Oregon Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act

EIGHTY-THIRD OREGON LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 2025 Regular Session

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INITIATED MEASURE ____

Be It Enacted by the People of the State of Oregon:

CONCERNING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A STATE PROGRAM FOR FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE TO ENSURE THE MATERIAL SECURITY OF ALL OREGON RESIDENTS, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, AMENDING ORS CHAPTERS 561 AND 285A, MAKING APPROPRIATIONS, AND PROVIDING EFFECTIVE DATES.

A BILL FOR AN ACT

LONG TITLE

AN ACT CONCERNING THE CREATION OF THE OREGON FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, ESTABLISHING THE OREGON FOOD ASSURANCE PROGRAM BY ADDING SECTIONS TO ORS CHAPTER 561 (AGRICULTURE GENERALLY); CREATING THE OREGON ESSENTIAL GOODS PROGRAM BY ADDING SECTIONS TO ORS CHAPTER 285A (ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT); MAKING APPROPRIATIONS; AND PROVIDING FOR EFFECTIVE DATES AND IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULES.

LEGISLATIVE ROUTING NOTE

Oregon invented the modern citizen initiative. In 1902, the Oregon System, spearheaded by William S. U'Ren and the Direct Legislation League, established the initiative and referendum process that every other initiative state subsequently copied. Article IV, Section 1 of the Oregon Constitution reserves to the people the power to propose laws and amendments by initiative petition. Oregon was the first state in the nation to adopt this mechanism of direct democracy.

FILING: An initiated statute is filed with the Oregon Secretary of State pursuant to ORS 250.045. The signature requirement for statewide initiated statutes is six percent (6%) of the total votes cast for the office of Governor at the most recent gubernatorial general election. Based on the November 8, 2022 general election, in which approximately 1,952,886 votes were cast for the office of Governor (Secretary of State, Official Abstract of Votes, 2022 General Election), the current signature requirement for statutory initiatives is approximately 117,173 valid signatures.

This proposal is filed as a statutory initiative. Chief petitioners must file a prospective petition with the Secretary of State, whereupon the Attorney General prepares a draft ballot title. The ballot title is reviewed and certified by the Secretary of State. Signature sheets must be filed no later than four months before the general election at which the measure is to be voted upon (ORS 250.052, 250.105).

Oregon imposes no geographic distribution requirement for initiative signatures. There is no single-subject rule for statutory initiatives. The collection window is two years from the date the prospective petition is approved for circulation.

Alternatively, this bill may be introduced through the Oregon Legislative Assembly by any member of the Senate or House of Representatives.

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENT: Upon introduction, this bill would likely be assigned to the Senate Committee on Natural Resources or the House Committee on Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources and Water. Because the bill carries a budgetary appropriation, it may also be referred to the Joint Committee on Ways and Means.

FISCAL NOTE: The Legislative Fiscal Office and Legislative Revenue Office prepare fiscal impact statements for all measures with budgetary impact per Oregon Legislative Assembly rules.

FLOOR VOTE: Simple majority in each chamber (16 of 30 Senators; 31 of 60 Representatives). Governor's signature or veto override (two-thirds of each chamber).

SESSION: The 83rd Oregon Legislative Assembly (2025). Oregon's legislative session convenes on the Monday nearest January 13 in odd-numbered years. Regular sessions in odd-numbered years are limited to 160 calendar days; even-year sessions to 35 calendar days.

HISTORY: A version of this proposal was first developed in 2016 through the Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), the first non-partisan political trade school in the United States, registered with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Division of Private Occupational Schools. The original proposal was written for Colorado and sidelined during the 2016-2017 legislative cycle. The present version adapts the framework to Oregon, incorporating updated research from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026), a ten-paper academic work providing the evidentiary foundation for this legislation.

OREGON DISTINCTION: Oregon has no general sales tax. It is one of only five states with no general sales tax (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon). Oregonians have repeatedly rejected sales tax proposals at the ballot box, most recently in 1993. Yet every Oregonian pays a 75.7 percent private markup on every grocery purchase, a hidden consumption charge collected by corporations, not the state, that exceeds any sales tax ever proposed. Oregon voters hold that consumption should not be taxed. This Act confronts the markup that functions as a private charge Oregonians never voted for.

LEGISLATIVE DECLARATION

Be It Enacted by the People of the State of Oregon:

SECTION 1. Legislative findings and declaration.

