Saving Idaho farmland is going to take more than goodwill — but it may be too late
Whenever we start talking about preserving farmland, I think about Gary and Fern Drake. They farmed on the north side of Kuna for about 40 years before retiring in 2007. They ended up selling their land to a developer to turn into subdivisions. Just before their farm auction on a crisp Saturday morning, I talked to Gary and Fern about their impending retirement.
One of the things that I still remember from that interview was how quick Gary was to answer, “Nope,” when I asked him if he felt sad about selling the farm after all those years. He was ready to retire, and Gary literally had a tough row to hoe. Another farmer I knew told me on the side that Gary had some of the toughest ground to farm in Kuna.
The other thing I remember from that interview was a story Gary told me about a woman who lived in a neighboring subdivision coming over to tell him how disappointed she was that the Drakes had sold their property, how much she enjoyed looking out her back window at their farm fields, and how disappointed she was going to be to see those fields covered with houses. He responded to her, “Well, I never saw you come over to help me pick rocks out of the ground.”
We’re losing farmland like the Drakes’ farm at an alarming rate in Idaho and particularly the Treasure Valley. How many times have you heard someone who has lived here any length of time say something like, “I remember when that was all just farm fields.”
But what’s at stake is more than just sentimentality and nostalgia.
“Western Treasure Valley is the fourth-largest seed production area in the world — in the world,” Shawn Shepherd, director of development for the West Coast for the American Farmland Trust, told me in a phone interview. “Losing land that is some of the most important, productive, fertile, arable, water available, great growing seasons, with temperate climate with the mountains surrounding it, you simply don’t get that anywhere else. That’s why it’s important for the state to look at these issues, not just as a one-off issue.”
John Hoadley, of Caldwell, who comes from a long line of farmers in the Caldwell area, going back to the 1800s, said there’s a lack of understanding of how important this farmland is.
“I don’t think people that are moving here really truly understand the area and how much of the world’s seeds come from the Treasure Valley,” he told me by phone. “We have the best growers who understand how, when and what to do, our soil, our low summer humidity and our control of irrigation. These are the ingredients in the perfect recipe, and it’s one that cannot be duplicated anywhere else in the world as it is in the Treasure Valley.”
Disappearing Idaho farmland
In a recent Idaho Statesman story, Nicole Foy reported that if the current rate of development continues, 200,000 acres of farm and ranch land will disappear from the Treasure Valley by 2100, according to an estimate in a Boise State University study.
That’s in addition to the 294,000 acres of agricultural land in Idaho that were converted to development between 1982 and 2012, according to data from the Farmland Information Center and the National Resources Inventory.
The most recent data recorded in the 2017 Census of Agriculture shows that Idaho’s total farm acreage dropped from 11.8 million acres to 11.7 million — a net loss of 100,000 acres over five years.
In the Treasure Valley, Ada County lost 100,000 acres of farmland from 1974 to 2012 and another 31,000 acres by 2017, according to Sean Ellis of the Idaho Farm Bureau. The total is now 112,370, Ellis reported, meaning Ada County has lost more than half of its farmland since 1974.
Canyon County, which has the most farms in the state, lost 10% of its farmland between 2012 and 2017 and now has 275,000 acres in agriculture, according to the 2017 Census of Ag data, Ellis reported.
At the same time, about 80% of respondents to a Boise State survey said they are concerned about the loss of ag land in the Treasure Valley.
Eric Grace, executive director of the Land Trust of the Treasure Valley, told me in a phone interview that there is an “overwhelming, huge call for farm and ranch protection right now.”
“It’s going to take a real concerted effort,” he said. “The Land Trust is prepared to help, but we are just one spoke in the wheel of this movement that seems to be growing. We need to do this. We’re behind the eight ball when it comes to ag development. It’s easy to develop land; it’s not so easy to undevelop land. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”
Retirement plan for farmers
The Drakes’ farm sale was a special event. It seemed like every farmer in Kuna showed up. It was part auction, part reunion and part celebration. The first things auctioned were Gary’s worn-out boots and sweat-stained cowboy hat, the sale of which had the sole purpose of padding the Drakes’ retirement account.
This, along with the sale of the land and all his equipment, is the retirement account for many of the valley’s farmers.
So what are a farmer’s options, if not to sell his or her land to a developer?
A generation of younger farmers, like Clay and Josie Erskine of Peaceful Belly Farm, Tammy and Mike McClure of Indian Creek Winery and Kuna High grad Tyler Reynolds, is out there breaking into farming, and that’s encouraging.
But land access is one of the most difficult obstacles for beginning farmers, according to the National Young Farmers Coalition.
Is a young farm family going to be able to compete with a developer willing to pay $3 million for farmland? Probably not.
And who has a right to tell a farmer he can’t maximize the profit on the sale of his land that he’s toiled on for the past 40 years?
There are solutions
As development land prices continue their ascent, I fear we’re running out of time. The pressures seem too great, the political will too weak and the solutions too underutilized to save farmland.
In which case, we should all just get used to every square mile covered with development and kiss those farms goodbye. If we’re serious about the need to save farmland in the Treasure Valley, the solutions are out there:
▪ conservation easements
▪ federal funding
▪ state funding
▪ low-interest loans
▪ private land trusts
▪ bond measures at the regional, county or even city level
▪ zoning and planning that encourages farmland preservation
▪ educating and supporting farmers, new and retiring, about the options that are available
But it’s a race against the clock, as development pressures continue to mount — along with land prices, especially in the Treasure Valley.
