Farming in the shade

We are involved in the Farmland Preservation movement here in Michigan. Years ago, The Farmer went on a bus tour out to Maryland and Pennsylvania to see their efforts to keep farmland from being gobbled up by development. He was impressed. Beautiful housing developments on one side of the highway, and miles of farmland on the other. Room for both. Since that time, he's gone to years of committee meetings and board meetings, pursuing what he saw out east. With no discernible results. Discouraged much? photo credit: Saucy Salad via photopin cc The other day I read a newspaper headline: Support waning for farmland preservation in ____ County. One of the nearby counties that had set aside money for purchase of development rights (PDR) was now backing away from the program. Blame them? Not really. Times are tight in Michigan and all over. Who has money for these things? And the PDR program is not without its faults and certainly not without its opponents. A related way ...

One of the things that we became interested in early in our farming career was the preservation of agricultural land. The Farmer went on a bus trip to Pennsylvania and Maryland to see how they've preserved their farmland using Purchase of Development Rights, and (his preference) Transfer of Development Rights. Since then (off and on) he's served on our county's committee to preserve farmland. Our farm is situated in a triangle between 3 cities. Until the recent recession, sprawl was happening (in our direction, from all 3 sides) at an alarming rate. It's slowed somewhat, but we are still in that triangle. And we still speak to folks all the time who think nothing of selling a perfectly good house to buy 10 acres out in the country and build a new house. We are still concerned about the sprawl and about the recent attacks on animal agriculture. But we're very (!) encouraged by the growing awareness that our food sources are important. I found this video clip from the...