Aug
14
Posted by
Chuck Palmquist

NORPAC Foods – I am Oregon Agriculture

The pile of beans behind me at our Stayton plant won’t last long; the plant runs up to 45 tons of green beans per hour, and is one of the highest capacity green bean lines in the world.

We are Oregon agriculture.

My name is Chuck Palmquist and I work for NORPAC Foods. I was raised on a small farm near Mt. Angel where we raised hops, boysenberries and wheat, among other things. After obtaining a Food Science degree from OSU I came to work at NORPAC and have been here over 30 years.

NORPAC is a cooperative owned by about 240 farmers in the Willamette Valley. Oregon farmers grow vegetables and fruit for NORPAC on about 30,000 acres in the valley and the Hermiston area in northeast Oregon. The values I learned growing up on that small farm are much the same as those of our farmer-owners.  NORPAC growers believe in stewardship of their land, fair treatment of their employees and contributing to their communities. We carry these same values through in the way we process and market our products.

 

A NORPAC field representative checks a green bean field in the hills east of Salem.

Our mission at NORPAC Foods is to provide our farmer-owners with reliable access to the marketplace for their crops. We have been doing that since our inception in Stayton in 1924. More and more, we accomplish our mission by adding value to those commodity crops which increase their impact in our local economy.  We are proud to be a part of the Oregon agricultural community.

Food processors are continuously investing in new technology to improve quality and reduce costs. Electronic sorters such as this in Stayton utilize lasers, color cameras and sophisticated software to remove defects from the product flow.

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