Rick Blaine and his wife have been farming in Hood River  for almost 50 years.

Over the years he has accumulated multiple orchards, growing apples, pears, and cherries. Though the region remains a prime area for growing tree fruit, Blaine notes that the farming community has changed entirely.

“Forty or 50 years ago there were maybe 300 to 350 different orchards in Hood River,” he recalls. “Back then you could make a living on 20 or 40 acres. Today there might be 50 growers in Hood River, and I’d be hard pressed to name them.”

Acting as a land use planner from the mid-1970s through the 1980s and a county commissioner in the 1990s, Blaine got an intimate look at how changes to the landscape impacted farmers and their community. “I got a chance to see a lot of the efforts to convert farmland into golf courses, housing, housing units, and whatnot,” he explains.

How have the changes impacted other smaller to mid-size family operations like his?

“They’re just about gone. There’s not many little guys left.”

Landscape and climatic changes are occurring across Oregon, making it difficult for family farmers to keep their operations afloat and pass them on to the next generation.

“I mean right now I look at our operation,” Blaine said. “I’m 75 and I don’t know how it’s going to survive. There’s an awful lot of interest in taking it over if it’s not too hard. But it’s hard right now. I mean it’s hard making it right now.”

Blaine’s story is reflective of larger trends that are occurring across Oregon’s agricultural production regions, as encroaching development and climate change place a squeeze on natural resources and community networks.

Agriculture has been a consistently important industry in Oregon’s economy, contributing to 13 percent of the state’s gross product in 2021.

According to a recent report by the American Farmland Trust, however, the Pacific Northwest is expected to lose over half a million acres of farmland to development in the next two decades.

Mike McCarthy, a longtime resident and grower in Parkdale, has been fighting for decades to protect the pristine farmland of the Hood River Valley from ongoing threats of large-scale development.

His family has owned property in the area since 1909, but McCarthy and his family moved to the area permanently in 1968 to operate a small dairy farm. McCarthy started working in agriculture over 60 years ago, at just 8 years old, when he was paid 8 cents an hour to stack wool fleeces.

McCarthy recalls that in 1980, Mount Hood Meadows, the owner of the property adjacent to his family’s farm, approached his mother with a plan for a golf course that would extend over her farmland.

“That was the beginning of what I called the destination resort wars in Hood River County,” he recounts. “They intended to build a destination resort with 500 units of housing and a small city.”

McCarthy was concerned with the impact on farmers and the longstanding agricultural economy in the Hood River Valley. “Anytime you get a destination resort on farmland or near farmland, the prices of that farmland can go up and can easily double or triple.”

While McCarthy and other opponents of large-scale development in agricultural areas have had success in holding back farmland conversion, areas like the Dundee Hills southwest of Portland are experiencing rapid growth.

Jason Lett, a second-generation winemaker at Eyrie Vineyards in McMinnville, explains that when his father started in the winemaking business, the highest value farmland was on the valley floor. Once the value of hillsides for grape growing became clear, however, the price of that land skyrocketed.

Lett said the consequences of such exclusive land prices include a much less connected community. “My three kids are the only children on the hill. And when I was growing up, there was a crowd of us running around. So it definitely feels a lot more like a museum than a community.”

As climate change impacts worsen, farmland conversion in agricultural production regions becomes an even greater threat to both agricultural communities and the viability of the entire farming operation. Water scarcity is a particularly salient concern amongst farmers across the state. 

As development expands across farmland, the competition for water increases as well. 

The conflict between residential water use and irrigation is particularly apparent to Pamela Toman of Anderson Blues near Corvallis.

Toman has been a middle school science teacher for over two decades. She and her husband decided to buy half of the Anderson Blues blueberry farm from the previous owners in 2020. Though they intended to purchase the remaining portion of the farm, it was sold to a developer. Now she has a subdivision going up on the property directly adjacent to her farm.

Toman’s property has two wells, and the previous owners reported few issues with water. However, Toman felt the effects of water scarcity in just the first year of owning the farm. “It’s not like we ran out, but the well would go dry, and I’d have to go turn on the other one, and then maybe that one was dry, so I’d have to wait a day or two.”

Since that first summer, the developer next door has put in two more wells for residential use, which draw from the same aquifer.

“I keep thinking I’m gonna try to learn more about water rights because it doesn’t seem like a clear path,” Toman said. “I’ve heard various things from different people and I just don’t know exactly what my rights are. I don’t exactly know who to go to and say… ‘hey, I had the water rights before these folks and I’m running out of water.’”

In Southern Oregon, one of the most acutely impacted regions, farmers are reducing the amount of land they farm in order to ensure that they can irrigate it sufficiently. Some livestock producers have been forced to sell off a portion of their herd early because, owing to drought and fires, they can’t afford to feed the whole herd.

One beef producer in the region quoted the cost of feeding his cattle as 12 times higher than the year before due to feed shortages.

As the drought in Southern Oregon continues, local irrigation districts are increasingly cutting back on the water they supply for agriculture.

Alec Levin, an associate professor focused on wine grape research at Oregon State University, recalls that there were just about five or six weeks during the summer last year that irrigation water was flowing in the Medford area.

“Basically, by the end of July there was no more irrigation,” he said. “People were hurting.”

The difficulty and stress of farming today is not lost on younger generations, as many step away from a livelihood that is increasingly threatened.

Julie Schedeen, who owns Schedeen Farms with her husband in Boring, sees many younger generations stepping away from farming because of the increasing stress and financial riskiness of the work.

“There are small farms that are getting a little bit swallowed up,” she said. “The biggest issue is the children and the transition to the next generation. You’ll see so many that have watched their parents struggle as things got harder and more complex, and they’re just saying ‘I’m not interested in taking this over.’”

Despite the ongoing challenges and expectations that making a good living will only become more difficult, many farmers throughout Oregon have vowed to persist. As Rick Blaine explains, “when you’re in any kind of farming, it’s central to your being. I mean, I’m 75 years old. My body is not quite what it used to be, but I’m not quitting.”

For Schedeen, the difficulties of farming have never convinced her that selling off her operation would be worth it.

“It’s hard to describe to someone that isn’t a farmer that you’re selling your house, your livelihood, and your entire meaning,” she explains. “It might mean a financial windfall, but what you’re giving up for that is so big.”