Prime Pajaro Farmland

Land Trust tapped to receive $4.5 million in funds

This article originally appeared in our newsletter, Landmarks, Fall 2006

Hundreds of acres of prime Pajaro Valley farmland will stay farmland thanks to the combined actions of local nonprofits and state and federal funders. The five way agreement will protect up to 560 acres of farmland – the first major protection of prime farmland in the Valley.

Under the agreement the Borina Foundation will continue to own the farmland and it will continue to be farmed, as the Borina family wished. The Land Trust of Santa Cruz County will hold conservation easements on the land, restricting its use to farming and prohibiting development.

Because the preservation agreement bans development, the future value of the land is limited. Since the Community Foundation has been designated to one day receive the land, it had a big stake in the decision. The Community Foundation’s Board approved the agreement – and in doing so made a major investment in land conservation. Community Foundation Executive Director Lance Linares says the conservation of prime farmland “ultimately benefits the entire region for many years to come.”

The acquisition of development rights will cost $4.5 million. The California Farmland Conservancy Program has approved $2.8 million toward that cost, the largest such grant in the agency’s history. In September the federal Farm and Ranchlands Protection Program selected the Land Trust to receive $1.7 million. It will take some time for the details of the complicated transaction to be completed.

Conservation agreements like this one are popular because they keep farms in family hands and protect farmland from development pressures. Nationwide more than 3.6 million acres have been protected by such agreements in the past five years. In California, more than 300,000 acres of land have been protected through conservation easements. The Land Trust has a similar agreement with the Cooley family, protecting almost 700 hilly acres of their Circle P Ranch east of Watsonville. This is the Land Trust’s first agreement protecting prime row crop farmland in the Pajaro Valley.

Part of our new Strategic Plan

“This is a very big deal for us and for conservation in Santa Cruz County,” says Terry Corwin, who became the Land Trust’s Executive Director a little over a year ago. “It is the first large scale protection of prime Pajaro Valley farmland.” It is also the first step in implementing the Land Trust’s new strategic plan, which makes the protection of prime farmland in the Valley a top priority – in addition to continuing the protection of natural lands throughout the county.

The agreement will be the most expensive in the Land Trust’s history and its second largest in terms of acreage. In one stroke of the pen it will increase the amount of land we protect by a third to over 2000 acres.

The $4.5 million price tag is greater than what we’ve spent in our entire 28 year history – which tells you what is at stake. The Pajaro Valley is a developer’s dream: flat, by a freeway, close to the ocean, in a county where the average house costs over $750,000, and next to a growing city. It is also a farmer’s dream – its flat rich soil and unusually long growing season combine to make it the most valuable farmland in the state and perhaps in the nation. The land is currently outside the Watsonville Urban Growth Area, but that could change in 16 years when those plans are up for review.

Bill Locke-Paddon, the co-director of the Borina Foundation, calls the preservation agreement “an extra layer of protection.” He notes that development decisions are ultimately political decisions – at both the local and state level. “The possibility certainly exists,” he says, “that at some future time, protection of farmland will become a lower political priority than other concerns.”

The value of farmland isn’t just for the farmers. Everyone who shops at one of our thriving farmers’ markets enjoys an amazing variety of fresh local produce – and you need local farmland to make local produce. Everyone who drives down Highway One or comes across the hills from Hollister sees thousands of acres of open land – and not thousands of acres of roads and malls and houses. The choice in the Valley is crops or pavement and we’re siding with the crops. •

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