By Alejandro Figueroa
A group of about a dozen farmers is lobbying state legislators to loosen Oregon's iconic land use laws to expand business opportunities on agricultural land.
Agritourism brings in nearly $1 billion each year to the Willamette Valley. The extra income can bolster a farm’s financial resilience when crop sales are down. But some farmers say strict state land-use laws limit how they can use their land, and they’re looking to change that.
Land conservation groups, however, say those laws exist to protect farmland.
As the fall season settles in, some farmers are preparing to open up their fields of pumpkin patches, farm-to-table dinners, corn mazes and hayrides for visitors to come in and spend a day on a farm.
But navigating the complex systems that are Oregon’s planning and zoning laws presents a challenge for farmers wanting to participate in some forms of agritourism activity, said Samantha Bayer, the general counsel at the Oregon Property Owners Association — a lobbying group representing private property owners.
“What we are seeing is that our land use laws are not designed and not being implemented to support a robust economy in general,” Bayer said. “The quest for farmland preservation is so over-leveraged that now you’re actually preventing farmers from using their land and doing the things that they need to do to stay in business.”
The Keep Oregon Farming campaign, which is affiliated with the property owners association and run by about a dozen farmers, is looking to lobby legislators and the governor to address some of those challenges.
Bayer said Oregon is losing farms, but it’s not because of urban sprawl. The latest USDA census of agriculture does indeed show Oregon lost 2,069 farms from 2017 to 2022 — the majority of those farms range from one to nine acres. Consolidation, the increasing cost of business and climate change are part of the reason for that loss.
Bayer said another reason for the loss of farms is that the laws designed to protect farmland are hurting farmers.
Oregon’s land protection laws are enshrined in Senate Bill 100, which passed in 1973. The foundation of the law is a set of 19 statewide land use planning goals. One of them, goal three, requires counties to identify farmland and zone it as exclusive farm use, or EFU.
If a farmer on exclusive farm-use land wants to host some form of agritourism activity, they usually have to seek a permit. One way is to apply for a farm stand permit. That allows farmers to sell the produce they grow on their farms, as well as other goods like hats, shirts or mugs. Annual sales of those non-agricultural goods and other fees they charge for activities like hay rides or farm-to-table dinners are limited to 25% of total annual farm-stand retail sales. If they go over that cap, they risk losing their permit.
Hilary Foote, a farm and forest specialist at the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, told OPB the cap is in place to prevent farm stands from selling goods and services that are not related to agriculture.
“That is a requirement established by the [Oregon] Legislature with the intent of ensuring that the sale of farm products remains the primary focus of something that has been permitted as a ‘farm stand’ and that it does not become a retail store,” she said.
Bayer, with the property owners group, said she believes the cap was established with good intentions, but would prefer the state did away with it.
“It should be farm first. And I think that that’s fair and that’s reasonable, especially when we’re talking about the exclusive farm use zone,” she said. “However, I think there is a way to do that so that it’s not an income restriction. I am not aware of any other business in the state of Oregon that is restricted on the income they can earn for promoting their business because of the underlying zoning of their property.”
Nellie McAdams, the executive director of the Oregon Agricultural Trust, said those limitations exist for a reason — to keep farmland dedicated to agriculture.
“Without reasonable limitations, we run the risk of having any kind of products that have no relation to agriculture or that particular farm being sold on farmland,” she said.
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