Retired director says Faulkner Farm is fulfilling mission

In a strongly worded op-ed published yesterday in the Ventura County Star, the retired director of UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura County, Larry Yee, said the historic Faulkner Farm continues to fulfill the mission of the Hansen Trust and should not be sold.

The op-ed came in response to a recent decision by the trust's advisory board to recommend that UC sell the farm.

Beginning in 1989, Yee worked personally with then 90-year-old Ms. Thelma Hansen, who was interested in applying her family's sizable fortune to sustain local agriculture. When she passed away in 1993, she left almost all of the family estate -- nearly $12 million -- to UC to create the Hansen Trust to benefit and sustain local agriculture through research and education.

Yee wrote in his op-ed that he had many conversations with Ms. Hansen from 1990 to 1993, when he was overseeing her care.

"She made it abundantly and unequivocally clear that she desired a center for agricultural research and education be created and developed with her gift," Yee said.

And, he said, in consultation with University attorneys, the trust advisory board saw no need to change the language of Ms. Hansen's 1990 trust document because it covered such a facility.

Over the years, Yee said, the Hansen Agricultural Center at Faulkner Farm has developed into a respected county treasure, recognized throughout the state and country for its work with research and educational programs that well served agriculture in Ventura County.

"It is my hope that the UC administrators and the UC Board of Regents will categorically reject this shortsighted and irresponsible request to sell the Faulkner Farm and dismantle the Hansen Agricultural Center," the op-ed says.