Each year, NRDC recognizes sustainable food pioneers across the United States through the Growing Green Awards. OnEarth is publishing blog posts from this year’s four winners and two of the judges. All of the posts can be found here.

Shepherd’s Grain started with two traditional Pacific Northwest wheat growers. We raised commodity wheat and sold it by the bushel to the commodity market, where it was mixed with anonymous wheat from all over the U.S. and exported to countries along the Asian rim.

Back then, the market didn’t reward growers for quality or good stewardship. We grew wheat at the lowest cost possible. We handed it over to the market, and couldn’t track how the wheat was processed or where it ended up.

Gradually, research showed that diversified production and no-tillage growing were better for the health of the land. Bold farmers in the Pacific Northwest started taking up environmentally sound practices. These farmers were making a commitment of heart and mind, facing the economic risks that came with switching to no-till, direct seed production. They had to “burn the plow” and there was no going back.

It was obvious that these growers needed a system for transporting, processing, and marketing of food products where they would be rewarded for caring for the environment and producing high quality raw food products.

It was that vision that led to the development of Shepherd’s Grain.

My partner Fred Fleming and I knew that this new food system would require the producer and consumer to once more be reunited. Growers needed to talk to eaters, with both sides sharing values of nurturing health and the environment. This idea struck people as unique, even though our parents and grandparents had been doing exactly that – growing for and buying from people they knew – for decades. Growing up, we had a diversified farm, and what we couldn’t eat we sold to our neighbors. In today’s world, our neighbors are just further away.