Oregon’s Willamette Valley is one of the world’s best places to produce food and crop seed because of our soils and micro-climates. Gardeners here are blessed with the pick of the best from some of the best seed producers in the country – and world.

The seeds produced by some of the companies of this list are organically-grown, open-pollinated and intended for the public domain. Those small-seed company propietors shun the idea of patenting life in the form of seeds. Seeds evolve over generations, adapting to their environment to remain healthy and vigorous. They should serve the people who grow them, not investors who may never have planted a seed.

Ten Rivers Food Web and Slow food Corvallis present the third annual Terra Madre Day event on Saturday, December 10th, 2011. Please join us for this holiday food fair celebrating and supporting local producers. Proceeds will benefit Slow Food’s “1,000 Gardens in Africa” initiative and Ten Rivers Food Web’s That’s My Farmer SNAP Incentive Program.  The event runs from 3 – 7 pm at the Mary’s River Grange in Philomath (24707 Grange Hall Road). Admission is free!  Pan-African food will be available for purchase made by Slow Food volunteers under …

On Saturday June 18th, the Ten Rivers Food Web hosted their 2nd Food Summit: A Report on Community Food Assessments in Linn, Benton and Lincoln Counties. Community Food Assessment Coordinators in Linn, Benton and Lincoln Counties presented preliminary findings of a year’s worth of interviews, surveys and community discussion. They presented on three topics: Agriculture and Fisheries in the Ten Rivers Foodshed, Barriers to Accessing Food, and Community Food Assets and Resources. They were followed by response from a panel of experts including Andrew Still (Open Oak Farm and Adaptive Seeds), Laura Anderson (Local Ocean Seafoods), Dr. Kyle Homertgen (Albany Heartspring Wellness Center), and Richard Hervey (Corvallis City Councilor). Here is a recap of the days’ events.

Several recent reports suggest that the world is facing the threat of growing food scarcity, that hunger among the world’s poor is rising, and that these problems are likely to get worse.   Whether we realize it yet or not, climate change, population growth, and environmental degradation appear to finally be catching up with us.  If you keep up on news about climate change and agriculture, you are probably not surprised.  But even so, a recent New York Times article titled “A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself” is worth noting. …