May 11, 2018
CapitalPress.com
Lane County cooperative
welcomes small poultry farms
20 cents
Farm share of the food dollar
18.1
15
By ALIYA HALL
For the Capital Press
WALTON, Ore. — When
Steve Knox and Terah Van
Dusen established Fog Hol-
low Farm to raise poultry in
early 2017, they also made
the decision to join Heart of
the Valley Growers’ Cooper-
ative.
Van Dusen and Knox run
a small-scale chicken and
duck operation on their 7-acre
property west of Eugene, and
found the Lane County coop-
erative an appealing oppor-
tunity to connect with the
small farm community.
“We have been able to
share knowledge, resources
and farm food at potlucks
with other poultry growers
all across the Willamette
Valley,” Van Dusen said in
an email. “It is wonderful to
work in collaboration with
folks who would otherwise
be competition. The idea of
the co-op is to work togeth-
er to provide the community
with fresh, local poultry. We
distribute the demand equal-
ly among the growers.”
Fog Hollow Farms is one
of the six Lane County farms
involved in Heart of the Val-
ley.
Heart of the Valley spe-
cializes in pastured poultry
and specialty meats, and
supports local agriculture
by buying feed and ani-
mals from within Oregon or
Northern California. Mem-
bership is $100 yearly.
Through the coopera-
tive, Van Dusen said that
Fog Hollow Farm’s business
has increased. Along with
selling at farmers’ markets
and through their Commu-
nity Supported Agriculture
(CSA) program, the coop-
erative organized supplying
larger stores and restaurants
within the county with poul-
try — businesses such as
Marche, Rye and Market of
Choice in Eugene.
“These are locations with
a higher volume of demand,
a volume which is unfeasi-
ble for one farm to provide
7
For every dollar spent on domesti-
cally produced food in the U.S. in
2016, the farmer’s take was 14.8
cents (farm share), its lowest
recorded level since 1997.
14.8 cents: Down
18.2% from 1997
Source: USDA ERS
Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
10
1996
’98
’00
’02
’04
’06
’08
’10
’12
’14
2016
Farm share of food
dollar shrinking
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
Photos by Aliya Hall/For the Capital Press
Steve Knox and Terah Van Dusen own Fog Hollow Farm in Walton, Ore. They joined the coopera-
tive in 2017, the same year they started their farm.
Angela Andre is one of the
founding members of Heart of
the Valley Growers’ Cooper-
ative. Her latest mission is
organizing a farmers’ market,
sponsored by the cooperative.
on its own,” Van Dusen said.
“That is our goal, at least
one of them, to have enough
chicken in the cache between
us that we can supply these
high traffic locations with
fresh, local chicken around
the clock and calendar.”
She said the chickens
are sold at wholesale price,
but the amount of meat sold
at one time makes it “well
worth it.”
Heart of the Valley Grow-
ers’ Cooperative formed in
2015 with the help of Angela
Andre of Phoenix Farm En-
terprises in Springfield, Ore.
Andre, who describes herself
as “an old hippy,” founded
the Newport Farmers’ Mar-
ket in the 1970s.
As the cooperative’s mar-
keter, Andre’s latest mission
is organizing the Springfield
farmers’ market, since the
city decided against hosting
one this year. The coopera-
tive will sponsor the event
along with Springfield’s Park
and Recreation Department.
The market will start on May
29, and the cooperative is
inviting all local farmers to
join.
“The reason we have
‘growers’ in our name is that
we thought we might expand
into more than just meat,”
she said. “Now is an oppor-
tunity to do that.”
Andre has been running
her own operations for six
years, although the first three
the farm was a nonprofit be-
fore it became a for-profit
business. She lives on 90
acres of Mackenzie River
Trust, where she farms 30
acres and the remaining 60
are a conservation easement.
Phoenix Farm Enterpris-
es raises meat chickens and
ducks, rabbits, laying hens
and goats for meat and milk.
She also grows vegetables
and hay for her animals.
Along with expanding
Heart of the Valley to Cor-
vallis and the Coast, the co-
operative’s biggest goal is to
open its own processing and
storage facility.
“Processing is a big wall
that all small farmers come up
against,” Andre said. “When
you’re bigger than mom
and pop selling to friends
and family, you need a way
to process meat legally and
store it. (Processing facilities)
don’t happen for small ag
(farms) in the middle. We’re
not hobby farmers, but we’re
not growing 100 acres of the
same thing.”
The cooperative is taking
steps toward achieving that
goal by applying for a val-
ue-added producer grant from
USDA.
At Fog Hollow Farm, Van
Dusen said the cooperative is
“a wonderful benefit for small
farmers,” especially those
who supplement their income
with outside professions.
“It’s interesting, and vali-
dating, to be in a room full of
Oregon’s poultry growers,”
she said. “I think we have re-
ally enjoyed the community
aspect that comes from being
a member of the co-op. We
feel less alone, even when our
farms are located on opposite
sides of the valley.”