(1) The people of Oregon hereby find, determine, and declare that:

FINDINGS RELATING TO THE STRUCTURAL IMPERATIVE FOR STATE ACTION:

(a0) Twenty-two federal government shutdowns have occurred since 1976, including a forty-three-day shutdown in 2025, the longest in United States history, which furloughed approximately 670,000 federal employees. The House of Representatives has been frozen at 435 members since 1929; 762,000 constituents per representative, the worst ratio in the OECD. Federal H.R. 1 (2025) shifted SNAP administrative costs from fifty percent to seventy-five percent state share. The federal machine is structurally overloaded (Cooper, Paper VII, 2026). This state has the authority to act under its own legislative power without awaiting federal action that structural overload prevents;

(a0a) Functioning multi-executive models exist and are invisible to the population most in need of them. The Swiss Federal Council has operated a seven-member collegial executive with a rotating one-year presidency since 1848, one hundred seventy-eight years, with citizen trust above eighty percent. The Roman Republic ran dual consuls for 482 years. A government too small for the job it is asked to do is a design problem, not a partisan one, and the states need not wait for the federal design to be corrected before acting within their own authority;

(a2) UNIVERSE 25 REBUTTAL. The Calhoun mouse experiment ("Universe 25") is frequently invoked against any abundance-distribution proposal. The argument is a misread. Calhoun's mice collapsed not because they had abundance, but because abundance arrived without institutional infrastructure: food, water, nesting material, and space, with no education, no governance, no intergenerational transmission, no civic role. Abundance of resources plus abundance of ease produces Universe 25. Abundance of resources plus structured civic obligation produces the Augustus annona (400 years), the Defense Commissary (159 years), and the Mabu Co settlement (800 years). The Roman grain dole was distributed to citizens who had civic obligations: military service, public works, jury duty, voting. The commissary is distributed to military families inside an institution that defines daily structure. The institutional scaffolding is what distinguishes sustainable abundance from collapse. Camp Rilea (the Oregon Army National Guard's primary training installation) operates this template on Oregon soil today, and the Bonneville Power Administration, federally chartered in 1937, has delivered at-cost hydropower across the Pacific Northwest for eighty-eight years as a parallel institutional-scaffolding precedent;

(a1) DENIAL IS NO LONGER NEUTRAL. Inaction by a legislature possessing the authority, capacity, and documented need to act constitutes active harm. The burden rests on denial;

FINDINGS RELATING TO FOOD AND COMMODITY INSECURITY:

(a) According to the United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, 13 percent of Oregon households experienced food insecurity in the 2022-2024 period. The Food Research and Action Center reports that 771,719 Oregonians received SNAP benefits in fiscal year 2024, with total SNAP expenditures of approximately $1.60 billion (FRAC, "SNAP State Fact Sheet: Oregon," 2025). Oregon Food Bank's network recorded 2.5 million visits to food assistance sites in 2024, a 31 percent increase over the prior year. Approximately one in eight Oregonians and one in five Oregon children experience food insecurity;

(b) Oregon's agricultural sector generates approximately $6.4 billion in annual cash receipts from farm marketings (USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2024 Oregon Agricultural Statistics). Oregon produces approximately 99 percent of the nation's hazelnuts, is a leading producer of Christmas trees and grass seed, and maintains significant production in berries, wine grapes, wheat, potatoes, nursery and greenhouse products, dairy, and cattle. Oregon's productive capacity exceeds its population's food requirements. Food insecurity in Oregon is a distribution problem, not a production problem;

(c) The United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service Food Dollar Series establishes that the farm share of the United States food dollar is 24.3 cents, with the remaining 75.7 cents allocated to processing, transportation, wholesale, retail, and food service markup. Total United States food-at-home spending is approximately $1.09 trillion; production cost is approximately $213 to $327 billion. The difference of approximately $496 billion represents markup above production cost;

(d) Oregon has no general sales tax. Oregon is one of only five states that does not levy a general sales tax on consumer goods. Oregon voters have repeatedly rejected sales tax proposals at the ballot box. Yet every Oregonian pays a 75.7 percent private markup on every grocery purchase, a consumption charge collected by corporations, not by the state. This markup exceeds any sales tax rate ever proposed in Oregon. Oregon voters who rejected a government sales tax are paying a private markup three times larger, with none of the proceeds funding public services. The people of Oregon did not vote for this markup. The people of Oregon have the right to eliminate it;

(e) The cost to close the food insecurity gap for all 47.9 million food-insecure Americans is approximately $32 billion, which represents 6.5 percent of the $496 billion markup between production cost and retail price (Cooper, "The Mathematics of Abundance," 2025);

