Drive enough in Oregon, and you’re likely to spot a familiar sign or two along the roads and highways. Dark green text on a white background announces what’s growing (or grazing) in the field behind it: perennial ryegrass and hazelnuts in one valley, beef cattle and peppermint in another.
Oregon grows over 200 different commodities for domestic and international markets, and signs have popped up for many of them over the years.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Pat Coon placing hand-painted signs along Peoria Road for passing trucks and station wagons to identify what farmers were growing between Corvallis and Albany in 1974. Coon led the effort to place signs and raise funds for materials with Linn-Benton Women for Agriculture the first few years. In 1983, she sent a letter to Dru Sloop at the Agri-Business Council of Oregon (now Oregon Aglink), inviting the organization to join forces and develop the program so they could meet the growing demand for signs.
Since the 1980s, that collaborative attitude has led to other partnerships with local groups like FFA chapters, county farm bureaus, and extension offices connecting with farms or ranches in their area to place signs. One particularly successful campaign that generated statewide press in 1989 was a “play-along” brochure left at rest stops and tourism offices for drivers to spot the signs and learn more about the crops they saw on their summer vacations. A special project posted signs identifying varieties of fruit growing in orchards along the Mt. Hood Railroad. In 2019, Ag West Farm Credit (then Northwest Farm Credit) sponsored twenty signs along I-5, and Oregon Aglink recently supported the Washington County Visitors Association sign project along the Vineyard & Valley Scenic Tour by talking through the design and helping them identify crops and local farmers.
As the decades passed, Oregon Aglink staff and volunteers saved photos, press clippings, and letters from organizations in other states looking to create their own sign programs. Maybe the most touching are the postcards sent in by people who appreciated the signs, sometimes farmers themselves but often “city-dwellers” gaining a new perspective.
Through the years, the signs have evolved to fit the materials available and regulations about roadside signage. Along I-5, the Oregon Department of Transportation owns the grassy strips of land to the highway, so the signs that Oregon Aglink puts up between Wilsonville and Salem are all zip-tied directly to the fences. Back where the signs originally flourished in Linn, Benton, and Lane county, the Oregon Women for Agriculture have fundraised to set up durable rolled-steel sign holders.
Whether zip tied to barbed wire, held up with t-posts, or bracketed in rolled steel, the signs– now printed on corrugated plastic instead of hand-painted or silk-screened on wood– last for a few seasons of wind, sun, and rain. Oregon Aglink works with a shop in Portland to design whatever graphics are needed, and to fact-check whether the images printed alongside the word aren’t accidentally portraying the wrong variety of a pear or breed of sheep, for instance. With orders coming in from around the state, often led by Oregon Women for Agriculture in their continued efforts to promote local agriculture, the Crop ID sign program is still a recognizable part of the Oregon landscape for drivers.
These days, the Crop ID sign program stands to make more of an impact than ever. Tourism remains strong in Oregon and visitors drive through many productive agriculture areas on their way to forests, coast, mountains, or high desert. Another potential audience would be the drivers who have moved to more rural areas from the suburbs or cities as well as people commuting longer distances between towns for work. Passing vehicles are generally going too fast for drivers to jot down a web address or scan a QR code, so the technology itself has its limits, but with smart phones and internet access, people can still look up more information about that beautiful (or sometimes unusual) looking field now that they have a name to go along with it.
Crop ID signs placed along increasingly-traveled backroads are a way to remind drivers that the land around them is busy growing food, supporting local communities, and contributing to the state economy. If you would like to order some signs for your operation or learn more about the program and developing partnerships, visit aglink.org/our-work/ and reach out to staff members about how local groups and businesses can get more involved in the program.