Farmland Legacy Program fends off residential development threats

Fully Contained Communities (FCCs) may have Skagit County residents on edge, but they are not the most significant threat to local farmland.

The real villain? Low-density residential land use.

According to the American Farmland Trust, 11 million acres of U.S. farmland and ranchland – 2,000 acres a day – were converted to urban and highly developed or low-density residential (LDR) land use between 2001 and 2016.

Seven million of those 11 million acres were turned into 5-, 10- and 20-acre farmettes and other low density, “large-lot” subdivisions.

These scattered developments fragment the rural landscape and limit production, marketing and management options for the remaining farms and ranches.

They are also the canary in the mine for urbanization. Where LDR use is permitted, dense housing developments like FCCs quickly follow.

The only way to stop this and to permanently save agricultural land, is to focus on Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easements (PACE) programs, AFT promotes.

It’s advice that Washington state and particularly Skagit County, is taking to heart.

Skagit County’s Farmland Legacy Program, whose annual report appears in today’s paper, provides owners of properties classified “Agricultural Natural Resources Land” a way to preserve their farmland by extinguishing the right to build a house on a 40-acre plot.

Farmers and other Ag-NRL owners receive a cash payout and a lower tax rate. The conservation easement placed on the land will keep the property safe from development no matter how Skagit County zoning laws may change.

Through the program, Skagit County has saved about 16 percent of its 89,000 acres of Ag-NRL land. It is one of the most successful farm preservation programs in a state that is a leader in preservation.

On the national level, PACE programs funded by the US Department of Agriculture has saved more than 1.9 million acres of farm and grazing land nationwide “to protect the long-term viability of the nation’s food supply,” says the USDA website.

Watching his uncle Dave Hedlin decide to participate in the Farmland Legacy program sparked Hedlin Farms manager Kai Ottesen’s interest in the PACE concept.

“It’s a very personal decision, especially for families,” said Ottesen, who thinks there can be good reasons for holding on to building sites on working farmland.

“It’s hard to know what you are going to want down the line. Do you extinguish a building site if another family member someday wants to live and work on the farm?”

Dairyman Jason Vander Kooy has no regrets that his parents Dick and Olga placed acreage in the Farmland Legacy program in 2014.

“We will never use the building sites and we turned them into cash to help pay some bills,” he said.

“While the building lot has some value, 90 percent or more of the value is in the ground. And having nice bare ground with no houses is nice, especially for dairy farming.”

Adding a cattle barn or a new shop would require approval, but Vander Kooy says that is one of the easiest steps in the complicated county permit process.

Vander Kooy also doesn’t mind the occasional visit by the program’s compliance monitors – who just happen to be Ottesen and his wife, Jules Riske.

As monitors, Riske and Ottesen make sure that owners of properties enrolled in the program are following the terms of the agricultural conservation easement and not building homes on protected land.

Aerial images help track properties year over year. So do in-person visits.

“The kinds of infractions we see are minimal,” said Ottesen, “mostly the slow accretion of vehicles and debris on a property.”

“They just want to make sure we haven’t put up a strip mall,” said Vander Kooy, “and it helps the county make sure that the money that taxpayers put into the program is keeping land open.”

Ottesen and Riske are enjoying their firsthand look at farming throughout the county.

It turns out that not everyone farms the way as done near La Conner: up to five feet under sea level, surrounded by dikes.

“There are all these little corners of ag that you don’t see from I-5,” Ottesen said. “Around Big Lake or Marblemount or Concrete there are tremendous operations a little bit off the highway. You wouldn’t have a clue they were there if you didn’t live there.

“It’s also cool to see farms that have made an affirmative choice to keep it farmland, to see the crops they are growing. Seeing how they adapt to their specific geography is endlessly fascinating.”

Sarah Stoner, agricultural lands coordinator for Skagit County Public Works, is ready to chat with anyone who owns Ag-NRL land. The program can help families set up a conservation easement on some or all of their property, or separate an existing house from farmland and preserve the rest.

“The door is open! Please call,” she said.

Find her number in today’s special insert.