Fertile Soil Yielding Bumper Crop of Homes

Lemons and oranges by the shipload steam from the Port of Hueneme to the markets of Asia. Strawberries and avocados, onions and cabbages and dozens of other crops are trucked by the ton to every corner of the nation.

Blessed by fertile soils and mild ocean breezes, Ventura County is one of the nation’s richest agricultural producers. Its $850-million farm economy is as robust and healthy as the top-quality produce pulled as often as three times a year from the same field.

Yet encroaching housing developments and urban sprawl are robbing the county of some of its most fertile ground.

A soon-to-be released report has determined that Ventura County--the nation’s 17th most productive farm county--is losing 1,100 acres of prime farmland a year, particularly on the Oxnard Plain.

A dramatic plunge in agriculture acreage has yet to be reflected in statistics, given that farmers have headed to hills that tolerate lower quality soil to plant avocado trees and other crops.

But room for expansion has run out, said Larry Rose, president of the Ventura County Agriculture Land Trust and Conservancy.

“Our backs are against the wall,” he said. “We need to look critically at letting go any more farmland we have on hand.”

Rose is about to release a 180-page report that could be a turning point in the perennial debate over how much more farmland should be lost to new rows of stucco homes, shopping centers and parking lots across the county.

Years in the making, the $100,000 report written by economic experts from around the state goes much further than the usual crop report. It outlines the costs of urban sprawl continuing to spread into cheaper agricultural land farther from the center of six cities.

If Oxnard, Camarillo, Moorpark, Ventura, Santa Paula and Fillmore continue their pattern of hopscotch development, it could cost those cities an extra $10 million a year, the report concludes.

Urban sprawl typically costs more in government services than it generates in tax revenues, and so researchers are urging politicians and planners to focus on building higher-density developments within city boundaries to save local governments from slipping deeper into red ink.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if you have less roads per unit, less fire stations per unit, the cost is going to be less,” economic consultant David Strong said.

Proud and protective of its rich agriculture tradition, Ventura County officials adopted a master plan in 1969 intended to hem in the type of urban sprawl that has consumed most of Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The county’s Guidelines for Orderly Development simply state that urban development should occur within city boundaries. And, as far as the guidelines go, they have blocked development from leapfrogging into the bands of farmland and other swaths of open space between the cities.

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But nothing in the guidelines prevents cities from extending their reach deep into farmland for future expansion.

“If you just look at the way the city has mapped out, it’s like a cross between an amoeba and an octopus,” said Edwin Duval, an east Ventura lemon rancher. “Unless people are willing to put growth-control pills in the city reservoirs, I don’t think there is any way to stop it.”

The city of Oxnard has been perhaps the most aggressive at unfurling its tentacles into surrounding farmland, approving huge new shopping centers, outlet malls and extensive housing communities.

Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn, who represents the Oxnard area, said he tried in the mid-1980s to keep this land grab in check, but failed to muster the votes.

“It’s a slash-and-burn mentality that we used in the westward movement of the United States,” Flynn said. “People are calling me, disturbed about what they see going on. They feel helpless about development and what’s happening to their quality of life.”

Oxnard is now considering a proposal by a financially troubled Orange County developer to build 5,000 houses on world-class strawberry fields and sod farms near Ormond Beach.

It’s not the only plot of farmland under siege.

Moorpark, a city named after a type of apricot no longer grown commercially there, is considering a 3,221-dwelling project on former citrus orchards and grazing land on the northeastern edge of town.

Bulldozers recently began ripping out orange and lemon trees on 200 acres just north of Camarillo, where a British-based developer wants to place 189 luxury homes.

Chain saws have been busily cutting trees on parcels around Ventura, where Orange County-based builders are preparing for the construction of hundreds of new houses.

All of this bulldozing, chopping, paving and building puts farmers in a dilemma. Although they want to preserve a healthy agriculture base, most also want to preserve their rights to sell to developers.

