A3
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2021
Potato, onion vie for state vegetable
By KRISTIAN FODEN-
VENCIL
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Mark Owens grew up
in Gresham. His mom was
a teacher. His dad was an
engineer. It was not what
you’d call a rural upbring-
ing, so there was some sur-
prise when he turned 21 and
moved to Harney County to
farm.
While he no longer has
to deal with big city traffi c,
both Owens and his workers
spend plenty of time behind
the wheel — of tractors.
“We try to honestly main-
tain no more than 12 hours
in a cab at one time,” Owens
said. “Those 12 hours will
sometimes go to 14 or 16.”
Harney County has been
good to Owens. It’s where
he met his wife and where
they had kids. He volun-
teered at the local school
board and the planning
committee. Then last year,
he was appointed to fi ll an
open seat in the Oregon
House of Representatives.
One of his fi rst pieces
of legislation was a bill to
make the onion the state
vegetable. Among other
highlights, the bill notes that
onions were as valuable as
gold in the middle ages and
as rare as gems.
So Owens grows onions,
right?
“I do not,” he said
recently. “We’ve tried dab-
bling in a little bit of carrot
seed and mint. But we do
not have the climate where
I live to grow onions.”
His farm sits 4,200 feet
above sea level. Land gener-
ally gets cheaper the higher
the altitude, because tem-
perature swings shorten the
growing season. So Owens
grows alfalfa, which is used
to feed animals.
Still, many of his low-
er-land neighbors in nearby
Malheur County grow
onions. And it was at their
request, via the Eastern
Oregon Border Economic
Development Board, that he
sought the onion’s designa-
tion as state vegetable.
“As I learned, shortly
after it was read to the
House fl oor on a fi rst read-
ing that there could be
some very potential signifi -
cant opportunities to adver-
tise the onion or advertise
the potato,” he said. “They
could use it in a marketing
scheme in order to promote
their product.”
Did you catch that? The
onion — or the potato.
It turns out the Oregon
Potato Commission has
been working for a couple
of years to get their product
recognized as the state vege-
table — and they were taken
aback by the onion bill.
Oregon has dozens of
offi cial symbols. The state
seashell is the Oregon Hairy
Triton. The state crustacean,
the Dungeness Crab. There
is even a state microbe:
brewers yeast.
“But it appears we don’t
have a state vegetable right
now,” said Nathan Buehler,
of Business Oregon. “Any
grower of any vegetable of
any state would like to make
their vegetable the state
vegetable of their respective
state.”
He’s right. But state des-
ignations are not easy. It
took a decade to designate
border collies as the offi cial
state dog, and Oregon Pub-
lic Broadcasting couldn’t
fi nd one lawmaker who’d
gone through that skirmish
to speak on the record about
it.
But Gary Roth, the exec-
utive director of the Oregon
Potato Commission, is will-
ing to champion his product.
“There are only 110 cal-
ories in a medium-sized
potato. And yet they are
packed full of nutritionally
dense complex carbohy-
drates,” he said. “They’re
cholesterol-free.
They’re
packed full of iron. They
have more vitamin C than a
grapefruit and more potas-
sium than a banana.”
Roth thinks the potato
should
be
the
state
vegetable.
“There are more than
250 agricultural and food
products, grown, raised and
harvested in Oregon. And
out of those 250, potatoes
rank No. 8 overall and they
are by far the most widely
grown vegetable,” he said.
Roth said potatoes return
more than $200 million a
year to farmers. The onion
returns half of that and is
11th on the commodities
rankings.
THE STATE
VEGETABLE IS
OFF THE TABLE
UNTIL AT LEAST
2023, AND EVEN
THEN A VOTE
FOR EITHER
THE POTATO OR
ONION ISN’T
CERTAIN.
But Roth doesn’t want
to fi ght. He points out that
most potato farmers don’t
just grow potatoes. They
grow several crops, so that
if the market for one slumps,
the others will keep the farm
going.
Plus, potatoes do better
when they’re rotated with
other crops.
Roth said the potato
commission is not playing
catch-up with the onion.
It didn’t push for vegeta-
ble designation this year
because of the coronavirus
pandemic.
“We thought, ‘What’s the
sense in designating some-
thing that’s really a feel-
good and positive initia-
tive, if you can’t gather the
media, farm families, FFA
students and the public to
celebrate it?” he said.
Mark Owens
State Rep. Mark Owens’ farm is 4,200 feet above sea level, too high to successfully farm onions. He grows alfalfa.
The vegetable designa-
tion is less about competi-
tion and more about educat-
ing people about agriculture
and the contribution of rural
counties. So should other
vegetables be considered?
“I’ve given that some
thought, and I really don’t
think so,” said Roth,
fi rmly a potato man. “I’m
a fi fth-generation Ore-
gon, and I fi nd great inter-
est and satisfaction from
things about Oregon that
are true, authentic, original
and things that are intrinsi-
cally and historically Ore-
gon. Potatoes are by far
Oregon’s most produced
and valuable vegetable.”
How things get decided
in Salem is often not pretty.
It’s been compared to sau-
sage making, or in this case,
soup making. But whatever
happens, the Eastern Ore-
gon Border Board has voted
to table the onion bill for
now.
Owens hasn’t lost hope
and thinks something will
re-emerge in 2023, because
the idea, he said, could be
advertising gold: “‘Are you
tired of that Idaho potato?
Why don’t you try the new
Oregon state vegetable, the
Oregon potato? Far superior
to these runt old Idaho pota-
toes,’” he said. “Something
that you can use to ele-
vate the conversation, put
a comical twist on it. Any-
body could use some levity
in this day and age.”
So the state vegeta-
ble is off the table until at
least 2023, and even then a
vote for either the potato or
onion isn’t certain. A bid to
make the Oregon Waltz the
offi cial state waltz — yes,
there are many different
types of the waltz — passed
the House in 1997 but never
made it through the Senate.
Even Oregon’s most
common nickname, the
Beaver State, is just a collo-
quialism. Lawmakers have
never made it offi cial.
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