The Other Oregon - Spring 2019 by designstudio.eomg

A VOICE FOR RURAL OREGON VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3 | Spring 2019

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE » Ecotrust creates food hub in SE Pdx » 16 Mass timber’s potential » 8 Who will work Oregon’s farmland? » 28 Five ways to bridge the divide » 26

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

elcome to our third issue. Whether you live in urban or rural Oregon, or have a foot in both places, you’ve probably heard of the urban-rural divide. It was a major theme in our 2018 gubernatorial election, and has been recognized as an issue since before “Toward One Oregon” was written a decade ago. It’s the reason this magazine exists, as we strive to connect urban and rural in a mutually beneficial way for all Oregonians. Business Oregon — the state’s economic development agency — has five major priorities. One of them is to “Cultivate Rural Economic Stability” — and one strategy to achieve this goal is to “connect rural communities to urban markets through targeted infrastructure investments.” Our cover story about The Redd shows how Ecotrust has created infrastructure to do just that: connect rural food producers with urban consumers. When farmers, ranchers, fishers and specialty food processors are freed from the challenges of storage and “last mile” distribution to their customers in Portland, they are able spend more time on their land and scale up their operations. Helping rural businesses grow while feeding urban dwellers is good for everyone. We hope that the stories told in The Other Oregon spark your interest and inspire you to start thinking about how to reach across the divide and create One Oregon. — Kathryn B. Brown, Publisher

The Other Oregon is distributed in print to 5,000 influential Oregonians — including elected officials, leaders of state agencies, business owners, directors of non-profits and foundations, economic development groups and to anyone who has an interest in understanding rural challenges and connecting urban and rural Oregon. As we strive to close the urban-rural divide and to create strong connections all over the state, please help us by spreading the word. If you are a business owner or head of an organization, please consider supporting our efforts by advertising to our unique audience. To subscribe: theotheroregon.com/subscribe For advertising information: theotheroregon.com/advertise Let us know what you would like to read in future issues: Publisher Kathryn B. Brown, kbbrown@eomediagroup.com, 541-278-2667 Editor Joe Beach, jbeach@eomediagroup.com, 503-506-0905 ON THE COVER: Aaron Dance of B-Line Sustainable Urban Delivery loads produce onto a cargo trike. B-Line is a core tenant of The Redd (see cover story). PHOTO BY SHAWN LINEHAN

A VOICE FOR RURAL OREGON TheOtherOregon.com

SPRING 2019 Publisher Kathryn B. Brown Editor Joe Beach Contributors Aliya Hall George Plaven Dick Hughes Eric Mortenson Mateusz Perkowski Nella Mea Parks E.J. Harris Designer Adam Drey Copy editor Martha Allen Graphic artist Alan Kenaga Advertising designer John Bruijn

CONTENTS COVER STORY: The Redd » 16 FEATURE Five ways to bridge the divide » 26 THE LAND Wild horse overpopulation » 4 Mass timber and tall wood buildings » 8 Who will work Oregon’s farmland? » 28 MAKING A LIVING Meet the rural lobby » 12 Cap and trade worries rural producers » 32 THE CULTURE They wrote the book on the divide » 22 Coos County facts and figures » 36 Geographic names: Have you herd? » 37

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The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 3

THE LAND

What happens when the Western symbols overpopulate? By ALIYA HALL

ild horses and burros are a staple of the American West, an ideal so revered that even Congress in the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 described the animals as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit.” Nearly 50 years later, there are 81,951 wild horses and burros roaming over public lands, according to the Bureau of Land Management’s program data. That’s a nearly five-fold increase since Congress passed its preservation act. Populations have increased so much that the herds are taxing the ability of public lands to sustain them. There are 4,731 wild horses and burros in Oregon’s roaming herd — 76 percent more than the maximum appropriate management level (AML) for the land. “There is definitely an overpopulation issue,” Tara Thissell, BLM public affairs specialist, said. Just how to control that population is a growing source of contention between wildlife managers and wild horse advocates. Those disputes inevitably find their way into federal court.

4 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

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A wild horse in the Oregon high desert.

dire terms. It says the century-old procedure is less invasive than the typical abdominal For years, BLM has tried to control the surgery used in spaying and has a 2 percent wild horse population by preventing pregmortality rate in wild mares. nancies or slowing down population growth But Kathrens says the dangers go beyond rates. the procedure. The sterile females can still While there has been progress with birth release hormones that show signs of heat to control vaccines and adopting out horses, stallions. Thissell said Oregon’s BLM office wanted “I think most of us, particularly the to study “something different” that the female sex, can see how terribly dangerous, agency isn’t using. inappropriate and lethal that is,” she said. It proposed the Spay on the Range A federal preliminary injunction issued Behavioral Outcomes Assessment. Nov. 2 halted any the Under the experiexperiment until the ment, females would case can be heard and be sterilized using a a decision made. procedure known as According to the an ovariectomy via plaintiffs, the judge colpotomy — the vagagreed that their free inal removal of the speech rights would ovaries. The United be violated if BLM States Geological Surexcluded them from vey would follow up watching the sterilizato evaluate the procetion procedures. dure’s impact on mare The judge also and band behavior. found it was “arbiWild horses and burros gathered from BLM had gathered trary and capricious” the Warm Springs herd in southeast more than 800 horses for BLM not to study Oregon arrive at the BLM corral in Hines. in Burns from the the social acceptabilWarm Springs herd ity of the experiment, management area in October, with plans as planned during an earlier study, the plainto return about 200 to range after half the tiffs said. females had their ovaries removed. No further court dates have been set. But horse advocates filed suit.

BLM experiment

The procedure set off warning bells for wild horse advocate Ginger Kathrens, executive director of The Cloud Foundation. Her organization — as well as the American Wild Horse Campaign and Animal Welfare Institute — filed three complaints with the district court and three appeals to the Department of Interior Board of Land Appeals. Kathrens, who had toured the BLM’s Burn’s facility in her role as the humane adviser for the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, said she knew for such a “complicated and dangerous procedure to be conducted (the facility) was unsuitable.” She added that it is rare for horses to have an ovariectomy via colpotomy because it was life threatening. “It is extremely expensive and risky, and most people wouldn’t entertain it, let alone in the corral without supervision of topdrawer surgeons,” Kathrens said. The BLM describes the procedure in less

What are the options? With the spaying portion of the project on hold, Thissell said the BLM is evaluating its options. In the past, BLM has tried to partner with universities to design new or refine existing fertility control techniques. In 2014, Oregon State University was awarded a grant to pursue research, but Steve Clark, vice president of University Relations and Marketing, said that the involvement with BLM didn’t advance after the public comment period. Colorado State University, which was involved in another Warm Springs sterilization project, also pulled out during the public comment period. CSU, which has been investigating alternative population and birth control measures for wild animals for more than 25 years, said that while it withdrew from that particular effort, the concern of overpopulation is

PHOTOS COURTESY BLM

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 5

THE LAND a “critical animal welfare issue that must be solved through objective, collaborative and transparent research.” Kathrens said the most effective solution is using the Porcine zona pellucida (PZP) contraception vaccine. There are two versions available that can be administered through ground darting or injection, and it can block pregnancy for 22 months. She said it’s really effective for smaller herds that are known and tracked. “With a herd like Warm Springs, get volunteers to do it so horses get used to them. Bait-trap with food and dart them in the trap or if they become habituated they can dart,” she said. “You have to do record keeping, but there are already volunteer groups who do this. It’s proven to work, but proven not to hurt the animal and it is reversible.” Although BLM uses PZP already and Thissell agreed that for smaller areas, a volunteer group would work, one of the hurdles

Wild horses on the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area.

6 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

BLM faces is that most of the herd management areas are up to half a million acres. There are 177 HMAs on 26.9 million acres managed by BLM, according to BLM’s program data. Thissell said there’s limited access to the range in late winter and early spring when the vaccine should be applied, and some of the horses aren’t approachable for darting, which makes delivery infeasible. Thissell said that while there are longer lasting fertility control forms, they haven’t been shown to be effective and they need to be hand injected, which would require more horse gatherings and more applications. “And that’s economically unfeasible,” she said. Another method BLM has utilized to manage population has been adopting out horses to the general public. But in the past 15 years, the market for horses has decreased significantly, Thissell said.

“In the ’90s where there weren’t many available, now we have thousands and thousands over what was once available,” she explained. “We have a lot of animals in holding. It’s compounded to the point where adoption probably can’t reach the demand for what we have available.” Kathrens said one of the best ways to manage population would be encouraging an ecosystem of predator-prey balance. She said there needs to be predator protection of wolves and mountain lions because without them there isn’t a natural balance. “Personally, and I’m a wildlife lover, I don’t think wild horses should have any greater value than deer or elk,” she said. “We need to embrace the natural world and natural cycle. Those top-tier predators need to have space on public lands.” At the end of the day, the matter of overpopulation still stands. BLM says the wild horse population can increase 20 percent a year, doubling every four to five years. “We’re really exceeding what is healthy for the landscape and animals both,” Thissell said. “We’re way, way over the number of animals the landscape can support. An excess of any animal is going to cause undue pressure on limited resources; we have to look at the big picture.”

EXPLORE WHAT'S POSSIBLE THE EASTERN EDGE eou.edu

OREGONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RURAL UNIVERSITY

THE LAND

Mass mass potential for

timber Tyler Freres, co-owner and vice president of sales at Freres Lumber, said the new mass plywood facility will help to grow business and sustain the company’s 470 current employees. GEORGE PLAVEN PHOTOS

Tall wood buildings may revitalize timber communities By GEORGE PLAVEN

fter nearly 100 years in business in the Mid-Willamette Valley, Freres Lumber Co. was at a crossroads. Forced to compete against a glut of cheap imported plywood from places such as China and South America, the family-owned business, which specializes in manufacturing a variety of wood products, needed something innovative to keep up in the marketplace. “Our plywood markets have continually been eroded by so many imports,” said Tyler Freres, vice president of sales for the company. “Raw materials in Oregon are not cheap.”

