NYSSA — Oregon native Paul Skeen has farmed onions for more than five decades. The former president of the Malheur County Onion Growers Association can see Idaho from his house — and, like many other agricultural producers in the region, he’s envious.

“Right there, I’m 800 feet away from an agriculture-friendly state that works tirelessly to keep agriculture booming,” said Skeen, pointing past a field adjacent to his Nyssa residence.

Skeen knows the onion business inside and out. He started farming at 19, as the youngest of seven children and the only one to stay in the region. He and two of his sons manage Skeen Farms in Nyssa, and are grower-owners at Baker & Murakami Produce Co., the largest-volume onion shipper in the region.

Now Skeen, 70, has begun preparing for a new challenge ahead of his retirement — leaving the state he’s lived in all his life for what he says are greener pastures.

“(My wife) says she doesn’t want to leave this house, and I built this house when I was 39,” Skeen said. “We thought we were going to live here till we died, but now we got to move.”

He’s not the only one. In recent years, numerous Malheur County agricultural producers have moved just across the border to Idaho, where many of them already do business. Even more are contemplating moving.

“I know of several dozens of growers, farmers, and producers that have moved their residency to Idaho for various reasons,” said state Sen. Lynn Findley, R-Vale, who represents the region in the Oregon Legislature. “It’s just easier to do business in Idaho.”

Findley said the trend is “accelerating.”

Malheur County, like others in the Treasure Valley region, is heavily dependent on agriculture.

Onions are a big deal in Malheur County, with just over 10,000 acres harvested in 2022 — the fifth most-productive onion county in the nation, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. That’s down more than 25% from 2017, when 13,480 acres were harvested.

The Oregon county shares plenty in common with neighboring Idaho. Most of Malheur is on Mountain Standard Time, unlike the rest of Oregon. Its largest city, Ontario, is more than 400 miles from Salem, but is considered part of the Boise metro area.

Most pertinent may be the wide political gulf between the two states.

Oregon, a predominantly left-leaning state, is dominated by liberals in large cities west of the Cascade Range.

Idaho, a deeply conservative state, often touts its laissez-faire approach. Its governor, Brad Little, said Idaho’s smaller government is part of its appeal.

“Deregulation reduces the friction of government, it doesn’t minimize the good things government does,” Little said during an interview in his Capitol office. “We have half the (Department of Agriculture) employees that Oregon does.”

Malheur and other counties in eastern Oregon — a predominantly conservative region — are placed in an unusual position of providing higher minimum wages, legal marijuana and abortion.

“We are the stepchild of Oregon,” Skeen said. “I don’t like the fact that we have no say. They can shove something down our throat and we can’t do anything about it, we don’t have the votes. You go to Idaho, it’s the other way around.”

Avoiding the ‘death tax’

For Skeen and others, the primary reason for a move to Idaho is Oregon’s estate tax. Oregon is one of just 12 states with the law, often derisively referred to as the “death tax,” which taxes the value of a decedent’s estate before distributing its assets.

For larger family farms, whose assets are largely in land and equipment, the impacts can be expensive, and devastating.

“You know, these guys that have amassed some generational wealth … in Idaho they could keep it and pass it on to the next generation,” Findley said. “They participate in service organizations, they contribute to fundraising events, and when they move away, they’re not as accessible to do that. So it hurts a lot of folks.”

Grant Kitamura, a manager and partner at Baker & Murakami Produce Co., moved three miles from Ontario to Fruitland, in Idaho, in 2020. Kitamura said his move was primarily intended to avoid the estate tax.

There are certain taxes and expenses in Idaho that Oregon residents don’t have to deal with — Oregon is one of just five states not to have a sales tax, for instance, while Idaho’s is 6% statewide. But Skeen said it was a less important issue compared to Oregon’s higher property and income taxes.

Last year, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek signed Senate Bill 498, which provided estate tax exemptions of up to $15 million for family farm, forest and fishing estates provided they meet specific criteria. The bill drew bipartisan support.

The exemption, however, has not dissuaded everyone, including Skeen, who said it wasn’t enough.

Making the move

Not everyone is looking to Idaho because of the estate tax. For others, Oregon’s labor laws and regulations have proven frustrating.

Owyhee Produce, along with Golden West Produce, another major producer, moved their onion packing sheds to Parma, Idaho, after a devastating winter storm in 2017 destroyed structures in Nyssa. Both companies had already planned to move to Idaho before the storm.

Shay Myers, Owyhee’s CEO, started the company’s first packing operation in Nyssa in 2007. It  has grown from 200 to roughly 1,800 acres. Over time, Oregon became increasingly difficult to work with, he said, due to rising labor costs impacting agriculture.

In recent years, Oregon legislators have ended the overtime exemption for agricultural workers, passed a statewide minimum wage increase and pushed state-mandated retirement and paid leave programs that took effect last year.

All were opposed by various business and agricultural interests in the state.

