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Farmland Protection and Climate Change
California farmers grow over 40% of the nation’s fruits and vegetables and more then 95% of the nation’s artichokes, almonds, apricots, kiwis and walnuts. However, while California is the nation’s breadbasket, we have not protected our agricultural resources, and California continues to lose over 50,000 acres of farmland a year.
While both federal and state law requires that developers mitigate when they develop habitat lands, there is no mitigation requirement when agricultural land is lost. And while Californian’s have approved over $15 billion in bonds over the past twenty years to protect California’s natural lands and waters, only $85 million has been allocated for farmland conservation.
However, California is a leader in addressing climate change. California has instituted a cap-and-trade auction that generated over $1 billion last year. While legislators have been developing California’s climate change strategies, researchers at UC Davis have been demonstrating the climate change benefits of local agriculture. UC Davis scientists have shown that urban uses produce 70 times more greenhouse gas emissions than irrigated agriculture, and they’ve concluded that conserving farmland on the urban-edge is an important strategy for protecting our cities from climate change. For more information, see Triple Harvest: Farmland conservation for climate protection, smart growth and food security. http://calclimateag.org/triple-harvest/
Based on this research, California’s legislators are providing an important new source of funding for farmland protection!
A coalition of advocates, scientists and farmland conservationists have been successful in securing $40 million of 2016 cap-and-trade auction revenues to protect California farmland. The Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program provides counties and cities with funds to create agricultural protection programs and $37.5 million is available for agricultural conservation easements – particularly for urban-edge farmland. BALT(Brentwood Agricultural Land Trust) looks forward to working with the Brentwood agricultural community to access this new source of funding to protect Brentwood farmland. For more information about BALT, please see: www.brentwoodaglandtrust.org or call (925) 818-1511.
