Following a much-talked about inaugural party on Sept. 22, the Santa Barbara County Ag Futures Alliance is already busy planning its first official meeting, during which alliance members plan to discuss some of the most important issues facing agriculture in the county.
A specific date has yet to be announced, but Eric Cardenas, the alliance’s founding member and program director of the Environmental Defense Center, said that he expects the meeting to occur some time in late October.
The alliance might be new to the public, but Cardenas said the group started meeting “underground” to discuss the project about 15 months ago.
“We had to spend time getting to know each other and building up trust,” Cardenas said. “The alliance is composed of groups of people who traditionally have trouble working together.”
The 12-member alliance represents several perspectives in the agricultural community, including agriculture, farm labor, environment, consumers, civics, and food service.
The alliance is committed to “coming up with real solutions to agricultural problems facing the county,” according to the alliance’s website, santabarbaracoafa.org.
Currently, group members have compiled a list of 15 to 20 issues they plan to address, but Cardenas said that ag land preservation and “the critical need for ag worker housing” are top priorities.
The alliance plans to meet once a month in Buellton, where it will receive information from industry experts and other members of the ag community to establish cooperative solutions.
“In the past, as we continued to fight, the farmers were losing land and the environmentalists were losing natural resources,” Cardenas said. “Everyone was losing while we were off bickering, but the alliance [will hopefully] change all that.”
Cardenas said that the alliance will act as a resource for county and city officials, by representing a diverse range of views when addressing agricultural issues. The group also plans to reach out to the community by hosting public events geared toward agriculture education.
For example, Cardenas said, the alliance might conduct tours of farm worker housing to “better connect people in the community with agriculture.”
Still, the alliance’s overall goal is to create respect between the opposing groups in agriculture.
“I think respect is one of the main things that has been missing from conversations in this county for decades,” Cardenas said. “We’re banking on the old-fashioned belief of respecting your neighbors.”
Teri Bontrager, a founding alliance member and executive director of the Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau, agreed.
“I am looking forward to working within a process based on open dialogue and cooperation that respects the values of all involved, so that the viability of agriculture in Santa Barbara County remains for generations to come,” Bontrager said in a release to the media.
The Santa Barbara County Ag Futures Alliance is modeled after the Ag Futures Alliance model and sponsored by Ag Innovations Network. According to www.agfuturesalliance.org, the goal of the alliance is to form “a county-based collaboration between farmers, ranchers, farm-workers, conservationists, and civic leaders who share a desire to build a vibrant, healthy, and durable food system.”
This article appears in Oct 2-9, 2008.