Locally Grown

Gorge Farmers Rally To Sustainable Agriculture

By Tomi Owens, 9-14-06

As America’s conscience slowly shifts toward concepts of sustainable agriculture, farmers’ markets are reestablishing themselves in Oregon communities large and small. The Sierra Club’s recent film and lecture series “The True Cost of Food”has been a motivating force nationwide in raising awareness of the hidden costs of massed-produced food and the import/export food industry.  

The film provides harsh criticism of how thoroughly the fossil fuel industry has pervaded both the production and transportation of foodstuffs in this country by suggesting that the average meal travels up to 1500 miles from farmer to dinner plate and has been dosed repeatedly with gallons of chemicals. With the price of fuel ballooning, added costs are hidden from the consumer but trickle down to farmers, causing ever diminishing returns and making small scale farming all but impossible. The thrust of the campaign is simple: “consumers, through our food choices, can stop practices that harm our health, our planet, our quality of life.”

"True Cost of Food" played a year ago August in Hood River. Part of the diverse group that had gathered were several Columbia Gorge agriculturists who took the message to heart and then took things into their own hands. During the discussion that followed the film, attendees were inspired to create a local organization that would pool resources and, hopefully, make a difference. Gorge Grown Food Network was born on the spot.

Designed as a non-profit, the organization's mission is to "promote connection between Economy, Ecology and Community in the Gorge."  Part of that mission was to begin a farmers' market. By June of 2006 the GGFN were supervising a Farmer's Markets on Thursday evenings, from 4-7pm at the Hood River Middle School, offering locally grown fruits and vegetables, hand raised local meat, Native caught salmon, and even wild mushrooms and berries foraged from the slopes of Mount Hood.  The GGFN website features the full list
of participating vendors, who represent nearly every aspect of the region's varied food/flower/fiber production.

True to form for Hood River, the Thursday evening farmers market incorporates the festive elements of a street fair: live music, children’s activities, fresh cut flowers. But, unlike many events held in Hood River, the market is in not a tourist trap. For the people, by the people is the intention and local, sustainable food production and the environmental wellbeing of the Columbia Gorge are the predominate theme.    

As well as sustainability, the GGFN also promotes “a living wage” for farmers. Every middleman that takes a cut between farmer and consumer decreases the profitability of sustainable agriculture. According to Ann Kramer, who is part of the GGFN Steering Committee, farmers are encouraged to “sell at 'retail' price, not the wholesale price. When they sell direct to the grocery the wholesale price enables the grocery to 'mark up' and sell it retail and get their share.”  

With ever increasing property values in the Gorge, selling out to developers becomes more and more attractive to farmers strapped by high cost/low profit food production. A farmers’ market offers direct access, grower to buyer, and GGFN hopes that will alleviate some of the temptation for farmers to sell their land to developers.

“Our goal with GGFN is to network farmers and consumers within the local region to co-support each other,” says Kramer, “This enables farmers to farm close by and in proximity to their market (vs. shipping outside the area). We would hope that this co-supported need would increase the financial success of the farmer who would then be able to maintain his farm vs. selling it out to a subdivision... and within this the community would also see the value in the farm nearby and become vocal in supporting the farmer not selling out.”

Ultimately, the GGFN would like to see the Gorge become a “food self-sufficient region.” Cheap oil won’t last forever — it can’t. And when the cheap oil goes so does cheap transportation, along with all the other chemical aspects of giant agribusiness farming: fertilizers, pesticide, packaging.

So far, the Gorge Grown Farmers’ Market has been a success, an average of 400-500 shoppers have attended each market evening and farmers are finding the event is well worth their time and effort monetarily.

Buying goods at a farmers market is more than just a drop in the ocean in terms of sustainable consumption. It narrows the scope, connecting people to their immediate community and to the land that supports them. At the same time, it lessens the dependence on harmful and inevitably unsustainable consumption practices.

At 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 26, the Gorge Grown Food Network will hold a committee meeting in the Community Room of the Hood River Public Library. Food self-sufficiency in the Gorge and livable wage farming will be discussed as well as furthering children’s awareness of food/nutrition/farming in the region. The meeting is open to the public and anyone concerned with these issues (or simply curious) is encouraged to attend and participate.

And what Columbia Gorge nonprofit would be complete without the standard winemaker’s dinner? A benefit for the Gorge Grown Food Network will be held at Phelps Creek Vineyards Saturday, Oct. 7, at 5 p.m.. For tickets and (yum!) menu info call 541.386.2607.

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