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As farm and timberland disappears, Flathead valley looks for solutions
The requests have been coming in for many years now, more rapidly in recent months, and they’re changing the face of the Flathead.
By William L. Spence
The Daily Inter Lake
There was a zone change request for 60 acres near Bigfork in February.
In March, it was a preliminary plat on 105 acres near Marion.
April saw a subdivision proposed on 72 acres in Creston.
In May, it was a 41-acre project in the Lower Valley. In June, it was 9 acres near Bigfork, 20 acres near Somers, and a 289-acre zone change north of Kalispell.
This month, it’s another 100-acre zone change in the Lower Valley, along with two more subdivision plats.
And so it’s goes: We are eating the elephant, one bite at a time.
Over the last 30 years, we’ve swallowed a huge chunk of farmland and timberland in the Flathead Valley — more than 170,000 acres in all, chewed and gnawed and subdivided into smaller, more digestible pieces.
That isn’t the full menu, either. It’s only what was split into new lots.
As a kind of side dish to the main course, existing lots were sold off as well, removed from natural resource production and turned into someone’s little slice of Paradise, another dream-come-true in rural Montana.
Figures for timberland aren’t readily available, but during the 5-year period from 1992 to ’97, when the last Census of Agriculture was completed, more than 60,000 acres of farmland in Flathead County were taken out of production — almost 22 percent of the available agricultural area, at a rate of 1.4 acres per hour.
"I don’t see that changing in the near term," said Jerry Sorenson, real estate manager for Plum Creek Timber Co. "We get blind calls all the time from people who want to buy a piece of land from us. This part of Montana is very popular."
Sorenson was one of several speakers at a Kalispell Chamber of Commerce tour on Wednesday.
The tour highlighted some of factors contributing to the conversion of agricultural and timber lands into real estate developments.
For many local residents, the rate at which this conversion is taking place causes a great deal of heartburn.
Some want to use regulatory barriers to slow the transition and increase the cost of development. Others say let the free market determine our fate.
Most, though, don’t know what to do. They only know that the valley is changing, and that free market and regulatory "solutions" can both be unpalatable at times.
"Part of me wishes we could preserve the best farmland by regulating development, but another part of me understands the view of the farmer," said Jeremy Fritz, owner of the Wheat Montana Bakery & Deli in Kalispell and a farmer himself.
"My family farms 400 acres here," Fritz said. "This valley has some of the best soils in the country. It kills me to see houses going up on it — but with so many people willing to buy land, I don’t know how you can stop it."
In Eastern Montana, agricultural land can still be had for less than $500 per acre, he said. In this area, "I think you’re crazy to sell for less than $30,000 an acre, and that’s for undeveloped land."
Those numbers are hard to resist, particularly when the average farmer here is in his upper 50s, and when the returns from agriculture are so thin and the risks so high.
"If they do an outstanding job, farmers can make maybe $1,000 an acre, with all the risk," Fritz said. "So there’s the decision: Work your tail off, or sell a few acres here and there."
The picture isn’t much better with timber, according to Sorenson.
"The amount people are willing to pay for land in many cases far exceeds our ability to generate cash flow from natural resource production," he said.
Plum Creek, the largest private landowner in Montana and second largest in the United States, hasn’t been particularly aggressive about cashing in its real estate base.
Since 1996, Sorenson said, the company has sold about 37,000 of the 1.4 million acres it owns in the state. Half of that went into conservation projects, rather than real estate.
As prices continue to escalate, though, the "highest and best use" for more and more parcels could shift from timber production to development.
"On some lands, we can get three to 10 times more cash flow per acre from real estate than we can from timber," Sorenson said. "In those cases, we’re going to look at it for potential development."
The basic economic equation driving this conversion may by now be so lopsided as to be almost unredeemable: Commodity prices are simply too low compared to the amount people are willing to pay for land.
Wheat prices, for example, averaged about $3.59 per bushel over the last decade, according to the Montana Department of Agriculture.