8 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

Development began in 2015 on “mass plywood,” a value-added product made from sheets of veneer lumber laminated into sturdy panels up to 12 feet wide, 48 feet long and 12 inches thick. Mass plywood is just one example of mass timber, a type of building material pioneered in Europe and used in the construction of tall commercial buildings. Other forms of mass timber include cross-laminated timber panels, which consist of several layers of lumber boards stacked in alternating directions; dowel laminated timber, fit together with hardwood dowels instead of glue or nails; or glue laminated beams, bounded with moisture-resistant adhesives.

Freres said they were initially dubious of mass timber, primarily because it uses so much wood. The beauty of mass plywood, he said, is more veneer actually makes it into the finished product, minimizing waste while maximizing profit. “You need to have as much (wood) go into the finished product as possible,” Freres said. “We just really felt like we could do it better.” Freres Lumber recently received a patent for mass plywood in Canada, to go with patents in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. The company opened a four-acre, $36 million production facility near Lyons in December 2017, adding about 10 employees with the potential for even more jobs as

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production ramps up to full scale. Mass timber has the potential to revitalize the economy in rural Oregon, Tyler Freres said, but only if state and federal lawmakers are willing to make changes in how forests are managed, and provide adequate harvest for the products to become cost-effective. “If we can harvest a higher portion of what we grow every year, our state will become more prosperous, and so will our rural communities,” he said.

Carbon 12, an eight-story condominium in Portland, is made with mass timber that accounts for 223 metric tons of avoided carbon dioxide emissions, while also storing 577 metric tons of CO2 in the wood itself. That’s equivalent to taking 169 cars off the road for one year.

Building with wood The first buildings made with cross-laminated timber, or CLT, were constructed in 1993-95 in Germany and Switzerland, and most production today remains in Europe. D.R. Johnson, a lumber manufacturer located south of Roseburg, became the first U.S. company certified by APA - The Engineered Wood Association to make structural CLT panels in 2015. A total of six companies are now certified by the association in the U.S. and Canada, including Freres Lumber. One major selling point of building with wood, apart from appearance and aesthetics, is environmental sustainability over steel and concrete. “From the start, we need to realize that using wood for construction or building is good,” Freres said. “It’s just a fantastic material.” Wood takes five times less energy to produce than steel, and 24 times less energy than concrete, according to figures from the TallWood Design Institute — a collaborative research program that combines staff from the University of Oregon College of Design, and Oregon State University’s College of Forestry and College of Engineering. All told, wood production emits 26 percent less greenhouse gases than steel, and 50 percent less than concrete. Wood also sequesters carbon through the lifetime of the building, with every cubic meter storing up to 1 ton of carbon dioxide. A study by Grand View Research in San Francisco predicts the global CLT market will be worth more than $2 billion by 2025, tied to increasing demand for environmentally friendly housing. To capitalize on the potential, Congress included the Timber Innovation Act in the 2018 Farm Bill, creating a research fund for mass timber under the USDA. Oregon Sens.

Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley were vocal supporters of the proposal, which received $3.5 million in the federal spending package approved Feb. 14. “We have been working to establish Oregon as a hub for mass timber products, using local timber and bolstering our forest products economy,” Merkley said in a statement released last December.

New developments More wood buildings are starting to emerge in Portland, including Carbon12, an eight-story condominium tower built in 2017 on the corner of North Williams Avenue and Northeast Fremont Street. Albina Yard, a four-story office building on North Albina Avenue, opened in 2016 with CLT panels from D.R. Johnson. First

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 9

THE LAND Tech Federal Credit Union also opened its new headquarters in Hillsboro last June, becoming the largest mass timber building in the country at 156,000 square feet. In a previous interview with the Capital Press, William Silva, pre-construction manager for Swinerton Builders in Portland, said mass timber is becoming more than just a progressive concept. “I see a lot of developers looking at this as a value proposition,” Silva said, referring to the way mass timber elements are prefabricated to specification, allowing for faster, cheaper construction on site. The boom time for tall wood buildings could just be getting started in Oregon, after the state Building Codes Division approved what is known as a Statewide Alternate Method that allows for wood structures up to 18 stories tall. The rules are based on the findings of the International Code Council, which formed a committee in 2015 to explore the scientific and technical merits of tall wood buildings. The committee proposed 14 changes to the International Building Code, which were approved in December 2018 and will be adopted in 2021. Tony Rocco, structural program chief for the Oregon Building Codes Division, said Oregon adopted the changes early in its Statewide Alternate Method — becoming the first state to do so. The method essentially breaks mass timber into different construction categories that require specific fire-resistance ratings and protections. “They went through many iterations of fire testing,” Rocco said of the ICC committee’s research. “There is quite a bit of scientific experimentation run on the actual timber proposals.” The Statewide Alternative Method “intentionally reinforces the notion that state building code is not a barrier to any method, technique or material of construction that is supported by scientific findings.”

Forest management With changes coming to the International Building Code, Tyler Freres said the company has 60 active quotes for new buildings ranging from two to 20 stories tall. “Now wood can go into nearly 90 percent of all developments out there, except the tallest skyscrapers,” he said. The challenge moving forward, Freres said, is increasing production to lower costs. That ties back to timber harvest in Oregon’s 10 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

Timm Locke, director of forest products for the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, explains the benefits of mass timber while touring a display at the World Forestry Center in Portland.

forests, which has declined by more than half since 1980. According to the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, annual timber harvest declined from more than 8 billion board-feet in 1985 to 3.8 billion board-feet in 2017. The biggest drop is on federally owned forests, which make up 60 percent of all forestland in Oregon. Meanwhile, Oregon forests are growing 2.8 billion cubic feet of new wood every year, of which 39 percent is logged and 25 percent dies from fire, insects and disease, according to OFRI. The remaining volume also adds to the fuel density driving larger and more severe wildfires, Freres said. “Oregon and the federal government do not do enough to make our forests safe and healthy,” he said. Mass timber could have a profound impact on communities spanning the urban-rural divide, Freres added, but only if government changes its tune on forest management. “If we don’t take the fiber out of the forest, Mother Nature definitely will,” he said.

Environmental practices Brad Kahn, a spokesman for the Forest Stewardship Council, agreed there is opportunity for mass timber, but said it should not be purely about increasing logging. ”It is about incentivizing a type of forestry that makes sense in an era of climate change,” Kahn said. “If the market just delivers wood as a commodity in big vol-

umes, then yeah, there is a concern that mass timber could become just another driver for large clear-cuts, lots of chemicals and impacts on the landscape.” The Forest Stewardship Council is an international nonprofit organization that certifies timber producers if they follow a set of standards intended to protect the environment. The idea, Kahn said, is to use market forces to reward management practices that go above and beyond state law. “A lot of these architects want to do the right thing. Their clients want to do the right thing,” Kahn said. “There is a real potential for mass timber to reward good behavior.” About 500 million acres have been certified globally by the council, including 170 million acres in the U.S. and Canada. Based in Seattle, Kahn said the practices differ between regions to mirror natural processes. Along the Pacific Coast, that means limiting average harvest size to no more than 40 acres, and leaving riparian buffers of 50 to 150 feet, depending on the presence of fish. Kahn acknowledges it does cost companies more to manage forests to FSC standards, but he said the goal should be to improve sustainability while avoiding forest degradation. “When wood comes from a responsibly managed forest, it is arguably the the most sustainable building product we have,” Kahn said. “If we have high standards in place, and significantly above what is allowed under the law, then yes, mass timber can be a good solution.”

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MAKING A LIVING

GETTY IMAGES

By DICK HUGHES

DICK HUGHES PHOTOS

Executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter Katie Fast, center, consults with colleagues at the statehouse.

12 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

ew Oregonians would ever accept a job without knowing the salary. Agricultural producers do that every season. They invest in crops, animals and equipment, and sometimes take out mortgages, without knowing what they’ll get paid when their products go to market – or even whether they’ll make money or lose money. “It is a different way than most of society operates,” said Katie Fast, executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter. That underscores the challenges faced by Fast and other rural lobbyists during the 2019 Oregon Legislature. Republicans represent most of rural Oregon yet they are vastly outnumbered by Democrats. Most legislation affecting rural Oregon goes through committees led by urban Democrats. City legislators may have little grasp of rural lifestyles, the business side of farming and how agriculture has changed over the decades to become much more environ-

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mentally friendly. The role of rural lobbyists is to help lawmakers understand not only the bills in this year’s legislative session but also the cumulative impact over time. “When they’re in a hearing or they’re voting on the floor, they’re looking at that one bill and what the pros and cons of that bill are,” Fast said. “But I don’t think they have the real, full perception and reality of what else is happening to the rural community – to the agricultural sector – within one session, let alone what’s happened during the past few sessions and what the weight of that regulatory burden is.” Fast strives to get past the alphabet soup of agriculture and make complicated issues digestible. She finds that legislators do listen. Even when they don’t agree, they will try to mitigate any potentially negative impacts. “Legislators are just regular people,” she said. “Without hearing the other side, they’re making decisions in a vacuum.” Capitol dynamics are further complicated by the turnover as lawmakers retire or are defeated for election. Like most areas of public policy, rural issues are more complex than people realize at first. Knowledge must be built up over time. Lobbyists spend years educating lawmakers about rural perspectives — from commodity pricing to employment, from water shortages to carbon capand-trade — and then start over with the new legislators. Ted Case, executive director of the Oregon Rural Electric Cooperative Association, agreed that urban legislators care about rural issues. “It’s just that their constituents are so much different,” he said. “There are two Oregons — that’s for sure — and trying to bridge that in a very constructive way is sometimes difficult. To their credit, they’re very good listeners. These legislators from Portland, they’re open to hearing our story, but you certainly have to make the case why you need whatever you’re seeking.” Interviews with Case, Fast and five other lobbyists from both sides of the Cascades showed common themes to their work:

Lobbyists embrace their cause Growing up on a cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon, Mary Anne Cooper experienced what it was like to have regulations imposed

Mary Anne Cooper, in red, talking with other lobbyists, some representing urban interests.

from hundreds of miles away. She became a lawyer in private practice in Portland, representing individual farmers and ranchers. But she felt bad charging them for things they shouldn’t have had to deal with in the first place. Now she works to affect those policies at their source by lobbying for the Oregon Farm Bureau as its vice president of public policy. “I really enjoy trying to bridge that gap between urban and rural,” she said.

