S.O.A.R. Officially Adopts Anti-Agriculture Position

The recent vote cast by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors to adopt the County Planning Department’s revised Biology Initial Study Assessment Guidelines (ISAG) flushed many snakes out of the tall grass on Tuesday.  Among them is Save our Open-Space and Agricultural Resources (S.O.A.R.).  According to S.O.A.R.’s own website:

“…the County of Ventura SOAR protects three land use categories:  Open space, Agriculture and Rural Land.”

Yet, debate has swirled within the farming community as to whether or not S.O.A.R. is actually friendly to agriculture (let alone protective), but with their public support for the County’s version of the Biology ISAG, there is little room for doubt: they are not.

Of the most contentious and damaging aspects which were supported by S.O.A.R. (along with liberal supervisors Linda Parks, Steve Bennett, and John Zaragoza), is the newly included references within the ISAG regulations to the South Coast Missing Linkages (SCML) project was the most worrisome and hotly contested by local farmers… and for good reason. The SCML project is essentially a collaboration of extreme environmentalists, using dubious science,  who seek to “create a major wildland network in one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas.” Obviously, this is a little hard to do without trampling on farmers and property owners who have other plans for their own bought and paid for property. What’s worse is that there has been no public scrutiny of their science or methodologies and they have not been transparent. Sound like the same tactics used by the global warming “scientists”? Al Gore would be proud. Just think climate-gate…

Referring to agriculture as “inhospitable” and targeting activities such as livestock grazing, the SCML project is unquestionably antagonistic toward agriculture. In many cases throughout their many reports, urban and agricultural areas are referenced together as a singular and equal threat to wildlife and their grandiose plans for connecting wildlands. When one looks at SCML maps such as the one found here, it quickly becomes apparent that much of the land that isn’t urban is targeted for hyper-regulation. It is no wonder, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture survey, the number of US farms has been declining. National Young Farmers Coalition board member, Lindsey Lusher Shute, said in a recent  interview for Rob Reuteman of CNBC, “generation after generation of farmers were making less and less money, and were not encouraging their children to farm.” That sentiment was echoed by many of the growers and ranchers who  expressed the desire to pass their farms on to their children.

Deceptively S.O.A.R. suggests that ISAG Guidelines are about saving open space from developers who will, if not prevented through the new ISAG regulations, divide “4000 acres into 400 10-acre lots…[with] the right to build 400 houses, and 400 second dwelling units.”  How ridiculous. The siren call by S.O.A.R. to stop developers from dividing up agricultural land, in reality, is little more than dad splitting his ranch into two parcels for his sons so they can each continue the family tradition of farming.

Bud Sloan, a local veterinarian and rancher, explained before the Supervisors that he had hoped to plant some additional acreage and in order to process the crops, he would need a new packing house. By his estimates, this would cost roughly $200,000 but with the passage of ISAG, that figure would jump to an eye-popping $700,000, making the project infeasible. So while S.O.A.R. fear-mongers about how the county will be a sea of tract homes without ISAG, the truth of the matter is that Parks, Bennett, and Zaragoza have trampled on small family-owned farmers once again. Congratulations supervisors, you stopped that big “developer” from building a barn (you know, the kind you always see on the front cover of Country Magazine).