Solutions

Tristen Winegar, Washington County Farm Bureau President and Idaho Farm Bureau President Bryan Searle stress that any solution to the problem in balancing residential development and loss of farmland must be voluntary, and not impede a farmer or rancher who might be retiring, or whose children aren’t following in their footsteps, or for whatever reason… chooses to sell their land.

“And more power to them because they worked their whole lives, they worked hard and they have that right to sell that for that money, and that’s fine, that’s their right. And Farm Bureau is big on private property rights, we’re not going to try and take those away,” said Winegar. “But if there was a voluntary program that they could do that, it would be great. And really, I would like to see a program where it promoted that those individuals that don’t have anybody following in their footsteps, that they were rewarded for selling it to an individual such as myself or somebody else to keep it in agriculture.”

Winegar said it’s not about stopping growth, but preserving the limited lands for agriculture, because with the finite water resources in Idaho, you can have only so much ground in production.

“It needs to be a multi-faceted solution, needs to cover all the angles, but we really need to do this because Idaho’s at a tipping point and we’re just starting to see the repercussions of it, but we need to do something quick.

Hopefully the solution that we come up with in Idaho is an example to other states as to something they can do and maybe we can further this program other places.”