Housing, wineries, solar highlighted in farm and forest lands report

Presenter: The 2025 Oregon legislature gets underway, and the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire hears the latest report on how well we have protected working farm and forest lands from development. On Jan. 21, Hilary Foote:

[00:00:15] Hilary Foote (DLCD): I’m Hilary Foote, the farm and forest land use specialist for the Department of Land Conservation and Development, to provide some insight into how well our working lands conservation program is doing at protecting farmland and timberland from conversion or development to other uses. (It’s a statutory obligation that we have.)

[00:00:38] Between 1955 and 1970, we lost half a million acres of prime farmland in the Willamette Valley. Clackamas County lost a third of its farmland in the 1960s. So that created the environment for the support for Senate Bill 100, which is Oregon’s landmark land use planning bill that was adopted in 1973.

[00:01:00] There’s only so much good dirt in the world that’s capable of supporting crops, timber, pasture, and configured in such a way that those operations are implementable, and are also supported by needed infrastructure like distribution systems.

[00:01:17] The Oregon program has been very successful in conserving farmland, particularly compared to other states throughout the nation.

[00:01:25] So how does DLCD look at conversion of farm and forest land?

[00:01:31] Presenter: She said there are three primary measures. The first is zoning changes. Hilary Foote:

[00:01:36] Hilary Foote (DLCD): The amount that has been removed from farm or forest zoning, either through a zone change or through an urban growth boundary expansion.

[00:01:45] So by that metric, we have been doing very well. We’ve maintained 99% of the land that was zoned for farm or forest use in that zoning since 1987.

[00:01:57] So about 1,000 acres of farm and forest land are added to urban growth boundaries every year. And about 1,400 acres of farm or forest land are rezoned every year. So since 1987, we’ve seen about 44,000 acres of farmland removed from protective zoning, and about 10,000 acres of forest land removed through those processes.

[00:02:19] It’s actually very common to see zone changes from farm to forest and from forest to farm. And there are a number of uses that are allowed in farm zones that are not allowed in forest zones, particularly dwelling types. And so it’s very common to see a zone change from one resource zone to another because there’s no need to take an exception to the goals.

[00:02:42] Presenter: Another metric involves Oregon Department of Forestry resource classes.

[00:02:47] Hilary Foote (DLCD): So another resource that we rely on in looking at conversion is a report that’s prepared by our sister agency, Department of Forestry. It’s called ‘Farms Forests and People, Land Use Change on Non-Federal Lands in Oregon in Washington.’ And so we can see how that actual land cover in the state has changed from year to year.

[00:03:06] So we’ve moved from talking about zoning to actual land cover and they’re not necessarily the same. So the Department of Forestry have found that 172,000 acres of forest land cover were lost and converted to other uses and 182,000 acres of farm and range land cover were converted to other uses between 1984 and 2014. So, that provides a little insight in what’s actually happening on the landscape.

[00:03:36] Presenter: The third data set includes federal reporting. Hilary Foote:

[00:03:39] Hilary Foote (DLCD): Back in 1997, USDA reported 17.7 million acres in farm use, which was more than we had zoned for exclusive farm use at that point in time. And they are now reporting 15.2 million acres in farm use, which is less than we have protected under exclusive farm use zoning now.

[00:04:02] From all three of these data sets, it’s clear that conversion of resource lands is happening even while it’s still being zoned for farm and forest use. And that’s not surprising. There are a number of non-resource developments that are permitted in statute and in rule. There’s numerous opportunities for that. And that can represent a de facto conversion of that land even while it’s maintained under protective farm and forest zoning.

[00:04:34] Presenter: The most common change involves housing. Hilary Foote:

[00:04:37] Hilary Foote (DLCD): These are the most commonly approved non-resource uses in farm zones since 1993. So the most commonly approved one are home occupations, so we see that lodging, that short-term rentals and bed and breakfast are the most commonly approved home occupation.

