WHAT'S NEW?
The California Board of Food & Agriculture, the principal agricultural advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger, has asked AFT to partner with the state department of food and agriculture in facilitating a process that could lead to a strategic plan for the future of the industry in the nation’s leading farm state. “Ag Vision,” as it is called, will engage leaders and experts in agriculture and other fields to address economic, food safety, environmental and other pressing issues confronting growers and other sectors of the industry.
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 A blue ribbon committee of city and agricultural leaders convened by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has outlined five steps the mayor should take to encourage local food production and consumption, including his support for conservation of farmland in the Bay Area and beyond. AFT helped launch this effort with its San Francisco foodshed study, Think Globally, Eat Locally, published last year. With partners from the region, our next step is to design a plan for conserving farmland and creating opportunities for those who farm it to take better advantage of the demand for locally-produced food.
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 A policy council comprised of 16 local elected officials from eight San Joaquin Valley counties has endorsed a “blueprint” for future development in California’s premier agricultural region that will save 118,000 acres of farmland by 2050, a 36 percent reduction compared with the way land is now being developed. While encouraging, the council’s decision rejected an even more ambitious growth scenario endorsed by AFT that would have cut farmland loss in half while also reducing both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent.
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Paving Paradise: AFT Study Details Statewide & Local Farmland Losses
 One out of every six acres developed in California since the Gold Rush was paved over between 1990 and 2004. So concludes a new AFT report, Paving Paradise: A New Perspective on California Farmland Conversion. In all, more than a half million acres were urbanized during this period, almost two-thirds of it agricultural land. Among AFT’s other findings: More than 60% of the land developed in the San Joaquin Valley, which accounts for half of California’s agricultural production, was farmland of the very best quality. Statewide, development is consuming an acre of land for every 9.4 people – imagine them spread out over a football field. If sprawling development patterns continue, another 2 million acres of California land will be paved over by 2050. If, however, the state as a whole develops land as efficiently as Sacramento County or the Bay Area did in recent years, a million acres of California’s irreplaceable farmland could be saved.
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