Farmland Threatened By Suburban Sprawl Conservation Group Warns Of Steady Loss Of Productive Farmland

Suburban sprawl threatens to swallow precious farmland in Spokane and Kootenai counties and the Columbia River Basin, a conservation group says.

The American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., released a report Thursday that claims the nation loses two acres of productive farmland nationwide to shopping malls and subdivisions every minute.

The study was produced from a year-long analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture land-use inventories.

The report warned that with the U.S. population set to double in 50 years, and farmland shrinking, the nation could become a net food importer by 2050.

The trust ranked the Columbia Basin as the 16th most at risk agricultural area in the nation, with about 60 percent of the 7,150 square-mile region area considered “endangered.” The Central Snake River Plains in Idaho was 13th.

However, the National Association of Home Builders claimed that America has enough farmland to last a long time. How land gets developed, it said, frequently is a function of local laws rather than developers’ whims.

“The American Farmland Trust seems intent on portraying developers as modern-day land rustlers. In reality, home building and development are having little effect on the state of the nation’s prime farmland,” said Kent Colton, executive vice president of the home builders.

The issue hits close to home in Spokane, where citizens hashed out controversial growth management regulations with city and county officials only last month.

Randy Primmer, Farm Service Agency director in Spokane and Pend Oreille counties, said urban sprawl is no further than his own back yard.

Primmer, who lives in the Hangman Valley area, points to a 160-acre track down the hill from his home that recently was subdivided into 16, 10-acre lots. New homeowners, he says, don’t have the equipment needed to keep weeds down. The weeds are endangering the nearby bluegrass seed fields.

“We’re losing very productive agricultural ground to houses,” he said. The federal government already has a variety of programs to help farmers keep farming. Last year, the Agriculture Department got $14.6 million for “conservation easements” or permanent deed restrictions that prohibit non-agricultural development.

But Eastern Washington has seen little of this money. Eric Vink, the trust’s Pacific Northwest field coordinator, said Washington only got $200,000 for easements, and all of the money went to King and Thurston counties on the west side of the state.

At a news conference Thursday, trust President Ralph Grossi said the federal government should do away with inheritance taxes for farmers who promise to keep their land in agriculture - a move generally popular with Northwest legislators.

But John Reganold, a professor of soil science at Washington State University, is skeptical about such rule changes. He says current government policies aimed at keeping farmland in production can’t compete with economics.

“People with money, if they want to develop, they’re going to do it,” he said.

, DataTimes