County economic future examined
From our weekly issue dated July 01, 2009
Panelists included (from left) Kit Doyle, Orville Camp, Marko Bey, Waves Forest and Roger Brandt. (Photo by Michelle Binker, Illinois Valley News)
Increased tourism, and various crops including hemp could greatly enhance Josephine County’s economy.
They were among topics during a town hall meeting Wednesday night, June 24 at Anne G. Basker Auditorium in Grants Pass. Approximately 50 people attended the two-hour-plus event, sponsored by Illinois Valley-based Community Media & Education Center, and which featured presentations by a series of speakers.
Cave Junction resident Roger Brandt’s main topic was the economic benefits of attracting more tourists to the area, including the Redwood Hwy. corridor. Kit Doyle, a builder and developer in the county for 16 years, told audience members how he began learning about agriculture in March.
“This used to be a very productive area,” Doyle said. He added that cherries, hops, grass seeds, cereal grains and other crops have been grown in Southwestern Oregon throughout the years.
Doyle has formed Southern Oregon Seed Oil, a company that seeks to turn oils from crops into bio-fuels. Those crops include camelina, black oil sunflower and pumpkin seeds, he said.
Camelina grows well in Josephine County, Doyle said -- especially on marginal land. It also does not require fertilizer. Through the long-term, Doyle said that he would like to see establishment of a grower’s co-op for seed oil producers.
“I think that’s a pretty good business model,” he observed. Doyle said that the county and its residents should seek to build local industry by using available, existing resources.
Waves Forest, an Illinois Valley resident, expounded on the virtues of industrial hemp. He said that it is capable of producing food, fuel and shelter, and that most industrial nations grow it.
Forest claimed that the county could “virtually end” poverty and unemployment in one year by growing the crop. He added that anything made from timber can be made from hemp, and that idle portions of Rough & Ready Lumber Co., between Cave Junction and O’Brien, could be used to process it.
Kerby resident Jill Talise, who helped organize the forum, read a letter from Rough & Ready co-owner Jennifer Phillippi. The latter emphasized the need to support the county’s existing resources and infrastructure. Rough & Ready supplies 90 family wage jobs directly and supports more than 200, Phillippi wrote.
She urged audience members to support the 1994 Northwest Forest Management Plan and the proposed Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR) in order to ensure a steady supply of raw product for the firm.
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Marko Bey, director of operations for Lomakatsi, an Ashland-based nonprofit organization, described that organization’s ecological and forest restoration efforts. Lomakatsi has received federal stimulus dollars for forest thinning projects and stewardship contracts.
Bey noted that 37 people recently were hired to perform work in and around Cave Junction. The focus is on creating “green jobs,” Bey said.
“The key here is to build an ecological workforce in the valley,” he said. “This is an emerging economy here.”
Selma resident Orville Camp talked about “ecostry,” which involves the extraction of natural resources through a natural selection process. He has been engaging in ecostry on his family’s property for four decades, and has conducted tours of it for 30 years.
Camp said that Josephine County had a natural ecosystem until humans started trying to manage it. He suggested that an ecostry project be conducted on county land to test its viability.
A presentation on ecostry is scheduled for July 22 at Anne Basker Auditorium, Camp said.
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