By DEAN REA

For the Capital Press

Hands On Organics is an appropriate name for an agricultural enterprise that bases its seed production on rows rather than on acres.

It’s a wholesale business based in Oregon that grows and markets vegetable, flower, grain, legume and herb seed throughout the United States.

Alan Adesse heads up the enterprise headquartered near Eugene, Ore., and leases 8 cultivated acres at four locations where the seeds are grown.

Hands On Organics grew out of a companion company, Wild Botanicals, that sells plants for medical purposes.

Adesse credits his eventual interest in becoming a business owner to his work for such governmental agencies as the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, where he became acquainted with medicinal plants in the Northwest.

“I wasn’t a good government employee,” he said. “I wanted to be creative, to have control of my time, to get my work done.”

He acknowledged, however, that he learned a lot of things about working in the woods while a governmental employee, which ended in 1981 when the Young Adult Conservation Crops program was eliminated in Ashland, where he was a work coordinator.

As he cast about for work during the early 1980s, Adesse said he read a paper about how a person could make a living by collecting medicinal plants.

“I spent two years in the southern Oregon mountains locating the populations of various plants,” he said. “I started calling companies and selling plants during that era when interest in natural healing was growing.”

Meanwhile, Adesse acquired an associate arts degree in forest management and spent a year studying forestry at Oregon State University.

“That education provided the botanical knowledge that I have needed,” he said.

Now he has turned much of his attention to the seed business.

When organic farmers get together at Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project meetings, they often turn to Adesse when fava beans are discussed.

Adesse said he became interested in the bean 25 years ago because it is connected to his family roots in the Middle East, where falafels are a favorite bean-based food. Last year, he grew a half-acre of the beans and harvested them by spreading the dried stocks on a tarpaulin and driving over them with a tractor.

When speaking of crop harvest, small organic farmers often refer to yield per row feet, Adesse said. In his case, rows range between 90 and 125 feet long.

Two employees usually join him at two Eugene-area plots in the hands-on business of planting, growing and harvesting an ever-changing variety of seed.

The 60-year-old Adesse is optimistic about the future of organic agriculture and plans to continue diversifying rather than “putting all of my eggs in one basket.”

“Farming is a love-hate relationship, especially after you’ve done it for 30 years,” he said. “You wouldn’t do it unless you loved it because it demands so much of you physically, mentally, spiritually.”

Even though farming is challenging, he said, “Every year you get to create a new landscape.”

Hands On Organics

Owner: Alan Adesse

Cultivated acres: 8

Length of operation: 30 years

Crops: Vegetable, flower and herb seeds