The 2008 Andrus Leadership Awards for Sustainability and Conservation were presented to MaryJane Butters and the 2007 Oregon Business Plan Steering Committee at the Sustainable Northwest Auction and Awards Gala on March 14th at the Portland Art Museum. We were thrilled to be joined by the honorable Cecil D. Andrus to present the awards. Learn more.

About the 2008 Andrus Awards Winners

MaryJane Butters, MaryJanesFarm (Moscow, Idaho)

MaryJane Butters on her farm in Moscow, Idaho

MaryJane Butters has always been a pioneer. She worked as the first female carpenter at Hill Air Force Base in Clearfield, Utah; spent summers watching for fires from a mountaintop lookout near Weippe, Idaho; worked in the Uinta Mountains of Utah as one of the first women wilderness rangers in the United States; and in 1976 became the first woman station guard at the Moose Creek Ranger Station, the most remote Forest Service district in the continental U.S. Along the way, she built fences in the Tetons, herded cows near Hell’s Canyon, and raised a market garden in White Bird, Idaho.

After moving to her Moscow, Idaho, farm in 1986, she founded a regional environmental group still thriving today, (www.pcei.org). After four years, she resigned as its director to develop new products for locally grown organic beans that would provide a secure market for farmers transitioning to sustainable production.  She began in 1990 with an easily prepared organic falafel mix. Now her organic enterprise, which was immortalized in the National Geographic magazine, has been featured in almost every major magazine and newspaper in the country. She also sponsors an organic farm apprentice program called Pay Dirt Farm School and runs a wall tent B&B that was featured in the New York Times Style Magazine. Her “everyday organic” lifestyle magazine, MaryJanesFarm, is available nationwide and she is the author of two Random House books, MaryJane’s Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook-- for the Farmgirl in All of Us and MaryJane’s Stitching Room--47 Farmgirl Handiwork Projects. Her upcoming book MaryJane’s Outpost--Unleashing Your Inner Wild, will go on sale June 2008.

From her farm, she sells 60 different organic prepared foods and shares the message of simple organic living with readers of her magazine, syndicated newspaper column, and websites (www.maryjanesfarm.org and www.maryjanesoutpost.org). In addition, she designs and sells her own line of organic linens in close to 300 department stores and is the creator of Project F.A.R.M. (First-class American Rural Made), an organization that employs rural women who sew totes, quilts, dolls, and more. She is also the owner of the historic Barron Flour Mill in Oakesdale, Washington. 

Wilderness ranger, environmental activist, and modern-day organic farmer, MaryJane Butters has worn many hats (and aprons) in her day, but none more proudly than that of the recipient of the Cecil D. Andrus Leadership Award for 2008.

2007 Oregon Business Plan Steering Committee

Business Plan Chair Steve Pratt Addresses a crowd at the Oregon Leadership Summit

Since 2002, the Oregon Business Plan has provided the strategic framework for Oregon's business and elected leaders, working together to build a stronger, more competitive state economy.

Each year the Business Plan is revisited at the Annual Leadership Summit.  At the Fourth Annual Summit in 2006, competitiveness guru and Harvard Business School Professor Dr. Michael Porter urged the Steering Committee to move beyond “mitigating Oregon’s weaknesses” and begin to identify a unique value proposition for the Oregon economy. He suggested that Oregon should find ways to translate its reputation for sustainability into a key competitive advantage.

Since that time, the Business Plan has evolved to reflect and focus Oregon’s emerging competitive advantage in green products and services, business process, public policy and expertise.  

The Steering Committee received strong support from the community for weaving sustainability into the Business Plan, and spent 2007 conducting interviews with thought leaders and convening focus groups of “green” industries from wood products to solar energy to discover industry needs and to find big ideas to advance the sustainability strategy. The following is from the 2007 Oregon Business Plan:

As entrepreneurs, consumers and citizens, the Steering Committee found that Oregon is ahead of the curve. An interlocking and reinforcing set of attitudes, policies, experience, and knowledge put the state farther along the path of figuring out how to integrate sustainability into our way of life. A widespread interest in and support for sustainability produces the kind of shared insights and mutually reinforcing actions that make this, more than any other place in the nation, and more than most places in the world, a hotbed of innovation in a wide range of sustainable practices.

None of this is to say that Oregon plans, or expects to have a monopoly on sustainable practices and businesses. But the burgeoning market for green products and services - and the likely regulation that will continue to expand those markets - will offer plenty of opportunities for business and job creation.

2007 Oregon Business Plan Steering Committee Members

Chair: Steve Pratt, ESCO Corporation
Past Chair:  Allen Alley
Eric Blackledge, Blackledge Furniture
Sam Brooks, S. Brooks & Associates (PBA Chair)
David Chen, Equilibrium Capital Group LLP (Oregon Innovation Council Chair)
Christine Chin-Ryan, Synergy Consulting (Former Governor's Small Business Council Chair)
Bob DeKoning, Routeware, Inc. (AeA Oregon Council Vice-Chair)
Kirby Dyess, Austin Capital Management (Board of Higher Education Chair)
Ben Fetherston, Clark, Lindauer, Fetherston LLP; (AOI Chair)
Nick Konidaris, Electro Scientific Industries, Inc. (ETIC Representative)
Randolph L. Miller, The Moore Company (At-large member)
Wade Mosby, The Collins Companies (OBA Chair)
Mike Nelson, Nelson Real Estate (Oregon Transportation Commission Vice-Chair)
Nancy Tait, Tait and Associates (At-large member)
William Thorndike, Jr, Medford Fabrication (OBC Chair)
Wally Van Valkenburg, Stoel Rives LLP (Oregon Economic and Community Development Commission Chair)
Brett Wilcox, Summit Power Alternative Resources (At-large member)
Bob Repine, Oregon Economic and Community Development Department; Ex-Officio Member