After adjusting for inflation, that’s 60 percent less than what farmers received during the 1980s, and half what they got in the ’60s. (That doesn’t take into account today’s higher yields, but it also doesn’t consider today’s higher operating costs.)
The value of raw land, by comparison, is riding a rocket.
Just in the last 5 years, the price of undeveloped farmland in the valley has doubled. For developed lots, the median price is now almost $50,000, and some exclusive parcels of modest size have sold for $1 million or more. Just for the land.
"There’s been a massive influx of wealth and money into the Flathead," noted Flathead County Planning Director Forrest Sanderson, who also spoke at Wednesday’s chamber tour. "These are people coming from areas with inflated housing prices, and when they get here, they’ll gladly pay $100,000 for a nice lot."
In such situations, stronger regulatory barriers could affect the conversion rate by adding to the overall cost of development.
Well-designed zoning and subdivision restrictions could also limit growth to more appropriate areas. In addition, setting higher standards and expecting more of developers would ensure that — when an area is converted into residential — at least a quality subdivision gets built, rather than the unsightly, unimaginative Weed Patch View Estates that otherwise so often results.
This approach, though, has a whole different set of consequences associated with it.
"Any time you impose higher standards on development, you drive up costs," Sanderson said. "The high-end subdivisions won’t be affected by tougher rules, but you could restrict your ability to create affordable housing."
In other words, increasing regulation won’t necessarily stop the conversion of open space into subdivisions. It will just reserve that space for the privileged few, leaving nothing but tract housing for the average person.
"We don’t want to set standards so low that it threatens the public health, safety or welfare," Sanderson said, "But if you try to impose rules to slow down the well-to-do, those of us who already live here will be priced out of the market. Trying to strike that balance is incredibly difficult."
So what’s the answer?
If we aren’t going to push back the plate and say "No" to another helping, if we’re reluctant to lock up land through zoning, then what can be done to preserve some of the Flathead’s incredible aesthetic bounty for future generations?
The chamber tour briefly outlined four options:
• Pay more for commodities — "I think it could be as simple as an extra dollar per bushel," said Fritz, who was unable to go on the tour. "I think that would keep a lot of farmers in production."
Increasing the amount of value-added processing would also help, he said.
That’s the model Wheat Montana has followed: It takes wheat directly from the farm, mills it, bakes it and sells it, capturing a share of the profits along the entire food chain.
"There have to be other creative things we can do like that here," Fritz said. "If we can follow it through to the retail stage, I think there’s money to be made."
• Private covenants — This option won’t keep natural resource land from being converted, but at least it helps ensure that the resulting subdivision looks decent.
Covenants are privately developed, privately enforced rules and restrictions that address a variety of issue, from the minimum size home allowed within a subdivision to architectural requirements and lawn care standards.
"The use of covenants is discretionary, but almost all higher-end subdivisions will have them," noted Sanderson. "They help protect and enhance property values."
• Conservation easements — The Flathead Land Trust is currently exploring the feasibility of a countywide agricultural or open space preservation bond.
The bond would be paid for through a voter-approved mill levy.
The money, which would be leveraged with state and federal matching dollars, could be used to purchase development rights on farmland, wetlands, critical wildlife habitat and other high-valued open space.
Traditional natural resource uses would be maintained on the property, but it couldn’t be converted into residential lots. The price of an easement compensates owners for the development rights they’d be giving up.
The land trust is trying to raise about $9,000 to conduct a telephone survey this fall. The intent of the survey is to determine whether there’s adequate voter support to proceed with this proposal.
• Comprehensive planning — Efforts to achieve a community consensus on any major growth-related topic have proven extremely controversial in recent years.
Special interest groups of various persuasions frequently dominate the process.
Local planning boards — which are supposed to weigh the community’s overall best interests — have also at times been stacked with ideological members by county and city officials.
Nevertheless, this approach offers one of the few opportunities to debate the issues affecting the valley, to try and balance the competing interests, and to develop an overall vision of our future.
"It’s an approach we support," said Sorenson at Plum Creek.
