If you look for a good reason to ban field burning in three years, you will look in vain. There is none.

The DEQ has been instructed to draft legislation for the 2009 legislative session to cut field burning acreage in half by 2010 and abolish the practice in 2011. Governor Kulongoski is said to be worried about possible health effects of field burning smoke.

But little has changed since the last time the legislature dealt with the issue in the early 1990s. What has changed is that field burning smoke has become less of a problem since then, not more.

The acreage burned has consistently stayed well below the authorized 65,000-acre maximum. So far this year it likely will be even less. Only 27,000 acres had been burned as of Wednesday.

Growers have been funding research on uses for the straw of annual ryegrass, and the industry reports there’s some promise in a current study of using it to make cellulosic ethanol as a fuel additive. But most likely it will take more than three years to get this perfected, if it can be done at all.

Meanwhile, it is worth remembering that grass seed in the valley is a basic industry worth

$300 million to $400 million a year and that smoke is a problem only three or four days a year, if that.

Through its laws, Oregon insists that farmland be used for nothing else. That implies an obligation to let farmers do their work the best way they know how. (hh)