Thanks for this article - I agree that we need to do a lot more to preserve the productive farmland soils that we have.
The farm in the first picture, SpringRain Farm in Chimacum, is actually protected from conversion by an Agricultural Conservation Easement. The landowners DONATED this conservation easement to Jefferson Land Trust, who is now responsible for ensuring the property retains its agricultural and habitat values in perpetuity - long after the current landowners are gone. So, SpringRain Farm is not a property that developers could buy and turn into anything else - it's always going to be farmland. SpringRain farm is an example of the kind of conservation we need more of.

As a veteran of many growth management battles and a lot of litigation, I have to say if there is not the political will - favorable county commissioners who don't give in to the whining of the likes of the Dan Woods and the Farm Bureau - than it just isn't going to happen.

I remember a story of an American in Germany who asked why are all your houses on the hills? The German replied because we grow our food in the valley where the soil is more fertile.

The Kent valley is in the deplorable state it is in because the farmers got taxed off their property. THis has beed discussed for the last 50 years when I can remember mostly dairy and agricultural there.

The time has long passed for discussion. Here is what I propose
1. Stop talking
2. Existing agricultural in Kent Valley clear up to Boeing field is declared as agricultural for next 50 years if not perpetuity
3. All agricultural land is tax free for next 20 years.
4. Agricultural land cannot be split up
5. When ag land MUST be sold and it cannot sell then COunty steps in and buys it - this would apply to very restricted situations such as estate sales.
6. Industrial land in agricultural tax base is raised ten fold - yes we are chasing them out - just like we did the farmers.
7. When industrial leaves - thank God - they take their buildings and asphalt with them and leave nothing but dirt. They will ahve to remove all contaminants at their cost (OK the consumer cost)
8. Industrial can go where they moved out of - the cities where there is rail
9. By industrial I include the big box stores and warahousing - get rid of em and send em back to where they came from.
10. Force City of Seattle to stop taxing industry out of town.
11. Oh yes the developers and industry will cry. I do NOT care about them. They do not care about us.

Great article!

Dear Mr. Myers,

Transportation is one factor in food distribution. How about packaging and processing? Or the bureaucratization of food production that emerges when the food system reaches a scale so complex that factory farms are condoned and tiny raw milk cooperatives are squashed by the feds? What about the loss of the local knowledge of our land that comes with development and can't be recovered? Or the loss of community vibrance, intelligence, trust, empathy, and adaptivity from local production and knowing the face behind the source? Or the loss of the skills of food preservation and storage that reduce post-production energy costs and deepen our culture's knowledge and respect? I prefer to use my senses, and they do not observe a strong cultural regard for the source of food—forget half-baked efficiency numbers for a second.

I see Myers' point that not everything needs to be produced locally. But that is beside the point. Everything is not going to be produced locally any time soon. 2 pounds from afar for every 1 pound locally. That is not good. Food is culture, it is the interface between the people and the land that ultimately sustains them. Absence of local food production fundamentally erodes our local culture and makes our food system highly vulnerable if global supply and/or national supply chains ever falter—that does not seem unlikely right now. Let's start by talking about all that rather than comparing reality with a scenario that will never exist, i.e. 100% local production, in terms that are purely political nonsense, i.e. soulless efficiency babble.

Here's a quote from the Post-Carbon reader on energy and food production:

"Each ingenious new invention made it easier to get food to the plate—at an energy cost. In 1840 the U.S. food system depended almost entirely on renewable energy sources, including labor from 70 percent (12 million) of the 17 million Americans of the day, more than 2 mil-lion of whom were enslaved. By 1900 the population had grown to 76 million, less than 40 percent (30 mil-lion) farmed, slavery had finally been abolished, and the food system consumed about 3 quadrillion Btu of fossil fuel.

