Future of farming is rooting itself in Central Oregon

There’s a new farm in Central Oregon, and it’s a bit different from your standard homestead.

It’s called Around the Bend Farms. And for now, you’ll find it in a laboratory at OSU-Cascades.

Around the Bend Farms CEO Ben Marsh describes it like this: “It’s definitely not your archetypal farmer who is in a field, sweating in 95-degree weather with a big combine. Our combine is a computer or a micro-controller.”

Around the Bend Farms is a non-profit organization that’s partnered with OSU-Cascades to create a personal food computer.

“What that means is that the computer can tell this thing, ‘OK, I need you to turn on a light.’ And this thing goes ‘All right,’ and turns on a light,” Marsh said.

The farm is a sustainable “vertical farm” that after being programed with the correct grow recipe, runs on its own.

“We’re controlling the heating, the cooling, the air movement, the lighting, temperature,” Marsh said

The goal is to eventually build computer-run, sustainable, vertical farms inside shipping containers.

Lance Porter is an energy systems engineering graduate involved in the project. He thinks the computer farm will attract a different type of farmer.

“The newer generations really want to be more involved in where their food comes from, and especially involved in how it’s made and how it’s produced,” Porter said

Executive research associate Makena Whitaker said this unique kind of farming will hopefully keep people coming back.

“It’s more fun if you make farming fun and interesting. People will stick around,” Whitaker said.

Around the Bend Farms also hopes to create a sense of community around growing food.

“Food was always a family endeavor and a community-based endeavor, and we want to kind of get back to that,” Marsh said.

Around the Bend Farms is in its early stages of development, but already they’ve tripled the size of their crop and hope to have a shipping container farm in Bend within two years.

For more information on the farm, you can visit the website at this link: https://www.aroundthebendfarms.org/