The state faces a quandary over how (and whether) to develop its farmland.
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The state faces a quandary over how (and whether) to develop its farmland.
September 23, 2025
A wheat farm near Gaston, Oregon. (Getty Images)
Nellie McAdams’ family began farming in Oregon’s Willamette Valley five generations ago, attracted by its temperate climate and fertile soil. McAdams plans to eventually take over the family farm in the small town of Gaston, where she grew up on a hazelnut orchard. But the place she calls home looks a lot different today than it did back then, with urban development now extending deep into farmland. Roundabouts, city streetlights, and sprawling estates have been built in the middle of farm country, transforming the character of the landscape.
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“What hurts me is that this is some of the best farmland in the world,” McAdams said. “It makes it harder to farm if you’re trying to drive your equipment around a roundabout.”
Between 2017 and 2022, the state lost 4 percent of its total farmland, according to the most recent USDA census. Simultaneously, the cost of Oregon’s farm real estate jumped 23 percent, roughly three times as much as farmland in the rest of the nation. The most expensive land is clustered in the Willamette Valley.
“It makes it harder to farm if you’re trying to drive your equipment around a roundabout.”
Skyrocketing land values have roused a heated debate between farmers, advocacy groups, property owners, and conservationists over how to protect Oregon’s farmland as it gets developed for different uses. Some blame agritourism for driving the changes, arguing that once a parking lot or building is added onto farmland, the property becomes more expensive while simultaneously losing acreage to farm on. But others say agritourism provides extra income that helps farmers keep their business in operation.
In March 2025, Oregon moved toward regulating agritourism by considering new rules for farm stands. These rules would have most affected farms looking to build new farm stands rather than ones with already established stands. But a backlash led the governor to pause the process indefinitely. Now, farmers and communities are left to navigate the uncertainty while the challenges around shrinking farmland and access remain unresolved.
Source Farms is a collective of farmers who sell fresh meat, seafood, and other products at this farm stand in Yamhill, Oregon. Participating purveyors include Tabula Rasa Farms, Pat-n-Tam’s Beef, Dominion Farms, Naked Grazing, and Coleman Farms. (Photo courtesy of Tabula Rasa Farms)
Agritourism—attractions like pumpkin patches, hayrides, and farm-to-table dinners—is common in Oregon, drawing visitors from Portland, Bend, and other cities. Many events revolve around farm stands, the temporary or permanent structures that house farm products or sell tickets for farm activities.
Only 1.4 percent of Oregon farms earn income from agritourism and recreational services, according to an Oregon State University study. Those farms tend to be small and mid-size, earning supplemental income from operations like farm stands.
However, a few farms throughout the state have become popular destinations, causing traffic on rural roads and sometimes encroaching on neighboring properties, infringing on farm zones meant to preserve land for solely agricultural use.
Zoning laws vary depending on the county, though, leading to a patchwork permitting system that means one farm stand can sell products that a stand in a different county can’t.
Brenda Smola-Foti, owner of Tabula Rasa Farms, with one of her cows. (Photo courtesy of Tabula Rasa Farms)
“This web of rulemaking and ordinances . . . they just frustrate most small farmers,” said Brenda Smola-Foti, owner of Tabula Rasa Farms, a beef, lamb, poultry, and pork operation in Carlton, Oregon. She also operates luxury vacation rentals and hosts farm tours, cooking classes, and private chef dinners on her property.
Land-use and conservation groups who support farm-stand regulations are critical of these types of ventures, arguing that their infrastructure—parking lots, septic drain fields, and buildings—increase property values and also make it harder to farm on that land in the future.
“Because of the infrastructure on many of those farms, they’ll never be farmed just for food production ever again,” said Mike McCarthy, a Hood River fruit farmer and board president of 1000 Friends of Oregon, a land-use advocacy group on the advisory committee for the farm-stand regulation.
Another challenge is that more non-farmers are looking for farm property to invest in.
In an attempt to curb non-farmers from inflating property values with new development, two bills were introduced in the state legislature earlier this year that could have limited the size of “replacement buildings” on farm properties. But significant pushback from opponents to farm-stand regulation killed both bills.
“By allowing farm stands, that’s how we preserve farmland,” said Dave Hunnicutt, president of the Oregon Property Owners Association, another organization involved in the advisory committee. “If a farmer can’t make any money on the farm, then they’re not going to farm anymore. And at that point . . . it’s not farmland; it’s open space.”
Agritourism regulations aren’t unique to Oregon. In California’s Napa Valley, for example, highly touristed farm destinations led to strict regulation of how farmland can be used, especially as housing and road developments started infringing on farm country as early as the mid-1900s.
Now, just five vineyards are allowed to host weddings because of the restrictions enforced by Napa County.
“[Agritourism] turned their whole county basically into an event center instead of a farm zone,” said Jim Johnson, policy director of 1000 Friends of Oregon.
He fears Oregon could be headed down the same path. “Agritourism and the like are great for complimentary and supplemental incomes, but they shouldn’t be the primary use,” Johnson said.
McAdams, of the Gaston hazelnut farm, agrees that farm stands, on their own, are not the issue. “It’s when tourism is the thing that’s driving the bus over agriculture, and it changes the number of buyers out there for agricultural land,” she said.
Some say the real issue facing Oregon’s farmers is land access.
“We’re seeing rising land prices really outpacing what farm income can generate for a mortgage,” said Alice Morrison, co-executive director of the nonprofit organization Friends of Family Farmers. She said farmers need solutions that provide affordable property and the freedom to operate their businesses as they see fit.
An apple harvest at McCarthy Family Farm, a fourth-generation farm that produces fruit, flowers, and other products. (Photo courtesy of Mike McCarthy)
One possibility for small and mid-size farmers is alternative arrangements that don’t require buying property, such as leasing unused pastureland from neighbors or participating in a community land trust where a nonprofit holds the land for farm use. This work is already being done by Oregon Agricultural Trust, which preserves farmland through working land easements that remove development rights from agricultural areas.
Whatever emerges as the solution to keep Oregon farmland in production, it’s likely farm stands will remain part of the equation. Governor Tina Kotek’s official statement about pausing the rulemaking recognized the delicate balance of preserving farmland while allowing for agritourism.
“We can support local farm businesses while also preserving Oregon’s historic land use system,” Kotek said. “We need to acknowledge that some of our small and mid-size farms need to maintain or consider different business models to continue to deliver the agricultural products and working farms we all value in Oregon.”
These new business models, she said, don’t have to be at odds with Oregon’s land use values. But Kotek did not say how, exactly, the state will strike this balance between farmland preservation and agritourism.
That answer will likely come from the farmers themselves, said Morrison of Friends of Family Farmers.
Many of them are contributing to the agricultural economy and feeding their communities, which is the purpose of Oregon farmland as state law defines it. “We have 1,600 farmers in our network who are very dedicated to finding that balance and making it work,” she said.
This story has been updated to reflect that the Napa County determines venue and event restrictions.
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So I was curious why farmland prefer to keep their property values down?