Today less than 1 percent of the population farms,and those 2 million farmers feed more than 300 mil-lion of their fellow citizens. The entire U.S. food system consumes about 10 quadrillion Btu from fossil fuel every year: 1 quadrillion Btu to make farm inputs like fuel, fertilizer, and machinery; 1 quadrillion to farm; 1 quadrillion to haul; 4 quadrillion to process, package, and sell food; and 3 quadrillion to run the fridges, freezers, stoves, and the other appliances that fill our home kitchens. The vast majority of energy used to get food to our plates is used after the food leaves the farm. Our kitchens consume far more energy than our farms."

Excellent article! Very informative with much valuable information about a very important issue which most of us tend to ignore, especially when buying our food at the grocery store or eating a meal in a restaurant.

The same way many people fail to recognize the connection between environmental conditions at animal slaughter houses and the healthfulness of the meat they buy, most of us tend to ignore or forget where and how the grains, fruit and vegetables we eat are grown.

We see a label on a gourmet product which says made or grown in Washington and congratulate ourselves on having an uber-hip agricultural state, all the while remaining in the dark about how much pollution, loss of farmland, the rise of corporate farming and a host of other significant issues affect US in the long run.

I'm alarmed when I look at how much land we've lost to industrialization and (sub)urban sprawl in the past few decades and while I rejoice over the proliferation of neighborhood farmer's markets springing up in Seattle and elsewhere, I realize that there is still a great deal to be done to avert an ultimate farming and land management crisis.

Berit, you hit the real crux of the issue with your last paragraph...this is a global problem with huge ramifications on many levels. "Fixing" this mess, the deplorable loss of our most precious resource, is going to take a real paradigm shift and the sooner the better!

And Berit--I am thrilled that your parents get Washington state property tax relief...as farmers, they deserve it! Thanks for a great article!

"You get homeowners moving into farm areas, and often times they object to the smells and sounds of farms," he explained.

And then the same people complain about the loss of rural areas and farmland.

Another essential conversation well begun.

Question for Wood: IF you were correct than there should be few if any farmers electing to assess their property at use value. Is that true? Instead of horror stories, you need to come clean with real data, e.g. numbers of use value elections and in relation to the instances and locations where reducing property taxes at speculation value to property taxes at use value does away with or lessens the need to borrow operating funds at all.

Message to Meyer: Reality checks that rain in Eco-Fads are essential. You have my thanks, but "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" on either side of the aisle. Local organic farming is a subject not the least amenable to idle economic theory, if so Canty's problem would have been solved without ever beginning. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but local restorative farming is "destructive innovation" is the best sense of that alas already faddish phrase.

There are a lot of ways to keep the farms but the main one to me is tax the property for what it is being used for. Farming, wood lots, tree farms, fish ponds or what ever makes food and agriculture. Then the next real hurdle is finding some one to own the land who really wants to farm and work that hard and invest in the equipment it takes. Then the land some how must be bought and sold at agriculture prices or be lucky enough to have a family to pass it on to. It is not cheap to farm and being taxed at highest possible use does not help. Actually I suspect the whole thing is a dream world to keep ag in King or the middle Puget sound area.

A reader's digest of Losing Ground for the overly busy:

Use of the Tools at Hand:
"—The majority of Puget Sound counties have enacted the conservation futures tax, but only Skagit County uses the proceeds solely for farmland protection and many counties rarely buy farm easements.
—Only San Juan County has enacted the so-called “REET 3”, a real estate excise tax solely for conservation [San Juan County uses it very effectively]
—State law grants counties the authority to tax agricultural property at its farm or use value rather than its speculative value for development (see RCW 84.34).
—[Transfers of development rights] require an unusual combination of real estate market demand, the political will to CAP (emphasis added) urban densities, and a high level of cooperation between counties and cities to move rights across political boundaries ...[A] program approved by the legislature in 2011... provides access to funding for urban infrastructure for communities that accept transferred development rights."

Key Counties in Brief:
"Skagit County has the best farmland protection program in the Puget Sound region....The best thing that the County can do is simply maintain their existing efforts [plus] consider [a few] additional steps.

