The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the first-of-its-kind Agricultural Enterprise Ordinance, closing years of time and effort poured into one document.
“The AEO [Agricultural Enterprise Ordinance] supports the continuation of farming and ranching on agricultural lands,” Santa Barbara County 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann told the Sun. “It will allow for activities like on-site farmstands, tree nut hulling and processing, and a variety of small-scale incidental and supplemental uses like farm stays, low-impact recreation, camping, or small-scale events.”
The ordinance originally came before supervisors in early November, but they tabled it until December to iron out some details, including Hartmann’s concerns around camping and farm stays impacting agriculture activities, which came up during the Dec. 10 meeting.
The county’s adjustments will include more stringent permits for small-scale campgrounds and reduce the number of campsites from 20 to 15. It increased the percentage of owner-provided accommodations like trailers, tents, cabins, or yurts, from 60 percent to 70 percent of campsites, and it will require guests of these facilities pay hotel bed tax (transient occupancy tax).
“The AEO represents a step toward preserving and strengthening the county’s agricultural economy by providing a framework for innovative and sustainable agricultural operations,” Hartmann told the Sun. “I believe we found a balance between supporting some of these new activities while maintaining the harmony for neighbors around these parcels.”
Santa Barbara County’s ag industry saw $1.87 billion in gross production value in 2023, but that number doesn’t represent growers’ take-home pay. Farmers across the county have struggled with increased operating costs, more state and federal regulations, and competition from other counties, states, and countries with fewer labor and environmental protections.
In order to preserve agricultural activities, the Planning and Development Department proposed an overlay, which limits additional activities like camping or farm stays in order to protect row crops and other production activities, particularly in the Santa Maria Valley. After the November meeting, supervisors decided to cut out an area near Garey from the limited agricultural enterprise use.
However, the Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties wrote about “grave concerns” for these changes in a public comment letter.
“We are concerned that introducing a new, limiting overlay could morph or be applied in new ways in the future beyond its current intended purpose, and inadvertently damage the very agricultural areas and activities that it is intended to protect,” Grower-Shipper President Claire Wineman wrote in the letter. “We are further concerned that the overlays, as currently contemplated, do not provide equal treatment and protection to our members who farm outside the boundaries; we also have members who farm both within and outside of the proposed overlays.”
Wineman suggested private party agreements as an additional means to resolve the local needs per individual site or reinstating a 1,000-foot setback from row crops and 400 feet from orchards and vineyards to protect production—which were implemented for composting activities, but not across all enterprise activities.
“Promoting and protecting the diversity of agriculture cannot come at the expense of the core functionality of agricultural activities,” Wineman said in the letter. “As an essential industry, agriculture has not experienced the same timing of economic downturns and hardships as other economic sectors, most especially tourism and recreation, and must maintain a robust piece of the local economy.”
This article appears in Dec 19-29, 2024.