Our Work: past, present, and ongoing
Feed’em Freedom
OSU Extension
Feed’em Freedom is a grassroots organization in Gresham, Oregon, working to establish a Black Community Food Hub and Food Forest that directly confront historic food inequities and expands access to fresh, culturally relevant food for underserved communities.
In partnership with OSU Extension, the organization hosts hands-on programming, including soil health workshops, irrigation training, and practical planting guides tailored to local growers, supporting individuals as they build skills and confidence at every stage of food production. We have led on-site soil health workshops at Feed’em Freedom, bringing technical expertise in soil health assessments, organic soils, and science-based management practices to strengthen the project from the ground up.
Together, Feed’em Freedom, OSU Extension, and SHES-OR are cultivating a long-term vision in which the Food Hub and Food Forest serve as lasting infrastructure where Black growers and community members can access land, shared tools and knowledge, and culturally meaningful foods. This work aims to nourish community resilience, build intergenerational connections, and create a more just, locally rooted food system.
“We look at this land as an opportunity for us all to create a learning lab to learn about the soil, building out a food forest, and sharing information out to a community that has interest in growing food for themselves and their families, and farmers as well.”
Cover Crop Variety Trials
Organic Agriculture Program
This ongoing cover crop variety trial addresses the lack of well-characterized varietal performance across Oregon’s diverse climates and soils, finding practical solutions that increase cover crop adoption.
At the OSU Vegetable Research Farm in Corvallis, OR, 66 varieties across 13 species were planted on 25 September 2025 and evaluated for seed size, germination, establishment, cold tolerance, plant growth, aboveground biomass, nutrient content, and weed suppression.
Measurements followed structured protocols, including establishment ratings (0–5), vigor and cold damage ratings (1–9), biomass sampling using 1.5 ft² PVC squares, and plant-available nitrogen estimates generated with the OSU Cover Crop Calculator (PNW 636). The trial faced real-world pressures from high volunteer oat and crimson clover weed pressure, as well as cold events down to 23°F in late January 2026.
The long-term goal is to generate reliable, locally relevant data that help producers match species and varieties to their goals and cropping systems, strengthen online extension tools and annual variety reports, and ultimately expand cover crop markets and breeding efforts.
Soil Health Outcomes Collaborative Database (SHOCD)
The Soil Health Outcomes Collaborative Database (SHOCD) is an initiative that connects soil health management practices with real-world outcomes for producers. By combining standardized soil health measurements with information on management history, climate, and soil characteristics, SHOCD provides context-specific insights into how farming practices influence productivity, resilience, water quality, nutrient cycling, and ecosystem health.
SHOCD brings together producers, researchers, extension professionals, conservation partners, and industry collaborators to build a statewide database of soil health information. Using standardized sampling protocols and innovative “bookend” sampling, the project creates meaningful benchmarks that allow producers to evaluate their soils relative to similar soil types and management systems. This collaborative approach generates practical, evidence-based recommendations while maintaining participant data privacy and ensuring all interpretations are grounded in expert-reviewed science.
Through this growing network, SHOCD is laying the foundation for decision-support tools such as GrowIT that will help farmers improve soil health, strengthen farm resilience, and adopt management practices that deliver measurable environmental and economic benefits across Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.
GrowIT
OSU Extension has over 150 years of accumulated research on Oregon cropping systems, soil health, weed and disease management, pest ecology, nutrient management, cropping systems, applied economics, and livestock health. These datasets exist in disparate formats, including published Extension publications, peer-reviewed literature, field notebooks, and institutional databases, that do not currently communicate with one another or with producer management systems.
Up in Farms LLC established GrowIT under USDA-supported work through Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) with input from Shannon Cappellazzi. We have developed initial workflows for integrating OSU Extension knowledge assets into the GrowIT platform’s governed delivery architecture.
The long-term goal of this project is to improve the competitiveness and profitability of organic and transitioning producers by closing the gap between scientific knowledge and on-farm decision-making.