SOAR’s Choices

Re “Alliance on SOAR More of an Illusion,” Oct. 25.

I’d have to agree with the Farm Bureau’s Rex Laird that the self-proclaimed environmentalists who pushed the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources initiative have a “desire for agricultural land to be preserved not because they favor agriculture but because it thwarts development.”

Agriculture, as practiced in Ventura County, should be considered an open-air factory operation. Scientists have stated that 70% of our environmental degradation originates from such operations. Water and air contamination, loss of topsoil, destruction of native plant and wildlife species . . . not the sort of thing environmentalists are known to promote.

Urban sprawl is certainly not the solution. But this is the debate we were dragged into with the SOAR initiative. One can only speculate as to the motives of the parties involved, or about the consequences now that the votes have been counted.

Clearly, the victim in this non-choice was public perception--reinforcement of the perception that agriculture and open space, or greenbelts, are the same thing. They are not.

SOAR proponent Russ Baggerly called farmland “mental health belts” and referred to the calming effect of seeing “open space” as one comes over Conejo Grade from Thousand Oaks. I have the opposite sensation when I see miles of plastic spread out in a futile effort to contain the tons of ozone-depleting nerve gas used on farmland, plastic that will end up in our overburdened landfills. This visible indicator is but a small fraction of the devastation that decades of chemically intensive agriculture have wreaked on the natural environment.

From the top of the grade we can see the open, wild space where native peoples once roamed, contrasted to the farmlands and cities that are white man’s “progress.” It was within this definition of progress that SOAR gave us the riddle of “two evils” from which to select our destiny.

DEBORAH BECHTEL, Camarillo

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I enjoyed reading your article “Farmers Group Assailed Over SOAR Ad,” Oct. 30. It was great to see what an environmentalist like Al Sanders of the Sierra Club really thinks about farmers.

It’s great for them to go broke farming while “landscaping” the county so everyone else can enjoy the view. But God forbid the landowner would want to do what he is legally permitted to do with his property. Then he becomes a “money-grubbing scumbag”!

DAVID COOK, Oxnard