Initiative 933: Washington's recent property-rights ballot measure has been defeated

But many voters remain uncertain about what the measure really meant and where we stand in agriculture now that it has failed

Leadership on I-933 came largely from the Washington Farm Bureau, which argued passionately that its adoption was necessary for the survival of agriculture.Yet many well-respected farmers and farm groups opposed the measure—including AFT.

So what does the defeat of I-933 mean for the future of agriculture in the state of Washington?

I-933 was about many things. It would have neutralized zoning limitations and land use laws of all kinds. It seems likely that it was written broadly to capture the fullest scope of landowner dissatisfaction with the government, thus maximizing landowner support for the measure. So it is difficult to assess the exact meaning of its defeat.

But much of the real heat behind the initiative seemed to arise out of an increasing concern within agriculture that tightening environmental regulations are driving farmers off the land and their land out of agriculture. The hope seemed to be that a roll-back of these regulations (such as local Critical Areas Ordinances) would relieve that pressure.Of course there are powerful social forces in Washington striving to protect the environment. And much of the environmental regulatory pressure facing all of us ultimately arises out of federal law—due to requirements of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, Indian fishing treaties, and other requirements that are unaffected by state laws—whether passed by initiative or otherwise. Those requirements merely make themselves felt on the ground through local regulations. To some extent, therefore, I-933 was an attempt to use Washington state’s initiative process to “push back,” not just against these federal requirements, but also against the political forces that sustain them. The proponents made a major issue of these environmental issues. So the vote, to this extent, reaffirms the strength and the direction of public opinion about them. Since this is the second defeat of such a measure in a decade, there is definitely a message there.

But despite its defeat, I-933 highlighted a fundamental question faced by much of agriculture: will the burdens of mitigating for environmental degradation caused by all of society be unfairly visited upon our agriculture industry? Hence the proponents’ slogan: “It’s only fair.”

As we experience growth—as our cities sprawl across the landscape and human pressures on the land increase—environmental values lost beneath our factories, retail stores and sprawling suburbs must somehow be mitigated elsewhere. There is, after all, only so much that can be done to address these problems in the urban setting itself. The losses show up across the entire landscape, not just in the city or the suburbs.And our open, relatively undeveloped farms occupy over half of our private lands. So it is not surprising that this is where society often looks to mitigate those losses.

Just by virtue of their existence, farms provide important benefits for the environment. And our farmers often go much further, taking great pains to manage their land to enhance those benefits.But our society has created no mechanism for compensating our farmers for keeping their lands in agriculture or for creating those important mitigating values. And we have no standards for deciding what should be expected and what goes above and beyond the call of duty. Instead, we often simply require our farmers to produce these values, and we frequently do so in ways that impose a significant economic burden. Then we seem surprised when the farms and their environmental benefits disappear.

Farmers, of course, must share in the burdens of addressing environmental issues—just like the rest of us. They are accountable, as we all are, for activities that place a burden upon or pose a risk to their neighbors. But it is tempting to believe that we can make up for society’s environmental losses by simply increasing the expectations for environmental performance on our region’s non-urban lands. Among other things, this approach forgets the simple truth that our private farms are also businesses. As society makes up for its collective environmental impacts, the resulting regulatory pressures our farmers experience can dramatically increase their operating costs.When the farm business fails, its land is inevitably fragmented and sold for development. And we suffer the frustrating irony of yet greater environmental losses.

I-933 is defeated, but the concerns that produced it live on. There is no question that everyone must comply with the requirements of federal law. And we all need to manage our activities to protect the environment. But we also need a more conscious evaluation of which burdens are, and are not, “fair” to impose upon our farmers. And we need to take affirmative steps to address the underlying issues that led to this initiative—steps like providing economic development encouragement for agriculture, protecting farmland so that farmers can again afford to own it, and making financial remuneration that helps our farmers generate important environmental values that mitigate for the impacts caused by all of us.

Whatever we do, we now have an opportunity to take advantage of the interest that has been generated by this initiative and to work together to create an economically and environmentally sustainable future for Washington’s precious agriculture industry.