Countywide : Proposal to Protect Farmland Faulted

Members of a Thousand Oaks-based real estate organization raised questions Friday about a proposal to protect productive farmland from development by establishing an agricultural land trust in Ventura County.

Ken Flowers, a director for the Conejo Valley Assn. of Realtors, said the proposal could virtually halt new development around growing cities, driving up the cost of houses.

“We’re not against preserving farmland,” Flowers said at a workshop in Camarillo held by the League of Women Voters. But, he added, “you can’t preserve farmland with a price tag of basically eliminating affordable housing in this county.”

The workshop was the first time that agricultural land trusts have been explained to the public since the Board of Supervisors approved the concept of creating such a trust in June.

Members of the county’s agricultural land trust committee fear that residential and commercial development will gradually erode the 101,000 acres of farmland left in the county.

If the acreage dips below about 70,000, many of the other businesses and industries that depend on farming will also leave the county, they said.

County agriculture officials and administrators of existing agriculture trusts elsewhere in the state argued that the only way to preserve agriculture is to make sure land is not under pressure from developers. Farmers would benefit by getting tax breaks, they said.

Realtors are not the only ones skeptical about agricultural land trusts.

County Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail said farmers also have reservations about the notion that nonprofit organizations can buy development rights from farmers.

Another workshop to answer farmers’ concerns is scheduled for Nov. 13 at the Triple S labor camp in Oxnard.