02/21/08 Paying Tribute to Farmers

Oregon Pays Tribute to Farmers. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Farming has a long history. The earliest sodbusters worked long and hard for their meager crops and fought to overcome drought, grasshoppers and dust storms. Many families have spent generations fighting to maintain the farm and lifestyle. Oregon's sesquicentennial celebration marking the state's 150th birthday got a one year head start with the recognition of 14 family farms and ranches that have been around since before statehood. Family members attended a recent ceremony marking the honor: MASON: Some in their sixth and seventh generations working on the farm, it's an incredible story. We need to do whatever we can as consumers and people to support agriculture, to do our part to help make these families continue to fly. Glenn Mason is program coordinator of the Oregon Century Farm and Ranch Program. One of the sesquicentennial farms is currently operated by Jim Heater of Marion County, who is hoping Oregonians will see bicentennial farms and ranches in the future. HEATER: I sure hope we do. We're going to try anyway and I hope most of these folks will too. That's another fifty years. I won't see it, but we've got several generations primed that will. The Oregon Legislature has approved a resolution honoring the 14 farms and ranches for being owned and operated by the same family for the past 150 years or longer. Currently, there are more than a thousand recognized century farms and ranches in the state located in nearly every Oregon County. As the years go by, more of them will be able to say they are sesquicentennial operations. Mason says the celebration of the sesquicentennial farms and ranches this year is a good precursor for the State of Oregon's 150th birthday next year. MASON: So much of the territorial legislature that was created in the 1840s was based on property and about people wanting to have property to farm and to ranch. Heater says these 150 year old farms and ranches are great examples of sustainability, a popular buzzword often heard today: HEATER: The same land is providing for the same family for up to seven generations and, of course, helping to settle the state in those early days. It means a lot and I think people will tend to recognize agriculture for what it really is. Hopefully it will be appreciated more throughout the state. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.