A Message From the General Manager
General Manager
Our lives literally depend on a safe and sustainable food supply. Unfortunately, local farmers and ranchers face increasing challenges in producing our local food sources: urban growth, high land values, climate change and extreme weather, dwindling water supplies and economic pressures. Sustainable agriculture not only provides an essential function for people, this land use also plays a critical role in protecting our surrounding natural environment and maintaining lands in open space by supporting rainwater percolation into our groundwater and creek systems, sequestering carbon within soils and crops, maintaining wildlife corridors and protecting the biodiversity of grasslands in grazing areas.
Last month, after nearly five years of policy development and community outreach work, the Midpen board of directors adopted a new, Agricultural Policy to govern agricultural land use and management across all of Midpen’s preserves, carefully balancing the values of natural resource protection and agriculture sustainability.
At Midpen, agricultural uses are integrated within our open space lands, particularly on the San Mateo County coast, allowing us to protect the open spaces and rural character of the Coastside while helping to sustain local food sources for our region.
In 2004, Midpen’s geographical boundaries expanded to include the Coastside Protection Area, which stretches west from Skyline Boulevard to the coastline, and from the San Mateo County line north to Montara. Since then, Midpen has preserved almost 19,000 acres in the coastal area, the majority of which remain in active agriculture, primarily as conservation grazing lands with a few properties containing row crops. Midpen currently leases over 10,000 acres of rangelands as part of our conservation grazing program, to maintain and enhance the ecological function of coastal grasslands and the species that use them.
At a high level, our new Agricultural Policy has three main goals:
- Preserve agricultural operations while ensuring the protection of sensitive natural resources;
- Encourage environmentally sensitive and sustainable agriculture and;
- Enhance diversity, equity and inclusion goals related to the management and operation of Midpen’s agricultural lands.
Midpen’s Agricultural Policy builds on the commitments we have made in the Coastal Service Plan and proposes new agricultural partnership possibilities for Midpen for supporting the preservation of more intensive agricultural lands, new farm labor housing and new agricultural infrastructure that also support Midpen’s larger goals around open space preservation, natural resource protection and ecologically sensitive public access.
Intended as a living document, the policy will be periodically reviewed to ensure we continue meeting the spirit of Midpen’s coastal mission.
This article was originally published in the Winter Views 2023 newsletter under, Balancing Midpen’s Coastal Mission: Updated Agricultural Policy is a Guide.