Senate Natural Resources committee hears DLCD data on farm and forest land loss; flags solar, dwellings and nonfarm uses

Sen. Jeff Golden, chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire, opened an informational meeting on farm and forest land loss in Oregon on Jan. 21, 2025, and the committee adopted its session rules before hearing presentations from state and stakeholder experts.

The Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) presented the agency's 2022–23 Farm and Forest Land Use Report, which documents how the state’s working-lands policies perform at keeping land available for agriculture and timber. Hillary Foote, DLCD’s Farm and Forest Land Use Specialist, told the committee "there are about 15,600,000 acres that are currently under exclusive farm use zoning," and described three data lenses DLCD uses: zoning changes and urban growth boundary adjustments, land-cover mapping, and Census of Agriculture figures.

The report shows the bulk of Oregon remains zoned for resource uses (DLCD: ~15.6 million acres EFU; ~8.5 million acres forest; ~2.2 million mixed farm/forest). By one DLCD metric, 99% of land zoned for farm or forest use since 1987 remains in that zoning; DLCD also reported roughly 1,000 acres of farm/forest land are added to urban growth boundaries each year and about 1,400 acres are rezoned annually. Foote cautioned that conversion can also occur while land remains zoned for resource use because counties may permit many nonfarm uses by statute and rule.

Solar siting and…