GROUPS WORK TO PRESERVE FARMLAND.

Byline: Michael Coit Daily News Staff Writer

Agriculture remains king in Ventura County, and two movements are in full flower to keep it that way, though with far different approaches.

The group Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) is gaining companion groups in the county's cities to push both countywide and municipal initiatives that would mandate voter approval before lands set aside for open space and agriculture can be rezoned for development.

A group of government and business leaders is pushing an alternative.

Established by the county Board of Supervisors, the Agriculture Policy Working Group has proposed scenarios for county growth through the year 2030 that range from freezing city boundaries and their General Plans to allowing urban expansion.

Both efforts are drawing considerable interest and could produce results before the year is over.

``It's definitely catching on. It's spreading all over the place,'' SOAR executive committee member and Thousand Oaks City Councilwoman Linda Parks said.

SOAR was formed in Ventura and successfully campaigned for a measure in 1995 that requires voter approval for any amendment to the city's General Plan that would convert agricultural land for some other use. Similar SOAR groups have formed in Oxnard, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, with other groups coming together in Camarillo, Moorpark, and the Santa Rosa and Las Posas valleys.

The groups aim to place a countywide initiative on the Nov. 3 ballot requiring voter approval of open space and agricultural zoning changes. SOAR is halfway to a $150,000 campaign goal and signature gathering begins by March, said Steve Bennett, the former Ventura councilman who led that city's initiative effort.

In the meantime, the Agriculture Policy Working Group has been holding community meetings to discuss how both farming and growth can be sustained through planning land uses.

Four meetings have been held, in Oxnard, Fillmore, Moorpark and Ventura, drawing as many as 250 and as few as 80 people. The remaining meetings are Tuesday in Camarillo, Thursday in Simi Valley and next month in Ojai.

``It's an issue that resonates. It's an issue that people are vitally interested in,'' said Larry Yee, director for the Ventura County office of the University of California Extension. ``We're talking about the future of the county.''

At stake in the county's unincorporated areas are 113,000 acres of tillable land and 220,000 acres of open space.

Those areas capture the interest of residents in the county's 10 cities because they provide buffers that give the county its enduring rural charm.

Kevin Conville helped establish Simi Valley SOAR this month in response to housing developments approved through annexations, such as Whiteface in Simi Valley and Woodridge in Thousand Oaks, that have cut into open space in the east county.

A Simi Valley resident since 1963, Conville contends that voters need a say in how much growth is enough.

``This is not a no-growth initiative, this is a responsible growth initiative,'' he said. ``When you continue to develop, you create a vacuum and that will draw people in.''

Ventura and Thousand Oaks have ordinances that require voter approval for zoning changes that allow development on open space and agricultural land and SOAR aims to get similar ordinances in the other cities.

``What SOAR does is give teeth to the present general plans of the county and cities,'' Parks explained. ``That's the crux of the problem. There are just piecemeal approvals of upzoning.

``This turns the table.''

Such strident talk from SOAR leaders likely led the county's supervisors to establish the agriculture policy panel, said Bennett, the SOAR organizer.

``There's absolutely no question, behind the scenes they're trying to portray SOAR as not good and that something else is better,'' Bennett said. ``But the backfire is, they're reminding people of the fact that we have an urban sprawl problem.''

Acknowledging that the agriculture policy panel indeed is expected to propose ways to preserve farmland, Yee nevertheless said the effort ``is not an intentional alternative to SOAR.''

Yee said the panel was spawned by the same converging forces of development, growth and the pressure on agriculture that are driving SOAR.

``I think it's better to try and plan our future, create our future than just let things happen,'' he said.

Agriculture is still the county's top grossing industry, generating more than $1 billion in sales and sustaining about 20,000 jobs annually, according to the Ventura County Agricultural Land Trust, a private nonprofit group established to help farmers hold onto their land.

But the county loses about 1,100 acres of farmland annually, according to a University of California study.

The agriculture policy panel has four growth scenarios through the year 2030 that begin with the county's current population of 717,000 and 113,000 acres of farmland:

Freeze city boundaries and their General Plan land-use designations. The population would grow to 924,000 and farmland would decline to 104,500 acres.

Allow greater density in cities to help protect farmland. The population would grow to 1.07 million and farmland would decline to 102,000 acres.

Allow larger residential lots and more sprawling development. The population would grow to 1.07 million and farmland would decline to 83,000 acres.

Assume greater population growth than current projections and expanded city boundaries. The population would grow to 1.25 million and farmland would decline to 69,500 acres.

Yee said these are not worst-case or best-case scenarios but rather possible growth scenarios.

``We didn't develop the scenarios as the only choices. It was a way to begin to talk about the choices we have,'' he explained. ``By creating these plausible story lines about how things can unfold, it was a way to highlight the issues and the sorts of trade-offs we might have to make.''

SOAR leaders, however, doubt that any recommended changes would result in policy makers doing anything significant to alter the pace at which the county is carved by development.

``They say we've got all the controls we need, which means they're saying, We like being the ones to make the decisions. And so the people have to take the decision making away from them,'' Bennett said.