Housing is Valley's New Cash Crop

By Dale Kasler
Bee Staff Writer

Published October 18, 1998

From his dairy farm south of Elk Grove, where his immigrant father started out more than 50 years ago, Tony Machado can see them coming: the suburbs creeping closer, their evening lights burning brighter.

He figures he's farming on borrowed time.

"It's too late for me now," said Machado, whose land is likely to get developed in a few years. "There's nothing I can do to stop it."

As California braces for its next great population explosion, a boom that will add 27 million people in 40 years, legions of farmers, land preservationists and others are sounding an alarm. They say this 21st-century human tidal wave could overwhelm one of the nation's most precious natural resources: California farmland.

From Elk Grove to Tracy, from Fresno to Chino, the relentless sprawl of suburbia could jeopardize an industry that produces half the nation's fruits, nuts and vegetables, some experts say. Eventually such a development could raise serious food-security questions for the nation, and turn America from the world's breadbasket into a major importer of food and fiber, they say.

"You continue to have this incremental taking of farmland, and pretty soon you're going to end up with something pretty significant," said Ann Veneman, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. "It's a serious concern."

Much of the concern is over the Central Valley, the agricultural jewel prized for its rich soils, Mediterranean-like climate and stunning diversity of crops. With the population between Redding and Bakersfield expected to more than double over the next 40 years, the preservationist group American Farmland Trust has labeled the Valley the nation's most "threatened" farming region.

"Most of the land that's available for development is in the Valley," said Thomas Hutchings, Sacramento County's planning director. "The economy of this state is moving from the coast to the inland valleys."

Rudy Platzek, a retired urban planner who's studied Valley development, warns of a day late in the 21st century when nearly half the Valley's farmland will have been devoured by "one linear mega-city from Marysville to the Tehachapi along the Highway 99 corridor." The farmland trust says the Valley could lose 1 million acres, or 15 percent of its farmland, by 2040.

Subdivisions are sprouting not just in the obvious places, like Elk Grove and Tracy, but also in burgs like Woodland, Salida and Los Banos -- quiet Valley farm towns morphing into bustling bedroom communities.

In Turlock, a mostly agricultural community south of Modesto, Earl Reed watched a housing development go up across the street from his corn farm and shook his head.

"I knew it was coming," said Reed, 69. "But it's a shock to see it happen so fast."

Scores of interviews with farmers, land preservationists, urban planners and developers reveal a problem that defies easy solutions:

To be sure, it's far too early to write off California agriculture. Farmers' revenue jumped 6 percent last year to a record $26.8 billion. California farmers have shown a remarkable capacity to increase their productivity and switch to high-value crops like apricots and wine grapes, fueling higher revenues even while land disappears.

"So what if we lose half our agricultural land? So long as farmers have the ability to produce (high-value) commodities that people want to buy, that works for agriculture," said director Don Villarejo of the Davis-based California Institute for Rural Studies.

Moreover, there's some dispute about how quickly farmland is disappearing.

The U.S. census of agriculture 1 pegs the annual loss at about 300,000 acres. But another federal program, the Department of Agriculture's National Resources Inventory, says about 66,000 acres a year are vanishing. And in a report covering 1994 to 1996, the state Department of Conservation says farmland loss was nonexistent, although the state did lose about 38,000 acres of its best land.

Anecdotal evidence also can be confusing. A city dweller driving through fast-growing communities like Davis or North Natomas might well conclude that urbanization is everywhere. But that overlooks the millions of acres lying undisturbed, far, far away from the nearest subdivision.

" There's lots and lots of land in the Valley between Bakersfield and Sacramento," said Mike Souza, a Tracy farmer and real estate executive whose family recently sold a 70-acre parcel for development. "Tons and tons, and acres and acres."

Added Tim Coyle of the California Building Industry Association: "The problem is exaggerated."

Developers say most projects proceed slowly, pausing for government reviews, recessions and other roadblocks. Ten years ago Elliott Homes began buying a 1,600-acre cow pasture by Folsom for a community called Broadstone. By the time it's finished, the project will have taken 18 years.

"These things just don't happen willy-nilly," said Russ Davis, an Elliott vice president.

Yet preservationists say that's precisely the point: Slow, incremental development ends up devouring big chunks of land.

"Demands have already been made now for land that is going to be developed over the next 10 years," said Shawn Stevenson, a rancher and pistachio grower near the Fresno suburb of Clovis. "Land has been bought, plans have been made, momentum is being generated.