Trust is most important “Being effective in advocacy in any arena is 100 percent relationship-based,” Cooper said, and that means building trust with legislators and fellow lobbyists. To some Americans, “lobbyist” is a four-letter word. But policymakers depend on lobbyists for in-depth information on issues, including the potential effects on people they represent. To be effective, lobbyists in Salem — regardless of their issue or which side they are on — must be known for providing credible, honest and accurate information. “It’s about being present. It’s about being personable. It’s about being a person of integrity,” said Tammy Dennee, legislative director for the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association.

Make a credible case “It’s our responsibility to show up and to communicate,” Dennee said. For example, she said, many legislators do not appreciate the economic impact of adding new regulations on a heavily regulated industry. Current milk prices are so depressed that producers already lose money with every shipment that leaves their farm. J.R. Cook, the founder and director of the Northeast Oregon Water Association, said it’s important to have a years-long strategy when lobbying, not simply go to policymakers with a gripe. “It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of understanding,” he said. “We try to come with that gripe but come with some ideas on how to fix it and what we’re willing to do, and a commitment from our region to live up to our side of the bargain as the state lives up to its side of the bargain.” His mentors taught him to “make dang good and sure that you’re going to put the time and effort behind making your commitment stick. It’s really easy to have an excuse in Salem that ‘We tried to work with that region or that individual area. And we lived up to our side but they couldn’t live up to theirs, or they made promises they couldn’t keep.’”

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 13

MAKING A LVING Misinformation flows freely Hearsay and dubious information flow freely through the halls of the Oregon State Capitol. Lobbyists must refute that misinformation before it creates doubt or confusion. That is a constant challenge, especially for offsite lobbyists such as Cook, who is based in Pendleton. “If you’re not there every day to address that confusion or to answer a question in the hallway as a legislator walks by, that doubt can turn into a 10,000-pound boulder,” Cook said. “Legislators’ minds are made up before you’re able to even understand that an issue or a concern was raised. “And you would think in an era of instant gratification and social media and email that you could address that via technology. But honestly speaking, the only way you can address that in something that moves as fast — and is as complex — as this Legislature and this state is by being there in person.” Dennee agreed. “There is no end to misinformation that will come to legislators,” she said. “If you tell the mistruth or the half-truth with enough frequency, then it becomes the truth.”

Lobbyists work long days During legislative sessions, the Capitol hallways turn into impromptu work stations. “You can sit down in the hallway outside one of the hearing rooms, and you can get a week’s worth of meetings done just by running into people and having 5- to 10-minute conversations,” said Dale Penn Dale Penn of CFM Strategic Communications, whose clients include the Willamette Valley Wineries Association. “That’s my day, moving from one sitting place to another, going to legislator meetings and monitoring hearings. Hopefully, you’ve done most of the prep work during the interim on some of the big issues for clients so you don’t have to do as much education” during the actual legislative session,” he said. “But there are always issues that crop up that require you to spend 80 percent of your time on a certain day on an issue.” Daytimes at the Capitol generally are so hectic that early mornings and evenings are when lobbyists make phone calls and handle emails.

14 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

Tammy Dennee, legislative director for the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association.

Connect lawmakers to rural life As Penn and the other lobbyists noted, much of their overarching educational role with lawmakers takes place in the months between legislative sessions. Many lawmakers making rural policy have never been to dairy farms, to hydroelectric projects such as Bonneville Dam or to other rural operations. Nothing can replace the value of those first-hand conversations, whether on the farm or at the Capitol. “People do care about agriculture,” said Cooper of the Farm Bureau. Cooper said if every farmer in Oregon went to the Capitol and testified on the one issue that mattered most to him or her, agriculture would have the most effective voice in the Capitol. Lobbyists can explain issues but individuals’ real-life testimony has the most impact. That puts rural residents at a disadvantage when they live farther from the Capitol than their urban counterparts. Another disincentive is that public testimony at legislative hearings often is limited to one-and-a-half to two minutes per person. “I can pull a grocer or a store owner or a doctor down to the Legislature to testify

for one of my other clients, but I can’t pull a grower from Eastern Oregon,” said independent lobbyist Amanda Dalton, whose diverse portfolio of clients includes the Oregon Wheat Growers League. “For them, it’s a twoday trip. It’s hard for them to justify that — when they’re going to come down and testify before Amanda a committee for two Dalton minutes.” That reality reinforces underscores the importance of working with legislators between legislative sessions, including getting them into the wheat fields of Eastern Oregon, and dispelling their misconceptions. “These growers and farmers are some of the truest conservationists I’ve met,” Dalton said. “They’re also scientists. And they’re international market traders. For my wheat growers, for example, 90 percent of their product is exported out of the country. “I’m always so impressed by them and their commitment to the land and their commitment to do good work on their local family farm.”

COVER STORY

FOOD HUB Helping to bridge urban-rural divide By ERIC MORTENSON

ohn Neumeister, founder of Cattail Creek Lamb near Junction City in rural Lane County, buys lambs from three Oregon farms that raise them on a protocol he established. Neumeister buys live lambs on contract and ushers them through processing and marketing, selling primarily in Portland. He sees his dependence on urban eaters as a simple truth. If rural farmers and ranchers want to

succeed, they need to get their product to where the money is. In the Pacific Northwest, the food money is in the trendy restaurants, specialty markets and institutional buyers of Portland and Seattle. For Neumeister, it works. He said he’s making money, and he said the three lamb growers get paid up to $1 per pound more than the going market rate. Tapping the urban market put him in collaboration with earnest activists —

“food futurists” is an expression among some — who frankly hope to see more equity and sustainability in our economic system, beginning with the food system. Among other things, Neumeister’s processed lamb gets pedaled to Portland customers by riders on solar-charged cargo trikes. “If Portland and Seattle are quirky, well, you’d better get quirky,” Neumeister said.

A B-Line cargo trike heads out of the Redd on Salmon Street to make morning deliveries. SHAWN LINEHAN

16 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

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Urban customers, rural producers Urban quirkiness, or even more so urban favor, does hold promise for rural producers. Beef from Wallowa County’s Carman Ranch is known by name in the Portland area, for example, and owner Cory Carman is something of a celebrity in food circles. As in, she’s someone The New York Times seeks out for interviews. Her beef customers include the food service at Oregon Health & Science University, which delivers 1,200 meals daily to patients’ rooms and feeds several thousand more medical staff, students, instructors and visitors. Carman said rural producers need to be heads up about what’s going on now in Portland. She said regional, appropriately sized food systems are the future. Which brings us to The Redd, the new food hub in Portland’s Central Eastside industrial district. Carman said storage, distribution, aggregation, production and other services at The Redd can solve a big piece of the puzzle for small- to mid-size farmers and ranchers. Most of her in-town restaurant deliveries go through The Redd. Her beef buyer club members go there to pick up their shares. She uses the same storage and trike-delivery services as Neumeister, the lamb marketer. Why? Because she said America has seen the “peril” of highly industrialized food. “People have given up too much to get lower cost,” Carman said. “We’ve lost a lot of choice, we’ve lost nutrition. We’ve gained low cost, but lost choice, nutrition, transparency, flavor.” She said the existing food system puts pressure on farmers to produce what national food companies most want: consistency and low cost. The desire for locally produced, healthy food is strong, but many small to mid-size farmers, ranchers and food manufacturers are stalled on an economic plateau. They’ve outgrown the roadside stand, farmers’ market and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription scenes, but aren’t big enough to sell to national grocery or restaurant supply chains. A 2015 study by Ecotrust, a Portland nonprofit deeply involved in social justice, food and natural resource issues, dubbed

Cory Carman raises beef cattle in Northeastern Oregon. COURTESY OF CARMAN RANCH

such producers the “ag of the middle.” In identifying infrastructure gaps that hinder growth, the report said mid-size growers often can’t “scale up,” or expand production, because they’re mired in chores of planting, harvest, labor management, processing, packing, storage, marketing and distribution. “A lot of economic opportunity is just leaking out” from what could be a much more robust regional food system, said Amanda Oborne, Ecotrust’s vice president of food and farms and the report’s co-author. Oborne estimated the food markets in Portland and Seattle — the amount of money that changes hands between producers, handlers and eaters — are worth $4 billion and $6 billion annually, respectively. Ecotrust, pulling together funding and other help from like-minded public and private organizations, set out to solve some of the problems it identified in the 2015 report. The most glaring snag, and first to be addressed, is what food system researchers call the “last mile” distribution. That is, producers such as Neumeister of Cattail Lamb can get their product to Portland just fine, but then face the puzzle and cost of storage and distribution. Driving a delivery vehicle the “last mile” to a series of restaurants or stores in Portland traffic is nobody’s idea of fun. Ecotrust’s first answer to such problems is The Redd, a 76,000-square-foot,

two-building campus in Portland’s Central Eastside industrial district. The $25 million facility takes its name from its location on Salmon Street; a redd is the egg nest a spawning salmon scoops from a streambed. Redd East, which formally opened March 2, is the campus community space, capable of holding 670 people for events, with smaller spaces for board meetings and offices. A spacious kitchen with a built in video system can be used for product development, catering, or in-person or online demonstrations. The building began life in 1918 as an ironworks business. Redd West, which has been operating since 2016, is a warehouse, cold storage, production and distribution hub built into a former marble stoneworks sales building. Its most visible occupant is B-Line Urban Delivery, which uses human powered, battery-assisted cargo trikes to deliver greens, fruit, coffee, meat and fish to 300 customers a month, most of them restaurants. The trike batteries are recharged by a solar array on the roof. B-Line was solely a delivery company in the past — Office Depot used it at one time to deliver paper to Portland State University downtown — but its role at The Redd is more expansive. B-Line rents pallet rack storage, cooler space and freezer space to producers who need a holding spot, then handles distribution for some with its cargo trikes.

