For farmers
Longer-term ground, better records, a path to outside capital, pre-season customer money, and dependable places for food and surplus to go.
Banks to McMinnville, Oregon
Rootstock. A local food system for the Banks–McMinnville corridor
An integrated regional operating platform for the Banks–McMinnville corridor.
Rootstock does not point to a collection of outside projects. It embeds the land, property operations, producer tools, prepaid sales, processing, public food space, and community fundraising needed to make the corridor work as one system.
The regional case
The value is not another program. It is the handoff between programs.
For landowners
More than one path: keep the title and bring in an operator, or pursue permanent agricultural protection through a nonprofit landholder.
For local government
A model that makes land use, public access, food infrastructure, and operating responsibility visible as connected planning questions.
For funders
A way to fund missing infrastructure as one connected system, with separate books, explicit roles, and operating plans that can be inspected.
The system
Six functions, and each one only works because the next one exists.
Every node is covered by somebody. Follow one to the venture that covers it.
- 03GrowThree Field Commons
- 04Pre-sell the harvestHarvest Provisions
- 06Feed and teachGroundworks
The return loop
Revenue and nutrients return to the land
The premise
Most food-system efforts fund one intervention and wonder why it doesn't scale.
The reason is almost never the intervention — it's that the function next to it is missing. A grower with no secure ground plants annuals. A farm with no way to pre-sell carries the whole season's risk alone. A glut with nowhere to go becomes compost.
Read the argument →The ventures
Six connected ventures. Each has a clear job in one local system.
Venture 01
BuildingThree Field Commons
Acquires and protects multiple farm sites, and leases them to the people who work them.
Land tenure
Farmland can remain zoned for agriculture and still become unreachable to the people who need long-term ground. Price, succession, and access are the open questions.
Nonprofit · Washington and Yamhill counties, Oregon
Venture 02
BuildingGroundworks
A café, farm stand, and teaching kitchen where the corridor's food meets the public.
Public face and conversion capacity
A corridor can grow good food and still lack one dependable public place to buy it, eat it, learn from it, and keep surplus from becoming waste.
Nonprofit · McMinnville, Oregon — site search under way
Venture 03
BuildingFoothold
Runs land and getaway properties for owners who keep the title.
Property operations
A useful rural property can stall when the owner wants to keep it but no longer wants to staff, maintain, or run it day to day.
Oregon LLC · Banks to McMinnville
- Venture 04Harvest Provisions
Prepaid food shares that pay producers before the season. Free for anyone to run.
BuildingRead more - Venture 05LiveSwell
Low-ABV craft beer, and benefit events that fund the rest.
ConceptRead more - Venture 06Farm Fund Finder
Free search for grants, loans and technical help for small farms, plus a market garden workbook and a ranch manager.
BuildingRead more
All ventures here are concept-stage.
All ventures →The corridor
One drive time between everything.
Banks to McMinnville is about an hour end to end. That's close enough for a share box, a surplus crate and a lease conversation to move between the same set of people in the same week — which is the only reason six functions can actually touch each other.
Why here →Three doors