Comments on: Oregon land use policy not working as planned

By: gary

gary — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:30:01 +0000

It’s not just rich individuals. There are loopholes, just down the road is a lot zoned farm/forestry, first was a agricultural market, then a industrial supply depot, now an industrial spot. Still zoned Farme & forest, so the county gets minimal tax out of the whole deal… who cares? – Isn’t the real comparison what things would have looked like without the law?

By: alwaysaskeptic

alwaysaskeptic — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:30:20 +0000

I have to second part of what Peasant Pudnit said. The agricultural and forest land goals intend to preserve farm and forest lands and protect them from development, and included in that is the preservation of Oregon’s agricultural and timber economies. It is true that some of the these lands, particularly Willamette Valley agricultural lands, are not being maximized to their full commercial potential. However, Peasant Pundit is correct in pointing at that even if some of these lands are being used more as “hobby farms,” something that wasn’t really part of the original intent, they are still available for agricultural use in the future. I work in a county planning department in a rural Oregon county and can assure you that the pressure for rural residential development is very strong, and there are a number of existing loopholes and ways to get around the land use laws to develop rural lands for residential use which people use all the time. If it weren’t for the land use program, I am certain that sprawl Oregon would be much worse than it is today.

One of the diffciculties in getting the general public to understand Oregon’s land use program is the natural tendency to view things in the short term and overlook the fact that what is happening right now isn’t how things always have been nor always will be. Our time here is really very short. By preserving these lands, even if not fully to their maximum commercial agricultural potential today, they are still available for future generations.

By: Peasant Pundit

Peasant Pundit — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:01:28 +0000

“Farmettes” take many forms. Some grow specialty crops not of interest to traditional agriculture; some practice sustainable husbandry. Most importantly, the land can still be farmed, and perhaps even combined into larger farms in the future, should we tire of importing from Chile and China (the majority of apple juice served to US school kids is from China!). These farmettes also provide a useful buffer between suburbia and large scale agriculture. Fly over any other state and witness random, pockmark style subdivisions run amok – I’ll take Oregon.