USDA has crunched the
numbers on the farmer’s share
of the consumer food dollar,
showing the smallest piece of
the pie since 1993.
The farmer’s take stood at
14.8 cents in 2016 (the most
recent data) with the other
85.2 cents claimed by sectors
off the farm and up the chain,
such as processors, wholesal-
ers, retailers and restaurants.
That’s a 4.5 percent de-
cline from 2015 and nearly a
14 percent drop from 2014.
It’s also the all-time lowest
share since the USDA Eco-
nomic Research Service be-
gan the Food Dollar series 25
years ago.
“It kind of tells me the
farmer’s share of what the
consumer is eating is getting
smaller,” John Newton, direc-
tor of market intelligence for
the American Farm Bureau
Federation, said.
Adjusted for inflation, the
real farm share is 12.2 cents
compared with the baseline
share of 17.5 cents in 1993,
he said.
Low commodity prices in
an extended recession in ag-
riculture — with a 12-year
low in farm income — is one
reason for the shrinking farm
share. The other is that more
consumers are eating away
from home, he said.
Foodservice claimed the
largest portion — 36.3 cents
— of the consumer food dol-
lar in 2016, trailed by food
processors with 15.2 cents,
ERS reported.
The farm share of the food
dollar spent at restaurants is
less than a nickel, Newton
said.
The farm share of the food
dollar represents what portion
goes back to the farm, but the
farmer also has to pay for in-
put costs, he said.
That puts the farmer’s
share of 14.8 cents at less than
8 cents when factoring in the
cost to raise crops and live-
stock, he said.
The farm share can im-
prove, but “we’re going to
have to see commodity prices
rise,” he said.
Many factors affect the
farm share, Patrick Canning,
ERS agricultural economist,
said in an email to Capital
Press.
The main ones are the pric-
es received by farmers from
their commodity sales, the
amount of processing for the
farm commodities purchased
in grocery stores and restau-
rants, the share of total food
spending away from home
and the cost of all post-farm
marketing services, he said.
“There are many factors
behind the decline in the farm
share over the past few years,
but the main factors appear to
be declining farm commodi-
ty prices, an increasing share
of food dollars spent eating
out and increasing prices for
foodservices when eating
out,” he said.
Report: Chinese tariff retaliation would hit ag hardest
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
The stakes are high in Pres-
ident Trump’s trade dispute
with China, but agriculture
has the most to lose if nego-
tiators are unable to rein in
the escalating threat of U.S.
tariffs and Chinese retaliation.
Trump raised the ante in
the latest round of sparring,
threatening to impose 25 per-
cent tariffs on $150 billion
worth of Chinese goods com-
ing into the U.S., and Chinese
officials have promised retal-
iatory tariffs on U.S. goods.
If realized, that scenario
would cost the U.S. nearly
455,000 jobs and $49.2 bil-
lion in the value of gross do-
mestic product annually in the
first couple of years, accord-
ing to a new research report
by Trade Partnerships World-
wide.
The hit on agriculture
would be the hardest, with an
annual loss of nearly 181,000
jobs and a 15 percent decline
in net farm income, the ana-
lysts reported.
While a full-blown trade
war is possible, the analysts
think the most likely scenario
would be the more restrained
initial announcement of U.S.
tariffs on $50 billion worth of
Chinese goods, with China re-
taliating in kind.
But the impact would still
be significant, with total job
loss at nearly 134,000 and a
$2.9 billion reduction in U.S.
output annually. Nearly half
of those job losses, 67,248,
would be in agriculture, and
net farm income would decline
6.7 percent annually.
“Agricultural jobs are go-
ing to get hit the hardest among
all the sectors we looked at,”
Laura Baughman, president of
Trade Partnership Worldwide,
told Capital Press.
Net job losses in agricul-
ture are about half the total job
losses in the more restrained
scenario and nearly triple in
number in the scenario with
broader tariffs, she said.
“Agriculture is really bear-
ing a heavy price in these tariff
and counter-tariff scenarios,”
she said.
Job losses would go down
every year after the first cou-
ple of years if the tariffs are in
place longer, but it would still
be a net negative, she said.
“We can just only hope that
this doesn’t happen. It’s just
not a good thing at the end of
the day,” she said.
The report, released on
Wednesday, was commis-
sioned by the National Retail
Federation and Consumer
Technology Association.
“As administration officials
prepare to head off to China
for trade talks, the livelihoods
of American workers hang in
the balance,” Matthew Shay,
NRF president and CEO, said
in a press release.
“We must resolve this trade
dispute without resorting to
job-killing tariffs and retalia-
tion,” he said.
Even with no retaliation
from China and U.S. tariffs
on only $50 billion in imports,
as first announced, the U.S.
would suffer more than 76,000
job losses and a $1.6 billion
decline in GDP, the analysts
reported.
For agriculture, that would
mean the loss of more than
7,000 jobs and a decline in
net farm income of less than
1 percent annually in the first
couple of years.
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