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 17

COVER STORY

Portland’s former Hesse Ersted Iron Works is now Redd East. COURTESY PETER J. HALL

Another key Redd West tenant is Wilder Land & Sea, which brokers meat and seafood to restaurants and uses B-Line to deliver some of it. On a mid-February afternoon, Celilo tribal fisherman arrived unexpectedly with 300 pounds of freshly caught Columbia River sturgeon. Wilder’s co-founders, Nathan Rispler and Kyle Swanson, bought the fish, rolled it into storage, and alerted a network of Portland chefs to the availability. They expected to have the sturgeon cut, wrapped, sold and delivered within a few days. Neumeister, of Cattail Lamb, said The Redd eliminates the weekly hassle of driving 110 miles to Portland to make deliveries himself. The biggest practical effect, he said, is improved customer service. Storage access is available 24-7, and Wilder Land & Sea and B-Line can respond quickly if a restaurant or market needs lamb. He’s had no problems with cargo trikes delivering his lamb.

18 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

“It took me quite a while to convince my insurance agent,” Neumeister said with a laugh. The trikes are heavy duty, capable of hauling 600 pounds, yet can park on the sidewalk outside a store or restaurant. “That’s a big one in Portland,” where traffic is thick and parking thin, Neumeister said. Having storage in Portland’s inner core, where most of the city’s leading restaurants are located, is a major bonus. “As soon as I heard about it, I went to (Ecotrust) and said, ‘I’m in,’ ” Neumeister said. He sensed it would help his business, but he also welcomed a large, well-funded philanthropic organization, Ecotrust, turning its attention to the food system. In its public declarations, Ecotrust touts the “economic multiplier effects” and potential “rural revitalization” that accompany a thriving network of small and midsize farms, ranches and food entrepreneurs. Benefits can include “restorative production

and responsible water stewardship,” local hiring and even climate change mitigation. At the same time, urban residents gain better access to “nutrient-dense, fresh, local food.” Ecotrust envisions a food system that helps solve what it calls the “vexing challenge” of making good food affordable to low-income and “vulnerable” people. “I wanted a seat at the table,” Neumeister said. “I believe in those people; they’re doing good things for the planet. We all eat. It’s a natural thing to organize people around food.” Other small producers have more basic needs. Brothers Jesse and Aaron Nichols, who operate Stoneboat Farm in the Helvetia area west of Portland, use Redd West for cold storage. They grow vegetables, and this winter stored 13 pallet boxes of root vegetables such as carrots, beets and turnips. “It is very hard for small farmers like us to find things like that,” Jesse Nichols said. “There’s a huge need. The cold

A 900-ton press, a relic from the former ironworks, anchors the Main Hall of Redd East. SALLY PAINTER

storage industry is not geared for smallscale production.” The brothers improvised some cold storage at their 30-acre farm and have used a neighboring orchard’s storage unit in the past, but it wasn’t enough. Jesse Nichols said the farm’s need for winter vegetable storage is just under the minimum size required by large cold storage companies. Stoneboat sells mixed vegetables to restaurants, CSAs and at a farmers market. When they have orders to fill, they drive 25 minutes to Redd West in Portland and get what they need from the boxes, which are the dimensions of a pallet and are 5 feet high. Nichols said many producers don’t know the cold storage option is available. “I still think the food system and the farmers around here have a lot more need than there is capacity,” he said. About 200 growers and entrepreneurs now use some aspect of Redd West. A crew from GroundUp, a Portland company that

makes almond and cashew nut butters, uses Redd West as a production site once a week. Founders Julie Sullivan and Carolyn Cesario started making nut butter in their home kitchen Cuisinarts. They expanded to Redd West as their nut butter found favor at farmers’ markets, and it’s now on the shelves in 100 Pacific Northwest grocery stores. They store raw ingredients at Redd West and use the facility for production, labeling and distribution. B-Line handles their local deliveries. “It’s an affordable form of distribution, we save ourselves lot of time running around in our cars making deliveries,” Sullivan said. They’ve increased production from two or three jars every 30 minutes in the early days to making an average of 20 cases per hour, she said. In three years, the staff has grown from the two partners and a part-time intern to nine employees. GroundUp specializes in hiring women who have been homeless or in other rough situations.

Sullivan said she and Cesario eventually want to have their own production facility. “We appreciate and enjoy the Redd,” she said. “We will reach a point where it’s time for us to go.”

Green Wheels The time it takes to go anywhere in Portland led to the involvement of another key partner: the Portland-based New Seasons grocery chain and its “Green Wheels” program. New Seasons stores favor local producers, but managers found themselves besieged at their back docks by fleets of small delivery vehicles as vendors hopped from store to store. A Champoeg, Ore., farmer was a case in point. In 2015, he was gathering, inspecting, packing and delivering hundreds of dozens of pasture-raised eggs weekly to a couple dozen New Seasons and Grand Central Bakery outlets in Portland, 35 miles away. Partly as a result, his eggs sold in the $6 per

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 19

COVER STORY

Ecotrust’s Redd East includes a demonstration kitchen adjoining the Main Hall. SHAWN LINEHAN

dozen range; he’s since shut down that part of his operation and sells processed turkeys and geese online at the farmgate. New Seasons now funnels small vendors to Redd West, where products can be stored, aggregated, labeled and distributed. B-Line’s cargo trikes handle deliveries. Chris Tjersland, New Seasons’ director of brand development, said the program eliminated 11,800 vendor trips in a twoand-a-half year period ending in December 2018. Traditional distribution can be costly, and many small producers don’t appreciate the time cost of doing that “final mile” logistics themselves, Tjersland said. He said Redd West’s storage and delivery system is simply structured and could be reassuring to smaller vendors worried about losing control of their product. “Vendors are literally in the facility all the time,” he said. “It’s about as hands-on as you can get.” Still, scaling up to meet an urban market doesn’t always work out.

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Rieben Farms, the last hog farm in Washington County west of Portland, thrived for a time under an agreement with New Seasons. The chain bought whole hogs from farmer Greg Rieben at an assured price, and its meat managers even traveled to the farm to help erect additional outdoor shelter for his animals. New Seasons asked for a few tweaks in Rieben’s production methods, helped him bring them about, and for a couple years its meat counters featured his pork by name alongside product from a much larger Washington producer. But New Seasons shifted into seeking what are known as primal pork cuts instead of buying whole hogs. Rieben said he would have had to pick up the additional processing cost, and decided against it. Their buying arrangement terminated at the end of 2018. “I wasn’t big enough for them,” Rieben said. But Rieben said he and New Seasons parted on good terms. Even as their agreement was ending, the business commit-

ted to buying all of the hogs Rieben had raised with the expectation of selling to New Seasons. “They totally stood by that,” Rieben said. He now sells to two other, smaller buyers.

Does it bridge divide? Will it work? Will the food system revision represented by The Redd be a game changer, the bridge that spans the urban-rural divide? “That is the great experiment we are all part of right now,” said Sam Appelbaum, who manages B-Line’s storage and delivery operations at Redd West. Appelbaum said the “lofty notions” of Ecotrust’s food system visionaries don’t always line up with the day-to-day realities of running a warehouse and shipping hub. He said the facility is a “slam dunk” for small urban manufacturers such as GroundUp, the nut butter maker that uses processing and packing space once a week. “It helps small food entrepreneurs,” Appelbaum said. “But connecting the rural

A VOICE FOR RURAL OREGON TheOtherOregon.com

ERIC MORTENSON

Emma Sharer, campus manager at The Redd in Portland, said advocates hope to create a new kind of economic system centered around food and adhering to a principle of “business as a source of good.”

economy with the urban core? We’re still working on how that is successful.” The sustainability piece is solid, he said. By using its cargo trikes instead of a standard delivery truck, B-Line avoids 30,000 to 35,000 vehicle miles per year and eliminates production of 80 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. Appelbaum based the estimate on what a typical delivery vehicle making the same trips would travel and spew. Emma Sharer, who manages The Redd campus for Ecotrust, said the food hub aligns with the group’s principle of doing business as a source for good. Programs purposefully involve women and people of color who have been “marginalized,” she said. “My perspective on that is we’re trying to create a new kind of economic system centered around food,” Sharer said. “The Redd is one of those infrastructure pieces to support what we’re envisioning.” Sharer said most consumers aren’t familiar with the complicated details of the supply chain that brings food to stores and restaurants. At the same time, there are “fishers, farmers and ranchers all over who could use the support of the buying power

we have in the heart of Portland,” she said. “We have all this incredible food being grown outside of Portland,” she said. “How do we get more of this bounty to the people who really need it?” Cory Carman, the Wallowa County rancher who sells beef in Portland, is on Ecotrust’s board of directors. She said the urban and rural food connection and the mutual benefit represented by The Redd are a work in progress. “You start out with no infrastructure,” she said. “As the infrastructure evolves, you have to figure out the business model. When the infrastructure is a complete roadblock, you focus on that. Then you move on to the next challenge. “Rural producers can’t look at The Redd and say, ‘Here’s my solution,’ but we can build a supply chain that supports them,” Carman said. The Redd provides a “huge piece” of the answer to storage, aggregation and distribution questions, she said. Carman is optimistic that The Redd will succeed. There is growing interest, she said, in where our food comes from and how it’s produced. “This is all driven by consumers,” she said.

