Integrating Agriculture into the Landscape: Current Condition

Integrating Agriculture into the Landscape

Current Condition:

Here are the major obstacles that stand in the way of integrating agriculture in the landscape:

Virtually all land use planning in Florida is geared toward the urbanization of open land. There is no effective rural planning. One of the major problems is the terminology and tools in current use were developed to describe urban areas. They have little meaning or application in rural areas. In fact, their application in rural areas tends to urbanize these areas, and remove the rural character that makes them unique.

A background paper prepared in February 1990 by Robert Lincoln, Joint Select Committee on Growth Management Implementation, entitled "Planning Needs in Rural Areas: an Evaluation of State Policy," underscores some of the drawbacks to the way in which the Growth Management Act has been applied to rural areas:

How do we recognize rural areas? One concept which may serve to illustrate rural areas is working landscapes ... A working landscape is one upon which the hand of man has acted, guiding and shaping the land and the vegetation which it supports without dominating it with structures. Pastures, fields, and orchards -- lands managed by man, but not overtaken by him -- are the working landscapes of rural areas.

Wilderness areas can be distinguished from rural areas by the dominance of natural landscapes over working landscapes. Urban areas can be distinguished from rural areas by the dominance of manmade artifacts: buildings hiding the underlying land. Rural areas are recognizable by the partnership of nature and mankind ...

Describing rural residential patterns in terms of "units per acre," or acres per unit, ignores the pattern of varied parcel sizes which occurred over time as land was divided according to need and opportunity. It also ignores the need for larger parcels if large scale agricultural activities are to remain viable.

Rural residential patterns are based on parcels, not lots: the purposes of a traditional subdivision — achieving a regular pattern of land use and providing land for infrastructure and access — have little meaning in a rural setting. Rural residential patterns are based on parcels of varying sizes, sold over time in response to the housing and agricultural needs of various purchasers. Density, lot size and housing type — fundamental aspects of the tools used to describe urban lands — have little meaning ... in rural areas ...

Whether the lot size is one, five, ten or forty acres, if working and natural landscapes are divided "cookie-cutter" fashion to provide residential use of the land, the rural character of the land will be destroyed ...

The threat to rural lands which are either adjacent to or in close proximity to rapidly developing areas comes largely from the imposition of suburban patterns of development on agricultural lands. Suburbanization effects rural areas in several ways. The establishment of residential subdivisions ... destroys the pattern of varied parcels sizes designed to accommodate agriculture, displaces agricultural uses, and often requires the extension of services to areas which are the least equipped to support them. In addition, suburban residents are desirous of the protection afforded by urban land use regulations, particularly restrictions on "incompatible" adjacent uses. These restrictions limit the means by which rural residents ... can make a livelihood.

Many south Florida growers farm the weather, not the land. Some of the products they produce can be grown no where else in the continental United States — including tropical plants, carambolas, leechees, mangoes and papayas, to name a few. Yet development patterns are squeezing them out of business — and making us reliant on foreign producers for the products they grew.

Urban development patterns pose many impediments to the continuation of agriculture. These include:

rising real estate values
loss of land available for — and appropriate to — agriculture production, services and processing.
urban encroachment
parcelization
lack of adequate buffering between agricultural operations and homes, which results in conflicts with urban neighbors and complaints about noise, smells, dust, etc.

Neighborhood opposition poses a major problem. "Look at the problems the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is having in Broward and Dade counties in their efforts to eliminate canker," Nat Roberts says. "We get threatened often by neighbors that do not like our use of pesticides or herbicides. One lady consumed at least a week of our production manager's time in trying to address her complaints. The state investigators said she was crazy. But we still had to deal with her and we have a bunch of neighbors. Same issues apply to migrant labor and transport equipment in a suburban area."

Zoning has failed as a tool to retain and manage agricultural land, open space and conservation.

Many available "land conservation tools" sustain open space but do not necessarily sustain agriculture.

Growth management = growth accommodation. No consideration has been given at all of how to integrate agriculture into the landscape.

Very few planners have the personal background or training to understand agriculture. As a result, agriculture — and its needs and impacts — are often misunderstood. Some planners see agriculture as a temporary use, that can be replaced once land can be developed to its "highest and best use" — residential subdivisions. Some see it as a place where the troublesome, "Not in My Back Yard" uses — such as asphalt plants, land excavations and landfills — can be located. And some believe that agriculture can always relocate, if not in their area, then in some other county, state or country.

Very few planners recognize that agriculture is a large outdoor industry that is distinct from — but sensitive to — other land uses. Very few planners appreciate the economic importance of agriculture; understand what is necessary to maintain (or improve) its economic viability; recognize its needs for support services and industries, farm worker housing, tractor lanes along highways and local distribution networks; or realize how the failure to plan for agriculture — with considerably more depth than simply marking an "A" on a land-use map — and to prevent conflicting uses from locating where they will interfere with agricultural operations, is leading to the demise of agriculture in many of the state's fast-growth counties.

Too often, the first response by concerned policy makers, planners, environmentalists and members of the public is to blanket agricultural areas under a cover of "no development" in a misdirected effort to "protect" agriculture.