(f) The United States military commissary system, established by the Military Commissary Act of 1867 and now codified at 10 U.S.C. Section 2484, has operated at-cost food distribution continuously for one hundred fifty-nine (159) years, delivering savings of 17 to 25 percent below civilian retail prices within the continental United States and up to 64 percent at overseas locations to approximately 2.8 million authorized users through 236 stores worldwide. This program is funded by all federal taxpayers but available only to military families and retirees, establishing a proven precedent for government-operated at-cost food distribution;

(g) The geographer Albrecht Penck calculated in 1925 that Earth's carrying capacity was eight billion people using 1920s agricultural technology. The current world population is approximately eight billion. Since agricultural technology has advanced substantially beyond 1920s capacity, scarcity of food is not a physical constraint but a distribution and policy constraint (Penck, 1925; Cohen, "How Many People Can the Earth Support?," 1995);

(h) The United States has approximately 293,000 manufacturing facilities. Studies indicate that 10,000 to 15,000 facilities would suffice for universal material abundance, representing 19.5 to 29.3 times overcapacity, with United States manufacturing currently operating at approximately 77 percent capacity utilization, 23 percent idle due to demand constraints, not supply limitations (Federal Reserve; Cooper, "The Mathematics of Abundance," 2025);

(i) In 2024, 7,325 retail store locations closed in the United States (Coresight Research; Cooper, "Stolen Futures," 2025), with 45 retail bankruptcies in 2024 representing an 80 percent increase over 2023, while 54 million Americans live in food deserts and 15,000 additional store closures are projected for 2025. The commercial retail grocery model is contracting as a distribution system. Rural Oregon, east of the Cascades, the southern coast, and the timber communities of Klamath Falls, Roseburg, Coos Bay, and Grants Pass, is a food desert;

(j) The economist John Kenneth Galbraith described in "The Affluent Society" (1958) the condition of "private opulence and public squalor," the coexistence of enormous private productive capacity with inadequate public provision of basic needs. In Oregon, this condition is visible on Interstate 5: Portland's food culture of farm-to-table restaurants, food carts, and Willamette Valley wine coexists with food deserts in Klamath Falls, closed timber mills in Roseburg, and a methamphetamine crisis in Grants Pass. The same state, the same governor, the same laws, different centuries;

(k) The economist Thorstein Veblen documented in "The Engineers and the Price System" (1921) the deliberate restriction of production capacity by business interests to maintain prices above production cost, a practice he termed the "conscious withdrawal of efficiency." Oregon's timber industry ran Veblen's analysis in real time: federal logging restrictions did not stop demand for timber; they redirected supply to imports while Oregon mill workers lost their livelihoods. Productive capacity was politically idled while the workers absorbed the cost. What the spotted owl debate framed as environment versus jobs was, in Veblen's analysis, the withdrawal of productive capacity with the human cost externalized to rural communities;

(l) The designer and systems theorist Jacque Fresco proposed in "Designing the Future" (2007) a resource library model with three distribution tiers: constant-need goods such as food, semi-permanent goods such as clothing, and permanent goods. Currency survives for luxury and custom goods. The Essential Goods Program established in this Act applies the semi-permanent tier of that model to clothing, household supplies, and tools at below-retail pricing;

FINDINGS RELATING TO HISTORICAL AND BIOLOGICAL PRECEDENT:

(l1) Augustus ran the annona civica for 200,000 Romans, grain as infrastructure, the same category as roads. Suetonius records him ordering the knight Pinarius stabbed at a public assembly for taking notes. Even a man who would have a citizen killed for taking notes in the wrong room understood that hungry citizens are broken infrastructure, and he fed his city. The annona ran over 400 years. Nerva added child nutrition, recorded on bronze at Veleia (CIL XI 1147) that can still be visited. At Mabu Co in Tibet, sedentary abundance was achieved 4,400 years ago at 14,587 feet with fishing hooks (Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2024). The Azolla Event proved one fern species could edit Earth's atmosphere over 800,000 years (Brinkhuis et al., Nature 441, 2006). The commissary has run 159 years. The annona ran 400. Biology works across geologic time. Three records converge: a 159-year commissary statute, 400 years of annona archaeology, and 49 million years of biological geology. Oregon's Willamette Valley is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. The food exists;

(l2) This Act does not place Oregon agriculture under government ownership. Willamette Valley farms stay private. Tillamook dairy stays private. Fishing fleets stay private. The state purchases at production cost plus a five percent surcharge, the same model the commissary has used since 1867 without acquiring a single farm. This is not the municipal-ownership model that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani proposed for city-owned grocery stores (the La Marqueta model); the state does not own the farms, the trucks, or the processors, it operates a retail point at cost. Costco demonstrates the private-sector form of the same discipline: a membership wholesaler that prices near cost. Currency survives for everything above the base list. The bill is a floor, not a ceiling;

