Guest: Stephanie Rocha, Owner, Nest Box Farm, San Martin, CA

Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Urban Sprawl: Small Farms V. Big Cities

It is a fact! Cities grow best, where farms grow best, and that is why some of the nation’s biggest cities are planted on some of the nation’s best farmland. This leads us to ask: Can farms survive their cities?

Topics include how cities rezone land to maximize revenue; how farmers fight to survive against the pressure for cities to grow; and what the future might hold for what city people will have to eat.

A few decades ago California’s Santa Clara Valley was called “The Valley of Hearts Delight” for the spectacular abundance of its tree fruit farms. Today it is called “Silicon Valley” for the abundance of its digital technology companies.

This transition from growing low value food to manufacturing high value digital information systems sets up a competition for resources between city and farm.

Consider this: A single-family valley home in the valley recently sold for $4 million dollars. Well, it did have 4 bedrooms!

Given the money this sale generated, and the property tax money it will generate in the future, this sale is exactly what the city fathers and mothers want to see more of. How to make that happen?

What Santa Clara County is trying to do, is what most cities do when they need more money – rezone the agriculture lands on the fringes of the metropolitan area into commercial and manufacturing... thus chasing out the rural folks and replacing them with big money folks.

This never ending competition between city and farm leads us to ask: Can farms survive their cities?