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July 2017 Update

Welcome to the first e-update of the Agriculture Resilience Plan project! The Snohomish Conservation District will send this e-update every few months to provide Snohomish County farmers and other interested parties with information about what is happening and how they can get involved or provide input. We will also share information, results, and tools generated to help farmers plan into the future.

The Agriculture Resilience Plan will lead to on-the-ground projects that improve agriculture's resilience to future changes - climate related changes, development pressure, population growth, etc. This is a farmer-led process that is being facilitated by the Snohomish Conservation District. The goals of the plan are to:

  • Provide information and project funding for farmers to manage for future risk on their farms
  • Develop landscape-scale projects to improve agricultural resilience
  • Protect agricultural lands from subdivision or development
For more detailed information on the scope of this work, visit our website. Photocredit: Anna Caruso/Photovoice 2017.

Steering Committee of Farmers
will oversee the project


A Steering Committee comprised of 12 farmers from Snohomish County will represent the agriculture community by providing overall direction for the project. These individuals represent a variety of farming types and sizes and include representatives from the Farm Bureau, diking and drainage districts, SnoValley Tilth, the Sustainable Lands Strategy, the SCD Board of Supervisors, and individual farms. The first meeting of the Steering Committee will be in mid-July. Thank you to the farmers that volunteered to serve as representatives of your community!

Photovoice Project Art Show on August 14th!  

Seven farms took part in the Photovoice Project hosted by the Snohomish Conservation District and The Nature Conservancy. Through a series of four workshops, participants responded to two questions through photos and discussion - "Why is agriculture important to our community?" and "What are the major challenges facing agriculture?" Farmers each selected three of their photos that are now part of this exhibition. By sharing their story and thoughts with decision makers through this exhibit, these farmers hope to address some of the pressing issues facing agriculture in this County. Click here to view the photos and captions. An opening event displaying the photos will be held at Skip Rock Distillery in Snohomish on August 14th from 5:30-8pm. We hope the media, decision-makers, and others will attend to engage in discussion about how to ensure the resilience of agriculture into the future. Please RSVP to Ashley Shattuck, ashattuck@snohomishcd.org, 425-377-7025.

Protecting farmland for future generations


A major focus of the Agriculture Resilience Plan is to prioritize farmland that is at risk of being converted and then work to fund the purchase or transfer of development rights on those farms. This reduces the pressure farmers feel to sell their land to developers, maintains a source of affordable farmland for new farmers, and protects our natural resources. At their meeting in July, the Steering Committee will review a draft map prioritizing farmland that was created by PCC Farmland Trust. The Trust is partnering with SCD, Forterra, Snohomish County, and others to complete this valuable work. Photocredit: Bill Pierce/2017 Photovoice.
Flood Modeling Underway
The University of Washington Climate Impacts Group has begun work modeling the predicted impact of climate change on flooding in the Snohomish and Stillaguamish Rivers and major tributaries. This work will allow farmers to view flood predictions for their farms showing the flooding extent and depth for 2- and 10-year floods out to the years 2040 and 2080. This work will be completed by January, 2018 and available online on The Nature Conservancy's Flood Risk Explorer tool. Similar modeling work was completed for the Snohomish River floodplain (from Monroe to the mouth) in 2014 and is currently available on the Flood Risk Explorer Tool.
Researcher Workshop a huge success!  
The Farming into the Future Expert Panel Workshop brought researchers together from WSU, WSU Extension, Whatcom Conservation District, King Conservation District and the Natural Resource Conservation Service in May. Researchers discussed the potential impacts of drier summers and less rainfall on agriculture, as well as the potential benefits of longer growing seasons and higher carbon dioxide levels. The state-of-the-research on various farm management practices such as soil amendments, agroforestry, no-till, and drainage techniques, was discussed and topics the team could collaborate on for future research were identified.

Crop Impacts Tool being developed by WSU


Kirti Rajagopalan, a researcher at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University, created an online risk management tool for farmers on the east side of the state. We recently secured funding for her to start expanding this tool to all of western Washington!  This tool allows farmers to plan for climate-related changes to growing season length, growing degree-day accumulations, frost risk, heat stress, precipitation patterns, and crop maturity timing. It also provides spatial analogs that show areas of the country that are similar now to what we predict our climate to look like in the future. Farmers can use this information to plan crop types, cropping management regimes and soil management techniques. This project is a partnership with King Conservation District and WSU.
Copyright © 2017 Snohomish Conservation District, All rights reserved.


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