Farmers' dilemma

May 10, 2005

JOEL DAVIDSON/Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU - Eric and Judy Granquist moved into a beautiful home last year with their two boys. Located just outside the city of Palmer, their house is surrounded by scenic mountain vistas and green farm fields.

Theirs is one of approximately 40 home sites that make up a 40-acre subdivision in the Springer Loop. This spring, construction crews and dirt movers are quickly transforming the one-time farm field into a bustling family neighborhood, with kids bicycling on quiet streets and neighbors painting their new homes and landscaping lawns.

Three years ago, the rapidly growing subdivision was a simple hay field, as it had been since the early 1970s. Before that, it was a fertile 40-acre vegetable and potato field first farmed by the original colonists in the 1930s.

Former owner Noel Woods remembers harvesting vegetables from the field with his father back in the 1940s. It's a tradition the 75-year-old Woods wanted to continue, but times changed and economic hardships caused

him to sell the field to developer Jess Hall, of Hall's Quality Homes. In the last couple of years, he sold an additional 80 acres to developers. "We sold the entire 120 acres within the last three years," Woods said last week. "It's all gone now."

Woods' story is not new in the history of American farming and it's becoming increasingly familiar in the Mat-Su. The rapid decline of family farms across the country is well documented. Smaller farmers struggle to compete with the increasingly lower prices of massive commercial farms, and many ultimately fail.

Like thousands of fellow farmers, Woods tried to upgrade his equipment to cut labor costs and increase production. The struggle finally ended in 1972, when Woods walked into the local bank to ask for a loan to purchase newer farm equipment.

"They asked me why I wanted to stay in farming when everyone else was getting out," Woods recalled. "I said, 'People still need to eat,' and I could still make a living even at the lower prices we were getting."

The bank didn't think it was a good investment, however, and declined Woods' loan request. He ended up selling his farm equipment and renting the property to hay farmers. The rent, however, didn't even pay the annual taxes on the land.

With no children who wanted to continue the family farm and area property values soaring to $15,000 per acre, Woods finally decided to cash in and sell the farm.

"I wanted to continue," he said, "but the bank didn't come through."

Similar stories continue to play out this summer across many of the most fertile farm fields in the Mat-Su. That land is considered by many to be Alaska's bread basket.

"The best farmland is being developed," said Joe Moore, state soil scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to Moore, the same properties that make Mat-Su land good for farming also make it prime land for housing developments. The land around Palmer, he said, is flat, drains quickly and has a thick layer of wind-blown silt, which makes for both fertile soil and great landscape material.

While annual statistics from the USDA show increasingly more Alaska land being turned into farmland, those numbers don't tell the whole story. According to Steve Gallagher, manager of the Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corp. in Palmer, new farmland is partly a result of Point MacKenzie property being put into farm production, after sitting dormant for nearly 20 years. That land, however, is inferior to the soil around Palmer.

"What we're seeing is Palmer farms being taken up," Gallagher said. "If you look at the state, I think there has been a decline in prime farmland."

With low-priced produce from the Lower 48 available at Valley grocery stores, why should local consumers be concerned if Alaskan farms turn into subdivisions?

Apart from the freshness and cleanliness of local crops, Larry DeVilbiss, director of the state Division of Agriculture, said there are economic advantages.

"A dollar generated out of our dirt right here is a lot more valuable to us as Alaskans than something that came out of the dirt in Washington or Oregon," he said. "It circulates and keeps going in the economy."

DeVilbiss also cited the fact that locally grown produce is often cheaper than Outside vegetables and potatoes.

In 2002, a federal farm bill allotted government funds to help preserve farmland across the country. The bill allows approved agencies to collect money towards the purchase of development rights or agricultural leases on local farmland.

Gallagher is racing to establish the Alaska Farm Land Trust, which would allow him to begin collecting money from private and governmental agencies for the purchase of agricultural easements and development rights on Mat-Su farms.

"I've run with this, but in the meantime farms have been selling off," Gallagher said. "More land is going. We're worried about Palmer Fishhook, Farm Loop and Butte areas being lost. We're running and trying to get ahead, but we are definitely behind."

Contact Joel Davidson at 352-2266, or joel.davidson@

frontiersman.com.