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Monday Mailing

Year 20 • Issue 35 02 June 2014 1.

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Why Would The Oregon Legislature Help Out Monsanto?

Thousands Petition Oregon Governor to Stop Nestlé Deal Webinar - Creative Somerville Series: Rebuilding the Local Food System A Dutch City Makes Room For Its River – And a New Identity The Day When Roads Will Harness Solar Energy is Drawing Near Frontier and Remote (FAR) Codes Pinpoint Nation’s Most Remote Regions 7. Transportation Emerges as Crucial to Escaping Poverty 8. 5 Simple Office Policies That Make Danish Workers Way More Happy Than Americans 9. End of The Car Age: How Cities Are Outgrowing the Automobile 2013 10. A Potential First: Lane County Asks For Drought Declaration 11. Top 10 Outdoors Attractions in Clatsop County: Wild About Oregon Coast 1. Why Would The Oregon Legislature Help Out Monsanto?

Last year my farm and 150 other family farms in Jackson County, Oregon did what many said was impossible: we passed a ballot measure banning genetically engineered crops. The goal was simple: protect our traditional and organically grown crops from contamination by the GMO crops legally patented by Monsanto, Syngenta and the other chemical giants. Monsanto and their ilk spent almost $ 1 million to defeat our measure, but we won and are now in a heated lawsuit trying to defend our democratic vote.

Quote of the Week: “This activist loves Oregon more than he loves life.”

-Tom McCall

But to the surprise of myself and many other family farmers, the Oregon House recently passed a bill backed by Rep. Brian Clem that could undermine Jackson County’s ban on GMOs. It would also prevent other future local and state laws aimed at protecting family farmers from other industrial agricultural practices. But House Bill 3212 would go far beyond that. This is why groups as diverse as Friends of Family Famers, the Center for Food Safety and the Oregon Chapter Sierra Club all oppose HB 3212.

To access the full story, click here.

Oregon Fast Fact: Oregon grows 98 percent of the hazelnuts in the United States. There are more than 3,755,000 hazelnut trees in Oregon, worth $49.5 million, grown on 30,000 acres, mostly in western Oregon.

2. Thousands Petition Oregon Governor to Stop Nestlé Deal Thousands of people have submitted comments opposing a controversial water-rights trade in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge.

The deal will allow the Swiss company Nestlé Waters to open a bottling plant in the economically depressed small town of Cascade Locks.

Opponents stacked about 7,000 comments at the Oregon State Capitol Thursday during a press conference meant to draw attention to the water swap, which centers on state-owned water rights at Oxbow Springs. They also plan to submit a petition, with about 25,000 signatures, asking Gov. Kate Brown to block the deal.

To access the full story, click here.

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3. Webinar - Creative Somerville Series: Rebuilding the Local Food System Wednesday, May 20, 2015 from 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM (EDT) The Creative Somerville Series is a series of “fireside chats” with locals in design, tech, food, social impact and other fields–celebrating the creative and entrepreneurial energy that makes Somerville great. The Creative Somerville Series is not your typical power point and Q&A. Our free fireside chats are about getting to hear someone’s story, learning about how they think and create, and getting to share creative energy and ideas in an intimate setting. The free events are co-curated by designer and researcher Mia Scharphie and Somerville Beat Founder Elyse Andrews and held at Aeronaut Brewing Company. They are co-sponsored by Somerville Local First and have been featured in BostInno.

About the Speaker: Colin Davis is a founder, and the CEO of Something GUD, based out of the Aeronaut Foods Hub. GUD enables customers to opt out of the global, corporate food system with weekly home or office deliveries of groceries from local farms, fishermen, bakers and chefs. Colin is also launching an aquaponic (fish + hydroponic vegetable) farm called Redemption Fish Co. and previously started a software company to automate energy efficiency studies of buildings. All of Colin’s projects are based on the goal of using business to build a more sustainable world To register for this webinar, click here.

4. A Dutch City Makes Room For Its River – And a New Identity NIJMEGEN, The Netherlands — In this city along the River Waal, this year marks the 20th anniversary of a scary event that quite nearly turned into a catastrophe.

Heavy rains upstream in France and Germany, where the river is known as the Rhine, sent a surge of water toward Nijmegen. The city of 170,000 people is protected by dikes. But as the waters rose and fear built that the dikes would break, many people and cattle in and around Nijmegen evacuated.

Luckily, the dikes held, and after several harrowing days, the water level dropped again.

The people of Nijmegen aren’t taking their good luck for granted. With climate change expected to bring more intense storms like the one in 1995 (and a previous one in 1993), the city is embarking on a massive flood-control project. That may be expected in the Netherlands, a low-lying country where most homes are built behind protective dikes (There’s a saying here that “God created the world and the Dutch created Holland”). But even here, the approach underway in Nijmegen is unusual, and filled with ideas that river cities anywhere can learn from.

To access the full story, click here.

5. The Day When Roads Will Harness Solar Energy is Drawing Near There are some 60 million kilometers (37.3 million miles) of roadways in the world, just sitting there.

