CORVALLIS, Ore. — It wasn’t long after Lauren Gwin arrived at Oregon State University in 2008 that she heard from a growing sector of Oregon farmers.
“I heard from organic growers from the moment I got involved in the Small Farms Program,” Gwin said. “Organic growers at that time said, ‘We really like what you’re building. Do more of it.’ Organic production systems have been a part of what the small farms team had been looking at and hearing about from the 1990s.”
For several years, the Oregon State University Extension Service had one part-time faculty member dedicated to organic agriculture. Now, there are six full-time faculty members in the Organic Agriculture Program.
“This is the first team of its kind in the United States, focused on organic, regenerative and low-input agriculture systems in Extension positions,” said Gwin, who directs OSU’s Center for Resilient Agriculture and Food Systems in the College of Agricultural Sciences."I’m so excited that OSU is doing this. We’re putting an organic Extension program on the map."
“Six people on a statewide team, working with growers in different cropping systems,” Gwin said. “They don’t just work with growers who are certified organic. There’s interest in these kinds of growing systems from all of agriculture. We didn’t create a silo where that work happens. What we did is create a home that supports a lot more of that work happening across Oregon and OSU.”
OSU Extension partnered with Oregon Tilth and the Oregon Organic Coalition to develop the organic program, which is housed in the Center for Resilient Agriculture and Food Systems (the center was formerly known as the formerly known as the Center for Small Farms and Community Food Systems).
The faculty, who serve as professors of practice, are:
- Nick Andrews, organic vegetable specialist
- Shayan Ghajar, organic pasture and forages specialist
- Brigid Meints, organic grains and pulses specialist
- Lucas Nebert, organic seed and planting stock specialist
- Shannon Cappellazzi, organic soils specialist
- Todd Anderson, organic tree fruit and nuts specialist
Oregon Tilth, a nonprofit organization in Corvallis dedicated to promoting organic food and farming practices; the Oregon Organic Coalition, which works to advance the development and growth of the organic industry in Oregon; and Organic Valley, a national cooperative of organic farmers, were all instrumental in securing state legislative funding for OSU’s Organic Agriculture Program.
“There is not another land grant university that has a team this size and with this potential,” said Chris Schreiner, chief executive officer of Oregon Tilth. “It’s historic.”
Amy Wong, who directs the Oregon Organic Coalition, said, “We look forward to the innovations that stem from this team’s work. Necessity is the mother of invention and organic growers have come up with practices that have been adopted by conventional growers, such as codling moth mating disruption in orchards. Many agricultural producers can benefit from innovations like these.”
Evolution of a program
For at least the past 15 years, Oregon has ranked among the top five states for the total farmgate value of organic agricultural products, according to the Oregon Organic Coalition. Additionally, the state generates an estimated $582 million in revenue from manufactured organic products, according to the Organic Agriculture & Organic Product Market Analysis prepared in 2023 by Highland Economics for the Oregon Business Development Department.
In 2008, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agriculture Statistics Service included organic agriculture in their census reports for the first time, with Oregon reporting $156 million in organic sales — 3.3% of the state’s total. By 2014, Oregon’s organic sales grew to $237 million and 5.5% of total sales. By 2019, organic sales reached $454 million and 9% of total sales.
“It’s appropriate that Oregon be a leader in having an Extension program focused on organic agriculture because the organic agriculture industry really grew up in states like Oregon,” said Gwin, who co-authored “Breaking New Ground: Farmer Perspectives on Organic Transition,” a report published in 2017 based on survey responses of more than 1,800 farmers across the United States.
In 2017, Oregon Tilth began donating $25,000 annually to the OSU Agricultural Research Foundation to develop an OSU organic program in OSU Extension. OSU matched to create a half-time organic vegetable Extension position, which was filled by Andrews to work primarily with vegetable growers.
Over his 30-year career, Andrews said he’s learned from working with farmers that farms are businesses.
“A farm business has to make the finances work,” Andrews said. “Ecological approaches can seem risky at first, but I’m convinced that they are more resilient and probably more profitable in the long run.”
New legislative funding
The OSU organic Extension working group organized an Organic Extension Summit in 2019 with interested faculty and supporters. Industry representatives met with Oregon legislators and other policymakers to promote OSU Extension and coordinated their efforts with OSU administrators.
In 2019, then-Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed HB 5050, which allocated $375,000 per biennium to expand organic Extension work in OSU’s Center for Resilient Agriculture and Food Systems. This funding led the part-time organic vegetable position to become full-time, and supporters prioritized an organic pasture and forages position. Ghajar was hired as an assistant professor of practice in 2021.
Garry Stephenson, who founded the OSU Extension Small Farms Program, worked with Andrews and Ghajar to update industry representatives on the work of the organic Extension working group. They received feedback and built networks of collaborating farmers.
Stakeholders strengthened their relationships with policymakers, OSU administrators, and others, hosting tours of organic farms such as Organic Valley dairies and Organically Grown Company’s organic produce distribution facility in Portland.
Oregon Tilth continued its financial support to the program. In response to stakeholder input, Stephenson and Gwin used these funds to expand the organic Extension team’s scope to include grains and pulses on a part-time basis. In late 2022, Meints began serving in this role, drawing on her expertise in barley breeding and organic grain and pulse production.
At the same time, organic producers and organizations continued to lobby the legislature for more OSU Extension organic positions.
“We were seeing the need to make sure anyone interested in organic practices had the support they needed,” Wong said. “Farmers need all sorts of technical assistance —financial, in-field and applied research. As extreme weather events require adaptation by agricultural producers, we wanted to ensure that these resources are available to Oregon growers.”
Due the strong industry support and advocacy, in 2023, Gov. Kotek signed HB 5025, which included $2 million per biennium to further expand the Organic Agriculture Program by adding four faculty specialist positions to the existing two — and included an outreach coordinator.
These positions address the specific needs of farmers interested in ecological farming practices, including organic, and cater to farms of all sizes.
“We saw this program as an opportunity for all of Oregon agriculture and the Oregon food system,” Schreiner said. “Some people might frame organic as an either/or choice in terms of farm management systems. We view organic as a both/and. We see many farms that are split operations. Some of the practices used by organic systems can and have been implemented in non-organic systems. These Extension organic specialists support all Oregon agriculture. It’s not like these six people are serving only the organic operations in the state.”
Stephenson, who retired in 2024, stresses that the legislative funding was added to the OSU Extension budget on top of Extension biennial budget increases. The funds didn’t take away from the Extension budget, he said.
“With the establishment of the Small Farms Program in 1996, there was a purposeful focus on organic and other ecological approaches to farming,” Stephenson said. “This focus grew to include medium and large farms. We designed the Organic Agriculture Program to work as a team with all types of farmers with a focus on problem solving with an organic/ecological lens to lower inputs and enhance farm profitability.”
Market of the future
According to the Oregon Organic Coalition, dedicated organic consumers in Oregon are diverse, with 14% identifying as Black, 25% as Hispanic and 10% as Asian — and each group’s organic purchasing exceeds its representation in the overall U.S. population.
According to 2022 Organic Trade Association data, 45% of the organic customer base is under 40, indicating that organic products are popular among younger consumers and represent a growing market for the future.
“Millennials and Gen Z buy organic more so than any other generation,” Wong said. “They feel like how they eat has an impact on the world. It’s the market for our future farmers. I’m so excited that OSU is doing this. We’re putting an organic Extension program on the map. This is something that should be celebrated and championed and held out as an example.”
