Valley farm land should be saved as a farm

Alex Getchell Alexander

Everett’s riverfront plans were criticized earlier this year at public meetings. It is easier to criticize a plan than to offer a better one. My comments here are directed to the proposed East Everett Park area along the Snohomish River, where planners would install — on prime agricultural land —ballfields, a cricket field, golf course or other features having neither agricultural nor ecological relevance.

There are needs for such features somewhere, but they are not compelling needs for farm land destruction. There are better things to be done with farm land, in better service to more people over longer periods of time.

I propose instead the design and installation of a model farm: an environment-integrated model for teaching, research and public enlightenment. Correctly designed and managed, it would favorably impact future usage of Western Washington’s lowland river valleys. It would place Everett on the map with Portland and a few other cities which have addressed global warming with the use of their properties. Most important, it would demonstrate what should be a lodestone goal: farm land’s preservation — as farm land.

The East Everett property consists of about 300 acres of lowland flood plain, mostly cleared. Snohomish Valley pioneers recognized the farming values of its soils over a century ago (as does the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s soil classification system today). The early farmers responded with vision, planning and labor directed to farm land development and improvement on behalf of posterity. Such lands are the heritage of generations yet unborn, who will want to farm in their own time. To deny posterity the heritage earned by their ancestors is planning at its worst.

My interest in this area’s future is both personal and professional. My family (Getchell) has farmed adjoining property on Ebey Island since 1873. In the 1940s and ’50s, I trapped furs there, much of the time at night, when communion with local fauna is remarkable. I was nearly drowned there in the great flood of 1951.

Since 1956, I have been engaged in agricultural research. For the past 22 years, this work has focused on environment-integrated farming, and since 1991 specifically on development of an environment-integrated farm model in Puerto Rico. The same principles can apply in the Snohomish Valley.

The proposed model here would have 11 subsystems, 10 of them green, all integrated among themselves and with native ecosystems. It would be oriented toward low-input, sustainable, high organic plants and would operate in compliance with the spirit and letter of environmental law. The inevitable floods cannot be prevented but they can be accommodated and, for some subsytems, beneficial. Wildlife would benefit across the board from planned habitat, shelter, food supply, security areas, breeding areas and inter-area access by land and water. The corridors for deer, coyote and the occasional cougar by night would be the public’s trails and footpaths by day. But visitors to the farm would see integrated conservation in progress at levels impossible to see even in pristine areas.

City planners will argue that agriculture is not their business. But conservation is their business, and service to all Everett citizens is their business. The model farm would provide both.

Unlike the existing master plan, which actually can be said to segregate people by favoring limited interests (how many people play golf, cricket or softball?), the model farm would serve everyone who breathes oxygen and is threatened by global warming. Atmosphere oxygenation and sequestering of carbon are farm services offered 24 hours per day, in all weather, every day of the year.

Some planners say they have already heard from environmentalists but they must respond to Everett’s 95,000 souls. Here is their chance. The farm model serves every citizen currently living. Add to them the hundreds of thousands yet unborn and innumberable breathing wild fauna who cannot speak for themselves.

Everett’s master plan sets a disturbing precedent for municipal policy on farm land development. One rarely sees a plan that, in one stroke, ignores the past, segregates the present and disenfranchises the future. What will history say of Everett’s handling of Snohomish Valley farm land? I don’t know. But history will not say that valley farmers bought a segment of historic Everett and converted it to farm land. Farmers know better. Everett planners can do better than they have so far.

At hearings this summer, I urged the state Department of Ecology to deny development of the East Everett park site until the model farm option is fairly heard and examined. An environment-integrated and sustainable model farm is no dream. Its case is compelling. It is convincing to all who bother to examine the evidence.

A model farm would address the present with vision and make posterity proud. And it would allow many Snohomish Valley pioneers to rest comfortably again.

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