Conservancy Plants Seeds of Hope in Tough Ground : Agriculture: The industry applauds the land-trust group’s efforts to protect prime soil from developers. But the group is still scrabbling for funds.

Formed 10 months ago with the lofty goal of preserving Ventura County’s farmland, the Agricultural Land Trust and Conservancy is still scrabbling unsuccessfully for funds.

Virtually everyone associated with the county’s agriculture industry praises the land trust for setting out to save lemon groves and strawberry fields from the unrelenting march of developers’ bulldozers.

But so far, farmers have been reluctant to back up their cheers with their checkbooks.

No one has yet donated acreage or development rights to the Agricultural Land Trust and Conservancy, a nonprofit group that aims to keep prime farmland for food production.

“This is not a fast-rolling program,” said Larry Rose, the trust’s secretary-treasurer. “But we’re looking forward to that first icebreaker.”

The trust relies on voluntary sales or donations. But farmers are naturally reluctant to hand over development rights, because once they commit to preserving their land for agriculture, the value of each acre plummets.

“If you sell your development rights, what have you got left if you run into tough times and need to use the land as collateral?” asked Ed Frost, who chairs the county’s Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business.

Furthermore, any handoff to the trust entails complex tax and accounting procedures that mystify many local estate planners. So the trust recently sponsored workshops for attorneys and accountants, explaining--in dizzying detail--the tax benefits of selling development rights, which are also known as conservation easements.

Merely organizing the workshops cleared out the trust’s bank account. The group has applied for several state and federal grants, but so far, its coffers are bare.

“We’re going to have to pass the hat at our next meeting just to stay afloat,” the trust’s Rose said.

Dry statistics may be enough to motivate some charitable donations.

Ag land--including crop fields, tree orchards and grazing pastures--makes up fully one-quarter of Ventura County’s total acreage. But that percentage is shrinking fast.

Urban sprawl gobbles up 1,500 acres of prime Ventura County farmland a year, as strip malls and ranchettes replace avocado groves and broccoli patches.

Buying conservation easements on all of Ventura County’s crop and grazing land would cost an estimated $20 billion. In remote areas, far from the path of development, easements might cost as little as $500 an acre, but saving a vegetable field next to a teeming subdivision might run up to $6,500 an acre.

Less-expensive tactics for preserving farmland--including zoning regulations and greenbelts--do exist, but they are also less permanent.

“Zoning is inherently temporary,” explained Bob Berner, executive director of the successful Marin County Agricultural Land Trust, which has acquired easements on 22,000 acres since its inception in 1980.

So conservationists say that securing easements on ag land is usually the best strategy. In Ventura County, the key will be convincing local farmers to relinquish their development rights.

Already, many farmers have taken an interim step under the Williamson Act, pledging to keep their land for growing or grazing in return for lower property taxes. About 151,000 acres in Ventura County are protected under the Williamson Act, but property owners reserve the right to withdraw from the contract at any time.

Permanently turning over development rights to an agricultural land trust requires a bit more courage.

“Sooner or later there’s got to be some brave soul” willing to donate, said Ventura rancher Link Leavens, a founding member of the trust. “We’re not going to be concerned if it takes a while.”

Far more troublesome than the trust’s slow start, Leavens said, is the simplistic notion that preserving farmland will save the agricultural industry.

With prices dropping and new regulations cracking down on pesticide use, many farmers don’t see any point to staying in the business. “If we can’t sell crops for more than they cost to produce, there’s no use saving ag land--the industry is doomed,” Leavens said.

At the Ventura County Farm Bureau, Executive Director Rex Laird echoed those fears. Launching into a furious monologue, he railed against the farmland preservationists who have cast their efforts as a crusade to save agriculture.

“Most of the groups that fervently support the preservation of ag land . . . use that same energy and passion to support legislation that will put us out of business in this county faster than the disappearance of ag land will,” Laird said.

“It’s like they’re telling us, ‘Just go put on your bib overalls and baseball cap and put that piece of straw back in your mouth and go off to do what you’ve been doing.’ Well, it’s not that simple. You can’t just lock up the land and then, with a wave of a magic wand, say we’ll be able to survive.”

Still, preserving good growing and grazing land is certainly one critical way to bolster the county’s agriculture industry, which last year generated $722 million worth of crops, down from $909 million in 1991.

Ventura County’s irrigated farmland now stands at about 100,000 acres. Officials believe that vital agribusiness support companies--pesticide sprayers, tree trimmers and other essential services--will fold should that total drop below 70,000 acres.

“Ventura County ag land is in danger--just think of the San Fernando Valley and what ag heaven that was at one time,” said Jerry Meral, executive director of the nonprofit Planning and Conservation Leage Foundation.

“You can see the path of development heading like an arrow over the hills and right into Ventura County,” Meral added.

In fact, the national American Farmland Trust recently named Ventura County and surrounding areas the third-most-threatened agricultural region in the United States, due to enormous development pressure.

“How do you convince people agriculture is important? You pave it over,” said Erik Vink, the nonprofit group’s field representative in California.

But others caution that development should not be painted as an evil, avaricious monster intent on paving over all that’s green and growing.

“Everyone would like to keep things preserved the way they were 50 or 60 years ago,” state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) said. “But we have growing families here and we have to provide housing for them and jobs for them--you must strike a balance.”

A tenuous equilibrium seems to have settled in Ventura County over the past few years.

Save-the-farmland activists decry the county’s decision to build the Todd Road Jail on a citrus-rich greenbelt midway between Ventura and Santa Paula. They are equally outraged at Cal State University’s plans to condemn a 190-acre lemon grove west of Camarillo and purchase it for a new campus.

But preservationists have also gained ground this summer:

* The Sierra Club last month successfully pushed for the establishment of a greenbelt restricting development on 5,000 acres of prime farmland between Ventura and Oxnard. The greenbelt agreement has already cleared several hurdles and awaits approval by the Oxnard City Council.

* Supervisor Maria VanderKolk’s top administrative assistant, Russ Baggerly, recently called for a ballot question on an agricultural tax or bond measure, designed to raise money to buy and preserve farmland. “We have to do it soon--within the next five years, and sooner rather than later,” Baggerly said.

* A statewide conservation group cited maintaining agricultural acreage in Ventura County as a key goal in a report released last month. The nonprofit group, the Planning and Conservation League Foundation, is sponsoring a bond initiative to raise money for open space acquisition across California, including millions of dollars earmarked to preserve farmland in Ventura County.

Despite these gains, some ag industry leaders remain pessimistic.

“The average person wants to move to the country because they like the open fields and the greenery,” explained Frost, who founded the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business lobbying group earlier this year.

“But on cold nights farmers get the wind machines going and it’s noisy and the neighbors get angry. Or people get supersensitive about the pesticide issue. Or the dust from ground work,” Frost added.

“Then the complaints start going in, and there’s more urban and suburban voters than there are aggies,” he said. “So politicians bend over backward for them. It seems like whenever push comes to shove, agriculture takes a back seat.”