Legislation needed to protect farmers, farmland

Just as Steam Mill and Sheffield Mills no longer have water-driven milling operations and boats can't be moored in Port Williams, is it possible that some day there won't be any great meadows left in Grand Pre? The tractors rumbling through Kentville last week got a lot of folks thinking.

Talking with Kings County Warden Fred Whalen the day after he voted for a subdivision in Weston, I could tell he feels as torn as many. A strong advocate of buying local, the warden also saw an economic benefit to the Weston project since he says this county has 5,000 acres of unused agricultural land.

American columnist Anna Quindlen says, “Many have the attitude toward development that we once had toward smoking: sure it's bad, but it won't be a problem for me.” In the eastern Valley these days, people are butting up against a problem with development.

This region, Niagara and the Okanogan boast the three most fertile soils in Canada. Obviously this productive land is a finite and irreplaceable resource. But how do you tell that to farmers who can't make a living raising hogs or chicken?

Approximately half of the two billion acres of land in the United States is working agricultural land, but estimates suggest that every minute of every day they lose two acres of agricultural land to development. Farmland is desirable for building because it tends to be flat, well drained and affordable. Hereabouts, we have a bizarre case of rural beauty drawing city people and retirees to clog the bucolic countryside that attracted them in the first place.

Voluntary Purchase of Development Rights programs have been gaining in interest in the U.S. in recent years. Under the program, landowners voluntarily sell their development rights for the difference between the value of the land if it was sold to a developer and its value as farmland.

Forty-two years ago, California passed landmark legislation offering farmers a lower property tax rate in exchange for the promise to continue farming their land. The law, the Williamson Act, has helped preserve 17 million of the state's 29 million acres of farmland and provided a counterbalancing force to development pressure.

Certainly the food and farming system contributes to Nova Scotia's gross domestic product and employs a percentage of the labor force. Agricultural land serves a larger environmental purpose. On the other hand, new development requires services such as schools, roads and fire/police protection, whereas privately owned and managed farmland requires very few services.

In the U.S., Cost of Community Services (COCS) studies have shown that farm, forest and open lands more than pay for the municipal services they require, while taxes on residential uses, on average, fail to cover costs.

If California found another way, surely we can, too. It seems to me that municipal leaders should not be the only politicians on the hot seat over development. Both the provincial and federal levels need to get involved. After all, in the European Union they pay farmers not to grow crops. Somehow we must cultivate a society that puts less value on greed and more on the common good. It is in the greater public interest to preserve farmland. How can we do a better job?

Prime agricultural land in growth areas is still at risk. Concern continues in Greenwich and Port Williams because of the long-standing pattern of accepting short-term gain ahead of the highest and best use of the land. The issue is not going to go away like freighters on the Cornwallis River.