Pat Cockrell of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation says: "The issue of rural density does not allow the value to stay with rural lands. [Land value] is what many farmers borrow against (collateral) to put a crop in the ground. Farmers are not guaranteed a profit each year. I had a south Florida vegetable farmer tell me that if he could make a profit one out of three years that he would stay in business. That's because of the nature of the markets can make one year highly profitable. His problem was he couldn't forecast which year would be profitable so he had to plant each year. He had to borrow against land value in the bad years so he could have a ‘good' year.'"

Public land acquisition policies often have the effect of reducing or depressing land values without compensating landowners. Attempts to prevent development in agricultural areas — such as by "downzoning," or decreasing the number of units that can be built on an acre — also result in decreased land values. This, in turn, interferes with a producer's ability to obtain production loans and can reduce a grower's ability to remain in business, thus forcing the producer to intensify his or her land uses or sell out to the highest bidder for the property. (For more detail on this issue, see Appendix B.) &

Large parcels of land are needed for ecological integrity. The largest culprit in breaking up large, privately owned parcels is federal estate taxes. (See Appendix G - "The Case for Eliminating Estate Taxes.")

The consolidation of ag land ownership into the hands of nonfarmers and the "industrialization" of agriculture have major implications for the future uses of rural lands. Charles C. Geisler, a professor in the Department of Rural Sociology at Cornell University, examines the massive trend toward industrialization and the consolidation of ownership in a paper entitled, "Working Lands and Working People: Coupling Smart Growth with Smart Ownership." The paper, presented in the opening plenary session of the Keep America Growing Conference in Philadelphia on June 7, 1999, is available for download at http://www.farmland.org/kag/pdffiles/papers/002.pdf Geisler states:

"The 1997 Census of Agriculture tells a [revealing] story about the separation of ownership and control. Today, half our agricultural land is owned by persons not farming it ... In their hands, the prospects of land conversion is more of a business calculation and estate planning endgame than an occupational decision."

Moreover, "By 1991 USDA researchers were reporting that the largest 4 percent (124,000 owners) held 47 percent of all farmland and 25 percent of all value in farms. We have, then, a situation in which a population roughly the size of Boise, Idaho, owns nearly half the agricultural land in the United States and controls its fate. " [Emphasis added.]

The situation has not improved. A July 17, 1998 article in The New York Times reported that farm debt in 1998 reached $172 billion, the highest since the height of the farm crisis in 1985. Since then, articles in the New York Times and other papers have continued to chronicle the economic struggles and losses of land that are devastating farmers across the nation (see Appendix F - "An American Tragedy.")

Federal estate tax laws also exacerbate this problem, since they remove land from individuals and families and abet consolidation by corporate and nonfarm entities. (See Appendix G - "The Case for Eliminating Estate Taxes.")

As a result: "Ownership units have grown in acres, assets, and market share at the expense of their neighbors. A starkly bimodal ownership structure is the result. The newly consolidated unit ... typical in many parts of the U.S. today, may rest legally in the hands of an individual, a family corporation, or an institutional owner (insurance company, bank, corporation, religious order, university, or estate).

Consequently: "... many million farmers been evacuated from their lands, and ... American agriculture has been diluted almost beyond recognition by depressed ratios of people-to-land and by changing ownership realities for those who remain on the land.

"Such a structure," Geisler says: "is a poor shield against farmland conversion and eventual sprawl." [Emphasis added.]

Against the backdrop of these statistics, Geisler asks: "How is it that our remedies for sprawl are almost entirely about land use controls rather than land ownership?"

(For a more complete discussion about consolidation, see Section 1, Improving Producer Profitability, Current Conditions and Priority Action 1.)

As Stephen W. Forsythe of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says, "I can say without any doubt that this section makes a compelling case for agriculture and environmental planners (if such groups exist) to work together. I fear that both groups will continue to lose productive agriculture and environmental land if the current land-use planning approaches in Florida continue."

Steven M. Seibert, Secretary, Department of Community Affairs wrote on January 26, 2000:

Thank you for the opportunity to review and comment on A NEW LOOK AT AGRICULTURE ... I applaud the efforts of the Sustainable Agriculture Task Team and commend the insightfulness of this report.

Last year when I began my tenure with the State's land planning agency I was struck by the number of land use implications associated with agriculture practices in Florida, yet the lack of engagement by the Department. I have since appointed Mr. Tom Beck as the Department's liaison with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. As a result, I look forward to a stronger partnership with Florida's agricultural stakeholders.

According to the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Florida will convert another 2.6 million acres from rural to urban use by 2020. We currently hold the fourth place position in the nation for such conversion. As the fourth fastest growing state in the nation, we must consider agricultural needs as an integral part of the landscape of Florida. As you point out in this report, "Land resources support growth of population in the state. Land for agriculture is as necessary as the raw ground to support that growth."

The Department of Community Affairs has recently conducted a growth management survey of more than 3,500 citizens in Florida. We are also hosting "town hall" meetings in 13 locations around the state in an effort to gain additional input on growth management in Florida. This information will be used to reassess and perhaps revise Florida's policies on many things, including agriculture. Your challenge to integrate agriculture into the landscape as a vital part of society's infrastructure and quality of life is one in which the Department would like to participate. We look forward to working with you on this matter of essential state interest.

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