Receive presentation on the Yolo County Agricultural Conservation Priority Plan in support of the Yolo County Strategic Plan 2020-2025, Flourishing Agriculture Goal. (No general fund impact) (Lindbo/Tschudin) (Est. Time: 20 min.)

Receive presentation on the Yolo County Agricultural Conservation Priority Plan in support of the Yolo County Strategic Plan 2020-2025, Flourishing Agriculture Goal.

The Yolo County Strategic Plan 2020-2025 is the guiding document for Yolo County for the five-year period and is intended to align goals and actions, set policies, and prioritize funding and resources. The Strategic Plan contains five primary goals, each with specific metrics to measure progress. One of the goals of the 2020-2025 Strategic Plan is Flourishing Agriculture, which is intended to facilitate a vibrant and resilient agricultural industry that preserves sufficient farmland to maintain a local, state and national food supply in perpetuity. The success of the Flourishing Agriculture goal is measured by the number of acres permanently protected. This and other County Strategic Plan goals reflect the 500 long-term action items contained in the Yolo County 2030 General Plan, which provides comprehensive policy direction on the variety of programs needed to realize the County’s long-term vision. Each comprehensive update to the General Plan, which was most recently updated in 2009, has built on the same core principles of agricultural preservation and agriculture as the economic and social engine of the County.

In fall of 2020, County staff identified the California Department of Conservation's Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation (SALC) grant program as a funding source to develop a strategy in support of the 2020-2025 Strategic Plan's goal of increasing the acreage of permanently protected agricultural land, which supports many of the General Plan's long-range goals and policies related to agricultural preservation, including:

Goal AG-1 Preservation of Agriculture: Preserve and defend agriculture as fundamental to the identity of Yolo County.

Goal AG-2 Natural Resources for Agriculture: Protect natural resources to ensure that agriculture remains an essential part of Yolo County’s future. 

Given the number of strategies and programs related to agricultural preservation, County staff applied to the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation grant program to review the agricultural preservation strategies at the County’s disposal and to develop a strategy document for the County Board of Supervisors, and other local and state entities involved in agricultural preservation, to use when considering how and where future agricultural preservation occurs. In early 2021, staff received confirmation that the project grant application was awarded funding to develop the Yolo County Agricultural Conservation Priority Plan. Staff issued an RFP for consultant services and received three proposals; ICF Jones & Stokes was the selected consultant and work commenced in the summer of 2021. 

As a first step, the project team reviewed available agricultural resources data, existing local agricultural protection programs, including the Yolo County Agricultural Conservation and Mitigation Ordinance, the Land Conservation Act of 1965 (Williamson Act), and the Yolo Habitat Conservation Plan/Natural Communities Conservation Plan. The project team also met with stakeholders involved in agriculture and agricultural conservation including the Yolo County Agricultural Commissioner and other County Departments, the Yolo Land Trust, the Yolo County Farm Bureau, the Yolo Habitat Conservancy, and local farmers to obtain information about current and future trends in local agriculture and to discuss ideas about and attitudes toward farmland conservation and how it’s been implemented in Yolo County historically.

One of the key County policies that the team reviewed is the Yolo County Agricultural Conservation and Mitigation Ordinance, County Code Sec. 8-2.404. Its purpose is to implement the agricultural land conservation policies contained in the Yolo County General Plan with a program designed to permanently protect agricultural land located within the unincorporated area. It identifies mitigation requirements for projects that convert or change from agricultural use to a pre-dominantly non-agricultural use prior to discretionary approval by the County and identifies which agricultural areas in the unincorporated area are considered eligible based on the parcel size, configuration, and location, and its class of soil and supply of water, to satisfy the agricultural mitigation requirements for the discretionary approval.

