Unless raised land taxes based on the revised real estate value meant a low-margin farm could no longer stay in the black.
Unless, of course, the encroaching suburb decided that they needed that land for new housing for the growing population.
Eminent domain, I believe it’s called.
Eminent domain is rarely invoked to build housing. Not that it can’t be, but it typically isn’t.
Yeah. Very rarely eminent domain.
Much more likely so-called “highest best use”. Which means setting the tax rate as if the land was used for the activity that could produce the most tax revenue. Even if the land is really used for something else where the new vastly higher tax rate makes the old use unprofitable. Which essentially forces the landowner to change the land to the other use or sell it to someone who can.
Overall, people should not be tied to land. Peasantry was a bad deal for everyone. Folks who think they can’t move because grandad plowed this dirt are prisoners; not yeoman / freeman. If we could eliminate humans’ misplaced attachment to specific plots of dirt we could eliminate about half the casus belli worldwide at a stroke. It’s just dirt; there’s more elsewhere.
Yes, bad choice of words on my part. Annexation and/or rezoning from agricultural to residential would have been better phrasing.
Yeah, that happens all the time. Often at the politically-connected property owner/developer’s request.
And when the land was rezoned from agricultural to residential, its value shot up, so the farm owner could sell (at a substantial profit) and buy farmland further out. Or they could retire and live comfortably. How is that a loss to them?
So you missed the episode where Jethro was going to use the ceement pond to clean cars, but the pulley broke and their truck fell completely into the pond, chugging away until the engine died? (“Glurp!”) High culture doesn’t get more high than that… 
I don’t know about California, but in NJ land used for agriculture got a lower tax rate. We knew someone who made a ton of money, got a big property, and got sheep (those damn sheep) to graze on the grass to get it to be considered as agricultural land.
I could not tell you how properties are valued in California for taxation purposes, but I can tell you that we (in California) have legislated means to keep property taxes low on ag properties. The Williamson Act was enacted in the '60s and were contracts between an owner of ag/open space property and the county in which it was situated. The property owner promised to keep the property in ag/open space use for 10 years, and in exchange, got a lower tax rate. Williamson Act contracts could be renewed on expiration - I do not believe the property was reappraised on expiration/renewal of the contract, but I’m not sure - and property owners could always get out of their “Willy Act” contracts any time they wanted prior to their expiration. If they wanted to cancel the contract early, though, they would have to pay substantial penalties.
Without getting into too much detail, I would also like to point out that “Highest and Best Use (HABU)” is usually considered independent of zoning. That is not to say that zoning has NO influence on HABU, but there’s nothing in the appraisal industry that says that HABU must be consistent with existing zoning. Some analyses of HABU, in fact, conclude that a change to zoning must be applied to in order to realize that use. But that’s probably best saved for another thread.
Let’s do some math here.
An Olympic swimming pool holds approximately 660,000 gallons of water.. I doubt few Beverly Hills swimming pools are that size, but that’s the only standard measurement, so let’s go with that.
Agriculture uses a standard measurement of acre-inches and acre-feet of water. That’s the amount of water needed to cover one-acre of land to that depth. One acre-foot of water equals 325,851 gallons.
Rounding here, one Olympiic-size swimming pool will require a little more than two-acre feet of water. Amazingly, we know that Beverly Hills has 2,481 private swimming pools (somebody counted.)
As noted upthread, once a swimming pool is filled the water is mostly recirculated and topped off as needed, but let’s assume every one of Beverly Hills’ swimming pools are drained and refilled once a year. Rounding again, let’s say that requires 5,000 acre-feet of water each year.
California’s leading agricultural product is dairy, but I’m not going to attempt calculating for cows and the crops needed to feed them, so let’s go to the state’s leading plant product - grapes.
The amount needed to grow an acre of grapes varies from 22-45 inches per year. That works out to slightly less than one to slightly less than two acre-feet of water.
So, rounding again, one Olympic-size swimming pool uses enough water to grow 1/2-1 acre of grapes == all the swimming pools replaced 1,250-2,500 acres of California’s highest value crop. Since the average size of a vineyard in California is 79 acres, that works out to a total of 15.8-31.6 vineyards.
Infamously, it has since been ruled that eminent domain can be invoked to allow commercial development that increases government tax revenue.
I’m gonna dispute a couple of your assumptions. I would guess the number of Olympic size swimming pools in residential properties in Los Angeles you could count on one, or maybe two hands. A quick search suggests that the range of 15,000 to 25,000 gallons is more typical of residential pool capacities. Also, a pool that is professionally maintained probably only gets drained every other year or less often.
Of course. I’m not saying that eminent domain has never been used to facilitate development. I’m saying it’s rare. The fact that a lot of people have heard of Kelo is, IMO, a good example of how rarely it happens. If that kind of condemnation action happened more often, fewer people would get their knickers in a knot over it. (FTR, I think the courts got Kelo wrong, but nobody asked me.)
I’ve noticed before that there are people who have no sense of place; to them every place is exchangeable for any other, so long as whatever particular amenities they care about are provided.
I suspect that there’s no more sense in trying to explain sense of place to somebody who hasn’t got it than there’s sense in trying to explain sexual attraction, or whatever there is about humans and ball games, or a sense of holiness, to somebody who hasn’t got those things. But I wish that people would recognize that these things are embedded very deep in overall human nature, even if not every human has them, and that trying to deny their importance won’t work and, to the extent to which it can be done, will do actual and significant damage.
This society, of course, has active reason to try to deny sense of place, since it wants everybody to be willing to move anywhere at any moment if that meand that money can be made (very often not by the people expected to move.)
I’m not disputing your disputations, but the only standard I can think of for a swimming pool is the Olympic standard.
Your guess of 15,000-25,000 gallons is as good as any. But if your assumptions on swimming pools are more accurate than mine, it means they’re using even less water than I calculated, which means the theoretical number of vineyards displaced was even fewer than the 15.8-31.6 that I calculated.
None. Ag in California uses 80% of the water that is used, industrial 10% and all residential uses- 10%. In fact almond trees alone use about as much water as all residential uses. You can get different figures if you count water which is left to go out to sea, for the salmon, etc.
Of all the water available, yes.
Yes, sure, but it aint residential use that keeping them from getting all the water they want, it is other farms.
And exported, we export a LOT of almonds.
Right, But of what we use here in the USA, a lot goes to stupid 'almond milk" - if you want plant “milk” why not try Oat milk, better for you and the environment
Nice calculations there. .
I think it remains true that the OP is a loaded question and I’d like to see some response from the OP regarding this.
The Water Wars were real (fictionally it’s a key plot point of the movie “Chinatown”), but apparently my impression that supplying Los Angeles and suburbs with water to waste was the primary pressure on the water supply was erroneous. My bad.
This. And other tree nuts like pistachios and walnuts. I am always amused by the farmers’ teary-eyed pleas for more dams and water conveyance, which are a clear form of corporate welfare - socialize the risk and cost, while privatizing the profits. Most water use in ag is not for food on our tables, but for profitable export crops. If a small percentage of tree nut farms was culled, there would be a water surplus in California, and no need for costly projects.