A complete summary of the 3rd Green Granger Summit, held in March 2013, is now available. Also included is our Local Farm, Food and Jobs Act resolution, which we drafted at the Summit, and a link to videos of our speakers. Grangers everywhere: we encourage you to download, print and bring a copy of the Local Farm, Food and Jobs Act resolution to present to your own Grange!

In its current form, commodity producers growing corn and soy — mainly used for high fructose corn syrup, fillers, and animal feed — receive nearly 95% of the Farm Bill’s $41.6 billion payments to growers. Farmers growing the foods that nourish our community receive only about 5%. Renewal of the Farm Bill, currently being debated in Congress (see Farm Bill Status below), provides an opportunity to shift more support to food growers that will in turn significantly reduce childhood obesity, diabetes and heart disease. A decline in diet-related illness could decrease health care spending by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Resolution Updates:

Current Farm Bill Status and Updates (Congressional):

The Senate is expected to put its Farm Bill to vote before the end of May, while the House is likely to debate and vote on its version by summer’s end.

May 8, 2013 A bill aimed at helping enact much-needed federal farm policy reform was introduced May 8th in the House by Congressman Earl Blumenauer and 12 other Representatives. The Balancing Food, Farm, and Environment Act would provide full funding for the Department of Agriculture’s oversubscribed conservation programs, which help and reward farmers who take steps to produce food in ways that don’t harm families, farms and environment. Among it’s provisions, the bill would require farmers who receive crop insurance subsidies to adopt basic environmental protections. In addition, the Balancing Act would reform USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program and Conservation Reserve Program to reduce the use of pesticides and unnecessary antibiotics and to provide long-term protection of wetlands and prairies. The bill also encourages greater farmer-to-farmer collaboration by delivering more support to groups of farmers who work together to protect drinking water supplies.

May 16, 2013 The House Agriculture Committee late last night voted a new five-year farm bill out of committee by a vote of 36-10. The bill includes a variety of major priorities of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, along with several serious setbacks for farmers, natural resource conservation, and rural development.

In good news, it would restore funding for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program and the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative and restore and increase funding for the Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program. Funding for all three programs is higher in the new House bill than in the bill reported by the Senate Agriculture Committee earlier this week.

On many other scores the bill is a major disappointment. Despite its name – The Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act – the bill includes no major reforms beyond the preordained elimination of direct payments. It reinvests most of the savings from direct payments back into new commodity and crop insurance subsidies. It increases the per farm commodity subsidy limitation by 92 percent and leaves in place current loopholes that allow individual farms to collect unlimited payments. It places no caps whatsoever on farm insurance subsidies.

May 23, 2013 Senate Amendments to the Farm Bill

The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act

Percent of Farms with Direct Sales (Congressional Research Service using USDA 2007 Census data)

For a perspective of what this means right here at home, the majority of farms here in Lane County are small-sized farms (defined as farms with sales of less than $50,000) where 88% of all sales are through direct-to-consumer marketing channels (farmers’ markets, on-farm sales, roadside stands, CSAs, etc.) The remainder of sales are “indirect”, i.e., they are made through intermediated market channels, including grocers, restaurants, and regional distributors. A 2010 food market analysis showed that less that 5% of the $1.2 billion spent annually on food by Lane County consumers is being spent on food produced here. A 1% increase in local food purchasing would result in $11.7 million staying in our local economy, versus going elsewhere. If local food purchases were to increase to 20%, it would equal $300 million in direct and indirect sales for these farms, while the increased economic activity in the food sector would generate an estimated 4,478 new jobs here in Lane County. The folks at the Willamette Farm & Food Coalition estimate that in order to reach this 20%, each household would simply need to redirect $31 of their weekly food budget to local food purchases. Note the emphasis on redirect: It’s not about spending more dollars on food, it’s about choosing food grown close to home.

A fun and easy way to bump up your percentage of nutritious home-grown produce would be consider visiting our very own Spencer Creek Community Growers’ Market where we’ll be celebrating the opening of our 4th season on June 1st! Several of our regular vendors have signed up and, even with the season just getting underway, our growing selection of items will make you glad you dropped by!

The Grange is a grassroots, non-partisan, non-sectarian, fraternal organization with its roots in agriculture. Although the Grange was originally an organization of farmers, it has evolved to include people from all walks of life who have a common goal to make our world a better place to live.

Established June 11th, 1936

The members of the Spencer Creek Grange are your neighbors, and include families who have lived here for generations as well as newcomers to the area. A shared love of agriculture, the natural world, and rural society unites us. Stop by for a meeting…
a friendly welcome awaits you!

Meetings

Meetings are held at 7:00 p.m. on the third Tuesday of every month. You are also invited to attend one of our Community Potlucks, an informal gathering during which you’ll have an opportunity to eat scrumptious food, hear presentations given by informative guest speakers and catch up with what’s new in your community. The potlucks take place once every three months and begin at 6:00 p.m.

Activities and Events

The Grange has become the venue for a growing number of fun and informative events. These include the Spencer Creek Community Growers’ Market, our annual Very Berry Pancake Breakfast, our popular Barn Dance series and the unimaginably spookiest Haunted House you’ll ever experience.

Contact Us

We can be reached by Email or you can write to:

Spencer Creek Grange No. 855
PO Box 25425
Eugene, OR 97402

The Spencer Creek Grange Hall is located at 86013 Lorane Highway at the corner of McBeth Road in Eugene. To learn how to get to the Grange, you can use this Google Maps link