Saving County’s Agricultural Land

It’s amazing how one topic can so dominate the news. With the libraries doing much better under new leadership, most of the school repair bond issues settled, and El Nino updates becoming old hat, news-conscious residents now face an almost daily barrage of articles and opinions about the gloom and doom associated with Ventura County’s loss of farmland.

After more than six months of discussing this latest hot-button “crisis,” a policy working group is set to tour the county with “four scenarios--various forks in the road the county can now take on the issue.”

But by concentrating so intently on the effects of farmland loss and trying “to formulate new policies to try to save agriculture,” the task force has completely neglected to address, or chosen to simply ignore, the causes of this phenomenon and only mentions the owners of these lands in terms of how much they stand to lose in both valuation and utilization if and when these policies are applied.

There are many reasons ag-land owners sell their properties to developers, including inheritance taxes and losses of agribusiness techniques that are taken away by neo-ruralists who, after moving into homes that were either built on once-agricultural land or neighboring it, find themselves uncomfortable with the noise, dust and sometimes chemical “bombardments” associated with agribusinesses trying to squeeze the highest possible yields from their dwindling acres.

There are just as many reasons why developers must set their sights on farmland to make a buck. Their survival depends almost solely on the availability of farmland because so many other large tracts of undeveloped, prime residential real estate have been deemed “open space”--in most cases just so some individuals don’t have the views from their backyards diminished.

In almost every corner of the world, modern societies have shunned building their cities on the ridgelines, choosing to develop their valleys instead. Over time this practice has pushed the means of supplying food to an ever-increasing population to a brink that some in Ventura County now see. Loosening the restrictions on ridgelines and questionable “open space” designations, eliminating inheritance taxes and giving “right-to-farm” laws a chance to take effect will go far in easing the necessity to develop farmland.

The Agricultural Policy Working Group can gather feedback until the cows come home, but if it continues to ignore the causes and focuses only on the effects of Ventura County’s loss of agricultural land, the entire effort is destined to go down in the annals of time as little more than another ill-conceived (hopefully futile) exercise in social engineering.

BRUCE ROLAND

Ojai

* Re: “The Options--and Price--for Saving Farmland” (Dec. 28):

So Scenario A is to limit cities to their present boundaries and preserve a maximum of open space. This will keep Ventura County a desirable place to live. But, we are told, the downside is that people won’t be able to move here and the value of our houses will soar.

Fortunately, the commission has devised three other scenarios--B, C and D--to avoid these terrible consequences.

BRENT MEEKER

Camarillo