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.
Blue Sky Organic Farms, in Litchfield Park, is the epitome of a community farm. Farmer David Vose has been growing food organically for decades, and has a wealth of experience in desert farming. His partner, Sara Dolan, runs a farmstand on the property that is loaded with their produce and other locally made food products, attends the Downtown Phoenix, Uptown Phoenix, Roadrunner Park, Old Town Scottsdale, and Gilbert Farmers Markets every week, operates a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program with 600 families participating and supplies produce to restaurants and kitchens. Blue Sky donates produce to local food banks and supplements CSAs and farmer’s markets across the state including Superior, Lake Havasu City and Flagstaff. They do an incredible job feeding Arizonans good, good food. And if you haven’t had their strawberries, you’re truly missing out.
CURRENT OPERATION: Blue Sky owns 19 acres of land on which 8 acres are farmable (meaning land to grow food) with buildings, roads, storage and pasture on the remaining 11 acres. They had leased 23 acres from a neighboring dairy in order to meet the demands from the community, and this land was sold to Fulton Homes, who will bulldoze and pave over the property to build a housing development beginning the summer of 2021.
THE NEED: David & Sara have been looking for a replacement property for Blue Sky Farms for almost two years, but have faced incredible difficulty in identifying land that is viable for farming. Quality soil and water is of utmost importance. The land they have found that is viable for farming is selling rapidly, off market and at high prices. In order to keep their business viable, David & Sara also need access to land that is close to their production facility in Litchfield Park to keep transportations costs down and produce fresh.
THE TIMELINE: David and Sara have just planted their last season of crops on their leased land. They must be moved out by July 1st, when Fulton Homes takes ownership. With the amount of work that it takes to set up a new farming operation, David and Sara need to have land that they can purchase or lease by the end of this April, 2021. If leased, land that is available on a long term basis is the priority to avoid the time and expense of having to upend their operations to move.
WHAT’S AT STAKE:
If land cannot be found, David and Sara most likely will leave Arizona to farm in another state.
Losing a well-established community farm like Blue Sky lowers our region’s food security. As most of us experienced at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the run on grocery stores resulted in empty shelves and a sense of panic. Blue Sky Organic Farms was here for us, planting more produce, increasing access to their farmstand and providing food to those in need via food banks. This added to many people’s sense of security, and the ability to access food. Blue Sky also went above and beyond to make sure COVID protocols were followed at their farmstand and at the farmers markets so that their customers and workers were properly safeguarded.
David has been farming in Phoenix since 1995. It has been no simple task, with extreme heat challenges, dust storms and wild weather events. Many farmers will tell you their occupation is a labor of love, and that the rewards are not monetarily based but instead based on meeting the needs of their community. If Blue Sky were to leave Arizona, we lose a tremendous amount of knowledge about growing on this land that David wants to share with the next generation of farmers.
Blue Sky provides 35-full time jobs and 14 part-time jobs, from field workers to farmstand and market staff. These employees will all be left unemployed in a job market that is already stretched thin.
Blue Sky Farm is one of the larger booths at farmer’s markets, a significant contributor to Sun Produce Co-operative and local food banks. Without their produce, these businesses are all affected.
Community farms quite simply add to our community. People move to areas where there is open space, or have a unique business like a community farm that they can visit and that supports them. David & Sara have customers that are like family.
Farmland in Maricopa County helps combat the heat island effect which is exacerbated by increased asphalt and concrete. As temperatures increase, the heat island makes our already hot desert climate dangerous to live in. Adding homes and roadways adds to the urban heat island effect, whereas farmland helps offset it.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
Do you know of any land that is available for purchase or lease in the metro Phoenix area? Ideally 20 – 50 acres, with some specific requirements that need to be met (soil and water mainly) but we are interested in all leads or creative ideas. Email [email protected].
Support Blue Sky with your dollars if you can. Visit their farmstand (where you can also pet their friendly goats) or seek them out at a farmer’s market.
Write a letter of support for Blue Sky sharing how much this farm means to you, your family and your community. These will be shared with local officials and decision makers. Email them to [email protected]
Advocate for farmland preservation. Share your concern with your elected officials (at the city, county, and state level), and keep your eye on policy that will protect land. There are zoning tools that cities can use right now to preserve farmland, outlined here.