"You can't wait 20 or 40 years from now to decide we've been exhausting everything."

Every acre of farmland that gets converted to urban use puts several more acres in the path of future development, "like ripples on a pond," said Larry Goldzband, director of the Department of Conservation. The market value of the farmland rises as speculation heats up, raising rents for farmers who lease. The temptation grows, too: Land that's worth $3,000 an acre for agriculture can be worth $25,000 or more for development.

"This is my dad's retirement," said Chuck Tuso, whose elderly father owns farmland near Tracy that could be developed some day.

Tellingly, the farmland issue is being raised not only by "hippie farmers" and left-leaning 3 organizations like the farmland trust, said the trust's California director, Erik Vink.

Now the leading voice on this matter is the conservative California Farm Bureau Federation, which used to stay out of the debate because it didn't want to infringe on a farmer's right to sell. The bureau recently teamed with the farmland trust to warn of "an accelerating loss of productive agricultural land" and call for income tax credits, more affordable water and other incentives to keep land in agriculture.

Indeed, the preservationist movement is gaining allies. Counties and cities more often are saying "no" to urbanization, as when Stanislaus County's Local Area 4 Formation Commission rejected Modesto's request two years ago to earmark for development a huge chunk of prime farmland.

Public and privately funded land trusts have locked away thousands of important acres in Sonoma, Yolo, Monterey and other counties by paying premiums to farmers who agree never to sell to developers.

Another 16 million acres of California farmland are covered by the Williamson Act, the historic 1965 state law that provides property tax breaks for farmland owners who agree not to sell to developers for 10 years at a time. The law imposes a penalty on land sales that break the Williamson agreements (The bill's author, former Assemblyman John C. Williamson, died last Sunday). Gov. Pete Wilson recently signed into law the so-called "Super Williamson Act," providing heftier incentives for those willing to lock away their land for 20 years at a time.

Many communities also have adopted urban service boundaries. But those boundaries aren't unbreakable; Sacramento County is considering a development near Rancho Murieta that would leapfrog its urban boundary. In San Bernardino County, population pressures are crashing in on a 15,000-acre land preserve established 30 years ago to protect the dairy farms around Chino.

"You do as well as you can for as long as you can," sighed Larry Walker, a San Bernardino supervisor who fought against developing the dairy land.

What's especially worrisome to some preservationists is the caliber of the land at risk. According to the USDA's National Resources Inventory, nearly 2 percent of the California farmland classified as "prime" was urbanized from 1982 to 1992.

"The cities are unfortunately located on the best soils," said Stanislaus County planner Ron Freitas.

Some land may well be priceless. Land preservationists in Monterey County worry that suburban sprawl from San Jose could elbow aside farmland that grows most of the nation's supply of artichokes, broccoli, cauliflower and a few other crops.

"This is the most significant area in the world for summer vegetables," said Brian Rianda, director of the Monterey County Agricultural and Historical Land Conservancy. "We're fooling with our breadbasket."

Urbanization isn't the only factor in eroding farmland. Environmental programs also play a role.

The CalFed project, a joint venture between the state and federal governments, wants to buy and take out of production 188,000 acres of farmland to improve water flows and aid the environment of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Many of the land purchases would occur in the Delta, but the proposal has sparked criticism from farmers all over.

Farmers in the Sacramento Valley fear CalFed's plan more than urbanization, said Rich Golb of the Northern California Water Association, which represents 66 water districts north of Sacramento.

Yet throughout much of California, in the long run the bigger concern is urban development, preservationists agree.

Suburbanites are even moving into farm towns once thought immune from the development craze.

In Woodland, for example, the influx of warehouses and distribution centers has brought economic growth -- and an emotional debate over the community's future.

When the city was updating its general plan in 1994, it proposed taking for development 5 several hundred acres of farmland owned by relatives of Steve Borchard, a city councilman and a farmer.

The idea broke Borchard's heart. While he couldn't participate in the council proceedings because of a conflict of interest, it was well known that he opposed the plan. Eventually the city agreed to develop elsewhere.

Borchard's stance angered some relatives. "It was their land, but I didn't want to see it plowed under," he said. "They felt I kept them from reaping their rewards."

The same kind of debate is going on in Tracy, another longtime agricultural community that is becoming a bedroom community. As population spills over from the East Bay, city officials have embraced plans for 20,000 new homes in the next 15 years or so.

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