Farmers greet 2002 with less land

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Posted 11:29AM on Tuesday, January 1, 2002

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA - California's farm owners enter 2002 with 50,000 fewer acres to farm due to urban growth. But they're also finding more money than ever to save their farms for future generations. In a state that leads the nation in production of 79 farm commodities, authorities say 2001's losses continue a trend in which an estimated 500,000 acres are paved over every decade. Though the 50,000 acres represent a bare fraction of California's 9 million irrigated acres, experts warn that one-third of those being paved are the state's best soils. And some say the state needs a far-reaching growth plan, possibly to steer development away from the Central, Salinas and Santa Maria valleys and Oxnard Plain. The four regions grow most of the nation's fresh produce. ``Currently, the state doesn't have much of a role,'' said Alvin Sokolow, public policy analyst at the University of California, Davis. ``It has no role.'' Nonetheless, the industry finds itself with new allies. Increasingly, farmers, cities and counties are tapping state and federal programs for millions of dollars to save farms from the state's relentless growth. As the state adds 600,000 people a year to its population of 35 million, government and private grant makers have begun something relatively new: buying development rights to thousands of acres of crop land. It's an idea largely pioneered in small eastern states: Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Jersey, said Chuck Tyson, who heads the California Farmland Conservancy Program. California's five-year-old program has already put 13,500 acres off limits to urban development. It offers farm owners a one-time cash payment: the difference between the land's farming value and the price a developer would pay. In return, owners must farm the land in perpetuity. Tyson said the state program received $25 million from Proposition 12, the $2.1 billion park and open space bond passed by voters in 2000. The David and Lucille Packard Foundation committed $175 million to conserve landscapes statewide, including farms. ``The idea isn't about stopping growth, but hopefully, at the local level, defining areas that have the greatest strategic ag value,'' Tyson said.