FARMLAND PRESERVATION

The US Department of Agriculture conducts a Census of Agriculture every 5 years, and according to its most recent data, Idaho lost 1% of its total agricultural ground from 2012 to 2017, which comes out to 117,000 acres. That’s a small amount of Idaho’s 11.7 million total acres of farmland, but in places where the population is rapidly growing like the Treasure Valley in southwestern Idaho, that loss is more pronounced.

According to the 2017 census, Canyon County lost 10% of its farm ground between 2012 and 2017, and Ada County lost 22% of its farm ground during the same period.

“Even though the growth is happening mostly here in the Treasure Valley, it’s happening all over the state. This is just where it’s the worst, and so the solution probably needs to come from here, but we need answers from everybody to make that happen,” said Winegar.

“I just got tired of everybody saying there’s nothing you can do about it, there’s nothing you can do about it, and I think that there is something that we can do about it and so I decided I wanted to try and explore those ideas. So, I presented it to my board, and I just said is this something we wanted to pursue, and it was an outstanding, unanimous yes, we want to figure something out,” said Winegar.

That idea eventually made its way to Idaho Farm Bureau Convention where the delegates voted to make it part of the 2022 Policy Book.