Measure Divides Farmers, Residents : Camarillo: Owners of agricultural land say those trying to preserve it are the same people who complain about tractor noise and pesticide use.

Dan Stuart has struggled for 10 years to make a living off his farm in Camarillo. Water is expensive, passersby pillage his crops, and residents in nearby neighborhoods complain about tractor noise and the smell of manure.

Some days, Stuart says, he wonders why he bothers to farm the 94 acres he owns south of the Ventura Freeway near Pleasant Valley Road, especially when many of his friends in Camarillo are selling their ranches to developers.

“It gets very discouraging and very disappointing,” said Stuart, who--like his father--has been a farmer all his life. As a result, Stuart figures that someday he too will rezone the land and sell to a developer.

But he may never get a chance. There is a movement afoot in Camarillo that could stop future development on much of the remaining 1,600 acres of the city’s agricultural land.

It is called Measure B--although it has not yet been placed on a ballot. The residents who are pushing for it hope to obtain enough signatures by spring to place the issue before voters.

If the measure were to pass, farmers such as Stuart would have to get approval from city voters before farmland could be rezoned for anything other than agriculture.

The Ventura County Farm Bureau staunchly opposes the idea. And a battle is brewing between environmentalists and farmers, who say the proposed law would violate their property rights.

Seven of the eight Camarillo City Council candidates--the exception being Mayor Charlotte Craven--have vowed they will fight to preserve the city’s remaining farmland, which has some of the richest topsoil in the United States.

Centered mostly along the Ventura Freeway, the open fields serve as an agricultural gateway to the community.

“We have a fixed amount of prime soil left,” said Mike Mishler, president of the Camarillo Farmland and Creek Preservation Committee. “The best use of our resources is to save it for farming.”

In addition, Mishler said, many residents have moved to Camarillo because they like the rural atmosphere.

“We’re afraid that Camarillo will turn into another Los Angeles or Orange county,” Mishler said. “We’ll have wall-to-wall houses and a massive city that runs down to the coastline. We are trying to break the cycle.”

But the mayor says the remaining agricultural land can be developed in a way that would not disrupt the rural atmosphere of the city.

“The reason you have cities is so you can have areas where there is development within the boundaries,” Craven said. “We should work for controlled development. We want to develop into a beautiful city from a rural area.” In addition, Craven says she believes that residential areas and farms make poor neighbors.

“Better than preserving agricultural land is to find other ways to use open space,” Craven said. “For example, a golf course is much more acceptable than agricultural land.

“We get a lot of complaints when the pesticides are sprayed. The fertilizers are smelly. Agriculture is just not compatible with residential.”

Rex Laird, executive director of the county farm bureau, agreed that agricultural land is not compatible with residential areas.

“If the farmers had their druthers, they would farm in contiguous farmland,” Laird said. “As urban development encroaches, it is not a good situation.”

Furthermore, Laird said, “agriculture’s function is not to provide parks.”

“Residents want us to provide open space for their benefit without compensation,” he said. “Yet they don’t want us to spray for bugs or run our tractors.”

Stuart says the initiative to save the agricultural land in Camarillo is “un-American.”

“They’re telling me that I have to keep doing what I’m doing,” Stuart said. “That’s dreadful.”

Mishler says the citizens feel they have no choice but to take drastic measures. Normally, they would depend on the city government to preserve the agricultural land, Mishler said, but the city is not following its General Plan.

Since 1986, the city has rezoned 800 acres specified as farmland under the General Plan. Most recently, Mishler said, Camarillo officials made way for the controversial Pitts Ranch project, which calls for 126 houses on 31 acres, on a lemon grove off Lewis Road.

Development plans also include a 16-acre park and four acres to be donated to the city for a Ventura County Sheriff’s Department substation.

Dave White, who sold his 160-acre Camarillo farm to Pardee Construction Co. for the Pitts Ranch project, said he faced a dilemma. He liked farming in Camarillo but had trouble turning a profit on the land. The lemon trees in the orchard were old and not producing enough, and city water was expensive.

White said he would rather own land in an area with other farms and not be surrounded by development.

“Land that is within an urban area should have urban uses,” White said.

So when Pardee officials offered White $100,000 per acre--five times more than what he paid for it a decade earlier--he decided to sell.

Until Pardee finalizes its development plans with the city, White said he will continue to farm the land. Meanwhile, he has used some money he earned from selling the farm to purchase more agricultural land near Somis.

Christeen Rhodes--who lives across the street from the proposed Pitts Ranch--said she and her husband, Larry, fought to stop the development.

“The thing that makes me mad is 10 years ago we were told not to worry, the land was zoned agricultural, and it will always be that way,” Rhodes said. “But I guess the city needs the money, and it pays to build houses.”

As a result, Rhodes said she and her husband have joined Mishler in his preservation efforts.

“The agricultural land is part of our roots, and it should be left that way,” Rhodes said. “We have a beautiful city . . . and we’re trying to preserve it for our children.”