LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — The future is up in the air for a popular Litchfield Park organic farm. A developer is buying some of the land that they lease, which could force them to close. At Blue Sky Farm, there’s a relationship with the land.

“You have to love it,” said owner David Vose. “It has to be in your DNA.”

It’s in Vose’s DNA who cared for these 42 acres for more than 25 years, but an imminent separation is coming. “It’s very sad,” said Vose. “There’s no way around it. I mean, I feel every day I’m working here, I will lose this, and it’s like a part of me is being ripped out.”

The farmer leased 23 acres for at least two decades, but he said a buy by Fulton Homes is taking it away and transforming it into a housing community. Vose owns the remainder of the farm, roughly 19 acres, that houses his retail shop and other buildings. But once Fulton Homes moves in, he said he’ll no longer be able to sustain his operations with the little land he has left.

“Emotionally, it’s crushing,” said Vose. “For all I’ve invested and all I’ve done, that I didn’t own enough land to keep doing it and that the market forces, the free market would decide for me that I was done.”

Vose said he couldn’t afford to buy the land when it was offered to him years back by another owner. In the past year, he’s looked for other properties but can’t find anything in the West Valley he can afford. Time is running out; he has until July to find new land.

“I want to be here,” said Vose.

Arizona’s Family reached out to Fulton Homes about the development and have not heard back.

Copyright 2021 KPHO/KTVK (KPHO Broadcasting Corporation). All rights reserved.

By: Jamie WarrenPosted at 7:00 AM, Dec 23, 2020 and last updated 7:40 AM, Dec 23, 2020

Last week, ABC15 shared the story of Blue Sky Organic Farms, on the verge of losing the land they lease because it’s being sold to development.

David Vose is the farm’s owner and says the amount of farmland Arizona is rapidly losing is concerning.

“We all assume food’s just going to show up from somewhere else and somewhere else now is California and Mexico and other countries,” Vose said. “And our own ability to feed ourselves is going to be severely limited because we have no long-term planning to make farming an option here.”

He says that can lead to food insecurity, a problem we saw back in March when the pandemic began.

“Where distribution was bottlenecked up,” Vose said.

Cindy Gentry, president of Sun Produce Cooperative, says local farms also ensure fair wages and fair prices for farmers. She says they use fewer pesticides on the food you eat and more soil means less pavement which can also keep the Valley cooler.

According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than half of all cropland ever created in Maricopa County has been converted to Urban Development.

USDA data shows that in the past 50 years, there’s been a steady decline from 1.5 million acres in the 1970s to just under 500,000 acres today.

Data shows the Valley relies on so much food from other places that in a report for the Maricopa County Food System Coalition’s Food Assessment prepared by Grant Falvo, it states “in the best-case scenario, where all of the remaining farmland is converted to producing food for local consumption and the county population remains at its current level, it was estimated that up to 10% of county residents could be sustained year-round on a typical American diet.”

“It’s not just that they’re losing their land but where is the land available left for them to go to,” Helene Tack, with Local First Arizona, said.

ABC15 spoke with over a handful of members of the Coalition for Farmland Preservation. They recently met with city and state leaders, bringing the problem to their attention and going over possible solutions.

“Our work could be considered futile if there is not a stronger priority on why we do the work,” Darren Chapman with Tiger Mountain Foundation said.

One starts with the Arizona Land and Water Trust, a non-profit that works with willing landowners to obtain conservation easements.

“Pay you in cash for those development rights so that the land is permanently protected and it’s in what we call perpetuity, so it’s forever,” said Executive Director of Arizona Land and Water Trust Liz Petterson.

Vose says another solution would be changing zoning laws and offering tax incentives to developers to not build on a portion of the land they buy.

“A developer buys a thousand acres and the city can say, ‘fine, but you got to keep a hundred acres in farming,'” Vose said. “That’s no different than saying you have to build a park, in my opinion.”

Another option, the coalition says, is finding a way for cities or counties to buy that land, preserve it and lease it back to the farmers.

“We will not be able to solve our food insecurity crisis if we are not able to consider land insecurity hand in hand,” said Adrienne Udarbe, Executive Director of Pinnacle Prevention.

These are just a few ideas that the coalition has and Dean Brennan with the Maricopa County Food System Coalition says in some cases, the tools to make these changes are currently available.

“In other cities, other states, that ethic does exist,” Brennan said. “That’s why those cities and counties and states have preserved (agricultural land) because there’s a belief that it is of a significant value and we just need to educate and inform people in Maricopa County.”

Rosanne Albright, Environmental Programs Coordinator with the city of Phoenix is also on the coalition. She sent ABC15 the following statement: “The City of Phoenix, through the Council-approved 2025 Phoenix Food Action Plan, is exploring mechanisms for farmland preservation and have taken that first step by participating in the formation of the Coalition for Farmland Preservation. We are working with the partners in the coalition to identify and advance policies that would protect and preserve farmland.”