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 21

THE CULTURE

THEY WROTE THE BOOK ON THE

URBAN-RURAL

DIVIDE S

By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI

tereotypes about the divergent lifestyles and viewpoints of urban and rural populations are nothing new. ¶ The cliché of urban centers being sophisticated or decadent compared to traditional or backwards rural areas certainly predates the modern era.¶ Even so, elections data show the differences in political leanings among urban and rural residents of Oregon and other states have grown more stark in the past half-century. Rural areas now overwhelmingly favor Republicans, while urban areas sway heavily toward Democrats. ¶ A decade ago, several Oregon universities organized a conference titled, “Toward One Oregon: Rural-Urban Interdependence,” which explored the links and divisions among these populations. ¶ The conference panelists later submitted papers expanding on their presentations, which were compiled into a book of the same name. ¶ Since then, the polarization between the politics and culture of urban and rural Oregon does not seem to have receded, judging from recent voting patterns. ¶ The Other Oregon sat down with three of the professors who helped organize the conference and edit the book, “Toward One Oregon,” to discuss the reasons for the rift between urban and rural communities and what can be done about it. The following conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

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22 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

A VOICE FOR RURAL OREGON TheOtherOregon.com

MICHAEL HIBBARD, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon’s School of Planning, Public Policy and Management The Other Oregon: What are the reasons for Oregon’s urban-rural divide? Michael Hibbard: Over the long haul, like say 100 years or something like that, the urban and rural economies have split apart. It used to be rural and urban economies were highly interdependent. Trees were being cut down in the Cascade foothills, being milled into product and the product then gets shipped out. You’ve got this economic linkage. Wheat would be brought down from the Columbia plateau, milled into flour in Portland and then shipped out to the world. That economic linkage is associated with political linkages and social linkages and so on. Everybody is making their living off this stuff, so they have a mutual interest in natural resources and agricultural products. But over time, that linkage has disappeared. There’s been an economic disconnect between urban and rural areas, so there’s a social disconnect and a political disconnect. Now, what you’ve got is strong linkages between rural Oregon and the global economy, urban Oregon and the global economy but not so much between urban and rural Oregon. To take wheat, as an example, instead of wheat being milled in Portland then shipped to the world, the wheat is shipped to the world and gets milled into flour someplace else, China or someplace. So the raw material goes out without having this stopping place where valued is added. TOO: What caused the economic disconnect? MH: Technology. The centralization of the timber industry. The economists’ term for this is commodity production. Instead of having small entities like small timber mills or flour mills, you have really big ones. And then they become more and more automated because one of the important costs of production is labor. If they can reduce the cost of labor and increase the amount of technology that goes into automation, it can reduce their costs. All businesses are interested in reducing their costs. You get fewer and fewer bigger tim-

Michael Hibbard

ber mills employing fewer and fewer workers. That’s great for the timber industry, for the companies, but it’s not good for the little communities that used to have small mills. TOO: Why should people care about the urban-rural divide? MH: We are and ought to be really concerned about the future of the environment. There is this view that if we just leave it alone, it will take care of itself, but I think that’s kind of naive. I think the environment needs to be managed and the question is, what are we managing it for? If we’re managing it for long-term environmental health: Number one, somebody’s got to do that work and it’s out in rural areas. So there need to be people out in rural areas who are taking care of the environment, who are managing things, who are concerned about conservation and environmental restoration. The second piece of it is, everyone’s got to eat and the food is produced in rural areas. We need to be concerned about the quality of

food and quantity of food and so on. Urban people need to be concerned about rural people and rural places for those two basic reasons. We need to be taking care of the environment long term and we need to be feeding ourselves. TOO: What can be done about the urban-rural divide? MH: One of the things that they can do is figure out ways to create jobs and wealth from natural resources in different ways than they used to. There is a lot of interest in environmental restoration, environmental conservation and that sort of thing. That requires workers and it’s activity that goes on in rural areas. There is a huge amount of salmon restoration work going on. Well, who does that work? Most of that work is paid for by the feds and the state but the work itself is being done by local contractors hiring local workers. Something on the order of 80 percent of the money that goes into restoration goes into local rural communities, stays in local rural communities.

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 23

THE CULTURE ETHAN SELTZER, professor emeritus of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University The Other Oregon: Why should people care about the urban-rural divide? Ethan Seltzer: Probably the biggest one is the things we share by living in the same watersheds. Whether you’re in urban or rural Oregon, you depend on the watersheds for water, for enabling us to sustain the activities we’ve gotten used to and the population centers that we’ve grown. The boundaries of urban and rural are kind of irrelevant when it comes to the way the biophysical world works. We share that world, so we better know how to talk about it and get along. The second reason to care about it is that in 1859 when Oregon became a state, the lines were put down on the map that defined the boundaries of the state and I don’t see those lines changing anytime soon. Whether we like it or not, we share the legislature, we share the institutions we’ve created for governance, we share the way our state is recognized by the nation. That’s not going away, that’s not optional. TOO: Given the population disparity between urban and rural, will rural communities always be at the mercy of urban policy considerations and policy directions? ES: If you color the map of Oregon by county using the red and blue, it looks like the entire state is red but is, by and large, dominated by blue policies and politicians. But the reality is that within those red areas there are a lot of blue voters and within the blue areas, there are a lot of red voters. If you boil it down to a simplistic map of red and blue by county, I think that hides the fact there is more common interest out there than we usually give credit to. Politics is the art of compromise, right? Even in this legislative session, which is considering the Clean Energy Jobs bill, for example, that’s a piece of legislation that most climate activists will say will be highly compromised before it gets enacted. You may ask, why is that, if in fact this red-blue or urban-rural split in Oregon is so profound? I guess what I’m telling you is, I don’t think it’s that profound. I think there are mediating factors on both sides. I think if you ask urban communities, they will tell you that urban communities

24 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

Ethan Seltzer

are not getting everything they want, that they’re compromising. Obviously if you go to rural communities, they will tell you they’re being overrun by urban policies. TOO: What’s the best way for natural resource dependent rural to navigate the current environment? Not everyone in rural areas is going to be able to have a niche where they’re selling to urbanites. And if you’re regulated differently than competitors, you’re going to be at a disadvantage. ES: In the 19th Century, it was all about competing on the basis of price. In the 21st Century, there are some things for which competing on the basis of price is the way it’s going to be worked out. But there are other opportunities that have to do with quality and I don’t think those are niche markets. I think you kind of diminish the importance of those markets by calling them that. If your expectation in making those statements that the only thing we can do in urban Oregon to show our affiliation with rural Oregon is to allow them to mark the price down of their products and compete with places that don’t care about natural resources, don’t care about climate, don’t care about water quality, don’t care about endangered species, then you’re never going to see urban Oregon going along with rural Oregon. But if, on the other hand, what you’re

saying is: What can we do to accelerate the way in which Oregon commodities can emerge on the world stage as the best, or in forms that make them more useful to a broader set of markets? That’s something we support and we’ve already shown we are supporting. TOO: Sometimes there’s a sense that urban policy makers dictate exactly how you have to do things in a very prescriptive way without really understanding agriculture or forestry. That they have preconceived notions and they want to micromanage without really understanding the industry. ES: I think there are two dimensions to that. One is that indeed there are very few people in the urban area who really understand what it’s like to be a farmer or a forester and what that entails. Just as I think there are not a lot of people who identify strongly with rural Oregon who understand what it’s like to walk in the shoes of people who live in urban places. There are some fundamental misunderstandings out there. There’s something deeper at play here. In an urban area like this, there is no way you’re going to know everybody or that everyone is going to know you. In urban areas, in order to get along, we depend on rules. We don’t know who those people are but as long as everyone is held account-

A VOICE FOR RURAL OREGON TheOtherOregon.com

able to the same set of rules, at least we have some basis for expecting how they’ll behave. In rural areas and smaller communities, sociologists have studied for years the fact it’s not so much about rules, it’s more about about relationships. When you’re in a town where everybody plays multiple roles — this person is an auto mechanic and they’re also a volunteer firefighter and they’re also on the planning commission and involved in their church — it’s bound and mediated not so much by rules and laws as it is by relationships. They’re two very different ways for relating to each other in urban and rural. That’s not going to change. But I think, on the other hand, if we can agree on a short list of things we can get our teeth into, maybe we can bridge some of those different ways of seeing the world that we’ve engaged in for a long time.

BRUCE WEBER, professor emeritus and director of Oregon State University’s Rural Studies Program The Other Oregon: What are the reasons people should care about the urban-rural divide? Bruce Weber: It seems like we basically have common aspirations — urban people, rural people, Democrats, Republicans — we want strong families, we want strong communities, we want healthy kids and educated, prosperous communities. We all want the same thing, but the context we live in gives us different views of the options. Is there a way of getting back to what unites us? We should care because we are part of a single humanity, and maybe it’s nothing more profound than that. Our inability to see that we share these common goals and that we want to work toward the same thing means that we’re not going to get there. TOO: What’s changed and why has it come to the fore? BW: The highest levels of inequality in our country are in the largest cities and the most populous states, the lowest levels of inequality are in rural places. That’s because there’s a base of lower middle-class of people everywhere and then the rich people move to the cities, so there’s inequality in the cities.

Bruce Weber

Rewards are going to people with education and not to people without education, so it’s partly a level of education and the rewards that come with having marketable skills. One thing that’s happened is the economy has become a lot more unequal and that has geographic implications for rural and urban. Rural people can see that both incomes are lower and inequality is higher, and that breeds a certain discontent. There’s also a power dynamic where the resources are concentrated in the cities, decisions are made in the legislature that take city interests into account, because that’s where power and money is, and rural people feel disenfranchised, which I feel is not an unfair statement. What has changed is an economic system that’s skewing toward the rich and toward the cities, and that produces tensions between urban and rural. TOO: What can we do to strengthen rural areas economically? BW: People are sometimes surprised that the government sector is larger in rural as a share of the economy than it is in urban. That’s partly because of scale — you need a sheriff in every county, no matter how many people. So, we can make sure that the government services are adequately provided.

That’s of course education but it’s also health care. Health care in rural areas is an important and concerning issue. Rural people don’t have as good of access to medical clinics and hospitals and part of that is scale — you can’t have a hospital in every rural town. One thing we can do for rural places is make sure those services — health, education — are more adequately provided. That would both provide an economic base and it would make the investment in human capital that would benefit everybody, both urban and rural. Those public investments made in rural areas would be one thing that would make it more attractive for businesses to thrive in those places as well. I do think that economic development is organic. In our system, it’s driven by people with good ideas and access to capital. There is something attractive about these places. If you live in one and have either a family connection or a business connection, there’s a lot of reasons people don’t want to leave this place or stay there. I think it will be people who desire that life who will figure that out. I don’t think the master planner can figure out how the future is in these rural places. And some rural places are going to shrivel. Other places are going to persist and thrive in their own ways.

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 25

FEATURE

WAYS TO BRIDGE THE DIVIDE

By MATEUSZ PERKOWSI n their discussions with The Other Oregon, retired professors Michael Hibbard, Ethan Seltzer and Bruce Weber offered their thoughts on what steps could help bridge the urban-rural divide — both in practical terms and how we think about the problem. Following is a synopsis of five ideas mentioned during the conversations.

