Saving Land for Food

Michael Olson’s Food Chain Radio Show #1334

This Poll is closed!!

Can cities be prevented from eating up all the farmland?

No

Yes

*

11%

88%

Listen Now…

GUEST: Barry Baker, Land Protection Director; Bryan Largay, Land Conservation Director Land Trust of SC County, California

Santa Cruz County is one of California’s smallest counties in terms of geography, and yet it is one of the state’s most bountiful in terms of its agricultural productivity per acre.

Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Saving Farm Land for Food

In fact, Santa Cruz County’s 600 farms produce about $660 million worth of food on 64,000 acres, which works out to about $10,300 per acre.  If the County’s farmers were growing wheat, they would only be making $170 per acre.

However, Santa Cruz County is located immediately adjacent to Silicon Valley, which hosts some of the world’s best paying jobs and most expensive metropolitan real estate.

This proximity of farmland to a major metropolitan cityscape quite naturally presents a wonderful opportunity for the city to grow, so it can collect more property taxes, so it can grow some more.   And it presents a wonderful opportunity for farmers to realize spectacular gains by turning their farm land into residential real estate – thus the saying, “Farmers live poor, but die rich!”

The city in Santa Cruz County that hungers most for farmland is Watsonville, which sits right in the middle of the Pajaro Valley’s fertile flood plain.  And Watsonville, like all cities, is compelled to grow.  And so we ask:

Leave a comment below: Can cities be prevented from eating up all the farmland? 

Tune in here, for the syndicated Michael Olson Food Chain Radio Show #1334 December 10, 2022 Saturday 9AM Pacific

Take the 2X2 Pledge

“Together, we can eat our way to economic security and personal freedom, and it won’t cost a dime and it will be so easy it will make you blush!”

Michael Olson’s Three Laws of the Food Chain

#1 Agriculture is the foundation upon which we build all our sand castles.

#2 The farther we go from the source of our food, the less control we have over what’s in that food.

#3 Cheap food isn’t!       READ MORE