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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2016
Network: ‘It’s important for
ag to see themselves in this’
Continued from Page 1A
• Obtain money to match
SNAP vouchers, formerly
called food stamps, spent at
farmers’ markets and rural gro-
cery stores. The move would
double the purchasing power
of SNAP recipients choosing
to buy fresh and local food.
• Establish a “Veggie Rx”
program, in which doctors
could write a prescription for
healthful food as they would
for medicine. A program in
Hood River initiated by Gorge
Grown, allows doctors to give
patients $30 vouchers that can
only be used to buy fresh fruit
and vegetables. In the past
year, the program helped 6,500
people buy food.
• Provide new and begin-
ning farmers with access to
farmland and capital by sup-
porting various transition pro-
grams. With many farmers
approaching retirement, ana-
lysts estimate two-thirds of
Oregon farmland will change
ownership in the coming years.
• Help producers scale-up
and sell more to retail and insti-
tutional food buyers. One of the
ideas is to establish food hubs
that aggregate, process and
store production from small
farms to provide the large vol-
ume needed by big buyers.
The network’s vision state-
ment is ambitious: All Ore-
gonians will have access to
healthful, affordable food that
is grown and processed region-
ally. This will happen in a food
system that is environmentally
and economically resilient
and that “provides entrepre-
neurial opportunity and fulfill-
ing livelihoods for employees
throughout the supply chain.”
OSU’s Gwin said farmers
should understand the group
is not saying the existing food
system is bad. It does keep
people fed, she said, but seri-
ous health disparities exist.
The network also is “not
just about small farms,” she
said, but about mid-size and
large farms as well. The food
they produce, the way it’s pro-
duced and the impact on rural
economic vitality are all part
of the discussion, she said.
“Farmers need to know
how to support that without
losing their shirts,” Gwin said.
“It’s important for ag to see
themselves in this.”
The network’s website is at
http://ocfsn.net
The Daily Astorian/File Photo
The Astoria Sunday Market is one of many farmers’ markets in Oregon. A new network will
boost the buying power of some shoppers to encourage them to buy healthier food.
Wolves: Budget includes $750,000 for nonlethal measures
Continued from Page 1A
planned to eliminate the entire
Profanity Peak pack, which
was preying on cattle in the
Colville National Forest. The
department suspended the
operation with four wolves
surviving.
WDFW said the chances of
attacks on livestock continuing
were low because the grazing
season was ending.
The department did enter
the operation with a spend-
ing limit, Martorello said. “It’s
something we think about, but
money wasn’t a factor in sus-
pending it,” he said.
The cost exceeded the
roughly $26,000 spent to
shoot one wolf in 2014 and the
$76,000 spent to shoot seven
wolves in 2012.
Cattle Producers of Wash-
ington President Scott Nielsen
said lethal-removal costs will
continue to be an issue.
“You have to remove the
problem wolves if you ever
want public acceptance in
this area,” said Nielsen, a Ste-
vens County rancher. “To say,
‘never kill a wolf,’ that is not a
reasonable position.”
The state could authorize
ranchers to remove wolves
that are attacking livestock, he
said.
“We would work collec-
tively,” Nielsen said. “It would
cost the state nothing.”
Martorello said he did not
have any proposals for cut-
ting the cost of killing wolves.
He noted that Fish and Wild-
life spends more on non-
lethal measures to prevent
wolf attacks on livestock, an
expense ranchers are expected
to share.
Nonlethal measures
The department’s two-
year budget adopted last year
included $750,000 for nonle-
thal measures.
Amaroq Weiss of the Cen-
ter for Biological Diversity
said the money spent shooting
wolves would have been better
used to move cattle off grazing
allotments and paying for sup-
plemental feed.
“I think the vast majority of
the public would be very sup-
portive of doing something
like that, instead of killing
wolves,” she said.
Wolves are not feder-
ally protected in the eastern
one-third of Washington. The
state’s policy calls for shooting
wolves when measures such as
putting more people on horse-
back around herds fail to stop
depredations.
Ranchers are eligible for
compensation for livestock
attacked by wolves. Ranchers
say many attacks go uncon-
firmed by the department and
that compensation doesn’t
address all the problems that
have been created by wolves
returning to Washington.
“I do not raise cows to feed
to the department’s predators,”
Nielsen said. “That is not
responsible husbandry.”
