Proposal Would Make an Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone for Santa Clara County

"Landowners and developers in Santa Clara County, California may have greater motivation to turn vacant lots into urban farms," reports AJ Hughes regarding an Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone proposal by county supervisors Ken Yeager and Mike Wasserman.

The county ordinance follows enabling state legislation, the Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Act (AB 551), approved in 2013, which "enables cities and counties to create Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones that would provide property tax breaks for landowners who use their vacant, blighted or unimproved land for urban agriculture for at least five years." 

Hughes reports that the decidedly urban Santa Clara County has lost 45 percent of its farmland since 1984. Supervisor Yeager is quoted in the article making the case for the ordinance as a tool for slowing that trend as well as a way to "reconnect residents with their food, increase access to healthy food for those living in poverty and aid in boosting people’s health." The concern with this law and others like it, however, is the potential property tax revenue that the land could realize with other kinds of uses.

Hughes notes that Assembly Bill 551 require county and city consent to establish an Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone. Nearby, the city and county of San Francisco have already established such a district.