All across the country, precious farmland is lost to new suburban subdivisions and shopping malls at an alarming rate. Farmers reap enormous profits by having their land up-zoned and selling out to developers. City governments are eager to re-zone farmland to residential and commercial, because the latter greatly increases their revenues. In Encinitas, Calif., a former land baron already converted thousands of acres to housing tracts and commercial facilities a decade ago, realizing close to a billion dollars in profit. In return for getting this free gift from the city and the state, he set aside his last parcel of land to remain "farmland in perpetuity." In 2005 he set about to break this trust, supported by the city council, in order to develop this last vestige of farmland in the community to housing tracts. The proposal was put to a public vote under Proposition A. But the people revolted against this deception and breach of public trust and handsomely defeated this proposition by two to one. The following poem helped to educate citizens and preserve this last farmland for future generations.

     SAVE OUR FARMLAND

On Ecke's fields big buildings grow,
Strip malls, asphalt, traffic, and blight.
Wall to wall mansions, row by row,
Fill the land. No end is in sight.

Gone are the flower fields of yore,
Plantations we loved to behold.
Open farmland beckons no more.
It fell prey to the glitter of gold.

Once stewards of square miles of land,
They did what lay in their powers
To lend it a nurturing hand,
Keeping fields blooming in flowers.

They farmed for three generations,
Community service their creed.
They now turned to plain exploitation,
Philanthropy turning to greed.

Life-granting earth is gutted and paved,
As pockets swell up with gold, and
Time and again a few acres are saved
As concessions for raping the land.

Now we hold their last farmland in trust,
And as trustees we cannot accept
One more broken promise, but must
Insist their last contract be kept.

We, the public have up-zoned their land,
Helped making them billionaires.
Our commitments we kept, and
It’s time that they honored theirs.

Enough is enough,
A deal is a deal.
Vote Nay on Prop A.

                                                                            Dietmar Rothe © 2005