Dennee

SALEM — A new executive director is coming to the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association.

Tammy Dennee was hired Aug. 13 to lead the industry lobbying group, representing 1,800 rancher members across the state. She replaces Jerome Rosa, who left in July to take over as head of the Arizona Cattle Growers Association.

While Dennee is officially joining the OCA, she won’t have to go far. For the past five years, she has been the legislative director of the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association, which shares an office in Salem with the cattlemen’s association.

That means Dennee will be moving all of 5 feet — just to the other side of the wall — when she begins her new job Oct. 1.

OCA President and Harney County rancher Tom Sharp said Dennee is “exceptionally qualified” for the position, adding that the group’s hiring committee was impressed with her years of experience working on behalf of agriculture at the Oregon State Capitol.

“I have complete confidence Tammy will do great work on behalf of our mission and membership,” Sharp said in a statement.

Dennee, 58, is a lifelong Oregonian, born in Hood River and raised in The Dalles. For a while in Hood River, Dennee said her grandparents had a small farm with cows, horses, chickens and a giant garden that, in the eyes of a child, seemed to stretch for blocks.

Dennee’s paternal grandfather was also a herdsman for a dairy farm near Donald, Ore. One summer, she remembers working on a ranch near Grass Valley in rural Sherman County, where she was introduced to the physical strenuous job of “bucking,” or stacking, hay bales by hand.

Those experiences, she said, helped her to develop a strong connection with agriculture.

“I just have such an appreciation for the hard work these men and women dedicate themselves to every single day,” Dennee said in an interview with the Capital Press.

Before going to work for the Dairy Farmers Association, Dennee was a top official for the Oregon wheat industry based in Pendleton. She spent 10 years as executive director of the Oregon Wheat Growers League, eventually stepping down in 2010.

Six years ago, Dennee moved from Eastern Oregon to the Willamette Valley with her husband, Michael. They live in Dallas, about 15 miles west of Salem.

In February 2015, Dennee was hired by the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association, placing her back at the Capitol. During the Legislature’s first special session of 2020, she said the organization successfully secured an amendment to the state corporate activity tax that exempted a small group of dairies that do not sell their milk to a co-op.

Sales to farm co-ops were exempt from the tax under the original version of the law, putting this group of farmers at a disadvantage, Dennee said.

“It was really a fairness issue for us to assist in removing those dairy farmers from that tax obligation,” she said. “It doesn’t take many cows to produce a million dollars worth of milk. That was the threshold for the (tax).”

As Dennee explains, dairy farmers and ranchers are closely linked in animal agriculture, giving her an advanced understanding producers’ needs. For example, dairy cows that are at the end of their lifespan might go to meat processing, and male calves may also be sent to a ranch or feedlot.

“Dairy and beef, we’re one in the same,” Dennee said. “We work very closely together on many of the same issues.”

With the OCA, Dennee said she is looking forward to developing a new strategic plan with the association’s leaders, looking three to five years into the future.

“We have a lot of work to do, always, in agriculture,” she said. “We really find ourselves in this place where consumers have a deep desire to be connected. We have to find a way to connect them back to our ranching community.”