Planning panel OKs ag proposal

But county's revision draws developers' ire

By TIM MORAN
tmoran@modbee.com

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Stanislaus County's amended agriculture element of the general plan won an 8-0 en- dorsement from the Planning Commission on Thursday night despite objections from the building industry.

The revised ag element has been in the works for 2½ years. It is designed to protect the county's farmland and No. 1 industry.

The most controversial part of the plan has been a provision requiring developers to mitigate the loss of farmland by preserving similar farmland elsewhere in the county on an acre-for-acre basis.

Kevin Stone, government relations coordinator for the Building Industry Association of Central California, said the provision was "mitigating a crisis that doesn't exist."

Stone noted that the county had more cropland in 2006 than it did 10 years earlier, and farm product sales were nearly $1 billion higher.

"Numbers don't lie," Stone said, adding that developers don't desire to build on prime farmland, but some farmers want to sell their property. "It's a property rights issue," he said. The mitigation measure would freeze at least half of the county's farmland regardless of future conditions, Stone said -- for instance, a water crisis that wouldn't allow the land to be farmed.

Keith Schneider, vice president of Keystone Corp., which is developing a business park in Patterson, said he thought the mitigation provision is "the most misguided policy I've seen in 25 years in the business."

Schneider said it shifts wealth from one industry to another, and called it "a diversified job killer."

Proponents of the ag element outnumbered the developers, however.

Wayne Zipser, executive manager of the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau, agreed that there is more land being farmed. But the added land is in the foothills above the valley, which cannot produce the 200 crops that prime valley land can, he said.

The foothills land can only produce three or four crops, Zipser said, and they use wells and drip irrigation systems that do not recharge the groundwater.

The increased farm product value is because of the innovation of farmers as well as added farmland, he added.

Brad Barker, a member of the local Sierra Club, said 81 percent of the development in the previous decade in Stanislaus County has been on prime farmland, the worst record in the Central Valley, he said.

Representatives from the National Farmland Trust and the Central Valley Farmland Trust also spoke in favor of the ag element.

Planning Commission members weren't swayed by the developers' arguments.

"Mitigation is one of the most important things in the ag element," commissioner John Shores said. "If we don't do anything about it, we won't have any ag land to protect."

Commissioner Allen Layman said the ag element will only apply to unincorporated areas, and most development occurs in the cities.

"This doesn't even apply to most of what people see as building on prime farmland," he said.

"We are going to lose some property rights," commissioner Ray Souza said. "But at the same time, we are strengthening farmers' rights."

The proposed ag element revision is scheduled for a public hearing before the Stanislaus County

Board of Supervisors at 6:45 p.m. Dec. 18 in the basement chambers at 1010 10th St., Modesto.

Bee staff writer Tim Moran can be reached attmoran@modbee.com or 578-2349.