Every day across the United States, 2,000 acres of farmland are lost or threatened by development – that’s over 80 acres ever hour. The farmland being lost the quickest also happens to be the best: the most productive, versatile, and resilient.

As the fourth largest county in the country and continuing to grow, Maricopa County is no exception to this alarming trend. Local community farms that feed the community, preserve open space, offer educational opportunities, and benefit the environment are at immediate risk of land loss. And they’re running out of places to go.

A coalition is forming to keep Maricopa County farms farming here.

Sign up to receive updates and learn how to get involved.

Are you a landowner or developer that is interested in preserving farmland? Email Helene@localfirstaz.com

Local Farms at Risk

Farmer Frank Martin

Farmer Frank, son of a Native American migrant farmworker, continues the Native American traditions of using Heirloom seeds, natural care for the soil, crop rotation, and other sustainable farming practices.

Frank and his staff run a prolific farm that provides fresh fruits, vegetables, and beans to families across the Valley through CSAs, farm to restaurant sales, food banks, and at two farmers markets. His produce also supplements CSAs and emergency food programs in Tucson, Ajo, Superior, and Lake Havasu City. He employs 14 people year-round, and provides ongoing mentorship to farmers across the state – a sorely needed resource at a time when agriculture’s workforce is shrinking in size and knowledge.

But Farmer Frank’s tenure in Phoenix might soon come to a close. The 40 acre parcel he has leased from a private landholder for over a decade is due to be sold to the City of Phoenix in order to expand its Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Sara Dolan & David Vose

Sara Dolan and David Vose have been farming organically in Arizona since 1995, and are passionate about growing. David can tell you the name of every single plant, and Sara has a hand in all their operations and is a fierce advocate for their 35 employees.

Right now, Blue Sky Organic Farms farms 35 acres in Litchfield Park, near the intersection of Camelback and the 303. They offer a robust CSA, wholesale opportunities, support five farmers markets across the Valley, and run a beautiful on-site farmstore featuring their own produce, as well as products from other local food artisans.

Beginning this Summer, 60% of the land farmed at Blue Sky Organic Farms will be taken out of production to make way for 600 new homes. In fact, 25,000 single-family residences have been proposed in developments within a 10-mile radius of Blue Sky Organic Farms in the next 10 years.

In the News

• ‘A raging crisis’: Metro Phoenix is losing its family farms and local food sources | AZ Central | August 2020 | Read it here
• Is this Phoenix farm being relocated to make way for a sewage plant? Here’s what we know | AZ Central | July 2020 | Read it here
• Family farms made Phoenix livable, so why are so many going away? | AZ Central | February 2019 | Read it here

The Coalition is made possible by the 2020 Spark Grant from the Vitalyst Health Foundation. Vitalyst Health Foundation is a Phoenix-based public foundation focused on improving well-being in Arizona by addressing root causes and broader issues that affect health. For additional information, please visit www.VitalystHealth.org.

Your help is needed to save Blue Sky Organic Farms – https://blueskyorganicfarms.com
They are looking to buy or acquire a long-term lease on 40 to 100 acres close to 189th Ave. and Camelback. Without a place to go they will begin to shut down operations at Blue Sky starting in April 2021. They need to turn over the 25 acres they have been leasing from the dairy in June of 2021. That will leave them with 10 acres that they own – mostly buildings and infrastructure and a bit of farmland – which will be less than useful if they have no product to process and pack and not enough to grow food on.

The loss of this farm would be a blow in so many ways – to local agricultural traditions, to farmers markets in the valley – Blue Sky sells what they grow at four of the main markets in central Arizona, as well as a loss to their 600 CSA members, and the families they serve through their store, a loss of a very talented organic grower and of community-minded friends and colleagues, a loss to restaurants, schools and stores, as well as food banks, low-income housing projects and senior centers who relish and are grateful for the opportunity to offer pristine local veggies,  and even a loss to outlets like Sun Produce Co-op, which have been steadfastly working to create a larger demand / niche for local food here in our state. 

Blue Sky has been a pillar of the Arizona farming community for 27 years. Without its continued existence we can’t begin to imagine what the future of smaller-acreage vegetable crop production looks like here, nor the opportunities to grow future farmers.

HERE IS HOW YOU CAN HELP: If you know of 40 acres or more of arable farmland near 189th Ave. and Camelback, that is available for sale or lease mid-to long-term and has water rights, and / or would like to provide funding support for the lease or purchase of such a place, please contact Sara at purplekarat@gmail.com or call 623.266.4031.