Ag, enviro advocates join hands
Davis Enterprise - 10/24/03
By Cory Golden, staff writer

At a forum Wednesday evening, local farmers and environmentalists found plenty of common ground -- ground threatened without cooperation and, just as vital, public support for their cause.

The success of Yolo County agriculture depends, in large part, on local consumers, Winters farmer Charlie Rominger said.

"Every time you go out and buy food," he said, "you're voting for what kind of farming you want."

Added Yolo County Ag Commissioner Rick Landon, paraphrasing a UC Davis professor: "(Right now) we're voting for the end of agriculture in the American portfolio."

About 60 people attended the event, sponsored by Tuleyome, the Sierra Club and the Yolo Audubon Society, at the Village Homes Community Center. Panelists were Landon, farmers Rominger, Blake Harlan and Paul Muller, and Yolo County Supervisor Helen Thomson.

Host Bob Schneider of Tuleyome, a nonprofit environmental organization protecting the agricultural and wild heritages of the Putah and Cache Creek watersheds, said the forum's goal was to foster communication at "critical stage" in the county's history. The meeting came five days before the Sacramento Area Council of Governments' scheduled transportation and land use meeting in Davis.

Rominger said at past SACOG meetings, he was frustrated to hear discussion limited to "smart growth." Current general plans in the region would see 50 percent of the Central Valley paved over in as little as 50 years, he said.

"Maybe we should see what we can do to lower those projections," Rominger said. "My thought is that SACOG asks where we're going to put (growth), not if we want it. Let's look at how other countries (control growth). I think we're slow learners."

Thomson, who sits on the SACOG board of directors, said she would like other parts of the region to "understand and appreciate Yolo County, so that other areas would take more (growth) while we will continue to supply the food."

She also emphasized the Board of Supervisors' goal of keeping agriculture the county's top priority, noting the two acre-for-one mitigation requirement.

The ag element of the county's General Plan has been updated, but she said the whole plan needs to be brought up to date. The General Plan's age led the board to pass a land-use moratorium around cities recently. The board has also hired a legal firm and hydrologist for advice on water policy.

"The board's vision is to try to support agriculture and keep as much open space as possible, but under law we have to have our fair share of housing -- and there's the rub," Thomson said.

In addition to large developments, Landon said an increasing number of plots are also being bought up by newcomers who take dozens of acres out of ag use, build "an estate" with one house, then find themselves distressed about pesticide use, manure spreading or dust from farms.

Rominger said such houses are proof the county's ag land protections remain inadequate. He said the Farm Bureau recommended the board copy in its ag element an Oregon law requiring that prime ag land bring in a minimum number of dollars per year, yet nothing similar was included.

The pressure to sell, meanwhile, has become undeniable.

"It's easy to look across that fence and wonder when (development) is going to get here," Harlan said. "The tougher things get, the easier that choice gets."

The panelists and audience combined to list row after row of other challenges:

* Trade issues affecting farmers nationwide: Food grown in countries with cheaper labor and land, technology provided by U.S. companies and often lax environmental, health and worker protection laws.

Said Harlan, "We are the best at what we do -- but others can do it cheaper than us."

* Falling commodity prices: Pressure to produce more for less leads to overproduction, Muller said, making farmers dependent on commodity and world markets and desperate to buy every new piece of technology -- even as their return continues to dwindle.

* Vanishing infrastructure: The loss of the Hunt-Wesson tomato processing plant in Davis is one example, the loss of railroad feeder lines another. Landon cited a third: Where once sugar beets were the county's No. 1 crop, now there are none grown here because the processing plants are gone.

"If you lose that infrastructure," he said, "that agriculture is gone."

* Stricter regulations: The state's environmental regulations are the toughest and getting tougher, including the recent removal of a waiver exempting farms from clean-water runoff regulations.

* Water: Environmentalists and growers have had heated arguments over Putah and Cache creeks, Harlan said, but both sides must recognize water is vital to their goals. Thomson said she's disturbed more people are selling water off.

* Budget cuts: Thomson said conservationists and growers alike should make themselves heard at public hearings next year about cuts to university agriculture programs, like the UC Cooperative Extension.

* A lack of connection with consumers: Muller, who runs Full Belly Farms, an organic operation, said he and other members of Capay Valley Vision decided they had to get a story out -- a story of small, local farms in a unique region, one a person in a grocery store would remember when spotting a Capay Valley label.

"We have to make our case as something special," he said.

Those assembled agreed environmentalists and farmers could work toward mutual goals. Landon pointed out rice growers' success at attracting water fowl with new habitat.

Farmers are willing to do more, the panel agreed, whether it's planting hedgerows or creating a pond.

"Those of us who are out there in the fields every day recognize the importance of agriculture for habitat," Harlan said.

But agriculture needs help, Landon said, and conservationists can provide the muscle. Farmers are worried, for example, about how they'll survive under those stricter runoff rules, which requiring expensive testing.

They could use vegetation-lined ditches and ponds to reduce runoff, too, if they had financial help.

"The environmental community has the wherewithal to get those funds," Landon said. "We both stand to win."

Thomson said for years she watched frustrated as farmers and environmentalists battle in Sacramento over water, despite having similar goals, only to have both sides walk away unhappy.

"So let's get it together," she said. "At least in this room."