Once a leader, Orange County loses last large tract

Small pockets will survive if buyers pay premium for local

By DAN WHEAT

Capital Press

IRVINE, Calif. -- At one time it was way out in the country. But now one of the largest single remaining blocks of farmland in Orange County -- once the epicenter of California agriculture -- is giving way to development.

Earthmovers and bulldozers have scraped some 450 acres bare along a stretch of Interstate 5 between Los Angeles and San Clemente. A large sign on Sand Canyon Avenue, at Irvine, declares: "Cypress Village. Apartment Homes. Opening early 2012. Irvine Co."

Across the avenue, farmworkers pick and pack what may be the last crop of red bell peppers on that 50 acres. Harvest finishes in November.

The land belongs to the Irvine Co., a real estate development behemoth that owns about one-fifth of Orange County and most of the farmland.

As the greater Los Angeles area and its 17.8 million people continue to sprawl southward across the county, the value of farmland loses ground to its value as apartments, houses and shopping centers. In past decades Orange County has become a poster child for the transformation of rural farmland into suburbia.

At one time Orange County was the nation's agricultural powerhouse. In 1949, it was the No. 1 county in the nation in farmgate dollar value, said A.G. Kawamura, co-owner of Orange County Produce and former state secretary of agriculture. But since then, that honor has rotated between Tulare and Fresno counties in California's Central Valley.

Growers could not sustain Orange County's agricultural stature because they could not remain competitive in production costs, Kawamura said. As a result there was an exodus of dairies, orchards and row crop production to the Central Valley and other parts of the West.

It's difficult to protect prime farmland if it's in the path of development. It's even harder if there's so much of it. California's total farmland -- 25.4 million acres -- is so vast that the state's farmers remain competitive despite losses to urbanization, Kawamura said.

The state had a record farmgate value of $37.5 billion in 2010, allowing it to remain the fourth- or fifth-largest ag economy in the world, depending on whether the European Union is counted as one country, he said.

Future of agriculture

As late as 1965, the Disneyland theme park near downtown Anaheim marked the southern edge of the greater Los Angeles area. It was bordered by a sea of orange groves and other farms that extended south along I-5 as far as the eye could see.

Even in the 1990s, much of the landscape along I-5 from Sand Canyon Avenue south was still farmland. It's all but gone now. And none will be left in the I-5 stretch between Los Angeles and San Clemente in the next five to seven years, said Peter Changala, vice president of agriculture at the Irvine Co.

For the last 40 years, agriculture in Orange County has been viewed as an interim land use, he said. Some farmers who now lease land from the Irvine Co. previously sold their own farms for development.

"All of us have the farming bug and do that to the best of our ability," Changala said. "Yet, at the end of the day the common story with so many of us is that we cash in and if we really want to keep farming we take up business somewhere else."

Future viability will be less impacted by development than by regulations, labor challenges and costs, Changala said.

An acre-foot of irrigation water costs more than $500 -- compared with $25 in the Sacramento Valley -- and other costs are only going up, he said.

"These other impacts," Changala said, "are more than likely to be the factors that will bring ag to a close here more than just being outright taken down by development."

Despite the dramatic farmland shrinkage from 142,151 acres in 1949 to 7,846 acres in 2007, Allan Price, president of the Orange County Farm Bureau and manager of Orange County Produce, does not believe farming will completely disappear.

Today, most of the county's production agriculture is on Irvine Co. land. But there are other pockets of 5- to 10-acre parcels still owned and farmed by others that probably add up to about 2,500 acres, Price said.

Kawamura agreed that some farming will survive.

There's still suitable land in Orange County that's not being farmed, even under powerlines, along rights-of-way and in backyards, Kawamura said. It can be farmed successfully because people are willing to pay higher prices for local produce, he said. And hydroponic farming is catching hold, he said.

"There's a reassessment of what agriculture might look like," Kawamura said. "It's a complex world. There's a lot of challenges to be met by a better and smarter kind of agriculture, teamwork and a lot of luck."

Changala said some farms will survive in the near term, like Irvine Co.'s orchards in the foothills.

Changing uses

The Irvine Co. still owns 94,000 acres, but it has shifted from farming to such disparate uses as a University of California campus, the city of Irvine, resorts, wilderness preserves and retail centers like Fashion Island, Newport Center and Irvine Spectrum Center.

Some of the company's development property sells for millions of dollars per acre, Changala said.

At one time, most of the company's acreage was in ranches or farms. When Changala went to work for the company in 1985, its farmland had already shrunk to 6,000 acres of row crops, 5,000 acres of orchards and 1,000 acres of ornamental nursery stock.

Today, that has further diminished, to 1,000 acres of avocado orchard, 500 acres of strawberries and the 50 acres of peppers at Sand Canyon Avenue soon to be gone.

Farming challenges

While the continued conversion of Irvine Co. holdings away from agriculture comes down to dollars, there's also the challenge of farming in suburbia, Changala said.

Farmers who lease land from the Irvine Co. have to be careful to keep mud off roads, particularly when moving equipment from a wet field.

"We have to have crews out sweeping roads clean," Changala said. "There can be penalties of thousands of dollars a day."

Irrigation runoff is closely monitored to minimize soil erosion into local drainages that feed into the Pacific Ocean. There are programs to inhibit erosion and, he said, the issue has become very politicized.

Spraying pesticides is another delicate matter, and so is noise. Tractors can't operate between 5:30 p.m. and 7 a.m. in certain areas. Even how portable toilets for workers are placed in fields contributes to the minutiae of what farmers deal with, he said.

In emergency situations, farmers can spray pesticides at night if they stay far enough away from homes. But they try to avoid it.

"We don't want to get into confrontations with neighborhoods on spraying," Changala said.

Price, of the county's Farm Bureau, said farms have been reduced to Monday through Saturday operations, starting after 9 a.m.

"Landowners and homeowners don't understand noise and dust and tractors and harvest," Price said.

But people also like seeing open space, whether it is a golf course, park or farm, so the organization tries to build on that goodwill, he said.