(l3) The retail contraction and autonomous freight are already eliminating distribution jobs. Aurora runs driverless freight between Dallas and Houston today. More than 15,000 store closures are projected for 2025. Fred Meyer closures have already reached rural Oregon. This bill does not cause that displacement; it catches the displaced worker by feeding that worker at cost regardless of employment status. The commissary employs truckers. At-cost distribution removes the markup, not the labor. Adam Smith warned in 1776 about exactly this worker, the one whose whole life is spent performing a few simple operations;

FINDINGS RELATING TO TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY:

(m) Oregon is home to nine (9) federally recognized tribal nations: the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, the Burns Paiute Tribe, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, the Coquille Indian Tribe, and the Klamath Tribes. Oregon's tribal termination era of the 1950s and 1960s stripped federal recognition and lands from multiple Oregon tribes, including the Klamath Tribes, the Grand Ronde, and the Siletz, who fought for decades to achieve restoration. The people of Oregon have a particular obligation to ensure that state programs honor tribal sovereignty and are implemented in genuine partnership with, not imposition upon, Oregon's tribal nations;

FINDINGS RELATING TO OREGON FISCAL CAPACITY:

(n) Oregon's biennial budget for 2025-27 is approximately $37.3 billion General Fund and $1.8 billion Lottery Funds, a combined General Fund and Lottery Fund total of approximately $39.1 billion for the biennium, approximately $19.55 billion per year (Oregon Legislative Fiscal Office, 2025-27 Budget Highlights). Oregon currently spends approximately $1.60 billion annually on SNAP benefits distributed through commercial retailers, where 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays for markup, not food production;

FINDINGS RELATING TO PUBLIC HEALTH: WHY THIS ACT REACHES BEYOND BARE SURVIVAL:

(o) Sir Michael Marmot's Whitehall Studies, commencing in 1967 and continuing to the present with 10,308 subjects, established that among British civil servants with universal healthcare, full employment, and no absolute poverty, the lowest employment grade experienced three times the mortality rate of the highest grade. Standard risk factors, smoking, cholesterol, and blood pressure, explained less than forty percent of the mortality gradient. The hierarchy itself, independent of absolute material deprivation, produces lethal health outcomes;

(p) Dr. Robert Sapolsky's thirty-year study of wild baboon populations in the Serengeti demonstrated that subordinate social position produces chronically elevated cortisol, atherosclerosis, immune suppression, and cognitive impairment. When a tuberculosis outbreak eliminated the most aggressive males from a troop, hierarchy collapsed, and the surviving subordinates' cortisol levels normalized, demonstrating that the health damage was caused by the hierarchy, not by inherent individual biology (Sapolsky, "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers," 1994; "Behave," 2017);

(q) Dr. Carol Shively's thirty-year study of female macaques at Wake Forest University demonstrated that subordinate social status directly causes visceral fat accumulation, atherosclerosis, and coronary artery disease, with cingulate cortex serotonin identified as the neurological nexus linking depression to cardiovascular disease (Shively, 2009; 2014);

(r) Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, demonstrated that chronic psychological stress shortens telomeres, the protective caps on chromosomal DNA, accelerating cellular aging. Caregivers of chronically ill children had measurably shorter telomeres proportional to years of stress. Poverty and subordination age human beings at the molecular level (Blackburn and Epel, "The Telomere Effect," 2017);

(s) These findings collectively establish that poverty and social hierarchy are not merely economic conditions but medical conditions with documented physiological pathways. The gap is the gradient, not the deprivation alone. Treating sickness downstream of an untreated gradient is documented to fail across four research programs, six decades, and three species. Hierarchy itself kills. A food and commodity assurance program that lifts residents off the bottom of the gradient is therefore a public health intervention with quantifiable healthcare cost reduction potential, not a charity;

(t) Bowles and Gintis named the right disease at the wrong site. Observing that stratification runs through the schools, they concluded the schools were its engine. Stratification is the ocean, not the cup. The gradient is the disease, and the gradient runs through every institution, housing, employment, food access, and health care alike. Targeting any single institution misses the structural mechanism. A food program does not cure stratification; it removes one of the gradient's sharpest edges, the edge that decides who eats;

