Davis ranch seeks protection

CLINTON — John Diamond remembers when farmers were run out of town because their cattle stank.

That happened while he served on the Clinton City Council years ago. A farmer in Clinton had 6,000 head of cattle near 2300 North and 3000 West. Once subdivisions came into the area, residents began to complain to the city, and eventually the man shut down his operation and took it to Idaho.

It's easy to get worried about dwindling farmland. Subdivisions cover what used to be farms. And when barbed wire meets vinyl fence, there are bound to be clashes.

Diamond wants to run his pheasant-hunting, cattle and hay operations in peace, so he and his wife, Marilyn, applied for agricultural protection for 197 acres of land with Davis County in November 2006. If the Davis County Board of Commissioners grants agricultural-protection status to the Diamonds during the board's meeting today, it will be the sixth time the status was granted in the county since the law was enacted.

The last time was in 2003, when the commission protected 357 acres in the Syracuse area.

The state law that allows the Diamonds to apply for protection indicates that farmers were there first, so everyone who builds homes near farms should expect farm smells and sounds. Plats for any subdivisions within 300 feet of a protected area are supposed to be recorded with a special note that says residents aren't going to get anywhere if they complain about normal farming operations.

Since the Utah Legislature enacted the agriculture protection law in 1994, only Box Elder, Cache, Daggett, Davis, Iron, Kane, Sanpete, Sevier, Summit, Tooele, Utah, Washington and Weber counties have protected agricultural land for a grand total of 178,862 acres.

While Utah has seen a slight increase statewide in the number of acres devoted to farming in the past decade, the amount of farmland along the Wasatch Front has dropped. That mirrors the national trend of fewer farms on fewer acres.

Between 1987 and 2002, Davis County, despite its large growth, has lost about 2,000 acres, or 2.9 percent, of its farmland, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Other counties have seen more dramatic decreases.

In those same years, Utah County saw 150,000 acres of farmland — 31 percent — turned into other uses. Salt Lake County has about 86,000 acres of farmland — half of what it had in 1987. At about 86,000 acres, Weber County's farmland is about 43 percent of 1987 totals.

From the Diamonds' property in unincorporated Davis County near Syracuse, they can see subdivisions where there used to be open fields. And they've heard more than a couple of complaints since they began working land throughout the county.