Farmland Fading From Scene in Antelope Valley

For nearly 50 years, Bill Barnes and his family have tilled the dry, sandy soils of the Antelope Valley, praying for rain and hoping to grow enough barley to scratch out a living. In all that time, Barnes figures he never got a single offer from a real estate agent to purchase his land.

But that changed last year just after a newspaper article announced a developer’s plans to build a huge new community in the open desert some miles away. For the next week, recalled Barnes’ wife, Eldora, their phone rang off the hook with bids for parts of their nearly 1,000-acre farm, 25 miles west of Lancaster on the fringe of the valley.

The couple sold their interest in several parcels of land totaling nearly 500 acres to investors for as much as $3,600 an acre--nearly 15 times what they paid for it about 12 years earlier. In doing so, the Barnes secured a comfortable retirement and also helped fuel the accelerating disappearance of agriculture from the Antelope Valley.

Beset by the mounting burdens on agriculture and lured by the skyrocketing prices their land will fetch, sometimes as much as $30,000 an acre, the farmers who once formed the backbone of the high desert region are fast becoming an endangered species.

“Virtually everything is up for sale or been sold,” said Gary Mork, a Lancaster-based inspector with the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner’s office. “They’re all subdividing like crazy, and once farmland is gone, you can’t ever bring it back.”

Locally, the loss of Antelope Valley farmland will deprive Los Angeles County of its last major agricultural center, officials said. But state officials say the loss of agriculture to development is a growing statewide concern. And experts said that trend is unlikely to slow.

Los Angeles County’s farmland, which made it the nation’s most productive agricultural county in the 1940s, has been steadily consumed by the advance of urbanization. And as agriculture faded elsewhere, the Antelope Valley’s farms accounted for more and more of the county’s agricultural output.

In the 1980s, amid a countywide population and real estate boom, the search for affordable housing and an escape from the city also began rapidly transforming the Antelope Valley’s farmland. The process, though, had begun much earlier.

For years, the region’s farmers have been beset by dry and uncertain desert weather, harmful pests and other factors. More recently, a fourth year of drought, pesticide restrictions and rising water prices and potential cutbacks in water supplies have added to farmers’ burdens. They now find it more profitable to sell the land than to till it.

In addition, many of the valley’s farmers, such as Barnes, are reaching retirement age and their children are pursuing other careers. Inside of 10 years, agriculture officials predict, large-scale farming will become a thing of the past in the valley as well as in the county.

And as the farmers of the high desert disappear, so does its once-dominant culture.

The names of some of the Antelope Valley’s communities--Almondale, Pearblossom and Pearland--evoke just some of the many crops grown there in large quantities during its more than 100 years as an agricultural region.

But the amount of acreage farmed in the Los Angeles County portion of the valley dropped to its lowest level in modern times last year, to 10,600 acres. There had been 77,400 acres in production as recently as 1960, according to the county agricultural commissioner’s records.

The valley no longer produces enough onions, alfalfa and peaches, its major crops, for their disappearance to be felt much by consumers, agriculture officials said. But many longtime valley residents believe the region is losing something more important than its crops.

“If you lose your agriculture and your ability to produce, you lose your nation,” said Richard Campbell, a Lancaster-based soil conservationist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “You lose a kind of sense of freedom, and people change; they’re not the same anymore,” he said.

Some residents said they no longer leave their doors unlocked, fearing the break-ins that have plagued many neighborhoods; others regret the loss of business relationships based on trust and friendship, saying they have been replaced by impersonal transactions.

“I think Lancaster and Palmdale are ruined. It just ain’t what it was,” said Barnes, 67, whose family has lived in the Antelope Valley since 1887. At the same time, though, Barnes concedes it is a change that has given him and his wife a financially secure retirement.

In past years, Barnes and his wife depended entirely on barley for their income. But after selling part of their land, Barnes figures he paid more in taxes last year than he ever earned in a year of farming. The couple say they still intend to farm some, but no longer have to.

One particularly harmful side effect of the transformation is the growth of desert sandstorms in the Antelope Valley. Where lush fields of grain once grew, strong desert winds now rake barren fields, creating the worst sandstorms that local officials have seen in years.

The purchase of farmland by development companies and investors reached its peak last year, officials said, although much of the recently purchased land remains temporarily in production. Developers said they actually seek to buy working farms because they typically have an established source of water. Farms also often have single owners, which makes them easier to acquire.

“The land ownership patterns . . . are extremely fragmented,” said Andy Atsaves, an official with Lincoln Property Co., a major developer. He attributed that to intense land speculation in the 1960s and 1970s spurred by Los Angeles’ still-delayed plans to build a major airport in Palmdale.

Lincoln, for example, last year paid about $5.2 million, or $12,000 an acre, to acquire a 440-acre farm at the eastern edge of Lancaster that had been been cultivated for decades. Although the land continues to be farmed, Lincoln eventually hopes to build a nearly 1,300-unit planned community on the site.

Likewise, a company owned by the family of the late Walt Disney, North Hollywood-based Retlaw Enterprises, was close to selling its 580-acre Antelope Valley farm before the deal failed last week, officials said. The reported price was close to $10 million, or about $16,000 per acre.

Such prices are enough to turn the head of even the most committed farmers.

“When I moved out here, I intended to farm until I died and my kids took over for me. But my kids figured there’s got to be an easier way to make a living,” said John Alesso, 62, president of the Los Angeles County Farm Bureau. He farmed in the valley for more than 38 years until retiring recently.

Alesso sold 640 acres for about $3,000 an acre in late 1988, land he said he bought for about $155 an acre in the mid-1950s. Unlike the others, though, Alesso’s buyer plans to use the land not for construction but to test the application of sewage sludge as a farm fertilizer.

For all the grumbling by farmers and complaints about urbanization changing the valley, though, no measures to conserve the area’s farmland are being discussed or proposed.

Mork, the county agriculture inspector who came to the Antelope Valley in 1976, recalled farmers’ reaction when county planners about that time suggested limiting the conversion of farmland. “We’d be in favor of it, and the growers would be against it,” Mork said.

“They didn’t want to be preserved,” said Mork, referring to the farmers. “They figured they’re going to farm here as long as it’s profitable, and when it’s not, adios. “