When California-based Amy’s Kitchen opened a plant in Southern Oregon in 2006, the Oregon Department of Agriculture called it “a large feather in Oregon’s organic cap.” The nation’s largest producer of organic frozen foods, from complete meals to pizza, now employs about 700 full-time workers in White City. Its success is a sign that, over the last decade, organics have morphed from counterculture to mainstream.
The Hatfield and McCormack ranch families of Brothers, Oregon, have partnered with OSU for generations to improve rangeland ecology. (Photo: Mark Reed)
Farming that fosters ecological balance and biological diversity is the goal of OSU’sOrganic Agriculture Program in the Department of Horticulture.
From the state’s ancient forests to its briny oceans, from its prehistoric landscapes to its fertile fields, OSU scientists are studying the complexities of nature and the impacts of human activity.
Oregon’s Willamette Valley is the undisputed “grass-seed capital of the world.” In close partnership with growers and scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, OSU researchers and agronomists have been at the forefront of an industry worth $500 million. Here are some of the milestones.
1909
Oregon State University biologist Matt Shinderman and his students have been surveying aquatic insects, or macro-invertebrates, to determine how the ecosystem was responding to the equivalent of major surgery.