(u) Oregon was for decades a leading lumber-producing state. The timber industry was the economic backbone of rural Oregon: Klamath Falls, Roseburg, Coos Bay, Grants Pass, and communities throughout the Cascades and the southern coast. Federal logging restrictions beginning in the 1990s, driven by the spotted owl listing under the Endangered Species Act, resulted in mill closures across rural Oregon. What the auto industry collapse was to Michigan and the steel industry collapse was to Ohio, the timber collapse was to Oregon;

(v) The health consequences of Oregon's timber collapse follow the same Marmot, Sapolsky, and Blackburn pathway documented in the Whitehall Studies: status loss produces chronically elevated cortisol, which produces atherosclerosis, immune suppression, shortened telomeres, and substance use as a biological coping mechanism. Methamphetamine in rural Oregon is the opioid crisis with a different molecule, the same cause and the same biology. The hierarchy injured Oregon's timber workers by removing their economic position;

(w) Oregon has among the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness in the United States. The 2024 Point-in-Time count recorded approximately 17,912 people experiencing sheltered or unsheltered homelessness statewide (Portland State University, Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative, 2024). A majority of Oregon's homeless population is unsheltered. Chronic homelessness produces cortisol levels comparable to combat veterans, and Blackburn's telomere research demonstrates that years of unsheltered living age people at the cellular level by decades. Portland's tent encampments are the gradient made visible on sidewalks. Immediate at-cost food access for all persons regardless of housing status is one concrete edge of the gradient this Act removes;

(2) The people of Oregon further find that the food and commodity assurance program established in this Act is a public health intervention. The findings relating to public health set out above establish that hierarchy and poverty inflict measurable physiological damage with documented pathways. Feeding people at cost is not charity. It is the documented treatment for a documented medical gradient, and it is the reason this Act reaches beyond bare survival. Denial is no longer neutral.

(3) Oregon gave America the initiative process in 1902. One hundred and twenty-four years later, this Act asks Oregonians to use it for what it was built for.

OREGON FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE

SECTION 2. Sections 3 through 12 of this act are added to and made a part of ORS Chapter 561 (Agriculture Generally).

SECTION 3. Short title.

Sections 3 through 12 of this act shall be known and may be cited as the "Oregon Food Assurance Act."

SECTION 4. Definitions.

As used in sections 3 through 12 of this act, unless the context otherwise requires:

(1) "At-cost pricing" means the price of a food product calculated as the sum of the direct production cost paid to the producer or supplier plus a facility surcharge not to exceed five percent (5%) of the production cost, with no additional profit margin, markup, or marketing cost applied.

(2) "Department" means the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

(3) "Director" means the Director of the Department of Agriculture.

(4) "Food assurance center" means a state-operated facility established under this section for the purpose of distributing food products to Oregon residents at at-cost pricing.

(5) "Facility surcharge" means a charge not to exceed five percent (5%) of the production cost of a food product, applied to cover the operational costs of a food assurance center, including but not limited to facility maintenance, labor, utilities, and transportation.

(6) "Production cost" means the cost of producing a food product as determined by the department based on wholesale acquisition price from producers, cooperatives, or the most proximate point in the supply chain to the point of original production.

SECTION 5. Oregon food assurance program: creation and purpose.

(1) There is hereby created in the Department of Agriculture the Oregon food assurance program.

(2) The purpose of the program is to establish state-operated food distribution centers where all Oregon residents may purchase the full range of grocery products at at-cost pricing, modeled on the United States military commissary system as authorized by 10 U.S.C. Section 2484 and as operated by the Defense Commissary Agency continuously since 1867.

(3) The no-sales-tax argument: Oregon voters rejected government taxation of consumption. But every Oregonian pays a 75.7 percent private markup on grocery purchases, a consumption charge collected by corporations, not the state. A government sales tax would at least fund public services. This markup funds corporate marketing budgets. The food assurance program eliminates the markup by purchasing directly from Oregon producers and distributing at production cost plus a 5 percent facility surcharge.

(4) The program shall:

(a) Establish and operate food assurance centers throughout the state of Oregon;

(b) Purchase food products directly from Oregon producers, cooperatives, and wholesale suppliers at or near production cost;

(c) Sell food products to Oregon residents at at-cost pricing as defined in section 4 of this act;

(d) Prioritize procurement from Oregon farms and ranches to the maximum extent practicable, drawing on Oregon's $6.4 billion agricultural sector including hazelnuts, berries, grass seed, nursery products, wheat, potatoes, dairy, and cattle;

(e) Accept all forms of payment including but not limited to cash, electronic benefit transfer (EBT), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) vouchers;

(f) Operate without profit motive, with all revenue above operational costs reinvested in program expansion.

