Support for locally grown food is high. Here's why land in Phoenix is scarce for the growers

Rodney and Daphine Machokoto started small, growing about 40 different vegetables and greens in their Phoenix front yard. They grew produce at a community center's garden while teaching kids gardening skills. They moved later to a quarter-acre plot and eventually grew to farm three acres of land, split around the city.

The couple had moved from Zimbabwe to Arizona nine years ago. With their work they want to help create livable communities and "build a resilient world by transforming local systems," said Rodney, who is also a doctorate student at Arizona State University and acting chairperson of Maricopa County's USDA urban agriculture committee.

Their small business grew, and in 2022 they closed a five-year deal on five acres of land with the help of producer and attorney Sam Kelsall. It was a half-million-dollar project in the middle of a food desert, Rodney said. They planned not only for a farm but for a food distribution center, a health food store and a restaurant. Daphine remembers those days vividly because she was pregnant with their third child.

With the lease signed, they planted one and a half acres of cantaloupe, watermelon, okra, dill, radish, squash, beets and shallots.

Early on, the Machokotos decided they would partner with organizations that support the food security of low-income communities, and opted out of selling their organic produce at farmers' markets. They built clients and partnerships with nonprofits and projects like the Arizona Food Bank Network, Pinnacle Prevention, the Diana Gregory Outreach Center, Unlimited Potential and Feed Phoenix.

“All of our produce should go directly to where the need is,” Daphine Machokoto said.

Five months after they planted, they received news that the owner was terminating the lease before they could even harvest. A developer had made a sweet offer.

They knew it was possible because they didn't own the land.

The experience is well known to many urban farmers in Maricopa County, who are at great risk of losing the land they cultivate. Like the Machokotos, most can’t afford to buy it. If and when the owner gets a cash offer from a developer, the growers have to pick up and leave, sometimes with a 30- to 90-day notice.

From 2019 to last year, over 9,000 acres of farmland were lost, according to the land use database of the Maricopa Association of Governments.

Rapid farmland loss amid suburban growth

Urban development started eating Phoenix's farmland in the mid-20th century. Citrus groves were cleared to build shopping centers, cotton fields plowed under for subdivisions, and dairies relocated to more distant farmland. Every year, the loss of agriculture matched the cities' growth.

Farmland in Maricopa County shrank from 640 square miles in 2000, to 410 square miles in 2019, to 395 square miles in 2022, according to the Maricopa Association of Governments land use database.

The county has the fastest farmland loss rate in the U.S., according to an American Farmland Trust report.

Warehouses are going up at a fast rate replacing what once was some of the best farmland in metro Phoenix, said producer Janna Anderson, who runs operations in Laveen and Waddell.

In June 2022, about a dozen small producers, the Machokoto family included, had to vacate Agave Farms in central Phoenix after the 17 acres they farmed on were sold to developers.

Anderson, who worked hard to own seven acres of land in Laveen, was forced to give the county about 1,750 square feet of orchard for a flood control project two years ago.

“It’s not a lot, but it was mine. The people that develop these projects have no value for the 15 years of growing those trees,” she said.

“The county picked this position because the farmland is undeveloped, and it was the cheapest and easiest way to get what they wanted.”

Some of Arizona's farmland in rural counties, with precious Colorado River water rights, is also under threat, said Danielle Corral, an agricultural consultant and former program manager of the Coalition for Farmland Preservation with Local First Arizona.

Investment companies have purchased thousands of acres of farmland in Arizona, The Arizona Republic has reported. Some deals end in corporate water transfers to new housing.

“No one is safe,” Corral said.

Urban farm interest grows as available land shrinks

Interest in urban farmland protection and locally grown foods has gained momentum in the past five years. Local farmers became critical during the pandemic, and the demand for Arizona-grown foods is growing. Producers and their allies are forming cooperatives and programs to tackle distribution challenges, and Phoenix created a farmland preservation program with $3 million of COVID-19 federal funds.

“If we learn anything from the pandemic, it is that we would like to have our food grown locally and shorten the supply chain as much as we can,” said Ayman Mostafa, director of the University of Arizona’s urban agriculture production, small-scale and beginning farmer program.

At a national level, Congress increased support for urban farming in the 2018 Farm Bill, creating new USDA urban service centers and declaring Phoenix one of 17 priority urban hubs. The new office is slated to open by early 2024.

New funding streams and grants that support building up local and regional food systems across the country could also translate into “tremendous change” in the next couple of years, said Patty Emmert, director of resilient food systems at Local First Arizona.

But for farmers who depend on leased land, little has changed. Viable land for farming is selling fast and at a high price.

Corral worked for two years doing outreach and planning, connecting stakeholders across Arizona to protect farmland. In that time she heard from at least six farmers facing imminent risk of losing the land they leased, and half a dozen more with threats over land they owned. The coalition often scrambled to connect them with other opportunities.

Relocating is never easy. When other land is available, it might not be suitable for agriculture.

There are years of investment in building infrastructure, tending soil health and quality and building markets. Once land use is converted for development, the change is often irreversible, even if nothing is built.

Farmland that is rezoned loses its water rights, Corral said. And it doesn't matter that there is land access for farmers if there is no water.

“The farmer doesn't simply pick up and move over to the next piece of dirt,” Emmert said.

“And this is part of why farmland preservation is so important. Because we are losing agricultural ground at a rapid rate. And once we develop that ground, we don't get that back.”

