Plan Urges More Governmental Say for Farmers

Hoping to shore up Ventura County’s threatened agricultural industry, the county Board of Supervisors is considering a plan that would give farmers a greater say in local government and create an ordinance protecting their “right to farm.”

The proposal, which the board is scheduled to discuss at its Tuesday meeting, calls for reforming the county’s Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee and directing its members to review every county ordinance affecting agriculture.

One of the plan’s chief architects said the point is to root out old ordinances that need revision, and in so doing to eliminate unnecessary regulation on local agriculture.

“Anything with the ‘A-word,’ we want this panel to review it,” said Keith Jayko, administrative assistant to Supervisor Judy Mikels.

The panel would also be asked to review development projects proposed within the county’s jurisdiction that could affect nearby farmland and to provide input to the board on agricultural issues.

This proposal comes at a time when supervisors are considering revising zoning ordinances governing farmland and trying to determine how many houses can be built on agriculturally zoned land. Earlier this week, a consortium of farming interests released a two-year study that said the county’s $2.4-billion-a-year agricultural industry was threatened by encroaching development.

Although the mission of the advisory panel would be new, the panel itself is not. Three years ago, budget cutting eliminated funding for the county employee who supplied information and research to the 10-member committee. Instead of meeting monthly, panel members switched to meeting just once each year.

If the proposal, submitted by Mikels, wins board approval, the existing committee would be formally dissolved, Jayko said. The number of new committee members would be cut to five, with each member drawn from the local agricultural community and nominated by a county supervisor. County Agriculture Commissioner W. Earl McPhail and Ben Faber, the University of California’s farm advisor for Ventura County, would serve as nonvoting members.

The reconstituted committee would resume a monthly meeting schedule. Members would sift through county ordinances, looking for any that may affect farmers. Ordinances that the committee decides need revision would then be forwarded to the Board of Supervisors with suggested changes.

Jayko stressed that the panel will not be able to revise or eliminate ordinances by itself.

“There is a checks and balances system here, because everything has to go through the board,” he said.

He added, however, that no one was better qualified to review agriculture-related ordinances than local growers.

“We want farmers doing this review, not urban planners who don’t have any farming experience except for a few plants in the backyard,” he said.

Although much of Mikels’ plan concerns ordinances already on the books, the proposal also calls for establishing a “right to farm” ordinance, designed to prevent disputes between farmers and their neighbors. The new rule would warn homeowners--through a note included in their annual tax bills--that people living near farms may encounter odors from nearby fields or hear the sounds of farmers working late into the night or before dawn--all part of the normal operation of a farm.

“The value of this is it will discourage people from filing endless nuisance complaints,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau.

Suburbanites often don’t understand that farmers use pesticide on fields, or that strawberry growers use noise-making machines to ward off birds, he said. As a result, homeowners often complain to police or county supervisors.

“This doesn’t give anyone license to do anything they didn’t already have the right to do,” Laird said.