Irrigators install a water line near Madras. (Bulletin file)

Get out of the cities in Central Oregon and forests take over. Or rugged desert takes over.

Or farms take over.

They rule the spaces beyond city boundaries. The exceptions, such as destination resorts plopped in some pretty places, are rare exceptions.

This design is a product of Oregon’s sometimes adored and sometimes maligned land use system. The fight over how flexible the system should be is fundamental to how Oregonians want their state to look.

Central to that debate is when land labeled farmland should continue to be called farmland. You know what a yard in Bend can look like without pouring water on it, or at least carefully dripping water in the right places. It can look like a desert. Many people who own land outside of the city are convinced that their land is not suitable for farmland and would be better suited for some other type of development, such as homes. It could be a big money maker to put some nice homes on some big lots. We could also give that perspective a more friendly spin: What Oregon needs now is housing.

Oregon’s Land Conservation and Development Commission may decide this week to insert itself in just such a fight in Deschutes County.

It concerns 710 acres about four and a half miles northwest of Redmond. The applicant is trying to get their property rezoned from exclusive farm use to rural residential with a 10-acre lot size minimum. To do that on a property, you have to essentially prove that the land is no good for farming.

The Deschutes County Commission has approved the change twice. The state’s Land Use Board of Appeals affirmed the county’s decision. Conservation groups, Central Oregon LandWatch and 1,000 Friends of Oregon, have been pushing back.

The Land Conservation and Development Commission staff “has concerns that the

interpretation could result in statewide consequences for the long-term protection of

farmland.” The argument is that the applicant didn’t do enough to prove it’s not good farmland.

We can’t tell you what mix of soil testing, profitability, availability of irrigation, examination of adjacent properties, analysis of ways to use the land for farming or other proof should be sufficient to pull a property out of exclusive farm use. But are a bunch of homes on 10-acre lots the kind of land use flexibility Oregon needs? Or are they an undesirable unraveling of the land use system?

When we read about this case, we recalled the review the state does every two years in its  farm and forest report to the Legislature. Most land that was zoned to be protected from development has stayed protected from development. For instance 99.7% of the land zoned for exclusive farm use in Oregon in 1987 was still zoned for exclusive farm use in 2023. Similarly, 99.9% of land zoned as forest or mixed farm-forest in 1987 was zoned the same in 2023.

Those numbers may feel like success. When each acre loses its farm or forest status, though, whether it’s bad farm or forest land or not, it’s not likely to return to that sort of protection from development.