1) Support businesses that create urban-rural linkages The Country Natural Beef cooperative of family ranchers was mentioned several times as an example of a company that’s highly effective at connecting rural producers with urban consumers. Ranchers in the cooperative abide by production standards and benefit from consumer awareness of the brand. Other examples included purveyors of cheese and seafood who work closely with producers in rural areas. Environmental work, including the removal of invasive juniper trees that can be milled into lumber, was also seen a positive way to strengthen urban and rural connections. With the sparser populations of Oregon’s rural businesses, it’s also more realistic to think about supporting many smaller companies rather than major employers with thousands of workers. “Large amounts of jobs are by definition an urban thing, they’re not a rural thing,” said Michael Hibbard of the University of Oregon. The general consensus was that bringing back the old economies of Oregon’s rural areas, in which natural resource-based manufacturing was heavily dependent on large numbers of people, wasn’t a realistic expectation.

26 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

“It’s not about how you recreate the economy you used to have. It’s given the things that you you’ve got at hand, what can we do today,” said Ethan Seltzer of Portland State University.

2) Create opportunities for interaction and understanding After concluding the “Toward One Oregon” conference and book, professors involved in the projects continued to meet with members of the public to discuss the urban-rural divide. Similar efforts include an “exchange” program by a Portland school in which urban children spend time in rural Eastern Oregon to learn about environmental issues from a different perspective. It was also noted that, generally, rural people have a more accurate understanding of urban opinions and lifestyles than vice versa. “Urban people are pretty much in a bubble. Most of rural people’s lives is spent interacting with the urban bubble in the ways they have to survive and thrive,” said Bruce Weber of Oregon State University. “Urban people, on the other hand, I don’t think fully appreciate the extent to which they depend on rural areas for food, for energy.”

3) Focus on big ideas affecting all Oregonians It’s easy to get bogged down in all the ways that urban and rural people don’t see eye-to-eye. Meanwhile, they all share common problems that would benefit from unique perspectives. Tackling public policy issues that are of concern to all Oregonians — including the opioid epidemic, school funding and wild-

fire prevention — can unite urban and rural populations. “We’re all in this together whether we like it or not,” said Hibbard. “We have to find solutions that are relevant to the state as a whole, not just urban or rural Oregon.” This sentiment was echoed by Ethan Seltzer of Portland State University, who said addressing “a short list of things we can get our teeth into” can overcome differences in how rural and urban people view the world. “They’re big problems but we will ultimately need to be able to show we can make progress on the things that are really threatening the future stability of the entire state of Oregon,” he said.

4) Invest in government services in rural areas While government is already proportionately a big employer in rural Oregon, further investment in schools and health care would provide more employment while improving the lives of people living there, said Bruce Weber of Oregon State University. Having access to such vital services would also make employers more amenable to siting their businesses in rural areas, he said. “The public investment isn’t just in the people there but it would make those places more attractive as places to work,” he said.

5) Don’t mischaracterize or exaggerate the nature of the rift Although the political gulf between urban and rural Oregonians may seem deeper than ever, it should be remembered that opinions across these regions are hardly uniform. Also, clashing perspectives may depend on other factors than simply geographic location, so caricatures should be avoided. “Be really careful not to describe it as an urban-rural divide problem until you’re absolutely sure that it is,” said Seltzer. “Just as I live in an urban area, I wouldn’t say that anyone who holds a position counter to mine must be from a rural area.” Using such shorthand to describe urban and rural beliefs may be convenient but it’s not necessarily realistic or helpful. “I think it becomes a habit. It becomes a way of feeding people’s expectations in a not constructive way,” Seltzer said.

Oregon family farmers and ranchers are less than 1% of the population but contribute $50 billion to Oregon’s economy. Please consider talking to us before making decisions that impact our livelihoods.

Oregon Women for Agriculture Working together to communicate the story of today’s agriculture 630 NW Hickory Street Suite 120, PMB50, Albany, OR 97321 owaonline.org • info@owaonline.org

THE LAND

Who will work Oregon’s land? Max Nilsson NELLA MAE PARKS

28 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

A VOICE FOR RURAL OREGON TheOtherOregon.com

As more farmers and ranchers consider retirement, getting younger people on the land is a major concern

By NELLA MAE PARKS

hile he grew up working all parts of the family farm, Max Nilsson says, “the last seven years have been my apprenticeship years.” Each year he takes on increasing responsibility for operations, learning step by step from his dad Pete Nilsson — who learned from his father-in-law, Willie Hamann, who learned from his dad, Arthur Hamann. The Hamann Angus Ranch has survived and grown through 100 years because each new generation has learned how to manage the land and business under the wing of the previous generation. The family, including the four Hamann sisters and their children, is very tight knit and close to the farm and its future. The future is Max, his sister, and cousins who are the fourth generation to farm the family place outside of La Grande. In farming it is often said, “the first generation buys it, the second generation builds it, and the third generation loses it.” But the Hamann Angus Ranch has moved through four generations because of the innovation and diversification of each successive generation. The farm first made it through the Great Depression with help from the family’s feed store business. This allowed the family to keep the land and even provide a fair living during hard times. As Max puts it, “even during the Depression, Grandpa had a new pair of shoes each year he didn’t care to wear.” After serving in an Army engineer battalion during WWII, Willie Hamann took over the family’s small place, bought more land with help from the GI Bill, and began to specialize in seed production while keeping things diversified. “Grandpa is, at heart, a seed man,” Max said, “but he was doing custom seed cleaning, while farming, while ranching. And always doing it with a William Penn cigar in his mouth.” While Willie’s operation was primarily dry-land farming, Pete pushed to increase irrigated acres and expand into new crops, including mint oil production. Neither father

An aerial view of the Hamman/Nilsson farm.

nity to come back and make a living at a job I really like.”

Transition challenges

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NILSSON FAMILY

nor son expected Max to take over the farming business. After high school, Max went to flight school, studied at history, geology and geography at the University of Oregon, and worked as a “groomer” at the Mt. Bachelor ski slope. While he expected to be a pilot, for Max, home was magnetic. He came back every summer to work on the farm, and over three years, he realized he wanted to return permanently. “I slowly recognized I had the opportu-

But there are huge challenges to farm succession for any farmer. Farming operations entwine generations, families, family members, styles and visions. While younger generations are needed, it is hard to get started. Acquiring new land and equipment can be cost prohibitive for both first generation farmers as well as those inheriting or marrying it. On multi-generational farms, older generations own the equipment and land so younger farmers don’t own assets. For some families, there are “gap generations” that won’t get a chance to farm as the oldest generation lives and farms longer. Fewer people are interested in farming perhaps, and farms can support fewer families than they used

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 29

THE LAND to. Agricultural businesses are often landrich and cash-poor, and farmland is often sold or developed to pay the inheritance of non-farming children, estate taxes, and fees. These complexities make it essential for families to talk and develop a succession plan, according to Nellie McAdams of Rogue Farm Corps. “A succession plan is more than an estate plan. It is hard because folks have to understand the financials of their own business, set a retirement date, and sit in a room with family members and professionals.” The greatest challenge is often interpersonal and even spiritual. “It is hard for anyone to come to terms with their own mortality and legacy.” But McAdams and Rogue Farm Corps are trying to make the succession process easier through a statewide workshop series called Changing Hands. She says the situation in Oregon is critical. “As the farmer and rancher population ages, 64 percent of Oregon’s agricultural land will change hands in the next 20 years. Yet most farmers do not have a succession plan.” The upcoming “great succession” of

two-thirds of farms and ranches is significant because agricultural land makes up one quarter of the state. Rogue Farm Corps estimates 10.5 million acres will change hands, meaning big changes in ownership, management, farm size and land use may be on the horizon. As the change plays out, many wonder who will farm Oregon’s 16.3 million acres as older farmers and ranchers retire and pass on. While young farmer training, loan and other programs have sprung up in the last decade, the average age of farmers continues to climb. Thirty-year-old Max Nilsson sees the problem playing out all around him. “I’m going to have to get bigger just because I don’t know who’s going to farm all the land in the Grande Ronde Valley. There aren’t many people younger than me who are farming around here.” McAdams says there are several current and proposed state programs to help young farmers like Max get started and older farmers like Willie to pass on their operations. Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) provides four different volun-

tary grants for succession planning and land preservation. Additionally, working lands easements and covenants allow landowners to lock in agriculture and prevent future development. Farmers are paid for easements, which makes it possible to pass on land instead of selling it to pay inheritances to off-farm relatives and estate taxes. “Oregon’s estate tax is one of the most onerous in the nation for farmers and ranchers as it affects estates worth $1 million or more,” McAdams said. The value of agricultural land, modern equipment, and infrastructure quickly add up to large estates on farms and ranches. “Being forced to sell off parcels hamstrings farm business year after year, which makes it harder for the next generation to be profitable,” McAdams said. Easements are essentially the sale of development rights, but McAdams notes that it doesn’t mean farmers are forced to make choices they don’t like. Landowners negotiate 20- to 50-year easements with a land trust or soil and water conservation districts and only give up rights they want to. “Easements aren’t for everybody, but for some it means the difference between pass-

Brazil has agreed to drop a tariff on U.S. wheat. PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NILSSON FAMILY

30 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

A VOICE FOR RURAL OREGON TheOtherOregon.com

ing on the farm on or not,” McAdams said. The most significant new program for farm succession in the state is the Oregon Agricultural Heritage Program, passed in the 2017 legislative session. The program is designed to address the dual issues of farm succession and agricultural land preservation.

Preserving agriculture McAdams believes farm succession planning will not only preserve family farms, it will preserve agriculture itself into the future. Despite strict land use laws in Oregon, there are over 50 exceptions to the Exclusive Farm Use (EFU) rules on agricultural land. McAdams says these exemptions and successful lobbying by land speculators to extend urban growth boundaries (UGB) have caused the loss of large tracts of farmland. “The biggest patch of Class 1 soil in Oregon is underneath the city of Portland. The best soil is near rivers like the Tigress, Euphrates, Willamette, and Rogue. The best places to live are also the best places to farm, but we can’t have both and we have to choose.” The Oregon Agricultural Heritage Program would help increase succession planning and working lands easements, but it is currently unfunded. If the program receives the $10 million that advocates are requesting this session, the it would be able to offer four voluntary grant programs to address statewide succession issues and leverage millions in federal dollars for the state. As for the fourth succession at the Hamann and Nilsson farm, Max says there is still a lot to talk about. “There is less conversation about the next generation than there should be.” He hopes to be able to draw another cousin back to the farm. He’s interested in expanding to other crops that they could process in their mint oil facility. He wants to experiment with native seed production. He wants to keep up with technology and international trends in agriculture. “Who knows? In Japan they are focusing on smaller and smaller tractors. My cousin Ben and I might be farming alone with tiny robot tractors.” He chuckles as he says what he’s really hoping for is a precision weed sprayer — a robot that will hunt down and spray each individual weed in a field.

