The Marin Agricultural Land Trust is preparing to purchase its second agricultural easement of the year. Last week, MALT secured nearly $1.4 million in public funds for development rights to the 540-acre Duncan Ranch as the trust renews its push to preserve farms and ranches after a period of turmoil. 

Last Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved the disbursal of funding from the Measure A quarter-cent sales tax, set aside for parks and open space preservation. The grant covers half of the cost of an easement on two parcels of organic beef grazing land near the intersection of Tomales-Petaluma and Chileno Valley Roads on the Marin-Sonoma border. The remainder of the $2.7 million easement will be paid for by private donations. 

The cost of a MALT easement, which bars subdivision in perpetuity and restricts the property to active agricultural use, typically amounts to between one third and half the value of the land. 

The acquisition follows an easement secured last month on the larger McDowell Ranch next door. Both ranches are owned by Kenneth and Clairette Wilson, who bought the Duncan Ranch after their neighbor, dairyman George Duncan, died in 2019. The ranch had been a dairy, supplying Petaluma Creamery, for years before that.

“This ranch, similar to McDowell, is in very good condition from an ecological standpoint,” said Eric Rubenstahl, who manages MALT’s stewardship program. “There are minimal invasive species and a high amount of native grasses.”

The Wilsons needed two separate easements, county parks staff told supervisors, because they want to maintain the Duncan and McDowell Ranches as two viable, independent properties. The family will employ rotational grazing on both, a practice that is easier on grasses and soils over time. The ranch borders the McIsaac Dairy and Hicks Canyon Ranch, which are MALT-protected, along with the Garzoli Ranch, which is not.

The Duncan ranch’s 500 acres of grassland are punctuated by stands of oak and laurel woodlands. Two intermittent tributaries of Stemple Creek, an important feeder in the Estero de San Antonio watershed, snake through the property. Stemple Creek itself carves through the Wilsons’ neighboring McDowell Ranch. 

As with similar MALT-ed properties, the trust hired a consulting rangeland specialist to create a set of recommendations for the Wilsons to follow. They include a limit on herd size based on the land’s carrying capacity and a 50-foot buffer around stream tributaries where the ranchers should not till or spread manure. These recommendations, intended to reduce runoff and keep the watershed healthy, are not prescriptive, Mr. Rubenstahl said. 

The grant was the final allocation of funds to MALT from the Measure A program before county spending shifted to allow more money to flow to the Marin Resource Conservation District and other groups, cutting back MALT’s pot of money for new easements and encouraging the trust to spend more on taking care of its existing lands. Marin County Parks had revised the spending plan ahead of the measure’s June renewal, responding to public input by dropping the acquisition fund from 95 percent of the farmland allocation to 50 percent.

Though the Measure A renewal won 75 percent of the vote, county surveys had shed light on public doubts about MALT’s spending. In 2020, the trust faced conflict-of-interest accusations and returned one grant to the county after failing to disclose a lower initial appraisal for a ranch. Last year saw high staff turnover and a contingent of detractors who mobilized in opposition to the trust’s use of Measure A funds. In 2021, MALT received no Measure A grants and bought just one easement with its own funds on the Leali Ranch, owned by Hog Island Oyster Company. 

Those most vocally opposed to the farmland preservation allocation had argued before the supervisors that MALT’s easements were needless public subsidies for private ranches with no benefit to taxpayers. Zoning and other incentives had extinguished the threat of overdevelopment, some said. More than half of the county’s agricultural properties have MALT easements. 

But MALT and its supporters say its easements have a host of benefits: supporting the producers of beloved local foods, helping struggling family farms through drought, preserving rangelands as natural fire breaks and protecting the open space that makes pastoral West Marin an escape in the Bay Area. 

The Duncan Ranch, like most ranches in Marin, is also protected under a 10-year Williamson Act contract that offers lower property taxes in exchange for keeping the land in agriculture. But landowners can opt out of those agreements, unlike MALT easements. Mr. Rubenstahl said the relatively flat valleys between Petaluma and Tomales, where the Wilsons’ properties lie, are at more risk of suburban sprawl than the hillier lands to the south. But the likelier scenario, he said, was that a wealthy buyer could take over the ranch and turn it into an estate. “It’s more the risk of things falling out of agriculture than of a massive subdivision,” he said.

MALT is considering easements for five other ranches totaling 3,380 acres.