Monday, June 25, 2001

By DAVID FISHER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

MONROE -- Andy Hofstra stood on his 100-acre dairy farm, with its sunny green views of the Skykomish River and Cascade Mountains, and fretted.

At 60, he wants to sell his farm to his son and retire. But with milk prices the way they are, county permits and environmental rules the way they are, and dwindling Snohomish County agriculture the way it is, he's not sure he and his son can swing it.

"Forty years ago, I wanted to go into farming and nobody could convince me any different," Hofstra said. "Now, nobody can convince my son any different. But I think he could probably do better. ... Most people don't want their kids to take over anymore."

The dilemma facing Hofstra and thousands like him concerns government planners, environmentalists and farm preservationists.

Farmers, on average, are getting older. And with fewer people entering farming, urban planners around the country worry about keeping farmland in production.

Last year, King and Snohomish counties launched a new FarmLink program, modeled after 18 similar programs nationwide. It tries to match aspiring new farmers with retiring farmers or others with land to lease or sell.

It also holds seminars and classes to link new farmers with experienced farmers and agricultural advisers on topics ranging from marketing to crop choices to estate planning.

So far, it has matched six prospective farmers with 153.5 acres of land, ranging from an experienced vegetable farmer who picked up a lease on 65 acres of productive farmland, to raw beginners who picked up plots of less than 10 acres.

But whether government is helping or hurting preservation -- or whether new markets and changed farms will have a stronger hand in shaping the future -- depends on who you ask.

Jesse Allen, 40, a beef cattle farmer from Silvana, said uncertainty over new fish protection and land use regulations is doing more harm to his operation than any beneficial programs can promise to mend.

"I don't see anybody really expanding," said Allen, who works contracting jobs to make ends meet with his 110-cow herd. "Why should we keep investing tens of thousands of dollars into this operation if the viability isn't there?"

A glimmer of hope

More than 50 percent of all U.S. farm assets are held by farmers who are 55 and older, according to the last U.S. Farm Census. With fewer new farmers stepping in to take over, shrinkage has been inexorable.

Across the United States, more than 33 million acres fell out of production in the last 10 years.

Snohomish County farm acreage plunged 18 percent from 1992 to 1997, while Pierce County shed 13 percent. King County lost only 2 percent, but the farmland that's left -- about 41,000 acres -- is only about three-quarters as much land as covered by the city of Seattle.

In Washington state, medium-size farms, such as dairies that produce food for huge commodity markets, are sinking fast, losing out to larger growers who can operate more efficiently.

But small farms that can sell directly to consumers are experiencing something of a boom, giving farm preservationists a glimmer of hope.

Some of the hopes are riding with young newcomers, such as 41-year-old Mark Strasburger, the first farmer matched with a seller by Washington FarmLink.

The husband of an Adobe Systems paralegal and the father of a newborn boy, Strasburger can't afford much time to farm.

But about one afternoon a week, he loads his white compact car with garden tools and drives from Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood to the 8-acre plot he bought last November near Silvana, west of Arlington.

So far, it doesn't look like much. About two-thirds of the odd-shaped lot is covered with wiry swamp grass and spindly trees, the remains of an old tree farm. The rest is covered with 9-foot-tall reed canary grass.

Aside from the few test strips Strasburger has carved with a rototiller, there's no sign of cultivation yet. He figures he might have to build drains and till mulch around the swamp grass to get things going, but he sees specialty vegetables coming out of the ground someday.

"This year, I'm obviously not going to have anything to sell," he said. "But next year ... maybe. Maybe."

Acreage is stabilizing

When Strasburger does have something to sell, profits might look good.

Buttressed by small farms that cater to nearby populations, farm acreages have begun to stabilize in many of the nation's metropolitan areas, said Tom Lyson, a professor of rural sociology at Cornell University.

The trend is driven partly by farmers looking for a way around punishing commodity markets, and partly by urban consumers who are tired of bland grocery store food and are looking for ways to reconnect to the land.

Washington state has 71 farmers markets this summer, up from 56 four years ago. And sales have reached $11 million, more than double the level in 1997.

Because farmers can pocket up to 90 percent of the retail price on produce they market directly, that's a significant boost, said Zachary Lyons, a spokesman with the Washington State Farmers Market Association.

The trend is beginning to attract attention from larger growers, some of whom have pulled up to 10 percent of their crops, such as apples and potatoes, away from traditional commodity markets to sell through farmers markets, roadside stands and directly through restaurants and grocery stores.

Still, despite their growth, farmers markets account for no more than about 0.5 percent of all food sales in Seattle, Lyons estimated.

And traditional farmers and dairymen, such as Hofstra, who produce most of the nation's food and hold the largest parcels of local farmland, say that government is just adding to their already daunting problems.

Chafing at new rules

Hofstra and his son waited to bring their silage in last Tuesday, hoping the hot sun would burn it down to 30 or 40 percent water content.

It sets better with the cows at that level, and just as important, anything more might cause runoff into a ditch or the river.

Hofstra's complaints center around new rules to protect endangered salmon and bull trout.

It's not that he's against clean operation, he said. Most dairies, including his, are environmentally cleaner than they were 30 years ago.

But the rules keep changing, and it's expensive to stay in compliance -- even if he can figure out what "compliance" means, or which government agency to ask.

The uncertainty taints basic farm decisions, he said, everything from cleaning ditches to filling low spots.

But that's not the only reason the family may sell. With so few dairies left, old supports such as farm supply centers have closed up or moved north. Even the Marysville Livestock Auction, a 40-year institution, has made noises about development.

Manure could be the final nail in the farm's coffin. The Hofstras need every inch of the 100 acres they own and the 150 acres they lease to spread waste from their 600 cows so it doesn't run into the river. If any of the three property owners they lease from sells to, say, a suburbanite who wants to run horses, the dairy would be forced to cut profits.

Snohomish County Councilman Mike Ashley, an Arlington dairy farmer, said he's trying to get county regulators to ease up on the costs that are pushed onto farmers, and he's looking for new ways to keep the few remaining dairies viable.

Among the ideas: methane-burning power plants, fuelled by cow manure.

But the decline of the Western Washington dairy industry, and the rise of its small direct market farms, is typical of trends throughout the country, Lyson said.

Megafarms are growing larger and small farmers are growing more numerous, while middle-size family farms are succumbing to competition, low prices and retirement.

Farmers, though, still work the land.

"There's an old saying," Ashley said. "The farmer that stirs the soil is eventually stirred by the soil.

"I think the concept there is that you eventually become part of the land, and attached to it, and that's the reason why we still have our farm and we will continue to farm.

"We are attached to the dirt. It is just in us."

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