Preserving Our Farmland

“If we don’t change our direction,” says an ancient Chinese proverb, “we will end up where we are headed.”

Where is Ventura County headed, with regard to preserving the farmland that poll after poll show we hold so dear?

We’ve heard a bumper crop of dire predictions: Sprawling cities, shrinking greenbelts, an economy and culture less rooted in agriculture, eventually its collapse as the number of farms drops too low to keep support services alive.

In response, numerous strategies are being touted. Thousand Oaks and Ventura have passed initiatives that require voter approval before farmland can be rezoned for other use. Similar measures are being pushed countywide. Oxnard is considering urban growth boundaries, which would keep future growth within existing city limits. Others preach that trusts and conservancies are the key.

But each of these roads has its tolls and its hazards--some obvious, others treacherously hidden. How can we know which routes lead in a direction we truly want to go?

Next month, every resident of Ventura County will be invited to join a public discussion about exactly that. A series of seven town hall meetings, held in every corner of the county, will present information about some of the roads we might take and what sort of future each might lead to.

It’s not an election, no multiple-choice question easily answered with a check mark. This is an effort to better understand the choices before us, so we may make better decisions. The meetings begin Jan. 12 in Oxnard and end Feb. 3 in Ojai, after which public feedback will be compiled into a report and forwarded to the supervisors, to each city government and to the Ventura Council of Governments to help guide future policy.

The Times encourages everyone who lives, works, pays taxes or cares about the future in Ventura County to attend the meeting in your area and to let your voice be heard.

It’s important because farming is the largest wedge in Ventura County’s economic pie--a $1.2-billion-a-year industry that employs 20,000 people. It is also a cornerstone of our local culture, whether you raise a pig for the county fair or merely buy fresh fruit, veggies and flowers at roadside stands. A Los Angeles Times poll last fall showed nearly two-thirds of Ventura County residents favor slowing growth and preserving farmland--yet for the past decade about 1,000 acres a year have been converted from crops to housing.

Controlling that trend is what this process is all about.

The town hall discussions climax eight months of homework and discussion by something called the Ventura County Agriculture Policy Working Group, a 23-member panel led by county Supervisors Kathy Long, John K. Flynn and Judy Mikels with representatives of farm, business, taxpayer, construction and environmental groups and the county’s seven cities that still have substantial agriculture.

Long said she established the group after realizing on the campaign trail that “ag preservation is a high priority all over Ventura County, but there is a lot of misinformation out there about the challenges facing the farmer.” Conflicts such as the annual debate over methyl bromide revealed high emotions, low understanding.

After a few months of briefings about the county’s economy, agricultural history, land use and all sorts of trends, the Working Group set out to draw up a variety of “scenarios”--possible futures that different strategies and actions might produce.

At one end of the “what-if” spectrum, freezing all 10 cities to their current boundaries would preserve the most farmland but could force greater population densities, higher housing costs and redevelopment of historic neighborhoods.

At the other end of the spectrum, relaxing our current growth limits would mean more affordable housing but could compromise the whole idea of distinct cities, add to traffic and air-quality problems and increase conflicts between farmers and their urban neighbors.

No doubt the road we want to take is in there somewhere, waiting to be constructed from the many strategies and actions available to us. There is no “right” direction, other than one chosen by informed citizens after fully considering the probable consequences of each decision.