Dear Editor:
So you want to prevent the development of more and more of our farmland?
We want this county to remain what it was. An agricultural-cattle ranching area with open rural space.
The land preservation group has some good ideas, five-acre parcel are not ecologically sustainable areas unless neighbors get together and develop grazing plans that address soil and plant issues, or the individual owner has some knowledge of land stewardship.
So the suggestion is to increase the acreage without knowledge as to how to care for those larger areas. Have we really solved anything?
As for limiting South County ranches to selling 160-acre plots, that is still not a sustainable ranch and the one being punished is the landowner who is selling their ranch. Probably under duress or they would not be selling anything.
This is one more burden that is being placed on the private property owner. That ranch may have been in the family for generations and the land is only capital they won. To continue farming, they need loans that are now threatened because the land value has dropped, thanks to the new limit on their ability to sell it.
And if they need to sell something to survive, they could have sold a small piece, an ability that would now no longer be available to them. And since when have we in America forgotten about private property rights?
It is their property and they own it, unless they receive just compensation for it. Would you like to be told what you can do with your property?
So, in order to please our new awareness and appreciation of open space, this suggested initiative would make the farmer-rancher pay the price by not being able to maybe continue farming or freely sell his land if necessary.
The solution to having open space is not in preventing farmers-ranchers from developing their land (which almost always is a last act of desperation) but in assisting them to be there in the first place. Buy local products.
Our farmers market is an avenue to this end, but that is certainly not the only way to buy local produce. We are surrounded by every kind of food and beverage. With a little effort, we could be buying from those ranches.
This is a sustainable win-win for the rancher, the consumer, the slow-growth advocates, and the county treasury.
If you truly want to save this community from more unsightly development, do something positive to assist large landowners in keeping their land financially sustainable.
Punishing them at the time of sale is after-the-fact and deriving them of their rightful ability to sell the only product they have left, land.
Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. The larger acreage rules suggested are not an equitable or wise solution.
Joy Law
Hollister
