Farm Advocate Has Tough Row to Hoe

Oxnard attorney Fred Rosenmund knows he’s not likely to win this farmland fight.

But he couldn’t just quietly watch some of Ventura County’s most productive cropland plowed under for a road he is convinced will spur development around his and other family farms.

So he put up protest signs along Rice Avenue and Pleasant Valley Road near Oxnard, where state and local agencies are teaming up to build a new interchange and extend an access road leading to the Port of Hueneme.

The message, in big, bright-red letters, sarcastically sums up his sentiments: “Thanks Oxnard for Destroying This Farmland.” He holds out little hope of stopping the project, already underway around the area where Pacific Coast Highway slices into south Oxnard.

Really, his one-man protest is meant to draw attention to larger issues of urban encroachment and to the fact that farmland continues to vanish despite efforts by county voters to enact strict preservation laws.

“I just feel you’ve got to throw little pebbles of protest at local government to catch the public’s attention,” said Rosenmund, whose family started farming in the area in the 1950s and now leases its land to local growers of strawberries and other row crops.

“This is a typical story when you have farmers right on the urban boundary,” he added. “But I think if you have farm owners who are willing to keep their property in farmland, rather than sell to developers, local leaders should go all out to help them do that.”

In the scheme of things, this is a small skirmish over the loss of a small chunk of farmland in a county still deeply rooted in agriculture.

The project, which has been on the drawing board in some form since the 1960s, will chew up a total of 50 acres of prime farmland. Rosenmund’s ranch stands to lose two acres as the result of road widening.

But to Rosenmund and others, the fight is much larger. Ventura County has lost thousands of acres of farmland over the past decade, as strip malls and subdivisions sprouted where fields used to be.

Ventura County throughout the 1990s consistently ranked as one of the leading counties in the state in converting farmland and other property to urban uses, according to the state Department of Conservation.

At some point, farmers say, the cumulative loss will begin to affect the county’s agricultural industry.

“It seems like just a nibble here and a nibble there, but the next thing you know houses are everywhere,” said Christine Becker, whose family has farmed in the area since the 1880s.

Early plans had the road project shaving off a portion of her land. But that changed after transportation planners discovered that the property was enrolled in a statewide farmland preservation program. The road was realigned and will instead go through a neighboring farm.

“I just feel very strongly that no more intrusion should happen,” she said. “I object to this. We all object to this. But the feeling is there is nothing that can be done.”

The three-year, $49-million project started in February.

It will extend Rice Avenue nearly one mile south from Pacific Coast Highway to Hueneme Road and provide an interchange at PCH and Pleasant Valley Road.

The Rice Avenue extension is designed to improve access to the Port of Hueneme, a move endorsed in a 1989 study by the Southern California Assn. of Governments on anticipated growth at the harbor.

And the new interchange is the first step in a long-range plan to reroute Pacific Coast Highway, which currently merges with Oxnard Boulevard near downtown Oxnard, onto Rice Avenue and north to the Ventura Freeway.

A plan to have the highway bypass downtown has been on the books since 1964. The interchange and road extension were adopted in 1994 into the State Transportation Improvement Program.

Most of the road improvements are taking place on unincorporated land, but some property in Oxnard also is involved.

In either case, farmland in the area is shielded from development by a greenbelt agreement brokered by Oxnard and Camarillo, and by a growth-control law approved by county voters in 1998. That measure, known as SOAR, prohibits farmland from being rezoned for development without voter approval.

Government projects, however, are exempt, opening the way for the roadwork to move forward.

“We recognize that it is a loss of farmland, but the City Council believes there are other social and economic benefits that override that,” said Cynthia Daniels, senior project coordinator for Oxnard’s transportation department.

State transportation officials already have started buying up parcels to make way for the project. And they are creating a plan designed to offset farmland losses in the area through conservation easements and other methods.

Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez said no one wants to see farmland plowed under. The city successfully pushed its own SOAR initiative along with the county’s measure in 1998, Lopez said, to put surrounding farmland off limits to development.

He said there’s no question that there has been a good amount of development on farmland in and around Oxnard in recent years, as city leaders have scrambled to accommodate explosive population growth. But it is unfair for Rosenmund to target Oxnard, the mayor said.

“I know the harbor was very much involved; they were the primary movers,” Lopez said. “To say that Oxnard or this current council is responsible for that project is an unfair criticism.”

Over at the Port of Hueneme, however, officials tell a different story. The port did put $2 million toward the project, and the new road will help improve access.

But Ray Fosse, president of the board of commissioners for the Port of Hueneme, said he believes the project has been pushed by Oxnard in an effort to reroute Pacific Coast Highway traffic away from the downtown area.

“We want to make it clear that we are neither the lead agency nor the driving force behind it,” Fosse said. “I have a certain amount of sympathy for farmers who are having their land taken from them. But those decisions were made by an authority higher than mine.”

Whatever the case, it appears little can be done to stop it.

In addition to the 50 acres of farmland, the road improvements will wipe out several area produce stands and farm-related enterprises.

Real estate attorney Lindsay Nielson, who specializes in farmland appraisals, has represented a handful of farm owners who have had land taken by the state for the project. He said one farmer had his six-acre operation seized, putting him out of business for good.

Nielson said he negotiated with the California Department of Transportation to get the farm owner fair compensation. But the man essentially had to give up his livelihood and relocate from a house where he had lived for decades, Nielson said.

“We’re talking about a way of life, and that’s very difficult to replace,” said Nielson, who also is representing Rosenmund in ongoing negotiations.

Caltrans spokeswoman Ivy Estrada said the agency has offered property owners a fair price. And she noted that of the four alternatives submitted for the project, the agency chose the one that paves over the least amount of farmland.

For several months, Rosenmund has hammered out a steady beat of protest. He’s fired off letters to members of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, telling them he believes the project has been pushed by Oxnard with the intent of opening the adjacent greenbelt to development.

The correspondence resulted in a review of the project last month by the Board of Supervisors, but no action was taken.

So it comes down to the protest signs, alerting hundreds of motorists who stream through that area each day to his crusade.

“I’m a voice all by myself out there,” he acknowledged. “But I would just hope in the future that people think about the impact these decisions have on farmers and that it helps shift voters toward electing people who are more concerned about preserving farmland.”