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Earthmetrics Report - page 10 immediately in the vicinity within one to three miles of the Study Area. A firm decision to focus further rural residential development in the Study Area might then effectively reduce the potential pressures for development of adjoining agricultural lands in the larger area. The same decision might save adjoining areas from the types of difficulties now being experienced by the applicant and other orchardists in the Study Area, these difficulties relating to restricted operational practices and neighborhood nuisance issues brought about by residents. Production foregone by the ultimate conversion of these lands to rural residential use is not significant. Already production levels are being affected by cultural and management constraints placed upon farm operators Both of the major tree crops located in the Study Area -apricots and w ainuts- currently exhibit strong overproduction tendencies The loss of these producing orchards will not seriously diminish the availability of either commodity to users and consumers in the short run, and, in the longer run, there are ample opportunities to bring new acreages into production in other areas of the county and state. The loss of prime agricultural soils is lamentable, yet the potential productive capacity of the soils on parcels in the Study Area is already diminished because of the pattern of development that has occured over the recent past. But even at the county level, the loss of 400+ acres of the two prime soils would not greatly diminish the county's current inventory of 3,215 acres of El So!yo clay loam and 11,420 acres of Stomar clay loam. It would be more prudent to actively protect similar soils in areas not yet as contaminated by heavy mixed residential and agricultural use. That goal can, perhaps, be well served by channelling current pressures for additional rural residential development in the south Tracy area on parcels as represented by the subject property, and others, in the Study Area. I find no compelling reason not to permit the amendment to the General Plan for the Traina Bros. application, admitting that to do so sends a message promising approval for other applications in the Study Area. I do not see the Traina Bros. application as the keystone to the preservation of economically viable agriculture in the Study Area. The major decisions seem to have been in years past as revealed by persistent development and parcelization activity over the past decades. One hopes that more efficiently organized production areas might indirectly be buffered by the contemplated decision to permit this, and subsequent, amendments in the Study Area. 13.3-15