SECTION 6. Pilot food assurance centers: locations and timeline.

(1) Within two (2) years of the effective date of this section, the department shall establish not fewer than five (5) pilot food assurance centers in the following regions:

(a) Two (2) centers in the Portland metropolitan area (Multnomah, Washington, or Clackamas counties);

(b) One (1) center in the Salem-Keizer metropolitan area (Marion County);

(c) One (1) center in the Eugene-Springfield metropolitan area (Lane County);

(d) One (1) center in a rural timber community in southern or eastern Oregon, including but not limited to Klamath Falls, Roseburg, Coos Bay, Grants Pass, or Bend.

(2) Within five (5) years of the effective date of this section, the department shall expand the program to not fewer than twenty (20) food assurance centers statewide, with at least one center in each congressional district and at least five (5) centers serving rural communities as defined by the department.

(3) The department shall prioritize locations with the highest rates of food insecurity, the greatest distances to existing grocery retail, and the largest populations residing in food deserts, with particular attention to Oregon's rural timber communities where mill closures have eliminated both employment and commercial infrastructure.

(4) The department shall consult with Oregon's nine federally recognized tribal nations regarding the siting and operation of food assurance centers on or near tribal lands, and shall enter into partnership agreements with any tribe that elects to co-operate or independently operate a food assurance center serving tribal members and surrounding communities.

SECTION 7. Oregon food assurance fund: creation.

(1) There is hereby created in the State Treasury the Oregon food assurance fund, separate and distinct from the General Fund.

(2) The fund shall consist of:

(a) Appropriations made by the Legislative Assembly;

(b) Revenue from facility surcharges collected pursuant to sections 3 through 12 of this act;

(c) Federal grants and matching funds;

(d) Gifts, donations, and grants from any source.

(3) Moneys in the fund are continuously appropriated to the department for the purposes of sections 3 through 12 of this act.

SECTION 8. Oregon-first procurement.

(1) Within three (3) years of the effective date of this section, not less than fifty percent (50%) of all food products sold through food assurance centers shall be sourced from Oregon producers.

(2) Within five (5) years of the effective date of this section, the Oregon-sourced share shall increase to not less than seventy percent (70%).

(3) The department shall establish procurement partnerships with Oregon State University Extension Service, local farmers' markets, and agricultural cooperatives to facilitate direct procurement from Oregon producers.

SECTION 9. Oregon essential goods program: creation.

(1) There is hereby created in the Oregon Business Development Department (ORS Chapter 285A) the Oregon essential goods program.

(2) The program shall produce and distribute clothing, household supplies, hygiene products, tools, educational materials, and other essential goods at below-retail pricing through manufacturing partnerships and direct procurement, applying the at-cost commissary discipline of section 4 of this act to commodity goods.

(3) Essential goods shall be distributed through food assurance centers or dedicated essential goods facilities as determined by the Oregon Business Development Department.

(4) The program shall prioritize Oregon-manufactured goods and shall partner with Oregon community colleges and workforce training programs to develop manufacturing capacity.

SECTION 10. Tribal food sovereignty provisions.

(1) Each of Oregon's nine federally recognized tribal nations shall be invited to participate in the food assurance program as a sovereign partner, not as a subordinate recipient.

(2) Tribal nations may:

(a) Co-operate food assurance centers on tribal lands with state support and funding;

(b) Independently operate food assurance centers serving tribal members and surrounding communities, with state procurement and supply chain access;

(c) Integrate traditional food systems, including but not limited to salmon, roots, berries, and game, into the food assurance program;

(d) Designate tribal representatives to sit on the food assurance program advisory board with voting authority.

(3) No provision of this act shall be construed to diminish, abrogate, or supersede the sovereign rights of any federally recognized tribal nation in Oregon. Oregon's tribal termination history, the legal dissolution and forced restoration of multiple Oregon tribes in the 1950s and 1960s, requires that this program be implemented in genuine partnership with, not imposition upon, tribal communities.

SECTION 11. Annual reporting.

(1) Beginning one (1) year after the first food assurance center opens, the department shall submit an annual report to the Legislative Assembly containing:

(a) Total food distributed and number of residents served;

(b) Average savings compared to retail grocery pricing;

(c) Oregon-sourced procurement percentage;

(d) Operational costs and facility surcharge revenue;

(e) Food insecurity rate changes in communities served;

(f) Tribal participation and partnership status.

SECTION 12. Sunset and review.