ERIC MORTENSON

Nellie McAdams at her family’s hazelnut farm near Gaston, Ore., which she is taking over from her parents. She helps farmers develop succession plans that will keep farmland in production.

Willie Hamann

“If they can sort M&Ms with lasers, we should be able to hit cheat grass with robots.” Perhaps his attitude of innovation and adaptation is how the family farm has lasted over generations. “I’m ready for the future,” he says. But Max Nilsson is also keenly aware

of the past — of the decisions made by his family, his dad, and his now 95-year old grandfather. “Grandpa did a good job managing; Dad did a good job managing. I know as long as I’m not a idiot and there aren’t too many natural disasters, we can keep it profitable and keep farming.”

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 31

MAKING A LIVING

Lawmakers work to adopt carbon pricing policy By GEORGE PLAVEN

Supporters of cap and trade rally outside the Oregon State Capitol on Feb. 6. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would implement cap and trade emissions pricing in Oregon, beginning in 2021. GEORGE PLAVEN

32 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

ALEM — Oregon lawmakers are considering a new carbon pricing policy during this year’s legislative session aimed at regulating greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat the effects of climate change. The legislation, known as cap and trade, worries many of the state’s farmers and ranchers concerned about higher fuel and

energy prices at a time when profit margins are already thin, while others see it as a needed step toward climate resilience. Cap and trade was re-introduced in the Legislature on Feb. 4, with state Democrats riding a wave of momentum after winning a supermajority of 60 percent in both chambers during the 2018 midterm elections. At least one Senate Republican, Cliff Bentz of Ontario, has said the bill is all but certain to pass, though there is still time to impact the proposal. “I think all of us are working on amendments to this bill,” Bentz said. Agricultural groups are lobbying to protect farmers and ranchers from projected hikes in fuel and energy prices. Jenny Dresler, of the Oregon Farm Bureau, said too few safeguards are built into the bill for growers who rely on diesel fuel, gasoline and inputs made from natural gas, or who ship their products long distances.

A VOICE FOR RURAL OREGON TheOtherOregon.com

“That’s a big point for us, that a lot of rural families and farm and ranch families are going to bear a disproportionate burden of these costs,” Dresler said.

House Bill 2020 The legislation, House Bill 2020, outlines a new cap and trade plan and calls for the creation of a state agency to oversee it. Under cap and trade, the state sets a limit, or cap, on greenhouse gas emissions — such as carbon dioxide and methane — beginning in 2021. The cap would be steadily reduced until carbon emissions are 45 percent below 1990 levels in 2035, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Though many details of the program are yet to be determined, companies would have to buy “allowances” for every metric ton of carbon — usually in the form of carbon dioxide — they generate in total. Only companies that emit more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon a year would be regulated, including electric utilities and natural gas and fuel suppliers. The state would sell the majority of allowances through regular auctions, and money collected would then go toward climate-friendly initiatives across the state, such as accelerating the adoption of renewable resources, weatherizing homes and thinning excess forest debris that feeds larger wildfires. Tentatively, cap and trade would be managed by the Oregon Carbon Policy Office, though Gov. Kate Brown has proposed creating a new agency, the Oregon Climate Authority, that would replace the Carbon Policy Office and Department of Energy. Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, is chairman of the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee, and co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Carbon Reduction, which is holding hearings on the bill. He said HB 2020 allows the state to address climate change while Sen. Michael directly benefiting the state Dembrow economy. “We need to take climate action really seriously,” Dembrow said. “That’s what this bill does.” Senate Minority Leader Herman Baertschiger Jr., R-Grants Pass, labeled the bill “Soviet-style” government that skirts the Legislature and consolidates power in the

GEORGE PLAVEN

Members of the Oregon Legislature’s Joint Committee on Carbon Reduction listen to testimony about a proposed cap and trade bill during a hearing Feb. 11 at the State Capitol.

executive branch. HB 2020 does call for establishing a Joint Committee on Climate Action, though Baertschiger said the rules for cap and trade — and how the money will be spent — will be written by the new Climate Authority, with a director appointed by the governor. “Once this is implemented, the Legislature is basically out of the picture,” Baertschiger said. “It is a way the executive branch, on their own, can control production in the state of Oregon.”

Higher costs It is widely expected that, once cap and trade is passed, Oregon would link its program to the Western Climate Initiative, which implements similar programs in California and Quebec, Canada. The allowances that companies must buy for emissions are estimated to cost $16 per ton of carbon in the first year, increasing fuel prices in Oregon by 15 to 16 cents per gallon. Oregon’s Carbon Policy Office estimates that cap and trade will apply directly to about 100 companies statewide. Under the current proposal, agriculture and forestry are exempt from the carbon cap but are not immune from the effects of higher fuel and energy prices. Dresler, with the Farm Bureau, said higher fuel costs alone could cost producers an extra $1,000 to $5,000 per year, depend-

ing on their consumption. Commercial fuel and dyed diesel for offroad use are not currently exempted in the bill. Farmers are price-takers in the global market, Dresler said, meaning they have no control over pricing and typically cannot pass on their cost increases to the consumer. “Any of these cost increases are going to be borne by the farm families,” Dresler said. Natural gas customers would also be impacted by cap and trade, which could have a significant impact on the food processing and nursery industries. PacifiCorp and Portland General Electric, Oregon’s largest electric utilities, would receive free allowances through 2030 to account for work already being done to phase out coal generation and double their renewable energy mandate. Utility representatives said the free allowances are necessary to avoid charging ratepayers twice for carbon savings. Gas companies, however, would not receive free allowances. NW Natural, the state’s largest gas utility, calculates that rates for small commercial businesses would climb by 13 percent in 2021, 44 percent by 2035 and 60 percent by 2040. Craig Smith, director of government affairs for Food Northwest, an association that represents the food processing industry, said processors rely heavily on natural gas to fuel their boilers. If gas rates go up, he wor-

The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 33

MAKING A LIVING ries that companies such as Lamb Weston could move out of the state. “A lot of our companies already have locations in (Washington and Idaho), so they just move production,” Smith said. Tom Fessler, owner of Woodburn Nursery in Woodburn, Ore., also testified before the Joint Committee on Carbon Reduction. Natural gas is the most cost-effective fuel for heating greenhouses, he said, and there is not an adequate or inexpensive alternative. “We cannot continue to absorb these increases, as our customers are unwilling to pay the prices needed to sustain our business,” Fessler said. Nursery and greenhouse plants are Oregon’s top agricultural commodity, valued at approximately $947 million in 2017.

Climate impact By 2050, the Carbon Policy Office estimates Oregon’s cap and trade plan would eliminate 43.4 million metric tons of carbon annually from the atmosphere. Critics point out that amount represents just 0.12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which reached an all-time high of more than 36 billion metric tons in 2018. Cap and trade, they argue, would cost too much for too little benefit. Supporters, however, say the state can no longer afford to stand by and do nothing about climate change. “The writing is on the wall. The state is already bearing the cost for this,” said Dylan Kruse, director of government affairs for the Portland-based nonprofit Sustainable Northwest. He points to more frequent droughts, which in 2018 helped fuel Oregon’s most expensive wildfire season to date, topping $514 million. “People keep talking about the cost of action. We’re past that. We have to start talking about the cost of inaction,” Kruse said. The last five years have been the hottest on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Average global temperatures in 2018 were just over 2 degrees higher than normal, and the U.S. experienced 14 weather and climate disasters — including wildfires in the West and hurricanes in the East — each with losses exceeding $1 billion and totaling around $91 billion in damages. A study by the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute concludes that longer,

34 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

Spending plan

GEORGE PLAVEN

Brenda Frketich, center, testifies against cap and trade during a hearing Feb. 11 at the capitol.

hotter summers and smaller winter snowpack will likely affect day-to-day operations in agriculture, including planting schedules, pest management strategies, yields, livestock health and soil retention. Megan Kemple, coordinator of the nonprofit Oregon Climate and Agriculture Network, or OrCAN, said more than 200 farms have signed on in support of cap and trade legislation. OrCAN was started by Kemple in 2017 to promote agricultural practices that mitigate climate change and sequester carbon. “The farmers I’m in communication with are concerned about the impacts of climate change on their livelihoods and their businesses,” Kemple said. Ramon Ramirez, with the labor union Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or PCUN, testified in favor of the cap and trade bill on behalf of farmworkers. PCUN, based in Woodburn, is Oregon’s largest Latino organization, representing 6,500 members. Ramirez served as president of the group until last November and now works as an policy organizer. “In this debate of reducing carbon, we are on the front lines,” Ramirez said. “Farmworkers who toil on the land to put food on the American table do backbreaking work while working with carbon and toxic chemicals.” It is no coincidence, Ramirez added, that the life expectancy for farmworkers is 49 years old compared to 78 for the general population, citing statistics from the National Center for Farmworker Health.

Dembrow said cap and trade targets four main areas of concern, including carbon reduction, sequestration, adaptation and climate resilience. While the Oregon Constitution mandates that any money collected from fuel suppliers must be spent within the State Highway Fund, HB 2020 establishes a Climate Investment Fund that can provide grants to help pay for such activities as weatherizing homes, installing wind and solar power and improving irrigation efficiency. Kemple said farms and ranches would be eligible to receive this funding, making their businesses cleaner and more sustainable in the long run. “We’re very supportive of the policy,” she said. “There is an opportunity there for agriculture as well.” Farms and ranches could also sell allowances on the open market generated by projects that sequester carbon — known as offset projects — though specific details are still subject to rule-making. A 72-page economic report on the cap and trade proposal, prepared for the Carbon Policy Office, states the policy may actually boost job growth over the long run. The analysis, by Berkeley Economic Advising and Research in Berkeley, Calif., forecasts that Oregon can hit its 2050 greenhouse gas reduction goals while boosting the state’s economy by 2.5 percent, adding 23,000 jobs. Brad Reed, a spokesman for Renew Oregon, a clean energy advocacy group formed in 2015 that has campaigned for cap and trade, said the bill is still far from perfect. He said supporters would like language that sets aside a certain percentage of funds for rural Oregonians, and hopes the state will limit the amount of free credits being offered to businesses that are trade dependent. “Because there is some back and forth about how many free allowances to give to various entities, that is going to cut into the amount that is collected for the program,” Reed said. “It’s going to affect our ability to reinvest that amount of money.” Dembrow said Oregonians need to do their part, and he is confident they will not be acting alone. “If we can come up with a good program that can significantly reduce our emissions while at the same time benefiting Oregon’s economy, then we believe other states will follow us,” he said.