“We make it difficult for them to farm,” Supervisor Maggie Kildee said. “The value of their land goes up and there is a temptation to develop. They know homes are more profitable than lemon trees.”

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That temptation grew too strong for Ives Vanoni, who never imagined he would sell his family’s Saticoy citrus ranch to an Orange County developer. But he did.

“I was just getting tired,” the 76-year-old farmer said. His son was not interested in ranching. And he had grown weary of the vandals and thieves who have busted his sprinklers, smashed the windows of his truck and stolen his avocados.

“We’re the last holdout here,” Vanoni said, motioning how his 125 acres are surrounded by houses. “As soon as we get the crop off, this is all going,” he said, surveying the orchard.

The upcoming report on Ventura County agriculture attempts to detail the problems in the urban-rural clash: The theft and vandalism. The need for expensive chain-link fences. Complaints from neighbors about smelly fertilizer, pesticides or noisy wind machines that run through the night to prevent frost damage.

But for the most part, county farmers and ranchers have shown remarkable ingenuity in adapting, or some might say resisting, the encroachment of city development.

“Except for the fact that Ventura County agriculture is under threat of development, it is in a pretty good shape,” said George Goldman, an agriculture economist at UC Berkeley who helped write the report.

Indeed, strawberries, lemons, avocados and celery continue to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars each year at market. Although strawberry profits have been dampened by a glut this year, sales have more than doubled in the past decade.

Agricultural experts see a rosy future for these specialty crops and others.

Economically, Goldman said, it would be in most farmers’ best interest to promote development. “But they are not,” he said. “Many want to continue farming for any sentimental or sophisticated economic reasons that they have.”

Craig Underwood, whose family has farmed in Ventura County since the late 1800s, said he believes agriculture will persevere, though he shares others’ concerns about shrinking farmland.

“That’s been my concern since I started [farming] with Dad in 1968,” he said. “People told me then that farming in Ventura wouldn’t last 10 years.”

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Three years ago, Underwood even expanded his acreage, forming a new partnership to farm 60 acres at the western base of the Conejo Grade.

The venture, however, has been beset with unforeseen problems. In 1994, the Environmental Protection Agency told Underwood that by draining the land and ripping out the rushes and willows that covered it, he had destroyed a valuable wetland and wildlife habitat.

The partners are still negotiating with the agency to determine what reparations they must make. Underwood, however, said the final agreement will probably involve re-creating some of the original wetlands on his property.

Despite the government difficulties, Underwood and his partners have not given up on their 60 acres, which now produce a healthy crop of broccoli, shallot greens and red jalapeno peppers.

The county’s mild climate and good topsoil have given farmers the flexibility to shift away from standard field crops to specialty crops that fetch better prices. Agriculture remains the county’s No. 1 industry.

“At least economically, the people in agriculture are doing pretty well in the specialty markets,” Goldman said. “They are making fairly good money.”

The expansion of the Port of Hueneme has been a huge boon for local citrus farmers, as well as those who grow broccoli and onions.

These agricultural exports now account for about 25% of the port’s business. Each week, longshoremen load about 200,000 cartons of lemons, oranges and grapefruit onto a freighter bound for Japan. Combined with assorted vegetables, it adds up to about $400,000 worth of produce a year.

The explosion in exports began in 1994 when the port opened the largest dockside, refrigerated warehouse on the West Coast.

Cool Carriers Inc., a Swedish shipping company, relocated its American headquarters to the port. “We are moving our ships literally in the backyard of one of Sunkist’s main growing areas,” said Gerry Fountain, president of the company’s U.S. branch.

With the county’s lemon and orange groves so close at hand, trucks from local packinghouses can make several trips to the warehouse each day, Fountain said.

That’s far more than would be possible if the fruit were still shipped out of Long Beach Harbor.

“We found that increased shipments through the harbor are beneficial to the whole industry,” Goldman said.