"We have land-use principles that support comprehensive planning," he said. "Responsible land use is good for land values. It also provides a certain level of predictability. We would look very closely at any (land-use restrictions) that might be proposed, but if we get reasonable predictability in return for reasonable use restrictions, that’s a good trade-off.
"For the future of the Flathead, if we can be more proactive on the planning side — and in the use of easements to compensate landowners for the rights they give up — then we can make some incremental progress towards protecting the open spaces that are so important to the people of the valley."
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Preserving Farmland While Accomodating Growth
Rural Yolo County, CA has found a balance between urban growth and farmland preservation.
Contributed by Mindy Oliver
"Yolo has embraced the philosophy that urban expansion should occur only on marginal lands and that prime planting ground should be saved for future generations of farmers. Under local laws, if developers build on an acre of farmland, they must protect another acre of equal agricultural value forever — a unique requirement among California counties… They have the strongest farmland protection ordinance in the state."
In Yolo, Farmland Is Hallowed Ground
* County officials stave off the urban onslaught with strict laws to preserve prime areas, while a trust saves 20,000 acres.
By Daryl Kelley, LA Times Staff Writer
WINTERS, Calif. — Peter Hunter was only 9 when his father planted his first Yolo County prune orchard and assured him the trees would be his some day. Now, Hunter, 53, takes his own two sons to a new prune orchard and tells them they can tend the family farm forever, if they want.
"I laugh because [9-year-old] Tadden isn’t particularly interested. He has visions of being a commando," Hunter said recently as a warm delta breeze fanned his hilltop farmhouse 30 miles west of Sacramento. "But Toby’s a little bit younger, and he likes the land out here. He may be the next farmer."
Hunter, who uses a PhD in computer science to subsidize his "farming habit," might have been rich by now had he welcomed expansion of this historic farm town and allowed housing subdivisions to push west onto his land at the foot of the Vaca Mountains.
Instead, a decade ago, Hunter joined a corps of farmers, politicians, academicians and bureaucrats in a countywide effort to hold the line against urban development.
Then, in 2000, Hunter sold the development rights on most of his farm to a land trust for enough money to plant a new orchard, forsaking a well-worn path by farmers who make more by selling at market rates to developers.
"In Southern California, today’s farmer is tomorrow’s developer," said John Bencomo, Yolo County’s planning director and a Los Angeles native. "Here, we have characters like the Hunters. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a belief system. It’s not about money."
Yolo County was settled by farmers about 150 years ago and has remained primarily a patchwork of flat cropland lined on the west by a ridge of rolling, oak-studded hills.
Located northwest of Sacramento, the 181,000-resident county faces enormous pressure to grow, because Capitol commuters can get to work from there in minutes on two interstate freeways by crossing the Sacramento River. It’s just 12 miles on I-80 from Davis, the largest city in the county, to downtown Sacramento.
But as much as any California county, Yolo has embraced the philosophy that urban expansion should occur only on marginal lands and that prime planting ground should be saved for future generations of farmers. Under local laws, if developers build on an acre of farmland, they must protect another acre of equal agricultural value forever — a unique requirement among California counties.
"Yolo County has stood fast and firm in the face of this incredible regional growth pressure," said John McCaull, regional director of the American Farmland Trust in California. "They have the strongest farmland protection ordinance in the state."
Planner Bencomo describes county rules and regulations that protect farmland — encased in three blue binders, each three inches thick — as a "collage of tools" that fashions growth, but does not stop it. Indeed, Yolo County was the state’s 17th fastest-growing county in the 1990s with a population increase of about 28,000, or nearly 20%.
During the previous 30 years, Yolo County — in the path of growth from Sacramento and the Bay Area — had seen its population explode.
"We realized we’d doubled in size, and asked what are we going to look like in 20 more years," recalled county Supervisor Helen Thomson. "That was when the cities and the Farm Bureau and the Chamber of Commerce all came together and discovered that we had a consensus about what we wanted for the future. And it has really all come about."
