Mike Hiller
OAN President
If you have not visited Oregon to experience what is grown here, you need to.
This issue of Digger is the Nursery Country issue, featuring the state’s quality plants and the growers who produce them. It’s a good read, filled with good information.
However, there is no substitute for driving the roads, walking the farms, meeting our expert growers and witnessing the sheer volume, variety and quality of plant material that is grown in Oregon and shipped nationwide.
The quality you see is no accident. Oregon has a mild climate that is ideal for supporting any number of agricultural crops, from wine grapes to hops to pears to grass seed to hazelnuts. But out of all these, nursery crops are number one with close to $1 billion in sales annually.
Oregon growers welcome visitors all throughout the year, but perhaps the best time to see all of our nurseries on display is during the Farwest Show. The 2019 show will be held August 21–23 in Portland, Oregon. Watch www.farwestshow.com for information over the coming months.
The show is packed with nursery tours, networking events, educational seminars and fun times to ensure that your visit will be one to remember.
To bring you quality product, we must mind the details behind the scenes — and not everyone understands this. The Oregon Association of Nurseries works hard to support our producers so they can do what they do best. We work with the Oregon Department of Agriculture to ensure that buyers get the best and safest products possible. Growing practices are being developed and updated constantly as new issues come up.
Another way we support our growers is by helping them ship their goods to the winter and summer trade shows with the Trucks to Trade Shows program. If you are a grower you may have used this program. If so, you know it makes things easy — just load your pallet, get it to the drop-off site in Oregon, and let the drivers handle the rest.
We also represent Oregon at MANTS (Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show) in Baltimore, Maryland and at Cultivate in Columbus, Ohio. If you are attending either of these shows, we invite you to find our booth, pick up your free copy of our Nursery Guide (full of plants, supplies and services), and chat with someone from the OAN staff. They are a great resource.
If you are planning that trip to Oregon, our staff can give you advice and facts about our state and our growers.
This is the time of year when we ask people to renew their OAN membership. Please make sure you take care of it if you haven’t already.
Likewise, we appreciate support for ONPAC, the Oregon Nurseries’ Political Action Committee. There’s a place to make a contribution on your renewal form. ONPAC contributes to nursery-friendly candidates from both sides of the aisle who take the time to understand our industry. This committee is one of the workhorses of the industry, keeping tabs on such issues as immigration, water supply development, land use regulation, market access, workplace regulations, transportation, theft prevention, taxation and many others.
If you are interested in learning more about the OAN, ONPAC or both, please reach out to our executive director, Jeff Stone, at jstone@oan.org. He will be pleased to answer any questions.
