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Farms, Their Land Shrink for Seventh Straight Year

Posted on: Saturday, 4 February 2006, 09:00 CST

By Douglas Fischer, STAFF WRITER

San Joaquin County Supervisor Steve Gutierrez has a fear:

That some day all the new tract homes and malls that have sprung up in the fertile bottomlands around Stockton and Tracy will be knocked down and the concrete hauled off to get to the prime soils underneath to feed the populace.

"People laugh at me when I say this," he says.

But a new report released this week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture suggests he has a point.

California, the nation's leading farm state, lost 500 farms and 300,000 acres in 2005, much of that to urban development.

The closures represent less than

1 percent of the state's remaining

76,500 farms and by themselves won't make much of a dent in the $32 billion farmers pulled off the land in 2004, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

But it represents the seventh straight year of decline in the number of California farms -- 10,500 in all -- reported to the USDA.

That has farmers worried, particularly as they see no let-up in development pressure. State forecasts call foranother 12 million Californians to arrive over the next 25 years -- akin to the populations of Washington, Oregon and Nevada all settling here.

"Statistically it might be seven straight years (of decline) but in reality it seems more like 49 of the last 50 (years): It's a steady, slow decline," said Andrew Brait, a general manager of Full Belly Farm in Yolo County's Capay Valley, just down the road from the booming Cache Creek Casino.

"A big part of rural economic success is having that rural diversity.... We've passed the point where people can afford to buy land to farm here."

The pressure comes from many angles:

- Big farms buying up small farms. The average farm size in California was 345 acres last year, up 5 percent since 1997. And the number of farms reporting sales over $500,000 rose to 8,500 in 2005, an increase of 200 farms.

- Aging farmers unable to draw the next generation to a life of long hours and hard work. "It's such a tough industry to make a living in," said Randy Strain, who makes a living roaming Alameda, Contra Costa, Sacramento and San Joaquin counties as a brand inspector for the state. "A lot of children of the old-timers don't want to do it. They can go to town and make twice as much working less."

- Mounting regulations on everything from diesel emissions to irrigation water discharges. "My Dad got tired of dealing with the regulatory agencies," said Bruce Blodgett, director of the San Joaquin County Farm Bureau, whose father sold the family farm in frustration in 1997. "He said, 'If I want to fix my levee, I spend more time on paperwork than I spend trying to fix my levee.'"

"Our farmers and ranchers have always said it's not going to get any worse, and since then it's continued to get worse."

- And, of course, seemingly ever-rising land values that price younger generations out of the market. "Unless you're in the wine industry and have good wine grapes and the soils for that," Gutierrez said, "it's a struggle."

California remains far and away the nation's leading farm state, where farm income from several counties surpass income from many states. Fresno County alone had nearly $5 billion in farm revenue last year, more than 22 states.

But the development trend is worrisome enough that the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors is considering a fee on any development taking farm land out of production. It's considered a radical idea, and even some farmers oppose it.

Gutierrez, born and reared in San Joaquin County, said the county needs some way to control when and how it grows. "Are we ready to continue to grow homes versus grow crops?" he asked. "The way I look at it, homes bring people. People bring all kinds of ... needs for services: more highways, more schools, more teachers, more doctors. It's incredible the impact."

In the Capay Valley, Full Belly Farm is fighting the expansion of Highway 16 to funnel more cars to the Cache Creek Casino. Brait, the farm's general partner, fears a widened road will magnify the development pressure. "We're only one farm ... but we're trying to get people to understand that there is an inherent value to having local farms in their local community."

Meanwhile Strain, the brand inspector, figures there's plenty of room in California for cattle and crops and people to co-exist.

"There will always be a need for us," he said. "There's still a large part of California that has cattle and won't be developed. The whole state isn't like the Bay Area or Los Angeles."

At least not yet.

Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com.

Source: Oakland Tribune

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