Planing Issue Paper Central Valley

Agriculture:

Size:

Kings County is one of the top Ag producing counties in California. The average farm in California is 374 acres. In Kings County the average farm size is 681 acres. As u can see that it is almost twice the acres as the whole state of California. As of this year it is said there were 77,000 farms operated in the state, with 1,100 being just in Kings County. The average length of the growing season is 257 days. As well as every one in 10 jobs in Kings County are in farmland. The total land in farms is 680,000 acres.

Acres Farmed vs. Acres available:

88% of the land area in Kings County is in farmland. 78% of the farmland in Kings County is protected under the Williamson Act. 95% of the land in Kings County is privately owned. Farm and grazing lands in California decreased by nearly 267 square miles between 2002 and 2004, as documented by the Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Program (FMMP). Both higher urbanization and a larger share for urban lands for the inland cities are the main cause of this decrease. Housing is the largest component of new urban acreage, with developments ranging from small infill sites to planned community units of 600 acres or more. Commodity markets and other factors impact land management decisions, causing shifts both in and out of irrigated agricultural uses.

According to the California Department of Conservation Division of Land Resource Protection, farmland conversions in Kings County from 2004-2006 resulted in the net acre loss of Important Farmland totaling 12,677 acres. Of these acres lost, 681 acres were converted to Urban and Built-Up Land, and 2,306 acres were converted to Other Land. The loss of Important Farmland to Other Land was due primarily to more detailed delineation of portions of the Tule River Canal, Kings River Canal, and Middle Branch Cross Creek/Lewis Ditch. The majority of the loss of Important Farmland was through conversion to Grazing Land, 9,934 acres, and results from the land being...