Feeding the World

December 27, 2023

Posted in:

Community Impact

We’re proud to have been carefully tending crops and livestock in the Boardman community for the last 24 years. While the world looks a little different after all this time, one important thing has remained the same, producing high-quality products to feed the world is at the heart of what we do.

Today, thanks to technological advances, farmers are able to feed more people on less land with fewer resources. Less fertilizer, less water, and less energy is needed to produce the same amount of food. In the 1960s, a US farmer fed 25 people on average, today that number is closer to 166, incredible growth even at farms that produce far less than Threemile, where we feed more than 16 million people every year.

Farming along the Columbia River allows us to grow a variety of crops, more than in other parts of the United States. At Threemile, we grow about eight different crops each year. Some crops go into the global food supply, while others, like corn and triticale (a wheat-like plant) feed our dairy cows. Each year we plant around 50,000 acres of crops, both conventional and organic.

We recently crunched the numbers and learned that products we grow at Threemile can satisfy about 16.7 million people’s average yearly consumption of cheese and vegetables.

The carrots we grow are processed for a variety of purposes – from being bagged or juiced to transformed into baby carrots. Our farm produces enough carrots to meet the yearly cravings of 3.26 million individuals!
At Threemile, our onion crop gets harvested and transformed into dehydrated onions. Our farm yields enough onions to satisfy the annual onion appetites of 3.6 million people!
Our blueberry crop is both hand and machine picked in the summer, producing delicious fresh and frozen blueberries. The farm yields enough blueberries to fulfill the yearly blueberry cravings of a whopping 480,000 people!
At Threemile, our squash is destined to be transformed into delicious pumpkin pie filling. Our farm produces enough squash to fulfill the yearly squash cravings of 1.4 million people.
At Threemile, our potatoes are harvested for delicious crispy french fries and other frozen potato products like wedges, hashbrowns, and tater tots. Our farm yields enough potatoes to meet the yearly potato cravings of 5.4 million people.
At Threemile, the wheat we produce is used mostly for export and made into Asian noodles, crackers, pastries. The wheat we grow can satisfy 232,835 people’s wheat flour use annually.
The milk we produce heads to the local processing plant where it is turned into yummy cheddar cheese. At Threemile, we produce enough milk to satisfy 2.3 million people’s yearly cheese cravings.