Conservancy Helps Preserve Farmland

Put yourself in a farmer's shoes and do the math.

Good agricultural land in Monterey County sells for about $20,000 an acre. However, if the property owner can persuade the county to convert the land to another use, its value might instantly jump to $200,000 per acre.

So it's no wonder that between 1984 and 2000, 100,000 acres of productive rural land was lost each year to development. In Monterey County 2,363 acres of prime agricultural land were converted to nonagricultural purposes.

Conversions typically occur because the owner had the chance for a windfall and felt it was in the family's financial interests to grab it.

Converting agricultural land to uses other than agriculture sometimes is beneficial for the community -- it can provide additional acreage for new manufacturing that leads to more jobs, provide housing and may even conserve water. Conversion also can diminish community life by leading to sprawl, produce less revenue and generate visual blight. It can lead to loss of habitat and flood- water absorption. Inevitably, it reduces the country's ability to feed its people.

Increasingly the American Farmland Trust is serving as a catalyst for preserving farmland and steering development away from farmland. The trust was formed to save agricultural land and slow the advance of builders who pave over 50,000 acres of crop and grazing land annually. Its goal is to keep the land in active production by removing the development pressures from the land -- usually that means compensating the landowner for not selling the property.

An agricultural conservation easement is a voluntary, legally recorded deed restriction that is placed on a specific property used for agricultural production. Because the easement is a restriction on the deed of the property, the easement remains in effect even when the land changes owners.

Since its inception in 1996, the California Farmland Conservancy Program has helped preserve 21,000 acres in California, including 3,400 acres in Monterey County. Thanks to the conservancy, Monterey County Agriculture and Historical Land Conservancy and Packard Foundation, a large expanse of farmland and natural habitat north of King City is now off-limits to development. The trust paid the owners, Rio Farms and Mesa Packing, about $1 million for a guarantee that the property will remain as is -- a lettuce farm. King City planners who had been eyeing the property for development, now must look elsewhere.

One small easement at a time, the farmland conservancy program is pushing growth onto land that's hilly, rocky or poorly drained -- in other words, onto land that's better suited for houses than for growing lettuce.