Perhaps it’s naive to think warmly of the people who appear to be trying to regulate you out of business.

On the flip side, environmentalists may believe it is naive on their part to think farmers are stewards of the land.

It was those two divergent thoughts that formed the genesis of a recent attempt to bridge the seemingly unnavigable chasm between people who work the land for a living and environmentalists who work from the sidelines to protect it.

And although the attempt is unlikely to unite the two sides, the Oregon Environmental Council’s recent attempt to pry open doors that have long been closed is commendable and potentially fruitful.

The council, in conducting what in essence is the back half of a previous project, asked former Associate Director of Extension at Oregon State University Peter Bloome to interview environmentalists about their concerns with agriculture’s impact on the environment and what could be done to address them.

The council in 2002 conducted a similar project: The council’s then-Agricultural Program Director Karen Lewotsky interviewed 20 farmers, asking them about their challenges and what they thought environmentalists could do to help them.

The subhead of the report Bloome presented recently to the Oregon Board of Agriculture, in fact, reflects this: Titled, “Working on Common Ground,” the subhead is “Interviews with Oregon Environmentalists: Continuing the Dialogue.”

To develop the 25-page report that Bloome unveiled earlier this month, he interviewed 12 environmentalists – from organizations such as WaterWatch, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and The Nature Conservancy – and seven producer-conservationists – such as Oregon Board of Agriculture members Ken Bailey of Orchard View Farms in The Dalles and Dan Carver of Imperial Stock Ranch in Shaniko.

Bloome said he kept the questions open-ended to encourage well-thought-out and creative responses.

Two themes kept popping up:

The first was a realization among the environmental community that it is important for farms and ranches to stay economically viable.

The second concerns the difficulties of addressing issues collaboratively when the interests of farmers and environmentalists collide.

The respondents also listed climate change as the greatest environmental challenge facing Oregon. They said land-use planning was an essential element in addressing environmental concerns. They singled out livestock grazing on public lands as a major issue. They identified water quality and water quantity as issues of concern.

When asked what farmers and ranchers could do to address these issues, they said farmers could:

?Openly acknowledge and talk about the issues.

?Be creative and innovative in embracing change and shaping it to meet needs.

?Reach out to environmentalists and support a greater flow of information between communities.

? Avoid stereotyping environmentalists.

? Avoid statements that irritate.

? Avoid taking intractable positions.

? Avoid keeping silent about agricultural bad actors.

Bloome, in his report to the Board of Agriculture, singled out several statements he found intriguing, including this one from Jack Southworth of Southworth Bros. Ranch in Seneca: “I think we have opportunities to figure out solutions that everyone can live with – not solutions that make us totally happy, but solutions we can all live with.”

The one sentence he believes resonates the loudest was provided by Rob Miller of Mount Jefferson Farms in Salem: “You need an objective understanding of the folks who don’t agree with you.”

“That, to me, is the most important sentence of the report,” Bloome said. “And the only way to get that is by talking.”

– The Capital Press