Editorial: Marin agriculture takes another hit with latest report

Agriculture has been an important strand of Marin’s economic and social fabric for decades.

Land-use planning decisions made in the 1970s placed preservation of West Marin’s ranchlands and agriculture as a top local priority, focusing future growth on the east side of the county. Marin voters’ approval of a local sales tax for parks, open space and preservation of agricultural lands has reinforced that priority.

But agriculture faces changes and challenges.

The annual report on Marin’s agricultural industry reflected both.

In recent years, Marin dairies have found economic resilience by being a leading producer of organic milk. It has been Marin’s top-ranked agricultural commodity.

But local milk production has shown a steep decline in value and volume, according to the county’s yearly report.

In 2023, the county reports, the value of local organic milk dropped by nearly one-third to $21.9 million.

That contributed to a 10-year low in the value of local agriculture production to a little more than $80 million. The value topped $115 million in 2015.

In 2022, organic milk sales counted for nearly $32 million.

Weather is always a factor, good and bad. Several longtime ranchers retired from the struggles of running a dairy and sold off their cows. Others have said rising production costs, including increases in forage and grain prices, led them to downsize their herds, decreasing production.

Federal relief for organic dairies and a normalizing of feed prices could make 2024 a bounce-back year.

Joe Deviney, the county’s agricultural commissioner, said the numbers also reflect the importance of local support for Marin-grown products.

“For all of us to buy local would be a tremendous thing,” he told county supervisors. Local support for those products is “key” to their success and long-term resilience, he said.

Many local dairies sell their products at Marin stores and farmers markets.

It’s part of maintaining a delicate, if not fragile, balance of preserving West Marin’s open ranchlands with a small, but healthy agricultural economy. Changes in that economic equilibrium can undermine Marin’s goals of preserving its agricultural roots.

While milk, despite its recent drop, continues to lead Marin agriculture, other commodities contribute to the industry.

Both poultry and aquaculture, mainly oyster production, saw growth.

Aquaculture, for example, represents 7% of the value of Marin’s agricultural production.

Interestingly, the local production of wine grapes dropped by 2%, but the crop’s value rose by 10.5% to $919,000, according to the county report.

The report also counts Marin’s fruit and vegetable farms, nursery products, field crops, sheep and poultry.

Changes are always factors in the county’s report. Its charting of the growth of organic milk helped promote change to where it amounts to about 90% of the volume produced by Marin dairies.

The economic strength of local agricultural production is critical to keeping those wide open and rolling grasslands of West Marin a place where farms and ranches can flourish.