Smart Growth and Farms

September 2009

We, the 1000 Friends of Maryland have understood all along that Smart Growth are two sides of one coin, a viable and healthy countryside on one side and thriving cities, towns and villages on the other.
We know that Towns and Cities will never be the vibrant places we want them to be, no matter how many incentives for redevelopment, as long as the floodgates are wide open to convert farm after farm and forest after forest into yet another subdivision, yet another shopping center and as long as town and country continue to dissolve into the homogenous hodgepodge of sprawl.
We also know that there will never be enough money to buy our way out of sprawl through buying enough development rights to really make a sound balance between town and countryside work.
Who is a natural steward of the land? Who is dependent on keeping land free of erosion and of sprawl? Who understands healthy soils, clean water and the weather? Who can produce food close to our homes? Who can grow healthy local food we can trust? But also: Who has been under economic pressure to the point of that extinction is a real possibility?
Yes, you guessed it, the Maryland family farmer, this figure which we recognize from our children’s books but rarely encounter anymore in real life!
What if farmers wouldn’t be forced to grow houses as their last crop? What if they and their children kept seeding, feeding and planting? What if they preserved with their farms our cultural landscapes and heritage? What if they continued to be one of Maryland’s strong economical pillars?
Not a bad idea, is it?
The point of our event tonight is, that with farmers remaining farmers and farms remaining farms, both, our rural places and our urban places will be better off.
Jim Baird of the Farmland Trust can assure us that this isn’t just a romantic notion born in the minds of a few urban granola yuppies or a reactionary throwback to times past. Helping our farmers to stay farmers is a sustainable, safe and progressive solution and as such vital for the future of our State and indeed, our country.