The Patrick Madden Award for Sustainable Agriculture

Peter Kenagy, Albany, Oregon

As Peter Kenagy has analyzed his farming practices over two-and-a-half decades, he's drawn some sobering views about their impact on the environment. Today, those views guide his farming philosophy, although he knows they may trouble more than a few fellow producers.

"Agriculture is a very invasive and destructive activity," said Kenagy. "We're disturbing soil and introducing species. So I tend to look at what can I do as a farmer and a land manager to minimize the destructive side effects of farming. My love for plants, animals and wild areas have made me look hard at what I can do to enhance natural and wild functions on my farm."

Enhance he has. In nominating Kenagy for the 2004 Madden Award, John Luna and Dan McGrath of Oregon State University outlined a host of practices the Albany, Ore., farmer has adopted - working with his wife, Tina, and their children, Rufus and Alana - on 325 tillable acres and 150 riparian acres along the Willamette River.

For example, where the farm meets the banks of the river, he's planted a mix of walnut, hazelnut, elderberry and cottonwood trees, cutting some for timber and retaining the rest in a 200-foot-wide buffer that sops up nutrients before they reach the river. He grows hedgerows and buffer strips to enhance resources for wildlife. He plants cover crops, some to scavenge nutrients, others to biologically fix nitrogen. And he adopts university-based scouting and Integrated Pest Management recommendations for controlling pests in snap beans and field corn.

Among his evolving practices, Kenagy ranks changes in tillage techniques as the most valuable. "We've gotten completely away from the moldboard plow and adopted no-till and other tillage methods," he said. "We haven't settled on any one thing - it's crop specific."

	"My love for plants, animals and wild areas have made me look hard at what I can do to enhance natural and wild functions on my farm." ~Peter Kenagy

For example, within his three-year rotation of wheat, snap beans and sweet corn for processing, Kenagy pairs a sorghum-sudangrass cover crop with strip tillage. He plants green beans in late April or early May. In 60 to 70 days, he harvests the beans, then plants sorghum sudangrass. The grass, which reaches nearly 5 feet high in the fall, dies back at the first frost and, by spring, has decomposed on the soil. Into this rich residue, Kenagy strip-tills sweet corn.

"For a huge part of the growing season, the ground was bare," said Kenagy. "So we started planting the sudangrass to take advantage of photosynthesis and control erosion and weeds." What's more, the light-touch tillage has improved soil quality, minimized soil compaction and saved fuel.

To bolster returns from his three-crop rotation, Kenagy maintains a small pick-your-own strawberry operation and fosters a specialty seed business that produces vegetable and cover crop seed. He also grows seed for native plants endemic to the Willamette Valley for wetland mitigation, upland prairie restoration and revegetation on public lands. A number of the original seed collections came from his farm.

Kenagy collaborates with university researchers and other farmers. As a member of the stewardship committee for Norpac Foods, a cooperative of 240 Willamette Valley farm families, he works with The Food Alliance of Portland to develop stewardship guidelines for Norpac growers. He serves on the Oregon Processed Vegetable Commission. And he's a member of the Willamette Farm Improvement Association, a progressive farm group formed in 1998 to collaborate on innovation through on-farm research.

Carl Hendricks, a fellow member of the Willamette Farm Improvement Association, said Kenagy cultivates innovation. "Peter has always been a leader in trying new and different methods," said Hendricks. "Peter's whole farm is like a research farm where he tries different cover crops and studies their effect on insect populations as well as the tilth of his soil."

Indeed, Alex Stone, Oregon State University vegetable cropping systems specialist, called Kenagy one of the most committed sustainable farmers she has ever met, practicing "cutting edge and economically viable environmental agriculture."

	"Peter is a unique individual who has sensitivity to the land's needs and is continually looking for concepts and methods that will enhance and improve the environment for future generations." ~Sam Sweeney

Despite his successes, Kenagy remains vexed by a plague of invasive plants - mainly canary grass and blackberries - that virtually dominate the understory on his farm's wild areas. "I really struggle, not knowing how to deal with them," he said of these and other invaders that entered the Willamette Valley through the door of agricultural disturbance. He may not have the answers, but won't stop trying.

"We will never eliminate agriculture's impacts completely," he said. "But it's a continually evolving challenge to figure out better ways to operate and soften our impact on natural and wild places."

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