Land Use: Plans, Zoning, Permits and Farmland

Water decides what land can grow. Land use rules decide what land can become. In Idaho, those rules come from the Local Land Use Planning Act, Idaho Code Title 67, Chapter 65, which tells every city and county how to plan, zone and decide applications. The Local Government module in this course covers how councils and commissions run meetings. This lesson covers what they are deciding when a farm is up for rezoning.

The plan comes first

Idaho Code 67-6508 requires each city and county to adopt what the statute calls a comprehensive plan. Everyone in planning says comp plan, and so will this lesson. The planning or planning and zoning commission runs the process. The plan has to address a list of components unless it explains why one does not apply:

The plan sets policy. A map that colors a farm "future residential" does not rezone it. But the plan matters in every later decision, because a conditional use permit cannot conflict with it and rezones are supposed to follow it.

Zoning and conditional uses

The zoning ordinance divides land into districts and lists, for each district, uses allowed outright, uses allowed only with a permit, and uses not allowed. An agricultural zone might allow farming outright, allow a farm processing plant with a conditional use permit, and prohibit subdivisions under a minimum lot size.

Idaho Code 67-6512 calls these special use permits and lets ordinances use the term conditional use permit. A permit can be granted when the use is conditionally allowed in that zone, the community can serve it, and it does not conflict with the plan. The board can attach conditions, including minimizing impacts on other development, controlling timing and duration, requiring on-site or off-site public facilities, requiring stricter standards, and requiring mitigation of effects on service providers such as school districts. The list is open-ended. The statute also allows studies of environmental effects before a permit is granted.

Decisions must be written and reasoned

Idaho Code 67-6535 requires that approvals and denials rest on standards in the plan, ordinance or other local rules, stated clearly enough that everyone knows what has to be met. Every decision must be in writing with a reasoned statement that explains the criteria, the relevant contested facts, and the reasoning tied to the plan, ordinances and the record. A decision that fails to explain compliance with an express standard can be thrown out on appeal. Site-specific decisions must tell the applicant they can ask for a regulatory taking analysis under 67-8003.

Protections for farming

Two statutes push in the farmer's direction. Idaho Code 67-6529 says county commissioners cannot use planning powers to deprive an owner of the full and complete use of agricultural land for producing agricultural products, with each county defining agricultural land in its own ordinance. And the Right to Farm Act, 22-4503, says an agricultural operation running for more than a year, which was not a nuisance when it started, generally cannot become a nuisance because the area around it changed. The protection does not cover nuisances caused by improper or negligent operation.

Together they mean the subdivision built next to a feedlot in 2026 usually cannot sue the 1990 feedlot for smelling like a feedlot. They do not mean anything goes on farmland. The same 67-6529 requires counties to regulate the siting of large confined animal feeding operations.

Conservation easements

A conservation easement is a recorded restriction that keeps land in farming or open space while the owner keeps title. Idaho's Uniform Conservation Easement Act, Idaho Code 55-2101, says the holder must be a government body empowered to hold real property or a charity whose purposes include conservation, and lists purposes including keeping land available for agriculture. Federal tax law in 26 U.S.C. 170 lets a donor deduct a qualified conservation contribution, with higher limits for qualified farmers and ranchers.

The deduction has been abused. The IRS says syndicated conservation easement deals produced inflated deductions; it reports the Tax Court has allowed about 6 percent of claimed amounts on average in these cases, and that two promoters were sentenced in 2024 to 25 and 23 years in prison. An ordinary family farm easement is a different animal, but anyone looking at an easement deal should ask how it was appraised and who bought in.

Farmland conversion: the numbers and the arguments

The 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 11,547,963 acres in Idaho farms, down 1 percent from 2017, and 22,877 farms, down 8 percent. USDA put Idaho irrigated cropland at $9,500 an acre in 2026.

Both sides have law on their side. A fair argument, from either side, names the specific standards in the local plan and ordinance and asks whether the decision met them.

On desert ground, disturbance lasts. BLM's technical reference on biological soil crusts (TR 1730-2) reports published recovery estimates from 2 to more than 3,800 years. In the Mojave, USGS found 1940s tank tracks still showed 24 to 55 percent lower infiltration decades later. Big sagebrush can take "several decades on average" to come back after fire, USGS says, and cheatgrass fuels "larger and more frequent wildfires." Pierson's Imagine a Tarp Over the Desert puts recovery at half a lifetime to a century; that range is his synthesis, not a single study's.