Achievement

REACH trainees from our 2008 cohort authored a study that described the impact of reductions in state funding for the Williamson Act, a land protection program that reduces property taxes of owners of 15 million acres of California rangeland. It suggested that many rangelands would be sold to developers with the termination of existing subsidies. The study was the lead article in the journal California Agriculture in Fall 2012.

Trainees Dale Manning and Daniel Swezey were invited by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors to present the results of this cohort project at a meeting of the Santa Barbara County Agricultural Advisory Committee. The meeting included county supervisors, land owners, representatives from trade organizations, and cooperative extension specialists, who distributed reprints of the students' paper and commented on the importance of the article for the ranching industry in California.