Given the County’s Agricultural Conservation and Mitigation program’s intrinsic relationship to the Strategic Plan 2020-25 Flourishing Agricultural Goal of increasing permanently protected agricultural acreage, the key findings of the Yolo County Agricultural Conservation Priority Plan are framed around its review, while also providing a framework that other entities involved in agricultural conservation can utilize to provide recommendations on which tool in the toolkit of agricultural preservation is most appropriate for different agricultural areas and which areas should be prioritized for preservation based on key indicators the project identified that could potentially be used to satisfy the Yolo County Agricultural Conservation and Mitigation Program and those with high agricultural values and high vulnerability to conversion. The indicators include whether the land is in public ownership or enrolled in conservation easement, whether the land is under the Land Conservation Act of 1965 (Williamson Act), whether the land is considered Prime Farmland or Non-Prime Farmland, and the lands proximity to cities and unincorporated communities. Four selection criteria are proposed for the County to use when considering which lands to conserve. The land should be prime farmland that is located in areas identified in the Agricultural Conservation and Mitigation Ordinance as priority conservation area or that is adjacent to other agricultural lands, or land that is not desirable for nonagricultural development.

The strategy recommendations included in the Yolo County Agricultural Conservation Priority Plan are as follows:

The strategy recommendations described above are based on the County’s existing Agricultural Conservation and Mitigation Ordinance implementation and informed by assumptions about future development requiring agricultural mitigation. For the purposes of this assessment, the team assumed that the full build-out of the County’s 2030 General Plan and all the land within the City spheres of influence would be converted to nonagricultural uses, triggering the need for agricultural mitigation. The County’s Agricultural Conservation and Mitigation Program requires a 3:1 mitigation ratio for the conversion of prime farmland, and 2:1 for non-prime farmland, unless mitigation occurs in a specified priority acquisition area, in which case it would be a 1:1 ratio. Table 4-1 and 4-2 of the Yolo County Agricultural Conservation Plan outlines the projected mitigation needs for the County and the Cities, respectively. Table 4-3, Available Land for Mitigation, shows the total farmland—prime and non-prime farmland acreages as well as land currently under conservation easement—within the 2-mile buffer for each city and the town of Esparto. The projected agricultural mitigation need and a summary of lands available is included below, and in Table 4-5 of the Yolo County Agricultural Conservation Priority Plan.

Table 4-5 Summary of Lands Available for Mitigation Compared to Projected Demand

The analysis shows substantial areas of farmland appropriate for conservation to mitigate for conversion of agricultural lands are located within the 2-mile buffer area. The agricultural lands not currently protected in the areas within 2 miles of the urban growth boundaries of the cities and the town of Esparto could easily accommodate the amount of mitigation lands that would be needed for build-out of the County General Plan, all the land within the spheres of influence, and a 15 percent buffer for other land uses that data is not available to forecast how extensive future activities requiring agricultural mitigation could be.

The Yolo County Agricultural Conservation Priority Plan does not create or substitute existing policies in the County’s General Plan or other planning documents or dictate decisions for landowners. The plan is a strategy document that makes recommendation for conservation strategies and approaches. In the short-term, the plan is intended to marry the 2020-2025 Strategic Plan goal of increasing the preservation of agricultural acres with the long-term policies and actions of the Countywide 2030 General Plan. In the medium-term, the plan will serve to assist in increasing the amount of preserved agricultural land by serving as a resource document for any project in need of agricultural mitigation, it will also serve as a resource to the County and its partners in agricultural and open space conversation by providing a cohesive strategy document for future agricultural conservation easement prioritization and acquisitions. In the long-term, it is intended to inform subsequent updates to County Code and the General Plan so that Yolo County can continue to build off its success and continue to be a leader in farmland preservation. 

The project team attended the April 13, 2023, Planning Commission meeting to introduce the project and receive feedback on the Plan. The project team discussed the intent of the Plan and its relation to the County’s short- and long-term guiding documents, as well as how the Agricultural and Mitigation Ordinance interfaces with other entities’ agricultural preservation activity. At the meeting, no significant comments were received.  

Yolo County Administrator's Office
Yolo County Department of Community Services
Yolo County Agricultural Commissioner and staff
Yolo County Farm Bureau and farmers
Yolo Land Trust
Sacramento Area Council of Governments
Yolo Habitat Conservancy