Corral and other farming advocates had tried before to build an Arizona Farm Link, a digital platform, similar to a real estate navigator tool, that connects farmers to available, irrigated land, and offers other resources. But that project, just like the coalition and many other initiatives that work underfunded or with short-term grants, struggled.

Cindy Gentry, president at a local agriculture co-op, Sun Produce, and a long-time presence in the Maricopa County food systems work, said there are many little programs and grants, but there is still a need for “state and local policies that plan for the future instead of the immediate.”

Lawmakers could write policies that preserve farmland and community gardens, and encourage developers to do the same.

“Anything that I can do with colleagues and friends would be so much stronger and better if policymakers would realize it’s important to maintain agricultural traditions in Arizona,” Gentry said.

“People who make decisions have to care.”

Conservation easements are still hard to sell

The Machokotos have continued to grow, operating  Machokoto Family Farms on three different pieces of land. They are still looking for a long-term deal, but for now, they maximize what they have, Rodney said.

Like so many other urban growers, they rely on "patchwork" farming.

Emily Heller, owner of Bene Vivendo, grows vegetables, fruits, herbs and edible flowers in three different small plots, and said she has enough market demand that she’d be able to scale up.

“Land availability is very constricted. I’m trying to make the most of what I got but I know it’s only temporary,” she added. “I am always looking for land to farm.”

Preserving some land for agricultural use only could at least diminish farmland loss, and bring some stability to growers.

But realtors often don’t want to keep agricultural zoning in perpetuity. Land with development rights has a higher value, and cities get higher property tax from other uses too.

Phoenix created the Farmland Preservation Program in 2021, and allocated a total of $3 million over time to counter some of the farmland loss. But the program spent less than half a million and is now defunct.

Farmland preservation proponents in and outside Phoenix worked hard to get that pilot program in place, but the funds included a spending deadline that was not met.

“Generally you find the interested land owner and then the funding,” said Sharma Torrens, an agriculture and conservation consultant with the Central Arizona Land Trust, the nonprofit that managed the program.

The nonprofit helped purchase the development rights on 3.3 acres of land, which secured the future of Maya’s Farm, a well-established small operation in South Phoenix, but was unsuccessful in signing other landowners into the program before the end of last year.

Developing interest was hard when many folks were learning about these deals from scratch or started with a wrong impression about them, Torrens said.

Currently, there are two other farms, about 18 acres total, around South Phoenix and Laveen that would be in line for funding, she added, but for now, the opportunity is gone.

The remaining $2.5 million, coming from the American Rescue Plan Act, had to be re-allocated by the end of last year to affordable housing and homeless projects because they were not being utilized, said Rosanne Albright, the city’s environmental programs coordinator.

Phoenix continues to explore permanent funding sources for the program and is working to identify city-owned land that may be available for food production, she added.

Despite woes, urban agriculture is growing

At the UA’s Maricopa County Cooperative Extension, a mixed group of folks gathered for the opening of a new demonstration farm south of the Phoenix airport. A small open lot, a hoop house, greenhouse, beekeeping station and a stacked tool shed will serve farmers of all learning levels with research, education and outreach.

It will also be home to a one-stop-shop Urban Service Center for Maricopa County farmers, thanks to a partnership between the university extension service, the USDA’s Farm Service Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

About 12 years prior, in those same offices, a beginner farmer program had its inception.

Kelly Young was working for the University of Arizona as an extension assistant in horticulture in Maricopa County and had recently begun a program with the Arizona Center for Rural Leadership. She heard from clients that there was a need for education programs for budding farmers, who were reaching out to farms to learn the trade. At the suggestion of local farmer Frank Martin of Crooked Sky Farms and Sara Dolan from Blue Sky Organics, she decided to launch a program.

She took it as her two-year, passion project, she said.

Young scraped for resources, got a $20,000 grant from the University of Colorado, and launched with what she had to build farm tours and talks, a farm business training course and a sustainable crop production series for beginning farmers.

Heller, the Phoenix-based producer, was part of Young’s first cohort in 2014. She remembers many participants at the time were aspiring farmers, with no strong footing on the business.

They’d learn about business planning, pest management, market strategies, and “all that has to be really thought through and planning done before the first seed goes into the ground,” she said.

Many like her, who got an early start at the program, are still farming a decade later, Heller added.

The program ended when Young moved east in 2017 to work for Field to Market, but in 2020 it was reinvigorated by the UA Cooperative Extension.

Now the Urban Agriculture Small-Scale and Beginning Farmer Program is a statewide project with the support of several university units, extension offices, and state and federal support. It has a virtual learning community of nearly 1,000 people, offers a mix of free webinars, on-site workshops and training, and will soon launch new curriculum too.

Phoenix farmland is disappearing: What you should know about a plan to save what's left

The program serves more small-scale, established farmers and provides technical support, said Mostafa, the new director of the program and an extension specialist in entomology.

While many of the people participating have no generational experience in agriculture, and some started as backyard gardeners, it doesn’t mean they are taking it as a “hobby,” he said.

“This is business. And they are looking for a source of living, plus helping the environment, helping the community,” he added.

The program started small but now has nearly $4 million in funding. This year, the university also approved the creation of the Center for Urban, Smart Agriculture, which is slated to open in 2024.

“This is something that we are taking quite seriously and we're quite proud of. It also speaks of the kind of endorsement that we are having,” Mostafa said. The pandemic was certainly one of the factors that helped the "movement" for locally-grown foods come together.

“You need time for this issue to be revealed and to be up front.”

Clara Migoya covers agriculture and water issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to clara.migoya@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Demand grows for local food, but farmland in Phoenix area is vanishing