Marin Voice: We all benefit from agricultural land protection, stewardship

January 28, 2022

Like all of you, I’ve heard a lot about Measure A recently, including questions about the funding portion allocated to agricultural land protection and criticisms of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust.

As stewardship program manager for MALT, I am responsible for doing site evaluation assessments for our agricultural conservation easement projects. I collect comprehensive data on the natural resource value of agricultural land in four main categories: ecological health, thriving community, climate resilience and prospering agriculture. We score each property on its protection value, the risk of it falling out of agricultural production and the potential for enhancing all these conservation targets.