Farmland

The weather along Ventura County's southern coast is so perfect that "it's hardly suitable for conversation," goes an old joke told by local farmers. The area, known as the Oxnard Plain, holds some of the nation's most productive farmland, according to agriculture experts. The ocean breezes that cool temperatures in the summer and keep frost away in winter allow farmers there to harvest top-grade produce as many as three times a year from the same piece of ground.

A spectacular stretch of Northern California coastline that includes ocean-side bluffs, beaches, rolling hills and redwood groves will be permanently protected from development under a landmark deal approved by the state Coastal Commission. Nearly 10 square miles of untouched shoreline, wooded glens, streams and farmland in northern Santa Cruz County, extending several miles inland, will be transferred to the state and federal governments, which will operate it as open space and preserve portions for agriculture.

Re "Stop Poisoning Schools," May 10. Your editorial and the news story that preceded it warning of the effect of farming operations on teachers and students is particularly timely as the Oxnard Elementary School District is on the verge of approving construction of a new campus in the middle of farmland. District staff are pressing to put a new school in southeast Oxnard, which would be within 1,000 feet of farmland despite the fact that your article provided numerous examples of health-related problems when schools are put within 7,920 feet (1 1/2 miles)

Los Angeles officials have offered Occupy L.A. protesters a package of incentives that includes downtown office space and farmland in an attempt to persuade them to abandon their camp outside of City Hall, according to several demonstrators who have been in negotiations with the city. The details of the proposal were revealed Monday during the demonstration's nightly general assembly meeting by Jim Lafferty, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who has been advocating on behalf of the protest since it began seven weeks ago. Lafferty said city officials have offered protesters a $1-a-year lease on a 10,000-square-foot office space near City Hall.

Strolling through emerald groves of orange trees, Tulare County citrus grower Allen Ishida said he reckons he'll have to sell some of his 270 acres to pay higher property taxes should his county pull out of a threatened farmland preservation program. Thirty miles down California 99, third-generation almond grower Don Davis was making similar calculations. Davis figures he could rip out rows of almond trees stretching over 480 acres near McFarland in Kern County and sell the land, if necessary.

If the public has to conserve on its water usage, the Metropolitan Water District should be forced to maintain its current prices (instead of increasing them to make up for the decreased demand). Less water usage will just mean MWD will have to bear its fair share of the burden, which means cutting operating costs and suffering along with everyone else. KENNETH L. ZIMMERMAN Cypress

Once again, our beautiful farmland is being hotly pursued by those who would turn it to lesser uses: yesterday, the ag lands near the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library; now in Oxnard, the 100 acres west of Patterson to Victoria. Isn't it time to think long term--even think globally as well as locally? We have a unique, irreplaceable resource--as fine as any agricultural soil on the planet, well-watered and in a setting of sheer beauty. Silhouetted by Topa Topa Mountain, shall we replace our green, productive land with cement, topped by row on row of houses?

Re "Bike Trail Opposition," letters, July 22. Letter writer Larry Dutra intimated that farmers in the Santa Clara Valley are crying "not in my back yard" and told us to "deal with it" when it comes to the proposed 32-mile Santa Paula Branch Line Trail. Some details were not stated. The public land he refers to is only a 100-foot right of way. It goes through the very heart of the highly productive cropland in the Santa Clara Valley. In most cases, it actually splits contiguous parcels owned by the same farmer.

Chinese officials vowed Wednesday to crack down on land seizures that are displacing as many as 1 million farmers a year and increasing public unrest. The move is part of Beijing's effort to balance nearly three decades of lopsided economic development that favors urban areas over rural ones by now fostering a "new socialist countryside."

Thousands of acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland will be preserved after a deal between the Sierra Club and a developer resulted in the funding of an $8.2-million trust. The Cambay Group, which is developing River Islands, has been involved in a courtroom dispute with the environmental group for seven years over the construction of an 11,000-home community on what is prime farmland in Lathrop.

In a last-ditch move to relieve stress on levees burdened by floodwaters, the Army Corps of Engineers opened a major Mississippi River floodgate Saturday for only the second time in nearly 40 years, funneling water toward farmland and small communities to save New Orleans and Baton Rouge from inundations. A crane lifted the metal teeth on one of the Morganza Spillway's 125 gates, and an avalanche of water began rushing through. The water branched out over the grassy flood plain and began rippling southward toward isolated hamlets, fishing and hunting camps, and towns tucked among the bayous.