The recently formed Coalition for Farmland Preservation is working on solutions that could preserve farmland. We are working on community mobilizations including letters of support and other actions for Blue Sky Farm and these will be shared via email. Sign up to stay in contact with the Coalition on the website. This will ensure you receive action alerts when we need your support.
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 [email protected]
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.
Disappearing Farmland in Arizona: Maricopa County Leads the Way By David R Hill, AzCLT Board Member
The smell of smoke and the sight of the house next door in flames will get your attention in a heartbeat and spur you to take immediate action. Give credit to your brain and autonomic nervous system for that. But the sight of vast swaths of farmland in your neck of the woods disappearing over the course of decades produces no such knee jerk reaction on the part of your nervous system. As with global climate change, it seems that the human brain is not very adept at responding to the slow-moving disaster, even when the scope of the disaster looms large and the likely consequences are dire.
Maricopa County is ground zero for the steady loss of farmland in Arizona over the past two decades. In 2000, there were 640 square miles of land dedicated to agriculture-related use in the county and 540 square miles of residential land. By 2019, the overall size of agricultural land had decreased to just 410 square miles – a 36% reduction. Residential land had increased over that same time period by 39% to 750 square miles. At this rate of loss (an average of 11.5 square miles per year), we can expect there to be no available farmland whatsoever in Maricopa County in just 36 years!
We recently read in the Arizona Republic about the plight of career farmers in Maricopa County such as David Vose and Sara Dolan, who operate Blue Sky Organic Farms in Litchfield Park. A development company recently purchased the dairy farm where Vose and Dolan lease their farmland. The company has plans for a housing development on the property. What’s happened to Blue Sky Organic Farm has in recent decades been experienced by scores of family farms in The Valley. Over the course of the past two decades, The Valley’s population has increased dramatically, resulting in many square miles of farmland being paved over to make room for houses, townhouses, strip malls and all the other services needed by a burgeoning influx of people. Maricopa County is now and will likely continue to be the fastest growing county in the country for the foreseeable future.
Local farmers and national experts warn that unless stringent action is taken, Maricopa County will have no remaining farmland before you know it. That could prove disastrous for all who live in the greater Phoenix metropolis. As we have seen in the recent COVID-19 crisis, residents have necessarily needed to turn to local farmers as a food source as outside food supplies were slowed down and the traditional global food system showed major signs of stress. The thought that local food sources grown on local farmland might no longer be available in years to come should cause local policy makers and municipal leaders to panic and spur them to act quickly and decisively. But that does not seem to be happening.
“I don’t know if there’s time to wake people up to the fact that if you don’t support agriculture in your own community, there won’t be any,” David Vose told the Arizona Republic’s Emilly Davis.
Ken Meter, a nationally recognized food system analyst conducted a comprehensive food assessment of Maricopa County for the Maricopa County Food System Coalition (funded by the Gila River Indian Community) in 2018. The results of the assessment troubled Meter. “This is one of the more shocking studies I’ve done around the country,” he told Emilly Davis. “It was the most grotesque case where income was rising rapidly, population was increasing, there were all these more mouths to feed and more money to spend on food, and yet nobody thinking about what the future of our food supply was going to look like.”
Ken Meter was especially concerned by one of the specific findings from the assessment: The common perception among Maricopa County farmers was that city and county leaders seemed to have no issue with so little of their food being locally sourced. “Most of the farms I interviewed have either moved or were threatened with moving since I was there two years ago,” Meter said. “And that’s shocking, I don’t know any place that is that unstable.”
Compounding the problem of farmland changing to land for housing is the cost of owning farmland. The rapid rise of growth in greater Phoenix has boosted the price of land, making it too costly for farmers to buy. The operators of Blue Sky Organic Farms noted that if they wanted to buy the land they currently lease, it would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $130,000 an acre – a price they could never hope to afford.
The high cost of farmland in Maricopa County due to the pressures of housing development is generally a feature of the cost of land throughout the state of Arizona. Among the nine states that make up the Mountain West region, Arizona ranks first by far in the average price per acre: $8400. Idaho is the next most expensive at $3400. The comparative high price for land in Arizona is not due, though, to the land’s native fertility for use in agriculture. It’s because much of that land will eventually be built on. With Maricopa County leading the way, much of the land in the state is held for speculation.
