Plowing Up Big Trouble : Agriculture: The EPA says a 60-acre farming venture in Ventura County destroyed 23 acres of wetland. The owners face stiff compensation costs and say the field lost $50,000 in its first year.

When his truck jounces along the rough road past Conejo Ranch, farmer Jim Roberts sees a tidy field of baby vegetables--the same kind of wispy, hopeful blooms that cloaked the field one year ago.

But although the Ventura County field looks just as it did last fall, Roberts views it differently. Where he once saw rich dirt and ripe potential, he now sees pain, frustration and anger.

Since they planted the first seeds on Conejo Ranch during Thanksgiving week of 1993, Roberts and partners Craig Underwood and Minos Athanassiadis have endured an astounding pileup of troubles on their 60-acre field.

Their biggest heartbreak: the federal Environmental Protection Agency recently determined that the farmers destroyed 23 acres of valuable wetland when they clear-cut, drained and leveled Conejo Ranch to prepare it for planting.

In a crushing verdict, the EPA ordered the partners to compensate California for the loss of key riparian habitat. They must either restore a large chunk of the field to its natural state or enhance a torn-up wetland elsewhere in the county.

The exact penalty is likely to be determined during negotiations over the next several months. Depending on the settlement, the partners’ tab could range from less than $100,000 to more than $2 million, according to wetland consultants.

The EPA’s harsh mandate is by far the worst blow of this tumultuous year. But the farmers have faced a fair share of other troubles as well.

They have skirmished with irate neighbors about a giant, stinking compost heap on a corner of Conejo Ranch. They have struggled to find markets in a competitive industry dominated by a few agribusiness giants. And they have watched part of a promising corn crop wither in the field when they could not unload the ears at decent prices.

Last fall, they cooed and clucked over Conejo Ranch as though it were a newborn. This year, they anguish and fret over the field as though it were a juvenile delinquent. The enterprise lost $50,000 in its first year.

All the tumult, Roberts mused, “changes the way you look at the land.”

Nonetheless, all three partners fiercely believe they will survive, if they keep doing what they have been doing elsewhere for years. That includes farming Conejo Ranch, carrying on from season to season, waiting out the bad times and waiting for the good. As Roberts explained: “That’s farming.”

Fewer and fewer farmers these days can endure the ups and downs. The most recent U.S. census disclosed that the number of farms in the United States has dropped below 2 million for the first time since the Civil War.

Meanwhile, about 2 million acres of agricultural land vanish each year, the rich soil buried under the concrete crust of development.

In launching Conejo Ranch, the partners were aware that they were bucking a national trend. They were proud of taking the risk.

The field, tucked between scrub-spotted hills and a plant-lined creek, was vacant for a decade before the partners bought it in the spring of 1993. The farmers eagerly ripped out the helter-skelter growth and laid down neat furrows, an elaborate drainage system, shiny irrigation pipes.

“To us, it seemed like we were doing a really good thing,” Underwood said.

Federal officials, however, took a different view.

After a six-month investigation that wrapped up in late October, EPA biologists determined that the farmers had destroyed a unique riparian ecosystem linking the Santa Monica Mountains with nearby Conejo Creek.

Because the ranchers did not know they were tampering with a wetland when they sent in their tractors, EPA biologist Aaron Setran said the agency will not press criminal charges. But the government will still exact a heavy toll, by demanding that the farmers replace the “values” of the destroyed habitat.

“All the natural disasters we face pale before what state and federal regulators can do,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau.

Just as much as the expense, the farmers resent the implication of the EPA’s verdict.

“I consider myself an environmentalist,” Roberts said. “That’s why I do what I do--to be outside, with nature. This just doesn’t sit right.”

Underwood added: “We thought we were doing an exceptional thing on Conejo Ranch. Sometimes you’re not rewarded for doing things right.”

But EPA biologists would argue that the farmers did not do things right. Before buying Conejo Ranch, they should have consulted with environmental experts, who might have warned them that the moist field, with its clusters of cattails and rushes, could fall under federal jurisdiction.

As Bart Doyle, a Los Angeles wetland attorney, explained: “In California, you should always assume some part of your land is regulated, no matter what you want to do with it.”

Ironically, federal law would have allowed the farmers to do anything they wanted on Conejo Ranch if they had first drained the water and let the field dry up, according to several environmental attorneys.

The Clean Water Act prohibits only the “discharge” of material into a wetland. That covers any redistribution of soil in a wetland--from digging a ditch to churning up earth with a bulldozer.

But other destructive activities remain legal: chopping plants by hand, burning vegetation, even pumping out water, as long as no soil is shifted. If careful, land owners can legally destroy a wetland--and then, once the parcel is dry, build or farm with impunity, lawyers said.

“Frankly, to this day you can do all sorts of things in wetlands,” San Francisco attorney David Ivester said.

The Conejo Ranch farmers could still challenge the EPA’s decision. And they are tempted. But the thought of going up against a federal agency scares them. If they choose not to appeal in court, their only option is to negotiate.

Generally, the EPA requires offenders to restore two acres of wetland for every one destroyed. The farmers could create a wetland corridor along their field’s border, clear non-native shrubs from an overgrown creek bed, pump water into a dried-up pond or dream up some other project.

Depending on the complexity, wetland repair jobs can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $60,000 an acre, environmental consultants said.

The EPA’s open-ended instructions leave the farmers free to scout the cheapest way to pay their dues. But whatever option they choose, they will never be able to fully make up for the lost habitat, scientists said.

“There was a mosaic to that wetland . . . and you’ll never, ever replace that,” Setran said. “It was unique unto itself.”

In planting Conejo Ranch, the partners fancied they were reinvigorating the land by reviving its agricultural roots. That respect for farming tradition, however, clashed with the environmentalists’ respect for nature, which had reclaimed the land with flair in just one decade.

Conejo Ranch’s planting foreman, Natividad Zavala, said the economic importance of the farm should be factored into the equation.

As his crew of harvesters crouched under a stormy November sky to pick carrots, Zavala said: “Look how many mouths you feed with this field. We have to do this to live. Of course, I don’t want the animals to die. But I don’t want myself to die either.”

Restoring the wetlands could cost a bundle, Underwood insists: “We will not allow that piece of property to threaten the rest of our farming operation.”

Although Conejo Ranch is the only property they own, the partners farm 22 parcels of leased land in Ventura County. Profits from those fields more than made up for the losses at Conejo Ranch this year.

But they still hope to turn a profit on Conejo Ranch. They are counting on brisk sales of the field’s most recent crop: baby carrots, with a sprinkling of red, gold and candy beets tossed in as well. The partners hope the carrots will swing the ranch back into the black, after a $100,000 loss from summer corn wiped out a $50,000 profit from last winter’s crop of greens.

Still, Underwood forecast a decent return for his company at year’s end. The 22 Ventura County fields that the partners rent and farm bailed out Conejo Ranch’s loss on the corn crop. And the financial fallout from the EPA probe probably won’t be felt until 1995.

For enduring 12 months of turmoil, the partners will each earn about $70,000.

As Roberts concluded: “There will be a Christmas.”

About This Series

“60 Acres of Hope,” a series that concludes today, has traced the first year of a new Southern California farming operation. Today’s article wraps up the tumultuous year and looks ahead at the uncertain future of the 60-acre Ventura County field known as Conejo Ranch. The story also explores an Environmental Protection Agency ruling that the farmers must compensate the government for destroying a wetland area when preparing their field for planting. Previous articles have examined the mechanics and economics of farming, from planting to harvesting to marketing.