Posted by David Hamilton on November 30th, 2009

Here at the Baldwin Center, we subscribe to several web news feeds that track studies, stories and statistics on farmland and development pressure.  The remarkable similarity of many of these stories (“Planning Commission Supports Additional Farmland Protection Measures”) illustrates how universal are the issues we’ve chosen to address with this foundation.

Recently, however, as so many fast-growing communities have begun to understand their fiscal situation after the financial crisis of 2008, we see more and more articles like THIS.  This week, no fewer than three newspapers have covered the budgetary conflicts between farmland and open-space conservation measures, and other budgetary priorities.  When governments are flush, the common value of farm and forest lands are clearly a priority the public values, and one we’ll pay to preserve.  When choices become tougher and, as in this linked article, we must discuss land conservation in the context of laying off Deputy Sheriffs, well, there’s a reason they call them “basic services.”

What’s interesting about this article, about Grand Rapids, is that the elected officials are looking at the problem regionally.  One board member counts the 25,000 acres the community wants to preserve, multiplies it by $4,000 per acre (presumably the going rate), and says, with a resignation obvious even in newsprint, that he’s looking for a hundred million dollars.  His conclusion is that the only place to find funds like that is government, and therefore the project is in peril.

We look at the same numbers, and the magnitude of the problem, and the importance of farm and forest lands to the public, tell us two things:  First, we cannot fail in the effort to conserve our productive land and agriculture.  Second, and more important, the effort cannot come from government alone, or from charity alone, or from the good intentions of legacy landowners.  In fact, the “hundred million dollar problem” in Grand Rapids leads us to the opposite conclusion: private-sector development like Bundoran Farm and other similar communities must be part of this solution.

Filed under: Architecture and Design, Baldwin Center for Preservation, Education and Inspiration, General