Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>]

http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=6633 
8/17/2005
ATTACK OF THE $3 TOMATO

How Portland's snooty tastes are saving Oregon farms, luring kids back
to the land and even-gasp!-teaching Republicans and Democrats to get
along. 

BY ZACH DUNDAS <http://www.wweek.com/author.php?author=ZACH%20DUNDAS> 

Last week, the meat counter at New Seasons Market on Southeast Division
Street-as good a place as any to observe Portland's organic-shopping,
local-arugula-worshipping foodies in their native habitat-offered
juicy-looking steak...for $13.99 a pound. 

Why would anyone slap down more than a ten-spot for a pound of cow flesh
when they could buy the same amount of the exact same cut for about
$7.50 at Safeway, just blocks away on Southeast Hawthorne? 

Or, for that matter, who would pay New Seasons $3.99 for a pint of
blueberries when the same Safeway sells it for a buck less? 

The answer, in both cases, has nothing to do with the way the American
consumer is supposed to behave in the globalized, big-box, Chinese-made
21st century. Instead, it has everything to do with where that spendy
meat and those blue-chip blueberries came from: Oregon. 

Forget "organic," long the label coveted by that cross-section of
hippies, yuppies, bourgeois bohemians and gourmets. Increasingly,
"local" is the new buzzword chowhounds are chasing. 

At the height of summer's bounty, signs of the trend are not hard to
find. New Seasons, a Portland-owned chain that employs two full-time
people to scout for local food, soon will open its sixth location since
launching in 2000, and will surpass 1,000 employees. Portland's farmers
markets, confined to a single obscure location little more than a decade
ago, are everywhere-at least two dozen in the metro area. The largest,
held Saturdays on Portland State's campus, boasts 140 vendors and a
two-year waiting list for stalls. And local restaurants are engaged in
something of a local-produce arms race to see who can trumpet the most
eccentric, specific Oregon-grown specimens.
http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=6633