When European settlers arrived more than 350 years ago, it was said that the Eastern forests were so expansive that a squirrel could travel from the Chesapeake Bay to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground.

Most of the broad, open views that we associate today with a drive in the country are essentially manmade. The fields we pass were likely farms that went fallow as farmers sold out or left to farm in the Midwest and California after WWII.

East Coast farms face multiple threats: cheap imports, competition from huge farms, an aging farm population that often earns the minimum wage, the relentless pressure of development and a lack of infrastructure to bring products to market.

Protect Land by Farming It

If you want to preserve “viewscapes” you can do what Chef Dan Barber’s grandmother did in Great Barrington, MA: Farm your open land, or lease it to someone else to farm. Keep it in sustainable and responsible production.

Both you and the surrounding countryside will receive all manner of benefits.

Towns and landowners have a number of options to protect their agricultural heritage, including:

• Protective Rural Zoning: zoning of a very low density. This is one of the most effective ways to protect rural and agricultural land and to maintain a critical mass of land required to support agricultural economies without buying conservation easements.
• Conservation Easements: a legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government whereby a landowner sells or donates the rights to develop his or her property to a conservation organization. When development rights are sold or donated, the land can never be developed.
• Transfer of Development Rights (TDR): a legal agreement that allows a developer (who wants to build at a higher density than is permitted) to purchase or trade for additional development rights from a willing seller who owns land in an area designated for preservation. (Source)

These well-structured and tested programs run into well-organized business and real estate interests. Last year I sat in on an open space planning session in the charming town of Millerton, NY. An audience member worked hard to discredit a team presenting a conservation framework. It turns out he was a real estate agent looking to protect a sale of a large farm. His groundwork paid dividends. Not that night but months later, when the Town tabled the plan—two years in development—without explanation.

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Keeping Open Space Open