Dan Armstrong

A central premise of the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project is the exploration of bean, grain, and edible seed varieties that can be added to those that are already grown in the Willamette Valley. The goal is to increase the diversity of staple crops as a way to add resilience to the regional food system. The edible seed of Chenopodium quinoa is a close fit.

Farmer-philosopher Frederick L. Kirschenmann’s recently published collection of essays, Cultivating an Ecological Conscience, with its clear concern for the part petroleum plays in modern agriculture, offers significant common ground for farmers and carbon-footprint conscious, twenty-first century environmentalists. This alone would make Kirschenmann’s book important, but it also does such a thorough job of describing the current state of agriculture, it would be difficult to find a more comprehensive compilation of essays on the subject.

The recently published and expanded fourth edition of The Transition Document: Toward a Biological Resilient Agriculture by Harry MacCormack is arguably his most important work in a long and winding career of poetry, politics, farming, writing, and spiritual discovery.

The bioregion defined by the Willamette River watershed in Oregon is one of the most bountiful in the United States. The agricultural picture of the Willamette Valley, however, has been turned inside out in the last 25 years. Nearly everything we eat comes from some place else. (Case study)