1. Develop and implement a public outreach campaign to raise awareness among the agricultural and broader Thurston County community on the need for farmland preservation in Thurston County, and solicit the public’s input in the design stage for the program.
    

2. Evaluate strategies to integrate, incorporate by reference, or otherwise ensure compliance of the draft parcel selection criteria and a Farm Preservation Program into the County’s existing Comprehensive Plan and Conservation Futures Program.
    

3. Examine various implementation tools (e.g. PDR, TDR, Mitigation ordinances) to determine:
    

   	how those that currently exist may be better tailored for farmland preservation, and
   	what other planning mechanisms may be implemented to encourage farmland preservation.

Background: 

The Need

Thurston County’s farmland is rapidly disappearing. In the last five years, the acreage of actively farmed land has dropped nearly in half - from 74,420 acres to 38,718 acres. Since the mid 1950s when Thurston County was primarily farmland, the County has lost over 75 percent of its working agricultural lands. 

Thurston County has been one of the fastest growing counties in Washington State since the 1960s, consistently exceeding the State’s overall rate of growth. Through the 1990s, over 46,000 new residents were added to the county’s population. The County’s growth rate, after a slight slowing in the late ‘90s, is increasing again and has been over three percent since 2005. 

The Threat

The distribution of new residents is especially relevant to the loss of farmland. In 1970, 47 of the population lived in the unincorporated county. By 1980, 58 percent of the population was living in the unincorporated county. In 2006, it is estimated that 61 percent of the population lives in the unincorporated county. Not only has the total population increased, but development has preferentially occurred in the rural (unincorporated areas) of the County, with large suburban subdivisions replacing recently working farms. Population forecasts indicate that the county will grow by 141,900 residents by the year 2030.

Quality resource land is often mistakenly viewed as expendable. However, land suitable for farming is irreplaceable. When such land is converted to urban and suburban uses an important community resource is permanently lost to the citizens of Thurston County.