Sections 3 through 12 of this act are subject to review by the Legislative Assembly during the 2033 regular session. This section does not repeal sections 3 through 12 of this act.

GENERAL PROVISIONS

SECTION 13. Appropriation.

(1) There is hereby appropriated from the General Fund to the following state agencies for the 2027-29 biennium:

Department of Agriculture (food assurance): $100,000,000 Oregon Business Development Department (essential goods): $40,000,000 TOTAL: $140,000,000

(2) This biennial total of $140,000,000 represents approximately 0.38 percent of Oregon's $37.3 billion General Fund for the 2025-27 biennium [SOURCE: Oregon Legislative Fiscal Office, 2025-27 Budget Highlights].

(3) Context: Oregon currently spends approximately $1.60 billion annually, $3.20 billion biennially, on SNAP benefits distributed through commercial retailers [SOURCE: FRAC, SNAP State Fact Sheet: Oregon, 2025]. At-cost pricing delivers substantially more food value per benefit dollar. The food assurance program is designed to approach operational self-sufficiency through facility surcharge revenue as volume scales.

THE FOOD PROGRAM TARGET. The at-cost food assurance program established in this Act, serving Oregon's population of 4,281,848 residents [SOURCE: World Population Review 2026, citing U.S. Census Bureau], reaches a full per-resident baseline at approximately $309 per person per year (Table 2, applied because Oregon's per-capita General Fund and Lottery spend of approximately $4,565 places it below the Table 1 threshold). The target is $309 x 4,281,848 = approximately $1.32 billion per year. Against Oregon's annualized General Fund and Lottery budget of approximately $19.55 billion, this represents approximately 6.8 percent of annual spending. The Table 1 baseline of $609 per person per year, approximately $2.61 billion or 13.3 percent of annual spending, is retained as the program's expansion goal as facility surcharge revenue and Oregon-first procurement mature.

THE FISCAL CONVERGENCE. The arithmetic says ending the gap costs a single-digit percentage of the markup the state already pays. The operational template has run for one hundred fifty-nine years inside the same federal apparatus the state already funds. Oregon is not asked to attempt something untested. Oregon is asked to deliver to its own residents what its veterans have received since 1867.

THE FEDERAL SNAP COST-SHIFT. Federal H.R. 1 (2025) increased the state share of SNAP administrative costs from fifty percent to seventy-five percent, effective October 1, 2026 [SOURCE: H.R. 1, 2025]. This state currently routes SNAP benefits through commercial retailers where 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays for markup instead of food. At at-cost routing through the food assurance program, approximately 95 cents of every dollar reaches the recipient as food, production cost plus a five percent surcharge, an increase in delivered food value per SNAP dollar that independently offsets the federal cost-shift.

THE FISCAL LOCK. The argument that Oregon cannot afford this Act is refuted by the state's existing expenditure on the less efficient version of the same program while absorbing a federal SNAP cost-shift the state did not request. The fiscal question is not whether to spend, but whether to continue spending several times as much as required to accomplish the same objective. Denial is no longer neutral.

SECTION 14. Effective dates.

(1) This Act takes effect July 1, 2027.

(2) Pilot food assurance centers shall be operational within two years of the effective date, and the program shall expand to not fewer than twenty centers within five years, as provided in section 6 of this act.

SECTION 15. Severability.

If any provision of this act or the application of any provision of this act to any person or circumstance is held to be invalid, the invalidity does not affect other provisions or applications of this act which can be given effect without the invalid provision or application, and to this end the provisions of this act are declared to be severable.

SECTION 16. Emergency clause.

This act being necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health and safety, an emergency is declared to exist, and this act takes effect on its passage.

REFERENCES

The research and citations underlying this legislation are drawn from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026), a ten-paper academic work, and established peer-reviewed literature:

FOOD SECURITY AND ECONOMICS: - USDA ERS Food Dollar Series (2023): farm share 24.3 cents, markup 75.7 cents - 10 U.S.C. Section 2484: Military Commissary Act (1867), 159 years of operation - Defense Commissary Agency: 236 stores, 2.8M+ authorized users - Penck, A. (1925): Earth carrying capacity 8 billion at 1920s technology - Cohen, J. (1995): "How Many People Can the Earth Support?" - Cooper, I. (2025): "The Mathematics of Abundance" - Factory Proof, Grocery Proof - Cooper, I. (2025): "Stolen Futures" - retail contraction, autonomous freight - Coresight Research: 2024 United States retail store closures - Galbraith, J.K. (1958): "The Affluent Society" - private opulence, public squalor - Veblen, T. (1921): "The Engineers and the Price System" - conscious withdrawal of efficiency - Fresco, J. (2007): "Designing the Future" - resource library model, three tiers - FRAC (2025): Oregon SNAP State Fact Sheet - 771,719 recipients, $1.60 billion FY2024 - Oregon Food Bank (2024): 2.5 million food assistance visits, 31% increase - USDA NASS (2024): Oregon Agricultural Statistics - $6.4 billion cash receipts

