Thoughts from the Tractor Seat: Why U.S. Farmers Are Being Pushed Off the Shelf
By Ken Polehn
The Dalles, Ore., July 23, 2025 — I was shopping for butter in my hometown grocery store— I reached for the familiar gold foil and paused. The butter came from Ireland.
There it was—Kerrygold Irish butter, competing directly with butter made right here in Oregon.
A few days earlier, I had a similar experience at Costco. I picked up a glass jar of beautiful, golden peaches. Everything about it said “premium.” But the label read: Product of China.
I’ve spent my life growing fruit in the Columbia River Gorge—pears, sweet cherries, and yes, my family has grown peaches in the past. I’ve supported our local creameries and watched our dairy farms fight to survive. So you can imagine how it felt to realize we’re now importing the very foods we produce so well right here at home.
The Bigger Problem
What I saw on those shelves was just the surface of a much deeper issue.
We still grow some of the world’s best fruit and dairy in the United States—but we're being pushed out by cheaper imports. Retailers stock foreign products because they often bring higher profit margins or longer shelf life. And as that happens, we lose more than shelf space—we lose infrastructure, jobs, and farms.
Not long ago, Del Monte Foods filed for bankruptcy and began shutting down its fruit processing operations. That means fewer buyers for American-grown fruit, less canning and freezing, and fewer options for family farms. Meanwhile, China, Turkey, and Ireland are shipping food to U.S. stores in volume.
Why? Because they can. Their costs are lower, regulations looser, and in many cases, foreign governments subsidize agriculture. Ours doesn’t—not in a way that helps small and mid-sized farms.
What We’re Losing
When imported butter outsells Oregon butter, and jarred peaches from China replace local fruit, we lose:
American jobs
Food security
Processing plants
Family farms
And the ability to feed ourselves independently
This isn’t just about farmers—it’s about our food system, our economy, and our identity.
What We Can Do
This can be fixed, but not by staying silent.
As consumers, we can:
Read labels. If it says “Product of China” or “Imported,” ask: could we grow this here?
Buy local when it’s available—especially during harvest season
Ask grocers to stock more U.S. and Oregon-grown products.
As voters and citizens, we should:
Demand Country-of-Origin Labeling on all food.
Support rebuilding domestic food processing infrastructure.
Push our lawmakers to prioritize American-grown food in schools, food banks, and military contracts.
Reexamine trade policy that puts our own producers at a disadvantage.
A Final Thought
I never thought buying butter would feel like a wake-up call. But that day, in a small-town grocery store, I realized: we’re letting go of something we can’t afford to lose.
We still grow the best. But if we don’t protect it through our choices, our policies, and our voices, we’ll find ourselves depending on others for the most basic things: our food.
And once we lose that, we don’t get it back.
About the author:
I was born in 1961 into a second-generation farm family in The Dalles. I grew up on a tractor seat, moving irrigation pipe with my sisters before school, and spent my summers picking cherries alongside the children of migrant families who returned year after year. My wife, children, and parents have all worked the same land. I’ve served as county Farm Bureau president, sat on the county fair board, and continue to support 4-H and FFA. I’ve seen firsthand what happens when farmers are squeezed out—not just of business, but of the conversation.
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