In an interesting alliance, the Sonoma County Farm Bureau and Greenbelt Alliance (a local environmental group in the Bay Area) have released a Land Use Audit intended to shape land use policies in Sonoma County.

Sonoma’s farming economy is, needless to say, a little different than the usual: vineyards command high market prices and attract considerable tourism to Wine Country, significantly filling the cash chasm that typically separates metropolitan and rural economies. Farmers in Northern California may also be happier with farm life; it sometimes seems that farmers in many other locales (especially given that the average age of American farmers is rapidly headed toward 65) are land speculators first and farmers second. Still, the Audit is a political breakthrough in coalition-building, since farmers had opposed earlier proposals to implement growth controls in Sonoma and elsewhere in California.