Disappearing Farms in Tulare County California
In Orosi, Tulare County, California, hand painted posters reading “Save the Filipino Farming Community” and “$126,000 +, Y QUE?” are plastered across the Ilokano Farms graffiti agricultural building. The owner of this Filipino family farm, Mary Jane Galviso, stands in front of her 20 acres farmland. She needs to pay part of her $126,000 debt to Orosi Public Utilities District, so she puts on her reading glasses and carefully looks through her notebooks for a check for over $10,000. As advertised in the Dinuba Sentinel, March 28th was the 4th time the Orosi Public Utilities District scheduled to auction off Ilokano Farms due to unpaid tax liens. The tax, she says, pays for the capacity for water and sewer services on her land. Mary Jane said as she closed her notebook, “I’m a farm, so I get my water from the irrigation district.” She admitted that she was paying for tax liens were intended for a housing development on her land over 10 years ago. But it was never built, not even a pipe was laid into the ground.
According to the Northern California Regional Center, California, the “breadbasket of the world” and the world’s fifth largest supplier of food and agriculture commodities is looking more urban.
The American Farmland Trust cites an average conversion rate of 1,498,200 acres of US American of rural and agricultural land into residential areas, commercial real estate, and other developed uses.
Ron Tackett, the head of single-family housing in the California Rural Development department of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) believes that the growing housing developments in the rural areas are “an engine that builds local consumers for businesses.” The more than half of the Rural Development department’s nation-wide annual expenditures since 2010, totaling to over $11,000,000,000, has gone to fund single-family housing projects.
Tackett’s office is one of the primary sources of funding for an affordable housing non-profit called Self-Help Enterprises that has built residential subdivisions all across the San Joaquin Valley since 1965. He believes that their program which allows rural residents who would normally not have the opportunity to own a house provides people a safe home and the opportunity to raise themselves out of poverty. However, he admitted that the USDA has not done any research in regard to the success of these growing housing developments on the local economy. When asked how much his office invests into Self-Help annually, he refused to answer after multiple requests.
Tricia Blatter, native resident to Exeter and the executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau has seen the changes in rural California’s landscape since the residential boom in the mid 2000’s. In a phone interview today, Blatter noted that the cities are acquiring more land to build retail and residential developments at the edge of urban areas.
She expressed that planners and investors should be careful about expanding into prime agricultural land. She was forthright in correcting the assumption that real estate development leads to a more prosperous economy for rural communities. “Ag land is more wealth, taxes, sales, jobs, and over all turning over of wealth in the local community than just real estate development.”
Susan Atkins, the program director for buyer and loan assistance at the Visalia office of Self-Help Enterprises sees that the real estate development as a response to the demand of rural residents. Despite Self Help Enterprises currently building 5 different projects simultaneously. While not knowing the process that Self-Help acquires land to build on, Atkins is concerned for the reduced possibility of being able to build more homes due to the availability of land that is ready for real estate development. She says building affordable housing has been beneficial to the community. “I’ve heard stories of children who grew up in self-help homes go to college and get careers because of having a stable home. This is my home and the people we work with, they’re my neighbor. It’s personal.”
The question that many of these stakeholders in the changing community of Tulare County don’t answer is: Is this type of local development what rural residents, who are primarily employed in the agricultural sector, want? Although Blatt commended the Tulare County Board of Supervisors for having an appreciation for the importance of agriculture, Blatter acknowledged that they are public elected representatives who are obligated to the more densely populated urban areas of the county. She shared that most residents, especially low-income residents in Tulare county that have difficulty participating civically due to barriers in transportation, education, language, and immigration status don’t get much input into country planning.
Veronica Gariby, the community outreach coordinator of California Rural Legal Assistance said that rural residents in unincorporated areas of Tulare usually get contacted about changing zoning or parcel taxes in language that is in technical language and is hard to understand. She said “It’s difficult for people to organize and protest because people don’t really know the process or what’s going on exactly.”
Farmer Mary Jane Galviso she stated, “I have never spoken to anyone that was involved in a USDA survey - or any other government survey - in which rural residents were asked to name rank the priorities in their rural community.” She confessed that the serial foreclosures against her farm by the local water district have nearly bankrupted her and the attempts to seize her farm have been a “nightmare.” She is confident that if the Orosi Public Utilities District successfully forecloses on her farm, they would auction her farmland to a real estate developer to create an 88-unit housing sub-division.
The mission of the United States Department of Agriculture is to “increase economic opportunity and improve the quality of life for all rural Americans.” Farmer Galviso imagines that rural community she lives could be better supported by the USDA’s efforts if they imagine the prosperity of the farming community in which she was born & raised. She states, “It is a community where small scale family farmers and farming are the economic backbone of the rural economy.”