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In areas of disappearing farmland, a common problem is that service industries are forced to shut down or leave. As the number of farmers dwindle, so do the support industries, he said. Tractor repair shops no longer have enough work. Fertilizer suppliers have too few customers to remain in business.

“It becomes a vicious cycle, hastening the departure of agriculture,” said Gene Kjellberg, a senior planner with Ventura County government. “When you turn under row crops and put pavement over them, you are not just converting agriculture land, you are destroying a part of the agriculture economy.”

For that reason the agriculture industry has been worried about keeping a sufficiently large field of operations to remain healthy.

So far, the county has maintained about 100,000 acres of irrigated farmland--sufficient to maintain a viable farm economy for most of the major crops, experts said. But if the trend continues, that could change.

“We are not losing that much agricultural land in terms of quantity,” Kjellberg said. “But qualitatively, we are losing the prime irrigated land in the Oxnard Plain, and it’s being replaced with marginal land in the foothills where the growing conditions are not as good.”

Economists expect the development pressures to resurge with the rebounding economy. After several years of recession, Ventura County and the rest of California are well on the way to recovery.

If history is a guide, the economists say, new housing tracts will not be far behind.

To reduce farmers’ temptation, one solution is to buy their rights to develop their land.

The Ventura County Agriculture Land Trust and Conservancy was set up four years ago to make such purchases in the name of protecting farmland. Lacking any money, the conservancy has yet to make its first offer to a farmer teetering on a sale.

“If we want to preserve farmland, we will need to tax ourselves and pay the farmer to leave it as farmland,” said Kildee, a county supervisor who helped set up the conservancy. “I think this would be the best way.”

Short of coming up with millions of dollars for such conservation easements, agricultural researchers have joined conservationists in calling on cities to slightly increase their density rather than allowing houses or strip malls to gobble up more farmland.

David Strong, the Oakland-based economist, developed a computer model that projects growth patterns in six cities surrounded by farmland--Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo, Santa Paula, Fillmore and Moorpark. Under one scenario, development takes place within city boundaries. The other shows growth following the traditional path of spreading to agricultural land outside the city.’

The results of his computer model should resonate with budget-conscious city leaders: Continuing checkerboard development into farmland could cost these six cities an extra $10 million a year.

“If you sprawl,” he warned, “it’s going to cost you substantially more.”

Kenneth R. Weiss and Tracy Wilson are Times staff writers. David R. Baker is a Times correspondent.

Ventura County’s Top Crops

Although lemons remain the county’s most lucrative crop, strawberries now rank a not-so-distant second. Profits from strawberries have more than doubled since 1985.

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Lemon Strawberry sales sales (in millions (in millions Year of dollars) of dollars) 1994 198.3 129.1 1993 216.1 110.4 1992 166.1 101.2 1991 206.0 130.7 1990 175.0 126.4 1989 164.4 84.5 1988 168.7 91.0 1987 162.7 88.4 1986 108.5 66.4 1985 116.0 60.1

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Source: UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project

Agricultural Acreage

Although some Ventura County growers are expanding their orchards onto hillsides that were previously left wild, the total number of acres farmed in the county has slowly dropped during the past 10 years. The acreage shown below also includes land devoted to cattle grazing. Figures for 1995 are not yet available.

Year: Acreage (in thousands)

1994: 384

1993: 384

1992: 396

1991: 452

1990: 471

1989: 483

1988: 475

1987: 502

1986: 505

1985: 452

Source: UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project

Farm Employment

The number of workers employed on Ventura County farms has risen during the past decade, though workers’ advocates complain that wages for farm jobs have dropped. Figures for 1995 are not yet available.

Year: Workers

1994: 19,951

1993: 19,961

1992: 19,498

1991: 17,962

1990: 21,218

1989: 18,128

1988: 18,333

1987: 17,158

1986: 15,846

1985: 15,511

Source: UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project