A 90-day task force is looking at ways to manage city-owned farms.

In the 1950s, the island had the sixth largest berry-growing operation in Washington, with over 225 acres dedicated to strawberry cultivation alone.

Today, island farming is concentrated on a strip of land along the Day Road corridor, with farmers often taking full-time jobs to subsidize their agricultural passions.

“The bottom line is you can’t make a living being a 60-hour-a-week farmer on Bainbridge,” said Terry Lande, executive director of the Bainbridge Island Metropolitan Park and Recreation District. “You can go anywhere in the country and it is a lot more difficult being a farmer now than it use to be 20 years ago.”

The difficulties facing island agriculture have spurred interest among farmers, park officials, community members and the city to find ways of preserving local agricultural.

The mayor’s office has convened a 90-day farmland task force, charged with creating a 3-5-year management vision for city-owned farms.

The group will be led by Mary McClure, executive director of the Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council, and will meet for the first time this Tuesday.

One plan has come from the Trust for Working Landscapes, a local non-profit group established to promote farming through education and cooperation.

TWL has been talking with park officials about a joint venture should city-owned farms in the Day Road area come under park district stewardship.

“They have a novel idea on how to keep farming as an important component on the island while still allowing for public access and broadening its possibilities,” Lande said. “What I’m hearing is that for farming to survive, it needs to become a co-op venture with farmers coming together, sharing land and enhancing the community.”

The TWL plan would see that group lease 90 acres of city-owned farmland for 99 years.

“The relationship to who owns that land is between the city and parks district, and that’s their issue,” said Dennis Vogt, executive director of TWL. “We would lease the land and make the project pay its own way. Our goal is not to make it subsidy-based.”

The TWL would then establish and manage a “community farming” model, bringing island farmers together under one working agreement for management.

“We’re still working on our proposal, finding ways to make it work, but people should come to the Ag Committee,” Vogt said. “They are going to set up where they want to go later this month, and then we’ll all respond to that.”

The first session of the Ag Committee is closed to the community, but future meetings will allow for public comment. Vogt expects a formal proposal from TWL will be presented sometime in August.

“The farmers are a pretty tight knight group,” Vogt said. “They share out work and cooperate and so forth, and we think we know what needs to be done to get the farmers and the public together on this.”