ABSTRACT
For more than three decades, the State of Oregon has sought to protect agricultural land from urban sprawl and leapfrog subdivisions. The exclusive farm use (EFU) Zone protects farmland in two main ways. First, it limits development by prohibiting land uses that conflict with commercial agriculture. Subdivisions, shopping malls, fast-food shops, and most other urban uses are prohibited in the EFU Zone. Second, the zone specifies a minimum lot size to keep farmland from being divided into pieces too small for commercial agriculture. As a result of legislation passed in the 1993 Legislature, the minimum parcel size for cropland is 80 acres, for rangeland, 160 acres. In 1994, a total of 1,137 new dwellings were approved on land zoned EFU. Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) had considerable evidence to indicate that new standards were needed. A study done in the late 1980's had shown that most new "farm dwellings" were in fact not associated with commercial farming at all.
