IN FARM WE TRUST

PALMER — Depending on how a vote goes next month, there’s a good chance the Mat-Su Borough might be getting out of the business of preserving farmland.

In previous years, the borough has set aside money in its annual budget to match federal grants to buy development rights from farmers. At the start of the program, the borough parceled out $300,000 per year. This most recent year it dropped its contribution to $100,000 in an effort to spur some other body, possibly the state, to take up the slack.

The money went to the Alaska Farmland Trust, which, in turn, bought the development rights to Valley fields. The agreements drawn up left owners in possession of their fields, but in exchange for the payments, owners signed a document saying the land would never be used for anything but farming. The trust inspects the fields each year. If the land is being used for something other than agriculture, then the trust can take legal action.

“My wife and I were the first ones to put 40 acres in Alaska Farmland Trust,” Palmerite LerRoi Heaven said at a borough assembly meeting last week. “When we bought this piece of land I was farming it at the time and I knew I was getting close to retirement, and the only way we were going to be able to pay taxes on this land, if it wasn’t being farmed, was to put it in the Alaska Farmland Trust.”

Heaven spoke to a lot of what worries those who would like to see farmland preserved: “It was going to end up either a gravel pit or it was going to end up having houses on it,” he said.

While the assembly has done a couple of these projects in the past, the current assembly is a whole new body. When the most recent deal came to the assembly, many of the members balked.

The plan is to buy the rights on two 40-acre parcels of farmland off of Palmer-Fishhook Road owned by James and Debra McCormick. The fields are currently hayfields. The borough’s contribution to the plan would come out to a little less than $300,000 per parcel.

“Really? The Mat-Su Borough is going to spend $600,000 to take private property out of private hands?” said Assemblyman Ron Arvin, who came to the assembly in last year’s election, replacing Michelle Church, who had supported the preservation program. “What we should be doing is taking public lands out of the government’s holding and putting them in private hands.”

He said farmland is important, but so are roads, schools and other essential borough projects. If farmers wanted their land put in a trust, he said, he’d like to see the private sector step up.

Arvin wasn’t alone. There seemed to be three firm “no” votes at the table: Arvin, Assemblyman Mark Ewing and Assemblyman Vern Halter.

“This is a very difficult issue. It really is. I grew up in farm country in Minnesota,” Halter said. He didn’t think just saving the land did the job. There has to be crops planted and a market to sell them. “I’m not sure that this is going to meet the intention, myself.”

On the other side, there seemed to be at least two “yes” votes in assembly members Lynne Woods and Pete Houston.

“The public benefit is preserving the capacity to feed ourselves,” Houston said. “The estimate is that in the state, on the grocery store shelves, is approximately a week’s worth of food.”

In the event of a disaster, he said, there isn’t enough food being grown in Alaska to keep the population fed for long.

One more vote against would mean this deal wouldn’t go through. The remaining two assembly members seemed to be on the fence. Jim Colver, for his part, said he thought the borough had enough money set aside to buy just one of the parcels and shouldn’t dip into funds not set aside for farmland to buy the second one.

“A little bit more work needs to be done rather than just go to our honey pot when we’re out of money for this purpose,” Colver said. He also seemed to agree with Arvin’s statements about the private sector stepping up. “Everybody always comes to the government first on these kinds of deals and sometimes it takes a combination of efforts.”

Cindy Bettine said she was of two minds. She was having trouble with the money side of the equation but feels farmland needs protection.

“I’m stumbling here because I see something that was worked on for many years kind of falling apart here,” she said.

It was her motion to postpone the discussion until April 6.

Reached Monday, Steve Gallagher, who runs the Alaska Farmland Trust, didn’t have much time to talk. He said he regretted not being at the meeting to help clear up what he felt was some confusion on the assembly.

“But I’ll be at the next one,” he said.