photo credit: Noah Abrams/KRCB
Erin Roscoe and Brennan Murphy's flock of sheep at Fox Sparrow Farm.

Small farmers are a big part of Sonoma’s identity, in fact it has the most farming acres of the nine Bay Area counties.

We’ve been taking a look at small farmers and how they’re having a difficult time making, in large part because buying land is becoming such a challenge.

But, one new program hopes to make it easier for farmers to find a foothold in Sonoma.

Sonoma County’s Ag and Open Space District is launching a pilot program called Buy-Protect-Sell, and it’s meant to help farmers like Erin Roscoe and her partner Brennan Murphy.

They run Fox Sparrow Farm west of Cotati, on about 13 acres, but they don’t own the land.

"Right now it's about a 5-year lease term," Roscoe said. "So it's not forever."

Roscoe said they have a great relationship with the owner but, Roscoe and her partner are looking for something permanent.

They dream of buying their own farm. Something between 20 and 40 acres where they can let their goats and sheep range, and invest in sturdy pens for their pigs.

"Pigs are really tough on infrastructure," Roscoe said. "So it would need to be fairly permanent."

But with only $500-thousand dollars to spend, the chances of finding that dream farm in Sonoma County are shrinking by the second.

That’s where the Buy-Protect-Sell program comes in.

"It's a way to keep farmland in the hands of farmers and ranchers, at a time when it might otherwise be at risk of not being in agriculture anymore," said Mary Chambers.

Chambers is with the Sonoma County Agriculture and Open Space District. She said the pilot program plans to buy one property in 2025.

Once Ag & Open Space owns the property, the program plans to protect it with a conservation easement, and that puts all kinds of restrictions on land use.

"The most typical restrictions would include things like the property can't be subdivided into smaller pieces," Chambers said.

Or that there can only be a certain number of buildings.

"It prevents that property from being converted from open land into like a parking lot or a big shopping center," Chambers said.

Basically, the easement restricts the land to farming. Once that’s in place they’ll sell it.

"Then we'll select a buyer for that property, and then we will sell the property to a new person," Chambers said.

The idea of Buy-Protect-Sell isn't unique to Sonoma County. The US Department of Agriculture and groups like the American Farmland Trust use the model in states like Maine.

Closer to home, Chambers said the Peninsula Open Space Trust in San Mateo County served as a model.

In Sonoma, Buy Protect Sell is being funded by Measure F, a sales tax that was renewed in 2006. Last year the measure raised about $32 million to conserve open space.

For its first purchase, Buy-Protect-Sell is looking for a plot of land for small farmers, "that's between 5 and 50 acres, located near market opportunities, like within a 15-minute drive of a city or town," Chambers said. "Something that has good soil ideally, really good water access."

Chambers said easements have an added value of depressing property prices so the land becomes affordable to farmers – or aspiring farmers – like Jack James.

"This is a gorgeous place, it's known for its agriculture," James said.

James graduated from Sonoma State a couple years ago and focused on environmental studies.

He and his close friends from college want to use their experience to start a bio-dynamic farm in Sonoma County.

"I mean, Luther Burbank said like this is the greatest place on Earth and I frankly have to agree thus far," James said.

I caught up with James and his friend Owen Stults at their home in Santa Rosa.

They're interested in Buy-Protect-Sell, but Stults said he’s skeptical that even with the easement, the land will be affordable to small farmers.

"It sounds like 30 to 70 percent off land costs is what they're projecting," Stults said.

And those projections are just a guess. Ag & Open Space won’t know how much they can take off the property value until an easement is in place.

"Even if you meet that in the middle and say half off land, half of a million dollar property is still 500 thousand dollars," Stults said.

There’s also the fact that Buy-Protect-Sell is in the pilot phase and purchasing just one property. Even so, Chambers has high hopes the program can also diversify the ranks of Sonoma County's farmers and the people they serve.

"Someone who is providing foods to disadvantaged communities, that's definitely going to be a really attractive community benefit to have on a Buy-Protect-Sell property," Chambers said.

Despite the scope of the pilot project, Erin Roscoe from Fox Sparrow Farm is happy to see some creative thinking about how to keep farming alive in Sonoma County, and she said, "I just I feel like if you don't try, you're never going to get anywhere."