Comedian takes big step, wins a top stand-up competition
By FRANCESCA
FONTANA
Register-Guard
EUGENE — Decades ago,
Alex Elkin won the talent show
at San Dimas High School in
California at 14 years old, a
promising start to his stand-up
career.
And in October, his stand-up
career reached a new level. The
Eugene-based comedian won
the 41st Annual San Francisco
Comedy Competition, taking
first place by only 0.006 points.
“I always tell people I’ve
hated math my entire life,”
Elkin said, laughing. “Until
Sunday, Oct. 2 at 9:55 p.m.”
That night Elkin, shocked
by the victory, joined a pres-
tigious group of past winners
— comedians Louis C.K.,
Robin Williams, Ellen DeGe-
neres and Dana Carvey have
all placed in the competition in
past years.
Elkin knew he wanted to
be a comedian since he was 4
years old, he said. He remem-
bers going with his dad to
Shabbat service one Friday
night, and as the first-born son
he had to take a sip of wine. As
a 4-year-old, he found the wine
disgusting and made a face in
front of the crowd.
“Everyone was laughing,”
he said. “Even the rabbi.”
Elkin said he loved that feel-
ing of making people laugh,
thinking to himself, “I don’t
know what this is, but this is
what I want.”
Andy Nelson/The Register-Guard
Comedian Alex Elkin poses for a photo in Eugene. Elkin
is excited to see where his win in the prestigious 41st an-
nual San Francisco Comedy Competition takes him. Elkin
said he knew he wanted to be a comedian from the time
he was 4 years old.
Comic influences
As a young comic, his influ-
ences included Steve Martin,
Jerry Seinfeld and Garry Shan-
dling, and he said that first win
at San Dimas High School
“gave me the confidence to do
it for a living.”
At 18, Elkin started work-
ing at the Disneyland Resort
Jungle Cruise, cracking corny
jokes to passengers on the
boat. A few years later, he
moved from Southern Califor-
w a t c h f o r i t
2 0 1 6
2014
nia to Eugene. Elkin enrolled
in Lane Community College
and met his wife; they mar-
ried in 2003 before return-
ing to California, where he
opened for national acts such
as Gabriel Iglesias and Carlos
Mencia.
“I was making a name for
myself,” he said.
But after he and his wife
had their first child, Elkin real-
ized he didn’t want to con-
stantly be on tour and away
from his family.
In 2007, he and his family
moved back to Eugene, right
after his wife gave birth to
their second child. Both grad-
uated from Lane Community
College in 2011.
Elkin said it was thanks to
local comedian Chris Warren
and Eugene’s Brickwall Com-
edy Club that he began head-
lining in Eugene.
“I really owe a lot to him,”
he said. “He pushed the baby
bird out of the nest.”
Elkin and Warren now
co-own All Comedy 1450 AM
radio, and Elkin is known to
listeners as “Beans” during
the Brickwall Comedy Show,
which airs at 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
on weekdays.
“When you’re performing,
you feed off of the energy of
the audience,” he said. “With
radio, I don’t know who’s lis-
tening or when.”
But Elkin said the work
pays off when he’s recognized
for his work in his every-
day life, like in the line at
the grocery store.
On a whim
Elkin entered this year’s
San Francisco Comedy Com-
petition on a whim, and he was
one of 32 comedians selected
out of thousands of applica-
tions to compete by perform-
ing for audiences in different
venues in the Bay Area over a
series of weeks.
Elkin went from joking
with students at the University
of California, Berkeley, one
night to pulling out his Donald
Trump material at a senior cen-
ter another night.
“It forces the comedian to
be very agile,” he said of the
competition.
As he made it to the top five
in semi-finals, and then the
final round, Elkin kept remind-
1
Buy
Get
Buy
ing himself, “in comedy com-
petitions, nothing is ever fair,
nothing ever makes sense —
and don’t take it personally,”
he said.
Elkin said he really didn’t
expect to win first place —
he figured that if second place
was good enough for Robin
Williams in 1976, it was good
enough for him.
He won $5,000 and said the
win has opened doors for his
career, and he is excited to see
where it leads.
After the win, Elkin signed
with Uproar Records and
is recording his first com-
edy album from Hallow-
een through Nov. 6 at the Las
Vegas casino Stratosphere.
“I am doing what I love for
a living,” he said. “I’m living
the dream.”
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