The state of Arizona is in the throes of a dramatic reduction in the total number of acres farmed, number of acres per farm, and average market value of farm commodities. According to USDA Census of Agriculture data, the average size of a farm in Arizona dropped from just under 3200 acres in 1997 to approximately 1300 in 2012. Total acreage has declined from more than 27 million acres in 1997 to around 26 million acres in 2012. During that same period, the average market value for Arizona’s agriculture products sold dropped by nearly 60 percent!
The total number of farms statewide fell 5% between 2012 and 2107. In Maricopa County, the decline was much more severe during that period: 24%! (Source: 2017 Census of Agriculture.)
Cotton and dairy production are two agricultural sectors that have seen the largest reductions. Cotton acreage has been reduced 85 percent over the last two decades. Whereas the state used to be home to approximately 30 cotton gins, there are but three gins remaining. Thirty years ago, Arizona was home to 400 or so families that operated dairy farms. Today only about 65 families still farm dairy.
Currently, approximately 8000 square miles of land in Arizona is used for agriculture and forestry activities – the largest amount of land used for any type of development in the state. But only 12 percent of lands in the state are permanently protected from development. In the decade from 2001 to 2011, Arizona lost a total of 371 square miles of natural area to development. That’s an area of land equal to 179,418 football fields of open, natural areas. As you might expect, the major cause of this loss of land was urban sprawl, which accounted for a 30.6 increase during that decade.
Clearly, farmers and advocates for vibrant food systems, both in Maricopa County and throughout the state of Arizona, face major challenges in the years ahead to maintain land currently being farmed in production and safe from the effects of urban sprawl. How legislators, policy makers, farmers and residents in need of a ready source of healthy, locally sourced food keep the already diminishing Arizona farmland from disappearing totally in the decades ahead is a challenge that needs a remedy sooner rather than later.
Sources:
‘A Raging Crisis’: Metro Phoenix is losing its family farms and local food sources. Article by Emilly Davis in the Arizona Republic. August 6, 2020.
Family farms made Phoenix livable, so why are so many going away? Article by Joshua Bowling in The Republic. June 17, 2019.
Shrinking AZ farmland shows Buckeye family’s generational differences. Article by Kristiana Faddoul in Cronkite News. November 11, 2016.
The Disappearing West: Arizona. Article by the CAP Public Lands Team for the Center for American Progress. May 2016.
Member Profile
Kalila and Anthony Aragon
Kalila and Anthony Aragon are members of The Coldwater Coffeehouse and Bakery, a worker owned coop operating out of a 100-year old farmhouse off of the main street in the old part of Avondale, Arizona. A backyard market garden provides the ingredients for the menu and stocks the shelves of our farm store. Old school American baked goods and farm fresh eats are made.
It all started four years ago when a pretty basic idea of a coffee shop morphed into a company modeled after the likes of Mondragon in Spain and the Evergreen Cooperative Initiative here in the US. A tall order for sure but like most large companies that started with only a few members and a small venture, we started with a small group of like minded friends and a ¼ acre urban farm.
Participate in the Life of Arizona Community Land Trust!
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Please join or renew your membership in AzCLT. Annual dues are still only $10.
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One-time or monthly contributions can be made to this Fund. Eventually we hope that this fund will help in the purchase of property. Until then, we will use these funds for incidental expenses related to purchase/gifts of land; legal fees, surveys, appraisals, etc.
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Please let us know if you are interested in gardening, farming, affordable housing or cooperative development.
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Please send checks to AzCLT, 1702 E Glendale Ave, Phoenix AZ 85020
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To become more involved, write us at [email protected] or fill ou our inquiry form on our website.
Why Does AzCLT Exist?
This is an excellent question. Land ownership has become a privilege of the wealthy. There is no equity when it comes to people’s ability to access land. It is used and abused to support personal gain, with little thought to the consequences that affect our ecosystems and humanity as a whole.
I invite you to watch an excellent video, the 40th annual lecture presented my the Schumacher Center for New Economics. It features George Monbiot, noted author, columnist and revolutionary thinker. Its title: Land as Commons: Building the New Economy.
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 [email protected] or call 623.266.4031.
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