Category: Agvocacy

A Big Win for Oregon Farmers

298Senate Bill 863, Seed Preemption passed both the house and the senate this past week!!  It is headed to the Governor’s desk!  I can’t tell you how much this meant to me as a farmer here in Oregon!  As I have written in the past couple of weeks, this goes a long way in showing that our state believes in helping farmers utilize tools in the future to feed this ever growing world!!  All the while protecting us from regulations county by county and keeping 1 Department of Agriculture in Oregon, not 36!

Here are the two blog posts from the weeks past….

Thanks to our Governor who allowed this to be in the special session package to begin with, legislators who worked on getting this passed, all our hard working lobbyists, to those who contacted their legislators, testified, and spoke out on how important this issue is, not just for farmers, but for our state!

Special Legislative Session, 2013

The Oregon Govenor has called a special legislative session for this year.  This special session is comprised of an all or nothing set of bills.  Three of the items in the package include PERS reform, small business tax relief, and seed preemption.

I am in favor of all of these issues, I think that if passed this package will help out not only farmers, but small businesses in our state, rural communities and schools.  The one issue though that I feel the most strongly about is the Seed Preemption portion.

I have written about this bill before, I even testified in favor of it during the last legislative session.  And so I’m writing again to push the point that we NEED to have the control of GMO seeds and seed production be at the state and federal level of government, not at the county level!

There are 36 counties in Oregon.  Three of which already have anti GMO bills that are trying to get on the ballot, my fear is that this is only the beginning to a statewide campaign to end the ability for us to use tools that are safe and have been proven safe time and time again!  Plus if you start to have regulations differ from county to county, it would be a great hardship to those who farm across county lines.  Not to mention, pollen doesn’t stop at a county line, so where does that play in regulations??  Another main issue is the fact that the issue of GMO’s is so complex putting that burden of regulation onto counties and county commissioners would be terrible.

We need to make sure that extremely complex issues of statewide concern, remain controlled at the state level.

You can read more about this issue by clicking here, and if you feel so inclined to contact your legislator today that would be greatly appreciated!  I know that they are getting flooded with calls from the other side of this issue, but it would be great to hear from more people who support this package and can see all the benefits that it would bring not just to farmers, but small businesses alike.

Get back to me…

Many of you may have already seen this video.  It’s been passing through facebook, social media and many ag outlets, and blogs for awhile now.  But I just wanted to share it once again on here.  I think the message is very interesting and so much of it is what I feel many times I come up against those who don’t want to listen to my side (the farmer’s side) or get so narrow minded they forget about the big picture.

I hope you enjoy the video, My favorite quote,

“Yeah get back to me.  I know you will, and when you do, we the farmers will stand amused at your little rant; before re-saddling, closing the harvest door, picking up the shovel and washing out the stalls and getting back to what we do, which is maintaining you, the people who would have us not be.  Yeah so get back me.”