The Ap is reporting the issue here (link is to the Statesman Journal).

The AP guy characterizes the lifting of the prohibition on development as a windfall. What he/she fails to see is the impact of the 30-year prohibition on the use of the property at a higher and better use during the 30-year freeze.

All the features of a farm community have long since vanished. All that is left is a bit of potentially developable land here and there.

I refused to go work for the government because it was too confining an occupation even if the financial rewards far out performed anything remotely achievable as a farmer. I don’t particularly like the drudgery of fighting weeds and pests, or rain at the most inconvenient times. There is no new generation of farmers except the holdovers who have not moved on. There is an art to farming; that is, it is not just a matter of the availability of farmland. And there is simply not enough money in it to raise a family.

An Anthropologist might find it useful to document the passing of an era in the Damascus area. But that is about all that is left of farming in Damascus -- a footnote in history. Mom and Dad know it, and I know it. I knew it 30 years ago. Hell, my Grandfather knew it in the 1940’s.

The AP guy needs to get his head out of his ass priming the pump so that public servants can claim the benefits of the lifting the prohibition on development. Windfall my ass.

UPDATE: Can you fill a barn full of hay . . . alone? If there was a supply of local kids willing to do a little muscle development now and then or grab a hoe for a week or two then it might be a whole different ballgame. Farming remains labor intensive. The cost of housing, fueled by the lending craze, has bubbled up prices such that no farmer or farm worker can afford to live side-by-side with the high-paced hyper inflationary world that surrounds them.