Coordinated Rural Opportunity Plan (CROP)
The Coordinated Rural Opportunity Plan (CROP) is a regional strategy to help preserve and maintain sustainable agriculture throughout the Sacramento Region. CROP is a joint effort between the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) and Valley Vision, and is part of SACOG’s Rural Urban Connection Strategy (RUCS).
CROP will serve as a resource for promoting public and private sector investment in infrastructure and programs that will strengthen our region’s agricultural economy, and support the preservation and acquisition of agricultural land.
The Coordinated Rural Opportunity Plan will analyze:
- The importance of the Sacramento region in statewide and global food production.
- The unique assets, qualities, and industries that are supported by each of the region’s six counties.
- The barriers and challenges facing agriculture including climate risks, pressure from urbanization, and limitations of existing infrastructure, among others.
Agriculture Has Deep Roots in the Sacramento Region
The counties of El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, and Yuba have a rich history in agriculture that provides a treasured legacy for residents and a strong regional identity. As the foundation of a food and agricultural economy valued at more than $12 billion, agriculture can have a bright future given that we have some of the most productive farmland in the world, highly skilled farmers, water and climate assets, a wide diversity of high-value crops, and UC Davis, one of the world’s premier agricultural institutions.
Our region’s urban and rural areas are interdependent, and just like urban areas, rural economic viability is fundamentally derived from land use decisions and investments that support critical infrastructure.
Agriculture is an Economic Driver
The region’s Prosperity Strategy outlines a strategic framework and bridge to action for the six-county region that prioritizes our core economic initiatives, aimed at advancing a more aligned, prosperous, inclusive, and resilient Sacramento region. The Prosperity Strategy includes initiatives to support the region’s tradeable industries – groups of related industries that support economic output through exporting goods or services. These industries are critical for local prosperity because of their ability to improve productivity and bring in wealth from outside the region through competitive economic advantage.
Agriculture is the foundation of our region’s most distinct tradeable industry – the food and agriculture cluster – comprised of crop production; packaging and processing; distribution; and support industries. Together, this cluster provides more than 55,000 direct jobs, putting the Sacramento region in the top fifth of large metropolitan areas in the country when it comes to sustaining a robust agricultural economy. The supply chain that generates our food and ag economy is deep, with its own unique networks and dependent sectors. As America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital, the Sacramento Region is both fertile and productive, with $2 billion in farm gate output value, more than 7,200 farms, and more than 1.5 million acres of harvested farmland. The overall cluster has an economic impact of more than $12 billion.
CROP Planning Activities
The Coordinated Rural Opportunity Plan provides a unique opportunity for planning staff, water agencies, resource conservation districts, and others to collaborate on creating a county-level and regional perspective of the economic and infrastructure investment challenges and solutions facing agriculture in the coming decades, including access to land and land use decisions, transportation and broadband infrastructure, water access and reliability, the regulatory environment, and others.
CROP is funded by the Department of Conservation’s Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation (SALC) Program.
Should you have any questions, or if you want to get involved, please reach out to Grace Kaufman at Grace.Kaufman@ValleyVision.org
