Indexed News on:

--the California "Mega-Park" Project

Tracking measurable success on preserving and connecting California's Parks & Wildlife Corridors

READ OUR EDITOR ON FACEBOOK: facebook.com/rex.frankel

Friday, August 14, 2009

772 Acres saved from urbanization in Marin Co...

-
Spaletta Dairy Protected by

Marin Agricultural Land Trust Easement


8/13/2009-Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) is pleased to announced that it has purchased an agricultural conservation easement on the Spaletta family's 772-acre Cypress Lane Ranch. Some of the Bay Area's most highly acclaimed dairy products and organic crops are produced on farmland protected by MALT conservation easements, which now total more than 41,500 acres on 64 family farms and ranches.

To learn more about Marin's family farms and the food they produce, visit www.malt.org.

The Spaletta ranch is prominently located on Point Reyes-Petaluma Road at its intersection with Novato Boulevard. It becomes part of a greenbelt of protected historic farmland on the road leading to Petaluma. Seventy-five percent of the property is grasslands, providing extensive pastures while silage is grown for feed on the southwestern part of the ranch.

Members of the Spaletta family have owned the ranch since 1932. Two of them, Charles Spaletta and his son Tony, currently live there and run a Grade A Holstein dairy cow operation, producing fluid milk. The dairy is of one of only 27 remaining in Marin County, down from 100 dairies in the 1970s. The Spaletta family corporation's sale of an easement to MALT will allow Charles and Tony, the dairy ranchers, to continue producing milk for the Bay Area.

Located short commute distances from Petaluma and central Marin, Cypress Lane Ranch might have been targeted by a developer for estate ranchettes which are in high demand in western Marin County. Under the Marin Agricultural Land Trust conservation easement, the development rights have been extinguished, and the land can never be subdivided; the ranch is permanently protected for agricultural use.

"Protecting the land so this productive dairy can continue operation is an example of how MALT works with ranching families to find a conservation alternative to the sale or development of the land," said Robert Berner, Executive Director of Marin Agricultural Land Trust.

MALT made the purchase with financial assistance from the Department of Conservation's California Farmland Conservancy Program and the United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Conservation Service (NRCS), paying the appraised value of $2,495,000 for the easement. The Department of Conservation and NRCS provided grants to MALT of $831,667 each for the project. The remaining third of the funds was raised from MALT members and supporters.

"The Department of Conservation is pleased to support local efforts to preserve farmland," said DOC Director Bridgett Luther. "We congratulate both MALT and the Spaletta family on the completion of this project, and encourage other Marin County landowners to consider the agricultural conservation easement option for their properties."

Marin Agricultural Land Trust is a member-supported, nonprofit organization created in 1980 by a coalition of ranchers and environmentalists to permanently preserve Marin County farmland.

No comments:

LA meetuphikes.org

E-Mail the editor:

rexfrankel at yahoo.com

Blog Archive

Quick-Search of Subjects on the Site