Advocating for the Oregon Agricultural Heritage Program

In 2017, the Oregon legislature established the Oregon Agricultural Heritage Program (OAHP) to protect agricultural land around the state through working land easements, conservation management planning, succession planning education, and technical assistance. $5 million was allocated to the program in 2022 (which in turn brought in over $6 million in federal matching dollars). This has provided great benefits to Oregon farmers and ranchers who wish to protect their land and pass it onto the next generation. 

Over the past year, OAT joined partners including Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts (COLT), Deschutes Land Trust, and Oregon farmers and ranchers to advocate for increased funding for this important program. This February, our Land Program Associate Tara Olson teamed with COLT in Salem during the short session to meet with legislators and share the importance of OAHP to Oregon’s communities, economies, and landscapes. As a result of this work, 5.8 million was allocated for OAHP in 2024! 

Learning through Osmosis

Tara’s Experience

It just so happens that advocating for OAHP was my first time engaging with legislators at the state capitol. I was nervous at first but, as OAT Executive Director Nellie McAdams shared with me, “It’s ok, you’ll learn through osmosis.”

What was at first an intimidating concept turned out to be an eye-opening experience on the legislative process and the people that take part in it. 

1. Not only politicians are allowed in the capitol building. After a quick security check at the front doors, you can see where the action happens. The halls of the capitol are always busy, whether you’re on the first floor near the hearing rooms, or on the upper floors where legislators have their offices. It turns out that you can knock on your legislator’s door, and if their schedule allows, you can meet with them then and there. 

2. Legislators are friendly people with curious questions. Although I came prepared to the capitol with my talking points, nervously flipping through pages of notes, I was pleasantly surprised at how conversational many of the meetings with legislators were. They asked great questions that would help them better understand our issue and their ability to support it. It helped that the team I was with at the capitol had already built ongoing, long-term relationships with many of these legislators, just by continuing to show up and advocate for important issues (like land use). 

3. Legislative staffers are just as important allies as legislators themselves. By nature of the job, legislative staffers have more time to meet with you, both at the capitol and on informational tours. When I was meeting with legislative staffers, I noticed how engaged they were in our conversations, and how they made sure they could communicate our message back to their legislator. I even began to recognize some staffers, who had attended our farm tours to learn about OAHP on behalf of their legislator. 

So, if you’re hesitant to start engaging, know that advocacy work is not as scary as it seems. We invite you to engage alongside us as we continue to advocate for increased OAHP funding in the coming years.

• Reach out and engage with your legislators as a constituent to advocate in support of farms, ranches, and agricultural land. You can reach out to them at any time to start building a relationship.

• Watch for action alerts. These include specific actions that you can take in support of ag land protection and usually have a short turnaround. Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and/or LinkedIn to receive alerts.

And since government and foundation grants rarely fund advocacy work, your donations are essential to supporting our advocacy efforts - consider donating to OAT today to amplify this important work!

Alesong Brewing & Blending

When you live in a state like Oregon, or one of the many states around us, you've got a bounty of things from grain to hops to fruit and other ingredients that are used in beer. And, when you can go pick it up or get a smaller shipment from close by, and truly know the farmer, those things are great, but if we don't support and protect that ag land, we're going to be forced to get it from somewhere else and not from our home.

-Matt Van Wyk, Alesong Brewing & Blending

Alesong Brewing & Blending creates barrel-aged beers

Communications Manager Sal Lopez spoke with Matt Van Wyk  of Alesong Brewing and Blending who shared some of the inspiration for Alesong’s barrel-aged beers as well as some of the local ingredients they use that infuse the beer with an Oregon flavor.

SL - What is the vision of Alesong? What inspired you to create it?

MVW – The mission of Alesong is to elevate the way beer is perceived and experienced. We are inspired by farmhouse beers of Belgium and also the Lambic ale tradition, which is typically blends of one-, two- and three-year-old beer. We don't have a lot of beer that's aged for three years, because we're not a Lambic brewery. But our beer probably stays in barrel for at least a year in most cases. It takes a while to make, age, and then bottle condition the beer. Finally, we blend different beers because we believe the sum of the parts is greater than the individual components that make it up. Like a song, the beer is our art and the interpretation is yours.

Alesong founders Matt Van Wyk, Doug Coombs and Brian Coombs

SL - What are some of the Oregon-grown ingredients you like to use in Alesong’s beer? 

MVW - We've been working with a few different places lately, namely Skagit Valley Malting, up in Washington, who's not malting anymore. But they had some malt that was grown in Oregon at Goschie Farms. We also have a place locally in Junction City called Camus Country Mill. They're the Hunton family Farm. Most of it isn't malted (germinated, dried, and roasted); it's either raw grains or flaked products. But with farmhouse beers, we can use a lot of those ingredients to put some of that local grain in there. And we use some imported ingredients too, but we try to get as much locally as we can. 

We also use a lot of fruit for our fruited sour beers. We'll get cherries from the Hood River Valley. Just next door to us is King Estate Winery. They're one of the largest wineries in the state and they have a huge biodynamic farm that grows a lot of different fruits. We've used raspberries from them, blueberries, plums, and we also use their grapes in our beer. 

SL - Is there any producer you work with where you say, “Hey, we'd like to make this type of beer” - how do you work with them to get the product you want to use?

MVW - I mention King Estate and other fruit producers around the state because we can go to them and say, “We’d like this ingredient at this ripeness level.” But if you just order from somewhere and they say, “Okay, I'll get you a pallet of peaches”, for example, a lot of times you're working with fruit that some of it is ripe, some of it is not, and you are waiting to process it to put it into beer, because it's not all ripe at the same time. And because we can work with our neighbors next door, and we have a good relationship with the grower, we can go talk to them. 

In fact, we recently made a Flemish red ale with raspberries. King Estate harvested the raspberries only when they were at their peak ripeness and put them in the freezer for us. They were ripening at different times throughout that harvest season. We just grabbed them all after they were frozen. And so instead of getting some raspberries that are tart and some of them are sweet and juicy, we got them all at the same ripeness and put them into beer at the same time. It made a big difference on the outcome of the beer. So, I think that local touch with the farmer is huge.  It really shows in the quality of the beer in the end. You can make good beer in many different ways. But when you can get your ingredients at their best, that's key for us.

SL - How do you see agricultural land protection as important to the beer industry and people who love beer? 

Alesong Brewing & Blending in Eugene, Oregon

MVW - It is huge for us. It’s getting so hard, in every manufacturing business right now, with the economy the way it is, the price of raw materials is going up. And that goes for agricultural products as well. And so the farther you have to get those ingredients from, the more you're going to pay shipping and other costs. There are some great malts in the UK and in Germany, and of course we can get hops from over there. And we have distributors to sell us that stuff. But the costs keep rising and rising and rising. 

When you live in a state like Oregon, or one of the many states around us, you've got a bounty of things from grain to hops to fruit and other ingredients that are used in beer. And, when you can go pick it up or get a smaller shipment from close by, and truly know the farmer, those things are great, but if we don't support and protect that ag land, we're going to be forced to get it from somewhere else and not from our home.

So I think the first step is to make sure these farmers, a) have the land and, b) have a customer to be able to grow those things for. And that's good for us, and it's good for the consumers drinking our beer too.

Alesong’s Cheers to the Land beer is a tart farmhouse ale with Oregon grown Rhubarb. They are hosting a Cheers to the Land beer release party on Monday, October 9. Come out and celebrate this wonderful collaboration beer and Oregon agriculture!