County Approves ‘Right-to-Farm’ Ordinance

Handing farmers a new tool to protect their livelihood, Ventura County supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved a “right-to-farm” ordinance to keep the county’s top industry as healthy as its cornucopia of crops.

The new ordinance will give farmers stronger protection against nuisance lawsuits from neighboring homeowners.

The measure, more than a year in the works, comes as farmers increasingly become the targets of claims from new residential neighbors complaining about the smells, dust, pesticides and noise lurking behind the pretty, green landscapes.

Farmers say such claims discourage investment and have threatened the economic viability of the county’s roughly $1-billon-a-year agricultural industry by forcing growers to shut down or scale back their operations.

“This is going to be a valuable tool in opening communication between urbanites and the farm community,” said Charles Schwabauer, a Moorpark-area avocado and citrus grower and chairman of the Ventura County Agricultural Policy Committee. “That is really the most important thing. Once we break down that lack of communication, then we’re going to have far fewer problems.”

County government attorneys say the new ordinance will not make growers immune to legal action. Yet it may offer them a stronger line of defense against nuisance claims--the ordinance guarantees them the right to continue any farming operation that is maintained at the same level for at least one year.

More than 30 California counties and a handful of cities have enacted similar ordinances. But increasingly over the past eight years, many of those jurisdictions--like Ventura County--have worked to strengthen such regulations, said Karen Mills, an attorney with the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Ventura County first adopted a right-to-farm ordinance in 1981. It essentially mirrored a statewide measure passed by the Legislature that year. Like that of the state, the county’s original ordinance sought to protect farms from being shut down by nuisance complaints providing that growers had maintained the same level of farming for at least three years.

The county’s new ordinance goes further by allowing farmers to continue operations that have been maintained at the same level for at least one year. The county also is capitalizing on state reforms dating from 1989 that allow local governments to mandate that buyers be told in writing of the potential perils of living next to farms.

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County Realtors are being asked to present home buyers with a disclosure statement as early as possible in the sale process. Buyers would be asked to acknowledge by their signature that they are aware of potential inconveniences that may be caused by neighboring farm operations.

And to Ventura County farmers, ever pressured by urban sprawl, that makes sense.

“The business of food production is becoming increasingly more difficult due to the continuing pressures of sprawling urbanization,” said Nancy Kimball of Camarillo, who farms about 100 acres of avocados with her husband, Gordon, near the Toland Road Landfill in the Santa Clara River Valley.

“The nature of farming is that occasionally it causes minor nuisances,” said Kimball, co-president of the Ventura County chapter of California Women for Agriculture. “If a person chooses to live next to an existing food factory, they must accept these small inconveniences.”

Still, county Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail pointed out, the ordinance does not supersede state law.

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Drifting pesticides--a concern of organic farmers--and the use of any herbicide, insecticide and fumigant against state regulation will remain illegal, he said.

“This ordinance does not make anything legal that is currently illegal,” McPhail said.

Even those who consider the ordinance a somewhat superficial step toward avoiding conflict between farmers and rural dwellers agree that alerting new neighbors to the realities of farming is a positive step.

“The whole ordinance is cosmetic . . . a feel-good thing, but it’s desirable,” said John Buse, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Center in Ventura. “Whether it’s going to do anything about the problem, I don’t know. . . . It’s a very limited tool and it has a very limited effect on everyone’s rights and responsibilities.”

Erik Vink, California field director for the advocacy group American Farmland Trust, said that too often elected leaders have passed such ordinances thinking they have truly addressed the problems that follow the development of farmland. However, he said, such ordinances will never supplant the best preventive measure--wise land-use planning.

Vink thinks right-to-farm measures are “more of a [public relations] effort than anything. It’s nothing that will have a substantial impact. The problem is so much more complex than that and so much more difficult.”

The Board of Supervisors’ unanimous vote Tuesday will not become final until a second vote Oct. 7. The ordinance could then become effective Nov. 6.

Following final adoption of the ordinance, the board plans to send letters to area mayors asking their cities to approve similar ordinances.

“I think we need to give farmers the kind of feeling that they’re wanted in Ventura County, that we support them and that their operation is necessary,” Supervisor John K. Flynn said.