King County has had one of the best farmland protection programs in the region since the 1970’s....At the same time, the program could improve through the following actions:
—1. Upgrading protection of farmland outside the ag zone:
As noted, there is approximately 25,000 acres of farmland outside of ag zones, most in rural zones which provide scant protection to farmland. King County should evaluate these tracts with an eye towards incorporating them in the A-10 zone....
—2. Increasing the number of acres conserved through the PDR Program:
Since King County bought the development rights of 12,600 acres of farmland in the late 70’s and early 80’s, only 600 more farm acres have been protected. King County should allocate a higher portion of its conservation futures funds towards its PDR program.
—3. Targeting agricultural land through its TDR program:
King County has one of the most active TDR programs in the country with over 142,000 acres of development rights transferred.... However... it would be helpful if future TDR transactions focused more on farmland protection.

While Pierce County has a fairly strong program of regulations, tax incentives, and TDR...very strong development pressure in the county... has overwhelmed what might otherwise be a successful program.

Snohomish County has made great strides in recent years to renew its commitment to a viable and sustainable farm economy in the future [actually INCREASING farmland 5.4% between 1997 and 2007]..... Several changes could help in continuing the strengthening of the County’s farmland protection efforts."

Digester's Commentary:
The report understandably does not go into the related lip service being paid affordable housing nor how distortiing the GMA from its intention of shared growth throughout the state to winner take-all growth (save the planet) impacts farmland near major UGBs. Morrill, in Crosscut and elsewhere has extensively documented the great pushing of those with the most modest means into the river valleys extending from Seattle's south end far south and west as far as Tacoma (cheapest because the land both floods and lies in the path of an active volcano— exquisite farmland. http://www.newgeography.com/content/00857-the-geography-class-greater-seattle

The affordable housing answer is hardly rocket science. Google Bainbridge Island Municipal Code Chapter 18.90—before you— the means to transform affordable housing from lip service into action. BUT, for Seattle to make use of the innovation would mean restoring density limits, the antiquated concept it just ditched as a modernization. Canty's report raises another valid reason for "antiquated" density limits— to cap, some would say keep low, in order to make TDR effective as opposed to the new fad of "selling zoning" and pretending funds will materialize to cover the otherwise ignored increased infrastructure needs. Totally losing track of the legal nexus for zoning, aka urban design, would have been noticed and corrected long ago had we remained a society ruled by law.

One caveat about a transfer of development rights program (TDR) used for farmland: if the county already has a successful PDR program, a TDR program will KILL it by increasing the market value of farmland to be out of reach fro the PDR program. TDRs are best used inside urban growth areas and cities/towns for open space, parks or like uses because the market determines the demand for TDRs where they have been used effectively.
An even better and less expensive market incentive to increase density in urban areas is the use of Density Credits, where a municipality designates an area for more density and then sells "credits" to developers who want to participate. The funds collected then can be donated to a PDR program, there is no administrative cost and farmland is actually protected, rather than threatened. This is a much smarter program and more efficient.
The NW corner still has an opportunity to designate Food Security Zones which could be established with even more reduced taxation, farm succession planning and even holding farmland in cooperatives, much like the PCC model of owning farms that supply grocers. People just need to know what is possible and work with farmers to secure our food supply.

The AFT report ignores the numbers of acres of farmland converted to other uses since 2007. For example, in Skagit County in 2008, 3000 acres of agricultural land were purchased, not by developers, but by state agencies for conversion to other uses ranging from road widening to habitat for wildlife. See details at http://www.friendsofskagitcounty.org/news/AgAcresConverted092308.pdf. With only 83,000 acres left in production, and a need for 40,000 acres for potato rotation annually, Skagit is fast losing the infrastructure of the soils it needs to continue producing food for the NW corner and the region. The 83 crops grown here are threatened primarily by no one keeping an honest and accurate watch on acres converted. It is truly death by 1,000 cuts and will not stop until the development rights are removed from every acres of farmland. You can help save farmland by sending a tax-deductible contribution in any amount to the Skagit County Farmland Legacy Program, 1800 Continental Place, Mount Vernon, WA 98273. The FLP has protected 9,000 acres, using the County Conservation Futures tax, federal grants and citizen contributions. We have a long way to go and need every eater's help. Thank you for putting your money where your fork is.