Development vs. preservation
Consider a hypothetical farmer who owns 160 acres of farmland. USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service estimates irrigated cropland value in Idaho at $6,000 an acre.
So if another farmer wanted to come in and buy the retiring farmer’s land to continue farming it, a reasonable asking price would be $960,000.
If a developer wanted to buy it, however, the developer could reasonably offer $20,000 per acre. During the boom times of 2006-07, I heard of prime development land going for $75,000 to $100,000 per acre. A parcel of 150 acres of land across from Dry Creek Ranch right now is going for $40,000 an acre. For argument’s sake, though, let’s go with a conservative estimate of $20,000 per acre, which would come out to $3.2 million for a 160-acre farm.
So if you’re a farmer and you’re looking at a retirement payday of $3.2 million vs. $960,000, which would you choose?
That’s how farmland becomes development land.
Conservation easement
One tool is a conservation easement, which could be used to get money to the retiring farmer and keep the land in farm production.
A land trust or another party could step in and offer the retiring farmer a payment equal to the ag value of the land, or $960,000, in exchange for agreement to keep the land in agriculture production in perpetuity. That would allow the farmer to sell the land for $2.24 million, which might be a stretch for a young farmer looking to buy, but certainly more palatable.
The retiring farmer also could agree to place a conservation easement on the land and instead take a tax deduction, essentially for a charitable donation, to help mitigate taking a lower price for the property.
“Placing a conservation easement on a person’s property will not provide a landowner with monetary compensation to what they would get if they were selling it at development prices,” Jennifer Smith, executive director of Lemhi Regional Land Trust, told me in a phone interview. “However, what it can do is provide some compensation, like cash or tax benefits that equal the value of those restrictions they choose to place on the deed to ensure the conservation values of the property are protected and they could still sell the property in the future and get money for the value of the property.”
Show me the money
One obvious problem here is that there isn’t some big pot of money laying around to pay for conservation easements on farmland.
Even if an organization were to announce a capital campaign tomorrow to focus on farmland preservation and raise $15 million in private donations for an endowment that generates $1 million in revenue each year, that would be enough for only one easement on a small, 160-acre property.
Meanwhile, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland out there ready to be developed.
Federal dollars could help. Shepherd said $200 million in federal money was made available for conservation efforts in the most recent Farm Bill.
But those federal dollars often require a local match.
So, for example, if you were to use federal dollars to pay for a $1 million easement, half of that, $500,000, would have to come from another source.
“So where is that match going to come from?” Grace said. “Is it a foundation, is it a capital campaign, is it a donation? This is a real issue, and we’re going to have to put some muscle behind it.”
The future could be a combination of a private capital campaign, a bond measure covering Ada and Canyon counties or relying on landowners to donate all or even a portion of their land for a conservation easement. So, for example, a retiring farmer could sell 80 acres for $1.6 million and donate the other 80 acres for a conservation easement.
Who’s leading the charge in the Treasure Valley?
Another major obstacle, though, is that no one is leading the charge on farmland preservation in the Treasure Valley.
The Land Trust of the Treasure Valley is the only private nonprofit group in the valley preserving open space, but Grace said it’s admittedly not focusing on farmland. Its primary focus is and has been the Foothills around Boise. But farmland conservation is on the Land Trust board’s radar and a hot topic of conversation right now.
“It’s going to take a much bigger effort than just the Land Trust,” Grace said. “It’s going to take elected officials, landowners, residents. This is a threat, and it’s a real threat.”
A good start was the inaugural “Treasure Our Valley” event in October to bring various organizations together to learn about farm and ranch land preservation. The next event is planned for Oct. 3, 2020, at Indian Creek Plaza in Caldwell.
“Everyone is talking about this,” Grace said. “But there just has to be some sort of unified voice on this. Some sort of unification that this is a problem for the whole community, then build out the program, whatever that looks like.”
Shepherd agrees that there needs to be greater state leadership in the discussion.
“We need to create some resource streams that will encourage people to put their land into agriculture conservation easements,” Shepherd said, noting that upfront costs are about $15,000 just to do all of the work to put land into an easement. Even creating a fund to help farmers with those upfront costs would help, she said.
“We’re starting to see some traction with organizations coming together,” Shepherd said. “We’re beginning to work at that level to say, ‘We’ve got to do something more aggressive, do something that really respects our values.’”
Smith said more than half of Lemhi Regional Land Trust’s easements, which are mostly on working cattle ranches, have been donated by those landowners, but her organization hasn’t been able to do any Natural Resource Conservation Service easements because of the non-federal cash match requirement.
“If we look at neighboring states and see how they’re getting big things done, they more often than not have a statewide or local conservation fund that can be specifically used to protect high-conservation-valued lands, and in the state of Idaho, that would most definitely include agricultural and working lands,” Smith said. “The No. 1 thing that Idaho could do to help conserve agricultural land, is to set up a statewide fund of some sort that could be used directly for the protection of those lands and other important lands across the state of Idaho.”
Unfortunately, as I look at the numbers and talk to more people, I get less and less optimistic about the future. A big part of me thinks we should give it up, accept the fact that we’re going to lose all of our farmland, and that it’s a foregone conclusion.
As Hoadley puts it, “I only hope the decisions don’t result in the prices of food forcing people to enjoy eating lumber with salt and pepper and concrete with ketchup and mustard, because once the ground is gone, it’s gone forever.”