HIERARCHY AND PUBLIC HEALTH: - Marmot, M. (1967-present): Whitehall Studies, 10,308 subjects, 3x mortality gradient - Marmot, M. (2004): "The Status Syndrome" - Sapolsky, R.M. (1994/2017): 30-year baboon studies, cortisol normalization - Shively, C.A. (2009; 2014): 30-year macaque studies, serotonin-cardiovascular nexus - Blackburn, E. and Epel, E. (2017): "The Telomere Effect" - chronic stress shortens telomeres - Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (1976): "Schooling in Capitalist America" - Cooper, I. (2025): Paper V - "The Targeting Error" (corrected Bowles and Gintis)

HISTORICAL AND BIOLOGICAL PRECEDENT: - Suetonius, "Life of Augustus"; Appian, "Civil Wars"; Cassius Dio, "Roman History" - Augustus annona civica (~27 BC, ~200,000 recipients, 400+ years) - Nerva alimenta; CIL XI 1147, Tabula Alimentaria from Veleia - Yang, X. et al. (2024): Mabu Co, Tibetan Plateau (Nature Ecology and Evolution) - Brinkhuis, H. et al. (2006): the Azolla Event (Nature 441)

OREGON-SPECIFIC: - Oregon Constitution, Article IV, Section 1 - initiative and referendum (1902) - Oregon Legislative Fiscal Office (2025): 2025-27 biennial budget, $37.3B General Fund - Oregon Department of Administrative Services: demographic forecast - World Population Review (2026): Oregon population 4,281,848 - Portland State University HRAC (2024): Oregon homelessness estimates - William S. U'Ren and the Direct Legislation League (1902): the Oregon System - Oregon tribal termination and restoration history (1950s-1960s) - Oregon timber industry collapse (1990s-2000s): mill closures, rural community impact - Oregon Secretary of State: Official Abstract of Votes, 2022 General Election

STRUCTURAL AND CIVILIZATIONAL: - Cooper, I. (2026): Paper VII - "The Structural Overload" (federal overload, multi-executive precedent) - Swiss Federal Council (1848-present): seven-member collegial executive - Cooper, I. (2025): Paper I - Historical Apoplexy concept definition - Cooper, I. (2026): Paper VIII - Venus Prime (Azolla Event) - H.R. 1 (2025): federal SNAP administrative cost-shift

END OF BILL

Oregon Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act Initiated Measure, pursuant to Oregon Constitution, Article IV, Section 1 Filed with the Oregon Secretary of State

Prepared by: The Amanuensis - theamanuensis.com Version 2 (Oregon adaptation, 2026) Originally drafted 2015-2016 as the Colorado food assurance bill (SMRF)

"Oregon gave America the initiative process in 1902. One hundred and twenty-four years later, use it for what it was built for."

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Verification notes & full source chain

Constitutional path: Citizen-initiative-capable.

Distribution-model precedent: The U.S. Defense Commissary Agency (10 U.S.C. § 2484), operational since 1867, sells groceries at cost plus a five-percent maintenance surcharge with no profit allowed by law. 2.8 million authorized users, 236 stores worldwide, $4 billion annual sales, $1.3 billion federal appropriation paid by all taxpayers including the 330+ million civilians denied access. This bill extends the same at-cost distribution model to all residents of Oregon.

Public-health-equity evidence: The Marmot Whitehall Studies (1967-present), Sapolsky's Serengeti baboons, Shively's cynomolgus macaques, and Blackburn's Nobel-winning telomere research establish that hierarchy itself kills across four research programmes, six decades, and three species. The gap is the gradient. Food assurance reaches beyond bare survival because the gradient damages population health even where calorie minimums are met.

Abundance arithmetic: 293,000 U.S. manufacturing facilities at 77 percent utilization; 19.5-29.3× the productive overcapacity required to provide universal abundance in consumer goods. 47.9 million Americans food-insecure; $32 billion ends domestic hunger; $496 billion is the annual U.S. food-industry markup over production cost; the gap is operational evidence of manufactured scarcity, not evidence of resource constraint. See Paper III, The Mathematics of Abundance.