When Elbert Santiago, a poor messenger service employee and father of three, heard about a chance to trade up from his "hole" of a slum apartment to a place a short stroll from the presidential palace, he didn't think twice. After all, the price was the same for both places: practically nothing. Santiago is a squatter, one of the army of poor who with the encouragement of leftist President Hugo Chavez have taken over an estimated 155 office, apartment and government buildings here in the Venezuelan capital.

When Peter Moyle began studying an obscure little Northern California fish in the early 1970s, he had no inkling of the role it would come to play in the state. No one had paid much attention to the delta smelt. "They were just there," recalled Moyle, then an assistant professor at UC Davis in need of a research topic. "We knew nothing about it. " Nearly four decades later, the delta smelt is arguably the most powerful player in California water. Its movements rule the pumping operations of the state's biggest water projects in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Michael Zulu trundles a wheelbarrow along the track to his farm homestead, where chickens peck at the carpet and skinny cats curl sleeping amid the bird droppings. He's the farmer now, not just a tractor driver for a white farmer named Engelbrecht, like he used to be. But he has a shirt full of holes, the roofless ruins of a dairy and a stretch of farmland whose only crop is cow manure, bagged up and stacked against a wall as a substitute for firewood. There's no electricity on his farm, just an hour's drive southeast of Johannesburg.

As investors tire of Wall Street's roller coaster, more of them are plowing their money into land — farmland. Few people understand this shift better than farm manager Carl Evers. On a recent morning, Evers steered his pickup truck through a Central California almond grove, his drawling sales pitch at the ready. Evers is co-founder of Farmland Management Services, which runs about 30,000 acres of nut groves, fruit orchards and wine grape vines for a Boston investment firm.

Orange County and the city of Camarillo will each receive one cent, Los Angeles County will waltz off with $1.14 and Fresno County will strike it not quite rich with $150.45. State payments for a once-flourishing farmland protection program are on the way — and the only good thing that some officials have to say about them is that at least they're not IOUs. Under the current, slimmed-down state budget, payments to local governments for participating in the plan known as the Williamson Act program have been slashed to $1,000, a sum that has been divvied up with angels-on-the-heads-of-a-pin precision to 47 participating cities and counties.

Now Oxnard wants to build a "self-sufficient community" on 815 acres of prime agricultural land (March 20). Building houses and more shopping is bad enough, but to pave over 90 acres of rich farmland to develop an amusement park and museum to educate visitors on the importance of agriculture has to be the dumbest idea yet. How about just leaving the farmland there and letting people enjoy seeing the real thing? I guess that's too simple of an idea for money hungry politicians. RUTH FRY, Camarillo

I read once again, in a Dec. 5 letter to the editor, that "there are persistent rumors that the farmland will be sold" at Pierce College. I have been the president of Pierce College for 2 1/2 years. During that time I have never once heard any official of the college or the Los Angeles Community College District give any consideration whatsoever to the sale of any of Pierce College's land. What has been discussed is how Pierce College is going to be able to survive the current financial crisis.

As the autumn air grows crisp and the groves of maple and oak trees warm this stretch of eastern Indiana with streaks of red and burnt gold, Maureen "Mo" Jester prepares for her favorite time of year: getting lost in the corn. Eight years ago, Jester decided that she and her family needed to make a bit of extra cash to support their 65-acre farm. So she and business partner Darren Coulter sat down at her kitchen table with graph paper and felt-tip pens and figured out how to transform some land into an agrarian take on the hedge mazes found on English manors.

There are certain phrases I never expected to utter in my lifetime. Things like, "Excuse me if I don't shake your hand. Mine's covered in horse urine." Or, to my son, "When you're finished with dinner, clear your plate and feed the scraps to the worms." Yet those are exactly the sorts of things I've found myself saying in the months I've been an urban farmer. A year ago, I didn't have a vegetable garden. I had a couple of lemon trees, but I'd given up on potted plants, having killed every rooted thing I'd attempted to nurture on my back deck.