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October 2005 farmland preservation report learn. So I always come back with some ideas. FPR: I just came upon a new idea writing for this issue of the newsletter. A county in Iowa has enacted a property tax rebate for any farmer converting to an organic operation... BERNER: I don't know if a tax credit would be sufficient incentive to dairies in Marin to convert to organic. There is an organic dairy in Marin, it was the first organic dairy in the west, I believe — the Straus Family Creamery. It is now buying and processing organic milk from a couple other dairies in the county so its business and its need for raw milk has grown. They have their own processing facility and produce other products. FPR: Most of the farms in Marin are either dairy or other grazing ... BERNER: In terms of land use, yes, the vast majority – our basic product is grass – dairy, beef cattle and some sheep. But we have a growing number of small organic operations, some independent of traditional operations and some that have become part of it. So in terms of gross revenues, organic crops are becoming a somewhat larger and growing part of the industry. In terms of land area it's not .a big change. We had one dairy family go out of the dairy business and they are now growing over five acres of organic strawberries. . There's another dairy making farmstead cheese that's being marketed nationally. So there are ways to get out of the commodity business and get into value added, where they get better prices and have more control over the price they are paid. FPR: You've got about 40,000 acres preserved. You also have more restrictive zoning than anywhere here in the east. How is that playing out on the ground? BERNER: Well the county zoning has largely made subdivision and nonagricultural development pretty much nonexistent. We have A -60 zoning, but the average size ranch is about 600 acres, so there is a theoretical potential for that average size ranch to be divided into 10 parcels. That has almost never happened because the county has other policies that make it very difficult to do that. However, because of our location on the edge of a 7 million - population metropolis where there is a huge amount of wealth means that agricultural land values have nevertheless escalated far above any values related to agricultural income and that's the principal problem. So the principal market for agricultural land in our county is not subdivision and development, it is for, basically, estates. People who pay several million of dollars for large rural properties to use as a. second home or a horse property, Page 7 s omething along those lines . Fortunately the vast majority of fi our agricultural families have no interest in selling. Nevertheless, the few sales that have taken place continue to take place at high and escalating values. FPR: So it is happening somewhat. When does the easement program come into 4_ play? BERNER: Well... when ranching 7'77 Y and farming families don't want to wry= sell but for one reason or another they have to deal with the land as 3 a financial asset and not just a natural resource, whether that's t estate taxes or family and estate planning or buying land or buying out partners, because of these y Sr high market values its very difficult to deal with these problems when there is so much value locked up in the land, which is providing an extremely low income return. So our ability to purchase conservation easements enables farming and ranching families to liquidate a significant part of the value of their land without having to sell it, and in that way to face whatever need they are facing ... FPR: Right. You recently did some easements and that cut into your funding quite a bit, you said, so much so that I put zero on how much money you have. So you're starting a new capital campaign. How do y_ou think that's going to go when you've been asking for money, for quite a while? Do you still have sources to go to? BERNER: Well we haven't been in the capital fundraising mode for two or three years except for the grants we applied for from public agencies... but as you said we completed three projects in the first part of this year and spent a total of over $8 million. About half of that was provided by grants from public agencies and private foundations. The other half was provided by funds we had raised in the early part of this decade. But those projects exhausted our capital reserves, so while we'll continue to seek grants from the State Coastal Conservancy and the State Department of Conservation and private foundations, we are going to have to initiate a large capital fundraising campaign because those sources will not provide anything more than about half of what it will cost to sustain this program... FPR: Bob, you're one of the chief veterans in farmland preservation. How did you get started in the field? BERNER: I fell into that sort of accidentally ... I answered an ad for someone with my background and it turned out to be The Nature Conservancy and I was eventually offered a job. It was there I got myself involved in this business and decided that that's what I wanted to continue to do. It eventually led to MALT, and I've been there ever since. FPR: Tell me what you like to read, Bob. Do you have time to read books? BERNER: [laughter] Occasionally I have time to read at night. Primarily I like novels. I like to read things that are pretty much unrelated to my work, when I'm away from work. The most recent one was a novel called The Shadow of the Law, by a man named Kermit Roosevelt, a sort of legal thriller if you will. If you like that kind of thing, I recommend it. FPR: [Our senior contributing editor] Tom Daniels reads those kind of novels all the time. He likes murder mysteries. BERNER: Really? I just saw Tom – today, and yesterday ... I'll have to compare notes with him. FPR: I just finished The Dante Club. You might like that one, too. Well, it must be dinnertime there, Bob. Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it. BERNER: OK, nice talking with you, Deborah.