Urban Sprawl Bites Off the Food Chain

Can you imagine a bunch of celery? Can you envision crunching into one of its crisp, juicy stalks? Delicious!

Can you imagine 30,000 bunches of celery? This is the amount of celery produced on one acre of prime farmland on the Oxnard Plain in one crop.

Two crops are harvested every year from that one acre. Can you imagine 60,000 bunches of celery?

After the two crops of celery are harvested, a third crop--often cabbage--is harvested that same year from that same acre. Can you imagine 20,000 heads of cabbage?

Can you now imagine 80,000 vegetables harvested from one acre in one year and able to be produced year after year for as long as the sun shines and rain falls?

Currently being proposed in the city of Oxnard is the Northwest Community development which would take 320 acres of farmland out of production--25,600,000 vegetables every year! I don’t think any of us can really imagine that much food. And this does not even include any development by the other cities on the plain.

Urban sprawl must be stopped. Construction in Ventura County must take place on marginal or hilly ground or depressed economic areas within city boundaries and not on prime farmland.

RUTH JOHNSON, Oxnard. Ruth Johnson is a member of STOP (Save the Oxnard Plain).