But adapting these surfaces to do anything besides passively carry traffic has proved difficult and prohibitively expensive.

Past attempts include trying to convert the vibrations on roads into electricity. But this technology is only economically feasible on the busiest thoroughfares, which account for a tiny proportion of the world’s huge network.

To access the full story, click here.

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6. Frontier and Remote (FAR) Codes Pinpoint Nation’s Most Remote Regions Small population size and geographic remoteness provide benefits for residents and visitors alike, but those same characteristics often create economic and social challenges. Job creation, population retention, and provision of goods/services (such as groceries, health care, clothing, household appliances, and other consumer items) require increased efforts in very rural, remote communities.

The newly updated ERS Frontier and Remote area (FAR) codes identify remote areas of the United States using travel times to nearby cities. Results for level one FAR codes (which include ZIP code areas with majority of their population living 60 minutes or more from urban areas of 50,000 or more people) show that 12.2 million Americans reside more than a one-hour drive from any city of 50,000 or more people. They constitute just 3.9 percent of the U.S. population living in territory covering 52 percent of U.S. land area. Wyoming has the highest share of its population living in FAR level one ZIP code areas (57 percent), followed by Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Alaska.

To access the full detail of FAR Codes, click here.

7. Transportation Emerges as Crucial to Escaping Poverty James Baker was pedaling to work along a slick, snow-covered road in Frederick County, Md., when a traffic light changed abruptly. He braked and skidded to the ground, unhurt but making a mess of his clothes before a long day of work and school.

He was on his bicycle that snowy morning last December, about an hour northwest of Washington, because the bus service in Frederick was so erratic. Routes were far apart and the buses often late, making a 30-minute bike ride, whatever the weather, a better option.

His commuting problems highlight a central theme for many low-income people trying to build a better life: A lack of reliable and efficient transportation is often a huge barrier.

In a large, continuing study of upward mobility based at Harvard, commuting time has emerged as the single strongest factor in the odds of escaping poverty. The longer an average commute in a given county, the worse the chances of low-income families there moving up the ladder.

The relationship between transportation and social mobility is stronger than that between mobility and several other factors, like crime, elementary-school test scores or the percentage of two-parent families in a community, said Nathaniel Hendren, a Harvard economist and one of the researchers on the study.

To access the full story, click here.

8. 5 Simple Office Policies That Make Danish Workers Way More Happy Than Americans You will often see Denmark listed in surveys as the “happiest country on the planet." Interestingly Danes are not only happy at home, they're also happy at work. According to most studies of worker satisfaction among nations, the happiest employees in the world are in Denmark. The U.S.? Not so much. Here's just one data point: a recent Gallup poll found that 18% of American workers are actively disengaged, meaning they are “emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and less likely to be productive.” The same number for Danish workers is only 10%.

But why are Danish workers so happy compared to their American counterparts? Here are five fundamental differences.

To access the full story, click here.

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9. End of The Car Age: How Cities Are Outgrowing the Automobile Gilles Vesco calls it the “new mobility”. It’s a vision of cities in which residents no longer rely on their cars but on public transport, shared cars and bikes and, above all, on real-time data on their smartphones. He anticipates a revolution which will transform not just transport but the cities themselves. “The goal is to rebalance the public space and create a city for people,” he says. “There will be less pollution, less noise, less stress; it will be a more walkable city.”

Vesco, the politician responsible for sustainable transport in Lyon, played a leading role in introducing the city’s Vélo’v bike-sharing scheme a decade ago. It has since been replicated in cities all over the world. Now, though, he is convinced that digital technology has changed the rules of the game, and will make possible the move away from cars that was unimaginable when Vélo’v launched in May 2005. “Digital information is the fuel of mobility,” he says. “Some transport sociologists say that information about mobility is 50% of mobility. The car will become an accessory to the smartphone.”

To access the report, click here.

10. A Potential First: Lane County Asks For Drought Declaration Lane County is joining the list of those asking the state for an emergency drought declaration. It’s the first Western Oregon county to make the request this year.

Across much of Oregon, mountain peaks that would normally still be snow-covered are bare. Record low snowpack levels and recent high temperatures mean less water will come into streams across the state.

“What that means for Lane County is that our rivers are running lower than normal,” said Linda Cook, emergency manager for Lane County. “It’s creating a water management issue for our water resources department.”

To access the full story, click here.

11. Top 10 Outdoors Attractions in Clatsop County: Wild About Oregon Coast Oregonians are wild about their Pacific coast. And who could blame them?

To celebrate all things coastal, here we begin a summer-long project to visit and describe the wildest places and things to do along the Oregon coast.

Yes, the Pacific Coast Scenic Byway, U.S. 101, is lined with fast food joints and taffy shops, but that's not why people visit.

Well, maybe it is why for some, but a lot of visitors still seek raw, natural experiences that are readily available along the highway's 360-plus miles in Oregon.

Name one? How about 10, for Clatsop County. Then 10 more each for Tillamook, Lincoln, Coos and Curry counties, then 10 combined for the Oregon Dunes of Land and Douglas counties.

To access the full story, click here.

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