labour and environmental protections. Since the farmers are also shareholders, they can reach consensus on the balance between short-term and long-term economic return, balancing a fair price for their crop with the need to invest for future success.
The cooperative structure also provides
It is hoped that bringing farms closer to the markets they serve can help to bridge this gap. Technical papers have pointed out that assessing social performance is problematic because it is difficult to quantify. There is no acceptable unit of social good, as opposed to accepted quantifiable methods for assessing economic activity, financial return, or water quality. However, the body of research on Willamette Valley agriculture is not without some anecdotal reports on the positive
a distinct opportunity for advocacy. OMG members are passionate about agriculture and want to take an active role in the debates on topics like chemicals regulation, food production, labour policy, and sustainability. It is therefore easy to perceive the disconnect between agricultural communities and the broader American public. Indeed, less than 2% of Americans earn their living from agriculture and only approximately 17% live in rural areas.11
conventional means.12 Assuming an
average member farms 1,500 acres, whole-farm adoption of no-till could save approximately 1,020 hours of labour during an already busy harvest season that begins in early June and ends in September. On farms where the owner and her family represent a large portion of the labour, this means more free time during summer months. Reports given to USDA Agricultural Research Service researchers by Willamette Valley farms, including OMG members, indicated that no-till practices created more opportunity to be involved in church, sports, and community activities.13 Those of us who do not live ‘on farm’ (the authors included) often take those things for granted.
Challenges
impacts of certain agricultural practices – notably no-till establishment. Ploughing and field preparation is both fuel and time intensive. Based on the OSU crop enterprise budgets, the average farm will save 0.68 hours of labour per acre by using no-till establishment rather than
OMG faces a bevy of challenges when affecting true sustainability in the Willamette Valley. For instance, OMG contracts an average of 3,000-6,000 acres of crops in a valley that grows more than 400,000 acres of grass seed. With such a small voice in the local agriculture community, how can OMG impact agriculture in the valley as a whole? The ‘ace in the hole’ for OMG is that its grower- members farm approximately 80,000 acres (including the crops contracted to OMG)