5-31 IAT County Fair

 Coalition For Agriculture’s Future Feels Fairgrounds Proposal Harmful To Ag Economy

 I was contacted by the Coalition for Agriculture’s Future and they said that their initial review of a proposal by the Canyon County Fair Board to move the Canyon County Fair to a new 80-plus acre site will be harmful to the County and would result in an unwise impact to the County’s agricultural economy, officials with the Coalition for  Agriculture’s Future said today. I called Coalition Executive Director, Roger Batt: “Satellite imagery of the site and physical inspection of the area makes it obvious that the fairgrounds proposal is a large scale commercial enterprise that will be dropped into the middle of historic productive agricultural lands and which will drive additional commercial development around the site.  That type of action always poses genuine concern for the Coalition because of its potential to impact agricultural issues in a much broader area than just the project site. Among the impacts  it would launch an inevitable and irreversible commercial and residential development in that area that would eventually consume huge amounts of additional farmland; and the project will trigger an escalation in land costs that would greatly hamper farmers from buying or renting farmland in the general area thus reducing the County’s overall agricultural production. Right off the top, the plan eliminates 80 acres of farmland that historically have been a positive fiscal provider to the Canyon County agricultural economy.  

Those standards include such factors as :

·        the commercial nature of the project is not in keeping with the general nature of the area in which it will be situated;

·        the project will result in land use that is completely incompatible with adjacent land uses;

·        the project will be located in an area where public infrastructure, services and facilities are not available or where there exists an established development pattern already present; and, perhaps most important,

·        the project clearly contradicts the proven land use management principles of building out from present population centers.

           The Coalition believes that the continued loss of rural agricultural lands to urban development has begun to severely limit the ability of Idaho's agricultural industry to produce the sustainable volume of crops required to meet the food needs of the world.  It is also concerned that historic agricultural heritage and traditions are being eroded as concrete and asphalt replace land historically used to grow crops.