Oregon’s Top 10 Agricultural Commodities Greenhouse & Nursery Cattle & Calves Hay Milk Grass Seed Wheat Potatoes Pears Grapes for Wine Blueberries

Value of Oregon Agricultural Exports: $5.7 billion Farm Gate Sales

Oregon Ranks #1 in the U.S. in Production of: Blackberries Boysenberries Hazelnuts Orchardgrass Seed Ryegrass Seed Crimson Clover Red Clover Seed Fescue Seed Potted Florist Azaleas Sugarbeet for Seed Rhubarb Christmas Trees

All of this would not be possible without pesticides. Most farmers, including both organic and conventional, use some type of pesticide to keep insects, weeds, or plant diseases from hurting their crops. No single solution exists for crop protection. Pesticides are one tool land managers may use to complement other common and effective practices, such as cover crops, tilling, crop rotation, and proper timing of planting.

“The health of my family, livestock, and environment are top priorities. Pesticides are just one tool I use to combat invasive species while allowing me to produce a quality product, as I protect Oregon’s natural resources.” —Tim Miller

www.ofsonline.org

THE CULTURE

A VOICE FOR RURAL OREGON TheOtherOregon.com

Coos County

Total land area: 1,806 sq. mi. Percent public land: 29

Facts and figures Population

Communities

Coos: 63,275 or 1.5% Multnomah: 813,300 or 19.4%

Other: 1.38 million or 33% Total statewide: 4.2 million

Source: Population Research Center, PSU (Estimate as of July 1, 2018.)

Washington: 606,280 or 14.5%

Deschutes: 188,980 or 4.5%

City/town

Population

Bandon Coos Bay Coquille Lakeside Myrtle Point North Bend Powers Unincorporated

3,155 16,680 3,915 1,735 2,535 9,815 695 24,745

Source: 2018 estimates from Population Research Center, PSU

Clackamas: 419,425 or 10%

Marion: 344,035 or 8.2%

Agriculture

Law enforcement officers in county

Lane: 375,120 or 8.9%

133

Source: State of Oregon Annual Report of Criminal Offenses and Arrests, 2016

Health

Source: USDA Census of Agriculture, 2012

Major production in Coos County includes cattle, calves, milk from cows, aquaculture, fruits, tree nuts and berries.

Coos rank on health outcomes ..... 30 out of 36 Oregon counties

Item

Coos rank on health factors .......... 35 out of 36 Oregon counties

(Based on length and quality of life.)

Quantity

Number of farms

(Based on weighted scores for health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors, and the physical environment.)

654

Land in farms (acres)

157,496

Average size farm (acres)

241

Percent pastureland

38.4

Percent cropland CLATSOP

13.3

COLUMBIA 26 Percent woodland/other

41.8

Avg. market value of products sold TILLAMOOK

HOOD RIVER

Interesting fact

CLACKAMAS

POLK

WASCO

12,572

6,280

101

UMATILLA

Sources: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, County Health Rankings for Oregon, 2019; Oregon Health Authority, WALLOWA Oregon Health Professions-Occupational and County Profiles, 2014

GILLIAM

353

MORROW

197

YAMHILL

Statewide

503

Number of people per registered nurse

SHERMAN

MULTNOMAH

Coos

Number of people per physician Number of people per psychiatrist

84 $50.4 million

WASHINGTON

Item

395

UNION

Tourist attractions

101 MARION BAKER • GolfWHEELER at Bandon Dunes The Jordan Cove Energy Project would GRANT JEFFERSON 84 develop a pipeline, 229 miles long and • Go crabbing and sports fishing LINN LINCOLN diameter, 36 inches to deliver20 liquefied BENTON • See the world’s tallest Douglas fir 26 tree natural gas from southern Oregon, CROOK 395 through Klamath, Jackson, Douglas and Colleges & universities LANE • Southwestern Oregon Community Coos counties to an LNG export terminal 20 DESCHUTES HARNEY at Coos Bay’s deepwater port. College

Coos Bay

Proposed pipeline

Roseburg

COOS

DOUGLAS

101

5 20 miles

JOSEPHINE

CURRY

199

JACKSON

KLAMATH

Medford 5

36 | The Other Oregon • Spring 2019

Klamath Falls Malin

State representatives

MALHEUR

395

• David Brock Smith (R), District 1 78 • Caddy McKeown (D), District 9

LAKE

State senators

• Dallas Heard (R), District 1 • Arnie Roblan (D), District 5

U.S. representative • Peter DeFazio (D)

You may not know Shore Acres State Park was originally the estate of timber baron Louis Simpson. Famous for formal gardens and holiday lights, it’s a great place to watch for whales and other sea life year-round.

Have you herd? Judging by the number of “Elk” name places in Oregon, elk were an important and plentiful game animal for both Native Americans and early settlers. 1. Elk Butte — Lake

County, in an area where elk are usually scarce.

2. Elk City — An

11 4 5 2

unincorporated place in 12 Lincoln County, upriver from Newport on the 10 Yaquina River.

87 1

3. Elk Flat — East of

Elgin in Union County, near Cricket Flat. There are also two Elk Flat(s) trails in the state.

4. Elk Horn — A locality in Polk County, southwest of Sheridan. 5. Elkhorn — A community in Marion County on the Little North Santiam River.

6. Elkhorn Mountains — The easternmost range of the Blue

Mountains in Baker County, home to Anthony Lakes Mountain Resort ski area.

7. Elk Lake — Southwest of Bend in Deschutes County. 8. Elk Mountain — A 5,936-foot peak straddling Deschutes and

Lane counties, west of Elk Lake, is one of several Elk Mountains in the state.

9. Elk Point — A 960-foot hill in Washington County, west of

Sylvan.

10. Elk River — Flows into the Pacific Ocean between Cape

Blanco and Port Orford in Curry County.

11. Elk Rock Island — In the Willamette River, north of Lake Oswego in Clackamas County. Sometime before 1927, witnesses saw two hounds chasing an elk on a nearby bluff. The elk jumped off the cliff into the river and the hounds followed; none survived the 200-foot fall. 12. Elkton — A town in

Douglas County, where Elk Creek meets the Umpqua River. Source: Oregon Geographic Names, 7th edition (2003), by Lewis A. McArthur & Lewis L. McArthur. Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland.

Read this book, and you’ll understand a lot about what makes Oregon Oregon. — Jackman Wilson, Editorial Page Editor, The Register-Guard

“Grit and Ink” tells a story that is very worthy of being told. — Kerry Tymchuk, Executive Director, Oregon Historical Society

Small-town family business history at its best.

—Richard Baker, U.S. Senate Historian Emeritus

NOW AVAILABLE AT

IN PRINT AND eBOOK FOR KINDLE

Also available from local booksellers or call 800-621-2736 books.eomediagroup.com/grit-ink The Other Oregon • Spring 2019 | 37

Community newspapers

are the backbone of American democracy

Get to know your community by subscribing to your local newspaper EO Media Group has been family-owned since E.B. Aldrich became an owner of the East Oregonian in 1908. Today, his grandsons and great-grandchildren publish newspapers, magazines, real estate guides and websites covering much of Eastern Oregon, the northern Oregon Coast and agriculture in the West.

EMPOWERING PRODUCERS OF FOOD & FIBER

Every Friday Agriculture in the West www.capitalpress.com 800-882-6789

Monday through Friday Clatsop Co. www.dailyastorian.com 800-781-3211

Tuesday through Saturday Umatilla Co. & Morrow Co. www.eastoregonian.com 800-522-0255

Every other Friday Seaside www.seasidesignal.com 503-738-5561

Every Wednesday Hermiston area www.hermistonherald.com 800-522-0255

Every other Friday Cannon Beach www.cannonbeachgazette.com 503-738-5561

Every Wednesday Wallowa Co. www.wallowa.com 541-416-4567

Monthly Columbia-Pacific Region www.crbizjournal.com 800-643-3703

The

Blue Mountain

EAGLE

oregon coast

Grant CountyÂˇs newspaper since 1868

Every Wednesday Grant Co. www.bluemountaineagle.com 541-575-0710

Every Friday Lincoln City www.oregoncoasttoday.com 503-921-0413

EO Media Group is committed to reporting and distributing local news and information because a well-informed public keeps our communities strong.

LET THE SAVINGS SOAK IN Energy upgrades to irrigation systems and equipment can yield more than energy savings. They can earn rebates and cash incentives from Energy Trust of Oregon, too.

Talk to your irrigation vendor, or visit www.energytrust.org/ag for more information. Serving customers of Portland General Electric, Pacific Power, NW Natural, Cascade Natural Gas and Avista.

Farm Bureau keeps Oregon agriculture viable & sustainable Established at the county level in 1919 and the state level in 1932, Farm Bureau is a grassroots, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization representing Oregon’s diverse agricultural community. Farm Bureau is Oregon’s most inclusive agriculture organization. We believe that all commodity types, farming methods, and operation sizes are valuable and necessary. We give a voice to farm and ranch families at the capitol, in the courts, and within regulatory agencies. We help these Oregonians stay in business and keep doing the job they love.



Oregon agriculture is known worldwide for its diversity. On my farm, I grow everything from broccoli to cherries to hops. As an organic and conventional farmer, I know that Farm Bureau supports all types of farms and farming methods. Coexistence between crops and practices is not only possible, it’s something Oregon farmers should be proud of. Molly McCargar, Marion County Farm Bureau

Visit



OregonFB.org to learn more or call us at 800.334.6323

   