Now, when developers bring projects to Yolo County’s Board of Supervisors, they not only must save an acre of farmland for every acre they pave over, they have to pay hefty special fees for an array of county services their projects will require. The same acre-for-acre requirement is in place in working-class Woodland, the seat of county government. And in upscale Davis, the leafy home to a University of California campus, city officials have upped the ante even more, requiring the donation of development rights on two acres of farmland for every acre used by builders.
So as subdivisions and ranchettes serving Sacramento push onto rich delta soil, the nonprofit Yolo Land Trust is buying or has acquired nearly 15,000 acres of grazing land and nearly 5,000 acres of cropland — far more than what is protected in any other county in the 400-mile-long Central Valley.
Yolo’s cities have taken another unusual step. The municipalities of Davis, Woodland, West Sacramento and Winters all share sales- or property-tax revenues with the county so supervisors are under less pressure to approve new developments in unincorporated areas to capture tax dollars.
The county has also joined its cities in creating three huge farmland buffer zones — each several miles long and totaling about 45,000 acres — meant to separate the communities from each other with fields of golden grain, green corn stalks, red tomatoes and shady walnut orchards. Two of the three zones are new, and awaiting formal ratification.
Yolo County has enforced for years a "right to farm" policy that warns new homeowners in their real estate deeds that they’re living next to farms and that noise, odor and dust come with the territory.
Local officials also joined a state and federal effort to restore 16,000 acres of ponds and grasslands in the Yolo Bypass floodway for hundreds of species of birds that nest or migrate along the Pacific Flyway. Local governments are creating wildlife preserves, and developers are now required to donate land for wildlife habitat.
Even the county’s tourism policy is shaped by its agrarian past. It promotes its vineyards, wineries, roadside vegetable stands and quaint bed-and-breakfasts.
But preserving rural heritage comes at a cost.
Local officials have been criticized for contributing to the rising cost of housing. In Davis, a typical home now sells for about $390,000, more than double its $180,000 median price in 1995, reports DataQuick Information Systems.
Last year, Yolo County ranked as the 21st-least affordable urban area among 190 in the United States, while Sacramento ranked 25th, according to the National Assn. of Homebuilders.
"It’s outrageous that they have policies that work against the state’s ability to meet its housing needs," said Tim Coyle, spokesman for the California Building Industry Assn. "There’s a direct cost of limiting land supply that ends up on the sticker of a single-family home or rental apartment. To ask a homebuilder or home buyer to subsidize a farmer, makes absolutely no sense. It’s wrong and it’s un-American."
Some local farmers are also critical of Yolo County’s efforts, but for different reasons. They complain that local officials are not doing enough to control population growth.
"The Yolo County’s General Plan sounds like farmland preservation is one of their goals, and they’ve done some things better than other counties," said fifth-generation farmer Charlie Rominger, 49, chairman of the county Farm Bureau’s land-use committee.
"But the growth rates here are about the same as in other counties," he said. "The city of Winters has tripled in size [to 6,600] since I finished high school in 1972."
In fact, as Yolo County’s population has doubled since 1970, the number of residents in each of its cities has about tripled. That shows growth has been concentrated in cities, as called for by county policy.
But Rominger said city boundaries are always expanding, and he ticked off projects he has opposed through the years that were built on prime farmland.
"There’s always a reason," he said.
And the push to urbanize is constant, say county officials and preservationists. Speculators are taking advantage of a struggling farm industry to buy up Yolo County farmland faster than ever, said Kathryn Kelly, executive director of the Yolo Land Trust.
"Developers typically purchase property five to 15 years in advance," she said. "They’re land banking."
For now, however, Yolo County moves in virtual lock step to protect farmland for future generations.
Peter Hunter, his biologist wife, Debbie, and their two boys are on the front lines. They’ve got another orchard to replant once they decide which crop is most likely to make them a little money, or lose the least.
But they can already see a housing subdivision just across Dry Creek half a mile away.
"We’re feeling a little closed in these days," Peter Hunter said. "But we want to stay. I tell my wife, when I die, to just sweep me out the back door. My dad’s buried out there."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-yolo13jul13,1,624263.story
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