County Farm and Forest Code Overhaul

Hood River County is in the final stages of updating its entire Farm and Forest zoning code for the first time in 20 years. The purpose of the update is to bring Hood River’s code into harmony with changes in state law and to make those code sections clearer and easier to understand.

While that sounds simple, it has been a Herculean task for the county’s Planning Commission and staff. There have been seven work sessions and three hearings. Preserving farm and forest land for farming and forestry is at the core of our mission, so you can be sure that we have been present at every session.

We are supportive of the proposed changes which generally offer more robust protection for our working landscapes with particularly strong protections for the county’s best farmland. The two key issues for HRVRC were prohibiting destination resorts in the forests of Mount Hood and the foothills and limiting uses that displace or conflict with agriculture particularly intensive urban uses that make farming harder or more expensive.

However, the issue that attracted the most attention from the public is a new state provision that allows “agri-tourism” events on farmland. The word “agri-tourism” caused some confusion because there is a big difference between how most of us understand agri-tourism in normal conversation and what it means under state law.

When most of us think about “agri-tourism” we think of farm stands, wineries, wedding venues, and things like Alpaca farms that also have shops. But none of these are “agri-tourism” as used defined by the code update. All of these uses are permitted in another way–as farm stands, wedding venues, commercial uses in association with farming, processing of farm products, home occupations, bed and breakfasts–and there are not any proposals to limit or change those categories in the code update.

“Agri-tourism” is a new category that has been included in state law to allow a limited number of commercial events on farmland that doesn’t already have a permit for something else. State law provides four different levels of permitting ranging from a single event a year of less than 100 people to allowing 18 events per year each spanning multiple days for up to 500 people. The Board of Commissioners seems poised to allow up to six events a year.

The Board of Commissioners hopes to approve final code revisions at their December 21 hearing.