government's regional hydropower authority, was considering a buyback program at a flat 7.5/kwh rate, says Dale Lathim, executive director of Potato Growers of Washington.

At that rate, he doubts many producers would enroll much land. If local power companies can get better incentives to offer, then "the first crops that would be coming out are sweet corn, seed crops and grain crops. We've been using these crops as rotational crops" with potatoes and other high value crops, he says.

Bargaining power

The Idaho Potato Growers has supported the power buy-back proposal while in the middle of negotiations to seek higher contract prices for processing potatoes. The bargaining group sought a 75 cent-a-hundredweight increase from the current contract p rice of about $4.30/cwt. While that's considerably better than fresh potatoes sold for as little as $1/cwt, growers are facing a tough year with higher production costs, Moss says. So far, they have not succeeded in getting the increase

Moss says it costs about $1,944 an acre to raise Russet Burbank potatoes in south central Idaho. In mid-March, his electricity costs will rise by more than a third, to 5 1/2/kWh, on top of a similar 30% increase in fertilizer costs and a 20% jump in fuel prices.

"Growers can't go on like it is, with the increase in electricity. We've already got the increase in fertilizer and fuels," he says.

Moss says not everyone in Idaho supports the power buy-back. Some dairy producers are worried that it will lead to a shortage of irrigated hay. And grain elevators near the Snake River are also worried about a cut in supplies.

"As far as small town USA is concerned, the farmers are still going to have the same amount of money to spend in town," he says.

The end of this month is the deadline for farmers to make bids to Idaho Power.

Dennis Lopez, a spokesman for the Boise, Idaho power company, said Tuesday that he didn't know how many bids the utility had received. "There's been a pretty high level of interest, judging from the e-mail and phone calls I've had," he says.

Irrigation load buyback sample calculations* Average pumping hours per year 1800
				Customer bid rate ($/kWh) Idaho Power payment $/ac-yr
Lift (ft.)	HP/ac	kW/ac	kWh/ac-yr	10 cents	15 cents	20 cents	25 cents
0	0.35	0.29	522	$52	$78	$104	$130
100	0.61	0.51	914	$91	$137	$182	228
200	0.88	0.72	1292	$129	$194	$258	323
300	1.14	0.92	1661	$166	$249	$332	415
400	1.4	1.14	2044	$204	$306	$408	510
500	1.66	1.35	2427	$243	$365	$486	$608
600	1.93	1.56	2811	$281	$422	$562	$703

*Source: Idaho Power

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