COUNTY NEWS
A Retrospective View of Agriculture and the Economic Impact of Yamhill County By Yamhill County Commissioner Rick Olson
While growing up in McMinnville and living in Yamhill County for over 60 years, I have been surrounded by local agriculture and the impacts it had and continue to have on the County’s Economic Development. Over those years the face of agriculture has dramatically changed. Growing up, the primary agricultural crops consisted of grains and grass crops such as wheat, clover, oats, barley, and other field crops. The economic development and viability of the small towns in Yamhill County was centered around agricultural activity. Every small town had grain elevators and seed cleaning facilities such as Meeker Seed in Amity, Madsen Grain in Carlton, Buchanan Cellars and Albers Milling in McMinnville. The businesses and services in the small towns mainly existed to service agriculture. Today some small towns continue to exist with a different focus, but many of the towns and waysides such as Whiteson, McCoy, Perrydale, Broadmead, Cove Orchard, Wapato, and St Joseph no longer exist with the grain elevators being torn down and other commerce being abandoned. Farmers and grain growers normally had one Massey Ferguson, International Harvester, or John Deer combine with manual controls and, if fortunate enough, an umbrella to keep the sun off the driver and provide a minimal amount of shade. All fields were planted and harvested using the knowledge of the land, planting patterns, family history, and his fellow farmers. Now many of the larger fields are harvested by multiple combines with GPS, air-conditioned cabs, and fully automatic controls which provide a higher yield per acre. Those combines travel from field to field harvesting multiple fields in a short period of time and many of the smaller farms now form the backbone for organic farming, farm to fork, niche
crops, etc. They rely on Agri-Tourism to fill the void, including on-site retail operations, organic fruits and vegetables, and cooperative membership. In the past, towns such as Whiteson had two service station stations, a grocery store, and two cafes. Many of those now nonexistent towns were serviced by the railroad with towns such as McCoy having a hotel in addition to the standard services. As transportation for much of agricultural crop moved to over road transportation, highways such as 99W and Hwy 47 were rerouted around those communities eliminating much of the vehicular traffic that passed by. Today, many of the still existing granaries in Yamhill County have been converted to new usages such as wineries, public meeting and gathering spaces, and even bed and breakfast and short-term vacation rentals breathing new life into the communities based on agricultural tourism and not on agricultural production itself. Today many of the grain and grass fields and farms have been converted to vineyards, hazelnut orchards, blueberries, and even olive orchards. Although the changing of agriculture in Yamhill County and in Oregon will bring new opportunities for farms and towns related to agriculture and economic development, those opportunities will also create many challenges that will need to be addressed such as Oregon’s current land use laws, local county zoning ordinances, compatibility of crops on adjacent parcels, transportation, water resources, and environmental concerns. The inability to address and solve those issues will have a major impact on the local economy.
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The Ag Issue
