Myron Redford has several dogs in the Measure 37 fight. Right now, some big Measure 37 developments and sprawling housing complexes are planned near his winery and agriculture operations in the rolling hills near Amity. Myron is convinced that Measure 37 needs reforming or it could destroy Oregon's agriculture industry — one farm at a time. Just when consumers are worried about the safety of imported foods, paving over some of the richest farmland in the United States just doesn't make sense to Myron.

A pioneer in the Oregon wine industry, Myron grows grapes, organic fruit and owns some forest land. For more than three decades he has made some of the fine wines that have made Oregon's industry famous. His winery, Amity Vineyards, produces world-renown Pinot Noir wine.

"Measure 37 threatens the viability of the agricultural community by inserting large urban developments on agricultural land," Myron says. "When you insert urban activities in a farming zone there will be problems. Urban people just aren’t great neighbors for farming. They don't understand they will have to share the roads with big, slow farm equipment. Some farming activities are not very pleasant. Farmers create dust when they disk the land. There are sprays, whether toxic or not. Farming can be noisy, with different kinds of machinery, some operating at unusual hours." Many vineyards, for example, use booming gas cannons to keep the birds from eating their grapes.

"Measure 37 has also injected uncertainty into the land use process," Myron says, "uncertainty encourages speculators to buy up land with the idea that they will make a huge amount of money. That causes the price of agricultural land to be distorted" and farmers cannot add to their productive land, he says.

Myron has filed a Measure 37 claim for three homesites on the fringes of his 72-acre property. He is not against building a few homes here and there. "I filed because it is the law. I supported some changes in the land use law, but not Measure 37," he says. "Measure 37 is a back door attempt by the big developers to overthrow our land use laws," he says.

Passing measure 49 would fix Measure 37 and would "allow some reasonable development," Myron says. "Voters were not envisioning 800 home developments in the middle of a forest or 110 homes on prime agricultural land," says Myron . "The one thing about farmland is that when it is lost, it is lost. It never comes back."