DUFUR, Oregon—Decades before he grew Azure Standard into one of the largest independent distributors of organic and non-GMO food in the United States, David Stelzer faced a health crisis that threatened to cut his life short just a few years after he was born.
It was the late 1960s, and he was a sickly child raised on his family’s multigenerational farm in central Oregon, plagued with severe asthma symptoms and autoimmune afflictions.
“My parents took me to doctor after doctor, and those doctors told my parents they didn’t expect me to live long,” Stelzer told The Epoch Times from Azure Standard’s corporate office in downtown Dufur, Oregon….