Leadership Quote by Greg Walden

Walden’s sentence is the politician’s tightrope walk: nod to insurgent, locally branded organic agriculture while refusing to declare war on the industrial system that still moves most fruit. The key word is “now,” which casts the shift as both timely and inevitable, a trend he’s simply recognizing rather than causing. That posture matters. It lets him sound responsive to a cultural moment - organics, farmers markets, direct-to-consumer - without committing to the regulatory or antitrust fights that would actually restructure food supply chains.

The phrasing is drenched in softeners. “Many” does a lot of work: enough people to signal momentum, not enough to claim transformation. “Taking it upon themselves” frames growers as self-reliant entrepreneurs, a Republican-friendly story of individual initiative that sidesteps the less romantic drivers (thin margins, consolidation, and the bargaining power of processors and retailers). Even “as opposed to necessarily” is cautious, offering the appearance of choice while avoiding the implication that farmers are forced into big processing.

Then comes the escape hatch: “obviously, the bulk of the fruit still is dealt with that way.” “Obviously” preempts critique by treating the dominance of processors as common sense, even natural - not the result of policy, subsidies, infrastructure, and concentrated corporate leverage. The subtext is reassurance to two audiences at once: to small growers, he signals he sees them; to big agribusiness, he signals continuity. It’s less a manifesto than a calibrated acknowledgment of change, designed to flatter the idea of local control while keeping the gravitational center firmly with the status quo.