Myers said many of the company’s employees took pay cuts, since Owyhee couldn’t afford to pay them for additional hours at overtime wages.

“This is not an anti-worker or anti-labor type of thing, it’s a dollars-and-cents thing,” Myers said. “We compete as a grower-packer-shipper on a national, even international basis, which means we have to minimize our costs.”

As a result, Myers said the 2017 storm merely accelerated a moving process that was already in motion.

However, for most producers, the idea of moving operations to Idaho is impractical at best, Kitamura said. Many of them already grow and operate in both states.

“It’s not worth it,” said Kitamura. “I don’t know of any growers (in the area) who have fully moved to Idaho.”

Oregon land-use laws praised

While many agricultural producers prefer Idaho’s deregulated approach, their admiration is not universal, particularly when it comes to land-use laws in each state.

Gabe Flick, 35, is a seed farmer with 300 acres just outside Ontario. A native of Sand Hollow, Idaho, Flick moved his farm to Oregon in 2021, citing rapid and unregulated urbanization in Idaho’s Treasure Valley.

“You couldn’t pay me enough money to move back to Sand Hollow,” Flick said. “Everybody talks about wanting these young farmers to stick around, but nobody seems to want to do anything to help them.”

Southwest Idaho has experienced rapid population growth in recent decades, leading to development of agricultural lands. Boise State University experts estimate that, by the year 2100, between 110,000 and 240,000 acres of farmland could be lost in the state.

Oregon, conversely, has had a land-use framework since the passage of Senate Bill 100 in 1973. The bill established urban growth boundaries designed to protect agricultural lands from unregulated city sprawl. The system is recognized as one of the strongest in the nation by the American Farmland Trust, which works to protect farmland.

“Basically, (in Oregon) it’s really hard outside of an urban growth boundary to do anything with your land that’s not agriculture-related,” said Daniel Bigelow, a professor of applied economics at Oregon State University.

Flick said he and his wife looked for land in Idaho’s border counties, including Canyon, Payette and Washington, but ultimately felt more protected by Oregon’s regulations. He said he was able to buy higher-quality ground in Malheur County for prices 30% to 40% lower than those in Idaho’s border counties.

As a smaller farmer with one employee, the estate tax and higher labor costs weren’t factors in his decision, he said.

“I haven’t gotten far enough to think about whether or not I’ll be crushed by an estate tax — I’m just trying to make sure I can, you know, have an estate,” he said.

Oregon’s land-use laws also likely keep agricultural land values lower compared to Idaho’s, which are in closer proximity to urban areas, said Bigelow.

“To give credit where it’s due, as a landowner I don’t like it, but as a farmer I do,” Myers said. “Oregon — their ag land protection law is what Idaho needs. It’s not perfect, there’s problems with Oregon’s law, but at least there’s a law.”

Prices appear to be on the rise for Eastern Oregon farmland. An August 2024 land values report from AgWest Farm Credit indicated “upward pressures” from Idaho buyers in the region, while Flick said the land adjacent to his farm had doubled in value since he moved to Oregon.

Advent of ‘Greater Idaho’ 

Some Oregonians say they would rather move Idaho’s border. Since 2020, Malheur and 12 other eastern Oregon counties have voted in support of the Greater Idaho movement, which seeks to move Idaho’s borders to encompass much of the eastern half of Oregon.

Supporters of the movement see Idaho as a better match for the region than the progressive policies produced west of the Cascade Range.

“I think most people here align, in many ways, with the political environment in Idaho, much more so than they do in Oregon,” said Myers.

Any change of the border would be a drawn-out, constitutionally complicated process, requiring support from the Oregon and Idaho legislatures, as well as Congress. Given the obvious political divides, such a step appears unlikely, even to those sympathetic to the movement.

“I have other things to do with my time than spend it on something that absolutely will never happen,” said Findley, the state senator.

Little, the Idaho governor, said he supports discussions of the Greater Idaho movement, which several Idaho legislators have proposed.

But he felt any proposal was unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Oregon Legislature, much less Congress, due to the electoral advantages it would give the Republican Party.

“Quite a few Oregon ranchers, some are in Idaho, they’re great friends and neighbors of mine, so I’m very sympathetic,” said Little, himself a rancher. “It doesn’t mean that an operator that thinks they’re stuck in Oregon can’t do some of their commerce in Idaho.”

Leaders of the Greater Idaho movement have requested a discussion with Kotek, Oregon’s governor, though she has given no indication she intends to meet.

“I know there’s a lot of folks who are interested in the actual measure and the path there, but I want to make sure these are constructive conversations,” said Kotek, a Democrat. “I want people to believe in Oregon, stay in Oregon, but I also want their grievances and concerns to be heard and addressed.”

Skeen, the onion farmer, said he’d love for the border to be moved, so he doesn’t have to. But he recognizes it’s unlikely.

“I have got to die in Idaho,” said Skeen. “And it’s a shame.”