Don’t pave over that farm just yet!
by Sid AndersonNovember 3rd, 2005 at 19:29:19
Who said families can’t make it on farming anymore? Maybe that’s the case in other states in the country where large corporate farms and suburban sprawl have swallowed up small family farms, but in Oregon things are different. I’m usually not an avid reader of the Oregonian’s Homes & Gardens section, but today the cover story caught my eye: Peonies from heaven. A childhood love saves a family farm.
First, it reminded me of my own mother who has been able to keep her farm due to a childhood love of heirloom apples, the ones you can’t find at Slaveway. Secondly, and more importantly, the story in Homes & Gardens demonstrates how an entreprenuerial spirit and a love of labor can create and build a lasting source of economic flow from the land. Moreover it shows that the value of land should not be tied soley to how that land can be developed into tract housing, strip malls or whatever else developers envision for Oregon’s open spaces.
Once a fertile tract of farm land has been built on, that’s it. It’s a one time deal and a long term loss in economic terms. A completed subdivision doesn’t create jobs. A successful farm operation does, and in Oregon the farming spirit is alive and well with family farms on the increase rather than decline, as they are in all other 49 states:
Buried in dry data spreadsheets cranked out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture lies a dramatic tale: At a time when small farmers are dying out across America, the number of farmers in Oregon is on the rise. The latest USDA “agriculture census” showed the number of full-time farmers in Oregon increasing more than 55 percent from 13,884 in 1974 to 21,580 in 2002, the last year the USDA surveyed.
Me thinks that our visionary state land use laws just might have something to do with this fact.
These statistics should put to rest the pro-sprawler argument that families can’t make money farming anymore. Obviously that argument is hogwash, and there are plenty of farmers, old and new, who can prove it. Perhaps apple farmers in Hood River can’t make money growing Granny Smiths anymore, but if they spent a little time doing some market research, or discovering something unique as the Homes & Gardens story shows, they just may find that there are opportunities for their farms to become profitable once again. Change is a necessary component in running a successful business.
Because of Oregon’s thirty year old land use conservation laws, Oregonians are in a unique situation to be able to promote the new emerging food economy that is helping so many family farms thrive. If we allow, through the legislature or initiative process, our conservation laws to be overturned, we will have lost a growing and potentially vital part of our state’s economy.
Farmers who don’t want to farm anymore can surely sell their land for a nice profit to someone who wants to farm and participate in contributing to the long term stability of Oregon’s economy.
November 4th, 2005 at 6:46 am
I worked on the 1986 fruit tree variety survey for Oregon. It was not a mere sampling but 100 percent coverage. I saw every single survey and logged many miles, and had many, many personal visits.
The mere numbers of farmers could be deceptive, in its’ incomplete picture of qualitative details.
The goal of supporting farmers would be a good thing to put on a resume if one was seeking a job as an extension agent. It is a bit more complex to extend that goal, that single goal, to a more wide ranging set of rules to govern society as a whole.
The property rights stuff involves much more than merely the particular uses of land but involves the relationship between private citizens and government. The skepticism one would hold for the self-proclamations of the common good by a king must be retained against a panel of elected folks that divine their vision of the common good. Kings and elected folks share one thing in common, they are each mere humans. Which should be a sufficient argument all by it self.
Consider the applicability of equal protection. If elected folks were always right, then there would be no need to insert an equal protection provision in a constitution. It is needed, in the interest of individuals, because of the known fallibility and special interest focus of elected folks.
Suppose that you had a larger goal of supporting all Oregonian’s, regardless of individual choice of occupation? If you are going to dream you might as well dream big, but compatible with equal protection and other basic rights.
“Imagine 30,000 Oregonian’s Each Getting ONE MILLION Dollars To Start A Business”
old link
which points to this SOS link
http://www.sos.state.or.us/elections/irr/2004/089text.pdf.
Read it and then see whether it is compatible with a more universal focus. You see, or should see, I am more radical (and yet conservative) than you might at first blush recognize. Another view is that I have maintained my dreams and idealism but used my legal and economics education to help cull out potential theoretical obstacles and to refine the focus.