Oregon Bill Ensures Statewide Consistency

Oregon Bill Ensures Statewide Consistency

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report.

Today we are going to highlight an Oregon legislative bill SB 633 called the Seed Preemption Bill that would ensure the regulation of agricultural seed, flower seed vegetable seed and as well as their products to remain at the state level -- and not be regulated by counties.

Oregon Grass Seed farmer Marie Bowers testified in support of this bill in March and she shares more about why its passage is important to Oregon farmers.

Bowers: “The reason this bill was developed was because there are certain counties at the moment who would like to ban the growing of a certain crop in their county. So that way it keeps it at a state level and makes it a even level playing field for all Oregonians and less regulation, in my mind. For me personally, it was because we grow grass seed in two counties. What if one county decided to ban grass seed because they didn’t like it.”

A 2014 ballot measure in a southern Oregon county would ban the growth of genetically engineered plants and allow the county to enforce it. SB 633 was created to prevent that ballot measure from reaching voters and keeping regulations consistent across the state.

Bowers says that nothing good can be accomplished anytime farmers are pitted against each other.

Bowers: “When you have farmer versus farmer, nobody wins in my opinion. I think a lot of it needs to be worked out outside of the legislature because once you start legislating what you can and can’t grow it becomes a slippery, slippery slope.”

A work session on Oregon’s SB 633 is scheduled for today.