Washington state is losing farmland to development faster than much of the rest of the nation. But Skagit County is bucking the trend and providing a road map for others to bolster rural economic development.
While Washington saw more than 5% of farmland losses, about 824,000 acres, between 2017 and 2022, Skagit County saw a 2% increase in farmland, as the county continues to safeguard its agriculture industry, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census of Agriculture.
“They really did get ahead of the curve in preserving their ag resource lands,” said Hilary Aten, a coordinator for the State Office of Farmland Preservation. The Skagit County Farmland Legacy Program, which was established about 25 years ago, is spearheading the local effort to preserve 30% of the county’s prime farmland by 2050.
The goal is to reach a critical mass threshold of farmland needed to keep the county’s agricultural industry afloat, explained Sarah Stoner, the agricultural lands coordinator for the county.
“Farmland is a finite resource,” Stoner said. “We have some of the most productive, high-quality, richest soil in the world here in Skagit County.”
The United States Department of Agriculture puts the soil quality in Skagit County in the top 2% of all farmlands in the nation.
Those fertile soils combined with a long, cool growing season have allowed farmers in the region to grow a wide variety of specialized crops, from spinach seed and thin-skin potatoes to tulips and blueberries. It has also established Skagit as a key part of the state’s food system.
“Having the land resource here to be able to grow our state’s food and support our economy is really critical,” Aten said. “Farmland preservation is basically making sure that we have that land.”
Yet, there are a variety of pressures on farmland in Skagit County and throughout the nation. Agricultural land is threatened by residential development, carbon offset projects, battery storage, weakening agricultural economic viability and climate change.
The land is particularly vulnerable to conversion to non-farming uses during generational transitions, making it all the more important for farmers to consider the Farmland Legacy Program when establishing their succession planning, Stoner said.
The impact, however, extends beyond the county borders, as Skagit is an anchor for Western Washington’s agricultural industry, Aten explained.
“A lot of the ag infrastructure and research and business that comes out of Skagit really supports ag all up and down the I-5 corridor,” Aten said, noting that the county also produces a “huge amount of high-value crops.”
Skagit is among the top 12% of counties nationwide for the market value of agricultural products sold, and ranked ninth in the state.
Skagit Farmland Legacy Program
In 2024, Skagit County protected five farmland properties, totaling 460 acres, through the Skagit Farmland Legacy Program. The previous year, it protected 425 acres — both ahead of the goal of 400 acres a year for the next 25 years.
The program compensates landowners for placing a perpetual conservation easement on their land, extinguishing valuable development rights and designating it for agricultural use. Nonetheless, the program participant retains ownership of their land and continues to farm it.
For example, the farmlands protected by the program in 2024 had 10 development rights associated with them. Instead of forcing the land to permanently stay in agricultural use, the farmers could have sold it to a developer, who could have then subdivided them for various projects.
“They have been sacrificing the economic advantage of selling out to a developer, making as much money as possible, for the sake of protecting their land,” Stoner said of the landowners who are part of the program.
When a conservation easement is placed over the land, extinguishing those development rights, it can significantly lower the value of the property. It typically brings down the value of the land by 20-40%, Aten explained.
The landowner is then paid through local, state or federal funds the difference in the price, putting money back in the farmer’s pocket.
“The beauty of an ag easement is that it allows the farmland owner to extract cash value off their land without having to sell their land,” Stoner said.
The Skagit County Farmland Legacy Program is locally funded by a tax levy of about 6 cents per every $1,000 of property valuation.
“Those funds are solely used to protect farmland,” Stoner said. “The whole function of farmland legacy is to protect farmland, but that is tied to the larger purpose of safeguarding agriculture in Skagit County.”
The decrease in value can lower the barrier of entry for those wanting to establish themselves in the agricultural industry without a family legacy in farming. It also makes it cheaper for established farmers to expand their operations.
“If there are building rights that you can sell off, it helps offset the cost and it makes it a little easier to afford,” explained Ryan Nelson, a third-generation potato farmer in Skagit County and farm manager for Double-N Potatoes. “But the big thing is it keeps it in agriculture.”
As of December, more than 15,000 acres of such agricultural land has been protected in Skagit County over the last 25 years, representing 283 fewer houses — and associated roads and infrastructure — being built on farmlands in the region, Stoner explained.
Agricultural critical mass
Double-N Potatoes has protected more farmland through the Farmland Legacy Program, about 1,500 acres, than any other entity. Nelson said that his family is not only leveraging the benefits of extinguishing development rights but that each acre protected helps preserve the necessary critical mass of agriculture in the county to ensure that farming remains economically viable.
As farmland is lost in a region, it becomes more difficult to support auxiliary industries, attract labor and sustain agricultural processing facilities, explained Michael Brady, an agricultural economist at Washington State University.
Ultimately, it undermines the economic viability of the entire industry.
“It gets to a point where too much ag gets taken out of production, well, it’s gonna be hard to keep your infrastructure intact,” Nelson said. “Everything from the tractor dealerships to the fertilizer companies to the seed companies that are here.”
Brady pointed to the agglomeration effect in economics: a higher concentration of a specific industry in a region increases innovation and decreases the cost of doing business.
This is especially true for specialty crops, where packing and processing is key.
“To keep those post farm gate tracking and processing industries economical, they need scale,” Brady said.
While there are the economics of scale — the bigger the farm, the lower the unit costs — there is also the economics of scope, or the benefit of growing a variety of crops, Brady explained.
This is particularly the case for small and medium farms focused on direct sales. The idea is to have a diversity of crops ready to be harvested at different times throughout the year to provide a steady flow of income.
Skagit Valley, constrained by the mountains on one side and the sea on the other, is limited with how much it can benefit from the economics of scale and is instead pushed toward diversification, as opposed to specialization.
Nonetheless, even this requires a great deal of farmland for a variety of reasons, including crop rotations, in which crops are planted in different fields on a set schedule so as not to deplete the soil quality of one parcel.
Future farmlands of Skagit
The Skagit County Farmland Legacy Program is one of the most successful farmland preservation programs in the state, yet more still needs to be done to secure the region’s future in agriculture, Stoner explained.
“It is vital to protect farmland at a fast pace,” Stoner said in December. “This year, we’ve been working to identify barriers and opportunities so that Farmland Legacy can protect 30% of Skagit farmland sooner than 2050.”
The county budgeted $3 million for the purchase of easements to protect agricultural land in 2024 and 2025. In 2024, the county spent $985,00 on the effort. However, Stoner noted that with population pressures increasing in the Puget Sound region, land values will increase, ultimately reducing the buying power of the program.
“We still have a ton of work ahead of us,” Stoner said. “Our dirt is our future.”
Isaac Stone Simonelli is CDN’s enterprise/investigations reporter; reach him at isaacsimonelli@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 127.
