Guest columnist
The Last Valley: Sprawl threatens the Skagit Valley

By Bill Dietrich
Special to The Times

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"Extinction is not an option."

The save-the-salmon battle cry of state and federal officials has become the vow of Skagit tulip grower John Roozen as well. The farmer isn't talking about fish, how-ever. He's talking about himself. And saving growers like Roozen may, in the long run, be one of the best ways to save salmon.

Skagit County farmers, already under pressure from globalization and inflexible regulation, see sprawl poised like death on the crest of Conway Hill, just itching to bury the valley below under pavement.

A mere 700 farm families stand in the way, doggedly sustaining the bucolic peace the rest of us take for granted.

Now they need help, King County. Buy a Western Washington apple, save the world.

The Puyallup Valley is mostly gone, lost to development. The Kent-Auburn Valley is an asphalt plain of warehouses. The Snoqualmie-Snohomish Valley is under siege from development.

The only place left with enough productive farmland to sustain the food processors, farm implement dealers, and fertilizer and seed companies needed for agriculture in Western Washington is the Skagit Valley. It's our Oz, our Shangri-la, our Shire.

"Skagit County is an oasis of agriculture in a desert of pavement," says grower Jean Youngquist. "We're the last of the Mohicans."

It's not just tulips and chlorophyll. The Skagit Valley is a migratory rest stop for birds. Some 30,000 snow geese and 1,300 trumpeter swans camp there. Hawks and eagles stand sentry. Humans from the Big City use it as refuge, too.

After more than three decades of preservation efforts, Skagit County has managed to retain about 80,000 acres of the 120,000 farm acres it once boasted. Yet, despite the serenity that attracts up to 500,000 visitors to the Tulip Festival each spring, the oasis is dying the death of a thousand cuts. The tipping point toward development could happen very, very fast.

"Agriculture will die with us," warns Rose Merritt, an orchardist who enjoys teaching visitors that apples don't have to taste like juicy cardboard. "In the next five to 10 years, you won't recognize this valley."

No one wants to lose Skagit Valley, of course. But in retrospect, it was a mistake to route Interstate 5 through the Skagit flats, paving hundreds of acres and opening thousands more to enticing interchange development. It was a mistake to build Cascade Mall on what were once tulip fields, setting off a chain-reaction development of big-box stores, auto malls and outlet emporiums that have turned Burlington and Mount Vernon into a borderless strip city.

It was a mistake to extend Mount Vernon's commercial growth boundaries south along the rich farmland by the freeway instead of east into the hills. Now there's so much floodplain development that property owners are calling for a permanent end to the threat of Skagit River floods, possibly by building a 2,000-foot-wide ditch to divert overflow waters to Padilla Bay. Unfortunately, this would not only eliminate more farmland, it would make suburbanization of the Skagit flats "safe."

No one wants such suburbanization. But if floods are banished, then couldn't we tuck in just one more teensy housing development here? And another there? And then... You know the drill. It's been repeated from Southern California to Marysville.

Few realize how fragile this last valley is. The agricultural flats are reclaimed Skagit River delta swamp, maintained like Holland through a complex system of dikes, tide gates and pumps. Farms need profit to keep this system going, but what they're getting instead are state and federal salmon rescuers who initially wanted to take the system apart. Failure to maintain the sloughs would drown the farms.

The latest word is that regulators are conceding that farms are better for salmon than pavement and that partnership can be reached. Yet, it's not just a matter of draining and protecting land, explains Bob Rose, executive director of Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland.

You need farmers, but one of the two remaining big tulip farms is up for sale, an example of aging growers opting out. Who will take their place?

You need processors to take the agricultural products, but the last big Skagit processor retreated to Moses Lake two years ago.

You need supplies, but the last big fertilizer dealer and last big lime dealer just left the valley.

You need customers, but most of us don't know if our food comes from La Conner or Chile. Peas that once dominated the valley are now rare because the strong dollar means grocery chains can save 2 cents a pound by buying in Canada. Economists call this efficiency. Farmers call it extinction.

The valley's Sakuma family is trying to save its berry business by building its own processing plant, but few farmers have the size for such vertical integration.

In today's globalized economy, grocery chains are looking for agri-factories, not family farms. Consumers are looking for pretty food in all seasons, which means scientists have bred strawberries with the resilience and taste of styrofoam and apples with skin like plastic and the mush of oatmeal. Welcome to Brave New World.

There's still good food grown in Western Washington, of course. A new state law is supposed to require grocery stores to identify such local produce. Maybe that will help. Another law requires it to be used in tax-supported institutions, where possible. But the battle will really be won or lost in your belly.

If you want to save farmland open space in a Puget Sound basin, visit and buy from farms and produce stands. To find them, go to pugetsoundfresh.org (a King County organization) where you'll find descriptions, directions and maps. Patronize restaurants that advertise their use of local ingredients. Ask produce managers at your grocery store to stock and identify Western Washington-grown. You've educated your palate to wine. Now become a vegetable snob.

It's not that the demand isn't theoretically there. King County's appetite could sustain Western Washington agriculture forever — if only farmers could master effective marketing and consumers realized they were buying not just food, but green space.

Yet, even this may not be quite enough. Skagit County passed an innovative 40-acre minimum lot size three decades ago, but new wealth makes even that a feasible size for fleeing urbanites. If you must move to a farm, keep its land rented to real farmers and limit the footprint of your house. Better yet, help buy up development rights while keeping land in farm production.

Locals have already taxed themselves and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy easements that prohibit development. Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland (skagitonians.org) has worked with Skagit County's Farmland Legacy Program to preserve 2,300 acres to date. The Skagit Land Trust (skagitlandtrust.org) has saved 275 acres of farm and 2,600 acres of wildlife habitat.

Unfortunately, Skagit County simply doesn't have the wealth to complete the job alone. Consider contributing toward conservation in this last valley. For about $1,000 an acre, donated through Skagitonians or the land trust, you can help your great-grandchildren enjoy the same Northwest you did.

Finally, speak up for the tulips. There's nothing cheaper than food and flowers, and most Americans take them for granted. But if you want to keep our agricultural oasis, you'd better let the politicians know you care because developers are shouting in their other ear.

An accident of geography put Western Washington's biggest river, most productive salmon run and richest farmland midway between Seattle and Vancouver, as far from development pressure as possible. The dumb luck result is a remarkable 21st-century gift other urban areas would envy.

It's close. It's gorgeous. And it's still working. But it will be you who decides if it stays that way.

"The worst farm is better for the environment than the best Wal-Mart," says Roozen. "But this valley will not survive unless the people in Seattle help us."

Bill Dietrich, whose books include “The Final Forest” and “Getting Back,” lives in Skagit County.

Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company

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