[00:04:56] So the salient statistic here is that since 1994, more non-farm dwellings, as a specific category, have been approved in farm zones than all of the dwellings in conjunction with farm operations.

[00:05:07] And that is not consistent with the legislative intent behind that opportunity. There is a quote from Sen. Hector Macpherson, who is one of the principal sponsors of Senate Bill 101, who characterized non-farm dwellings as ‘a little escape valve’ to provide an opportunity for residential development. But they really were meant to be an exception. And since 1993, we have seen more than 7,000 of these types of dwellings approved on resource lands.

[00:05:34] In forest zones, I’ll just quickly circle back to the work by the Department of Forestry. One of their findings in that report is that the amount of wildland forest in the state has declined by 7% since 1974. And ODF concludes that the majority of that impact is due to dispersed residential development in our timberlands.

[00:05:57] And that is important because patterns of dispersed residential development can impair forest functionality, interfere with timber operations. They can increase risk of wildfire, increase cost of wildfire suppression, and diminish some ecosystem services. And those are conclusions in that report by the Department of Forestry.

[00:06:17] Second is commercial activities in conjunction with farm use. We’ve seen a decline in permits issued for the more traditional rural recreational uses—we’ve seen a decline in permits for hunting and fishing preserves and campgrounds. And we’ve seen an increase in permits for alcohol processing and tasting facilities. So: Wineries, cideries, breweries, meaderies, distilleries are the most commonly-approved commercial activity in conjunction with farm use.

[00:06:45] Then power-generating solar permits represent the bulk of these permits for power-generating facilities on farmland.

[00:06:54] Presenter: We are losing some working lands to solar power facilities. Hilary Foote:

[00:06:58] Hilary Foote (DLCD): So there are three ways that you can permit a solar facility on farmland. The first is through a conditional use permit process at the county level that is subject to DLCD’s rules and standards for that. So about 8,600 acres of solar development have been permitted for solar development pursuant to our rules.

[00:07:21] The second way a solar project can get permitted is through a county with an exception to statewide Planning Goal 3. That is waiving sort of the standards in our rules. About 5,000 acres have been approved through the county exceptions process.

[00:07:38] The third way that solar projects get approved is the state is through the Energy Facility Site Council. And that is a very different process. It actually has a less stringent exception requirement to meet.

So the Energy Facility Site Council has approved about 19,000 acres of solar development in the state. So a cumulative that amounts to just over 33,000 acres of farmland that have been approved for solar in the state at the time that the report was published so let’s circle back to that.

So our solar rules, DLCD solar rules, were designed to encourage siting on nonarable lands. And if you just look at the 8,000 acres that were permitted pursuant to our rules, most of that has been on nonarable lands.

[00:08:26] So our rules are working as they were designed to encourage solar development onto those lower-quality resource lands. And the solar rulemaking that’s going on right now is actually meant to continue to encourage the siting of projects on lower-quality resource lands.

[00:08:41] However, as we just noted, far more solar capacity is being approved in the state through a goal exception than under our rules. And the majority of that is actually being permitted on arable lands or cultivatable lands.

[00:08:57] Our report was prepared prior to the approval of, a recent approval of a very large 10,000-acre project in Morrow County. And looking to the future, if we consider the recently-approved Sunstone project and the seven other projects that are currently under review by the Energy Facility Site Council, we could see an additional 40,000 acres of farmland approved for conversion to solar in the next year or so. So if that does happen, that would bring sort of the cumulative total to over 70,000 acres there. So something to look for in the next Farm and Forest Report.

[00:09:35] There is a much longer version of this presentation and conversation with LCDC on our YouTube channel that’s posted there and the full Farm and Forest Report is posted on our website.

[00:09:45] Presenter: Hilary Foote from the Department of Land Conservation and Development says Oregon has preserved 99% of its working lands, but we’re seeing more housing dispersed in forestlands and more non-farm buildings, led by wineries, being constructed on farmland. Solar production on farmland is also increasing.