Farmland in San Joaquin County, California
Ryan Long is a Junior at Pomona College. He is majoring in Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE) and minoring in Science, Technology & Society (STS). For one summer, Ryan worked on 21 Acres Farm in Woodinville, Washington.
Alienated from the spaces that produce our food, in the common American view, food can just be restocked when a grocery shelf goes empty. But have we considered a reality where that shelf cannot be restocked when it is bare? Where the numbers of farmers are dwindling and less goods are produced? Where farmland is sold to developers for the sake of increasing urban sprawl? The United States is facing a crisis of farmland loss—as the American Farmland Trust details, “America continues to lose farmland at an alarming rate of 175 acres every hour, and 1.5 million acres a year.”[1] While these trends have been expressed across the entire country, an area with a concerningly high rate of farmland loss is the Central Valley of California, specifically San Joaquin County: Located near the Bay Area and Sacramento, this region faces development pressure from high population growth, concentrated urban wealth, powerful land development interests, and ever increasing demand for housing, especially sprawling suburbs. Approximately 3.4 million acres of land in California’s agricultural counties are now urbanized.[2] San Joaquin County farmland is threatened by urban expansion, that, when considered in conjunction with changing climate and growing population, could create conditions for massive food shortages and famine.
To address the crisis of farmland loss in the San Joaquin County, this project centers on a proposal for a farmland trust that is economically resilient while also encouraging farmer transition to regenerative land management. San Joaquin County contains 921,600 total acres, of which 812,000 acres are farmland[3]—the goal for the trust is to regeneratively manage 100,000 acres by 2030.
To address and correct financial losses that farmers currently incur and to discourage farmers from selling to land hungry developers, the trust will implement a strategic multistep plan to ensure that farmers are adequately compensated for food production. Simultaneously ensuring long term protection of this vital farmland and helping farmers maintain ownership of their land, this trust will purchase conservation easements. Furthermore, tax breaks and subsidies will also be employed to not only cover the fair market value change from before and after easement, but to also help cover farmer transition to regenerative agriculture. The trust hopes to secure an inclusion of agriculture under the California 170(h) tax code to subsidize the shift to regenerative agriculture by filling this transition as a reconstruction for public and environmental benefits. The trust would also lift inheritance taxes to encourage intergenerational land transitions.
For this trust to be successful, it must create strategic partnerships. This trust would foster relationships with housing developers to encourage collaboration and design smart growth density plans—the trust will strike a deal with developers to supply grocery stores and restaurants in these smart growth regions at a discounted price. The Metropolitan Water District is another potential partnership: by managing farmland regeneratively, this trust will reduce farm water usage, thus creating an avenue to gain revenue by leasing rights for excess water to the district. The on-farm practices supported by the trust not only improve water management, but regenerative farming also increases carbon sequestration potential of soil. This enhanced capacity provides another possible revenue stream—California, as part of the Healthy Soils and the Alternative Manure Management pays farmers to sequester carbon.[4] Since the financial foundation of this trust is reliant on federal and state funding, such as the Federal Policy for Preserving Farmland, the trust will create relationships with representative at multiple levels of government. The California Wildlands Conservancy and other regional conservation groups are another category of potential strategic partners since regenerative farming aligns with conservation goals by improving farmland biodiversity and ecological resilience. Finally, this trust will also collaborate with existing farmland trusts, including the American Farmland Trust and the California Farmland Trust.
In addition to the aforementioned partnerships, to maintain long term stability, the trust will institute a collaborative and interdisciplinary management group to oversee trust operations and ensure fiduciary obligation is upheld. The group itself will consist of a strategic management team to oversee the trust, lobbyists and policy analysts to negotiate with government representatives, ecologists and regenerative agriculture specialists to aid farmer transition to regenerative agriculture, a case management team to work directly with farmers on their individual needs, and an outside relations division to coordinate partnerships.
As the American Farmland Trust aptly articulates, “conserving farmland ‘by the acre’ and soil ‘by the inch’” is how we must approach the crisis of farmland loss in the United States.[5] By uniting interests and emphasizing regenerative land management, this trust hopes to preserve vital farmland in the San Joaquin County to ensure food security for present and future generations.
[1] American Farmland Trust. (2019, May 21). Protecting Farmland. Retrieved from https://farmland.org/protecting-farmland-read-more/
[2] Thompson Jr, E. (2009, July). Agricultural Land Loss & Conservation. Retrieved from https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/agvision/docs/Agricultural_Loss_and_Conservation.pdf
[3] University of California. (2005, April). PROFILE OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY. Retrieved from https://ucanr.edu/sites/ce_san_joaquin/files/35823.pdf
[4] Babcock, B. (2009). Costs and Benefits to Agriculture from Climate Change Policy. Retrieved from https://www.card.iastate.edu/iowa_ag_review/summer_09/article1.aspx
[5] American Farmland Trust. (2019, November 21). Farmers Combat Climate Change. Retrieved from https://farmland.org/project/farmers-combat-climate-change/