Farmland Vanishing at Faster Pace

Ventura County is losing farm and grazing land to housing tracts, strip malls and other urban uses at a quickening pace--and data suggest the rate will only increase in the near future, according to a state report released this week.

The latest edition of the state Department of Conservation’s Farmland Conversion Report, which covers the two fiscal years beginning in 1994 and ending in 1996, shows that the county lost 1,383 acres of farmland to urbanization during that time--more than the 1,032 paved over the prior two years, but less than the 1,000-acre-a-year average of the previous decade.

However, the report’s indicator of land committed to nonagricultural use--properties that were still being farmed but had already been rezoned to allow development--nearly quadrupled, suggesting that a far more significant loss of farm and ranch land is underway.

The county committed 8,259 acres of farm and grazing land to urban uses in the latest two-year period, compared with 2,263 acres in the previous period, according to the report.

It is hard to pin down exactly where the losses occurred, but county officials believe that the 8,259-acre figure largely represents the approval by the Board of Supervisors of the massive Ahmanson Ranch mini-city to be built on open space near Oak Park. Ironically, the Board of Supervisors has spent much of this year blaming Oxnard and other county cities for the loss of farmland and open space.

Although it is considered the most authoritative reflection of farmland losses in California by most agricultural experts, the Department of Conservation report is not without its critics. In the April edition of its magazine, Southern California Builder, the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California strongly questioned the conclusions drawn from the Ventura County report, calling them “wildly overblown.” The association had the figures last spring because some county reports were released earlier than the overall state data.

Acknowledging that the report is not without flaws, county officials are creating their own system to gauge farmland conversion. But for now, they believe the report is the best measuring stick available.

“There’s no real major surprises,” Gene Kjellberg, the county’s farmland preservation expert, said of the report. “The one thing that pops out at me is the land committed to nonagricultural uses. That’s a huge difference.

“I’m assuming a major part of that is the Ahmanson Ranch,” he added. “But there is also a big jump in the ag land category.”

The report’s conclusions come as the county is engaged in a historic political debate over the future of urbanization, particularly regarding the need to protect farmland from growth pressures.

The group known as Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources hopes to pass no fewer than seven growth-control initiatives this year, taking zoning powers away from elected leaders and giving them directly to voters. Meanwhile, a competing county government-led effort by a committee known as the Agriculture Policy Working Group is looking to address the same concerns in a less drastic fashion.

Richard Francis, leader of the SOAR movement, said the report’s conclusions illustrate the need for stronger measures to preserve farmland--an issue, he said, that SOAR’s opponents can no longer rebut.

“Our detractors have tried to say the loss of agricultural land is not an issue, and these numbers appear to show that it is,” Francis said.

“Ag land should not be viewed as a holding zone for development,” he said. “But that is the way some people continue to think about it, even though it is one of the engines driving our local economy.”

However, Rob Roy of the Ventura County Agricultural Assn., one of the leaders of the anti-SOAR Coalition for Community Planning, downplayed the report’s importance, arguing that the acreage lost is minuscule compared with the amount still in farming. There were about 123,335 acres of farmland in the county in 1996, according to the report.

“Is that significant enough to engage in a political experiment in this county, one that is full of unforeseen consequences?” Roy said in reference to SOAR. “I think the answer is no. We are nowhere close to becoming another San Fernando Valley or Orange County, contrary to the alarmist rhetoric of SOAR.”

Indeed, from a statewide perspective, Ventura County’s rate of farmland conversion in the latest report was actually slower than in other counties. Overall, the report showed an 8% increase in urbanization statewide.

Ventura County no longer ranked among the report’s “Top 10 Urbanizing Counties,” after coming in at No. 7 in the previous report. It was still listed among the 10 counties that converted the most irrigated farmland to urban uses, but it dropped in that category as well, from fifth to eighth.

The top three urbanizing counties--all in Southern California--were Riverside, which converted 6,379 acres; San Diego, which converted 5,641 acres; and San Bernardino, which converted 5,609 acres, according to the report.