In the News

from the The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, MD 6.21.03

State serves as model for land preservation; Michigan officials admire local protected farmland 

Officials from Michigan, a state that is losing 10 acres of farmland every hour to development, came to Maryland yesterday to look at the results of land preservation, smart growth and redevelopment of urban areas.

After visiting a new housing subdivision in Montgomery County, meeting with former Gov. Parris N. Glendening, and touring several permanently preserved farms in Montgomery and Carroll counties, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm offered high praise to Maryland leaders.

"You are so far ahead of the game in Maryland," said Granholm, a Democrat elected to her first term in November. "If we had started when you did, we would be seeing results now. This state has done a beautiful job thinking ahead and preserving green space and farmland. It is a real credit to all those who said 'enough' to development."

Soon after her election, Granholm made land preservation a priority and has asked legislators to fund agricultural protection programs. Although Maryland started preservation efforts in 1980, Michigan has only begun to recognize the need "to balance economic development with the need to preserve the state's natural resources," Granholm said.

Michigan has preserved about 14,000 acres statewide, while in Carroll County, long a national leader in farmland protection, 42,000 acres are permanently safeguarded from development.
"We are learning from the experts in Maryland and bringing those lessons home," Granholm said.

The governor was one of 120 participants in the ninth annual Ultimate Farmland Preservation tour as it traveled through Montgomery, Carroll, Baltimore and Harford counties on a five-day trip that also includes stops in New Jersey and southern Pennsylvania. The group included state legislators, municipal and county officials, town planners and many farmers.

Glendening, who is nationally known for his Smart Growth initiatives, met with the group in Montgomery County. The tour started in Gaithersburg with a look at an affordable housing project built in an existing community and went on to several rural areas. A town planner from Michigan, Sherrin Hood, was making her second farm tour.

"For a planner, the tour is the best learning experience you can have," Hood said. "It touches on everything and gets you thinking."

Before leaving Carroll County, the tour stopped at Windsor Manor Farm, a 150-acre grain and dairy operation outside New Windsor that is part of a 10,000-acre parcel of protected land.

"The idea is to introduce people to successful preservation programs," said Ralph E. Grossi, a third-generation farmer from Marin County, Calif., and president of American Farmland Trust, which organized the tour. "Why not go to a place with the most experienced, longest-running lab in the country?"

David Skjaerlund, president of Midwest Land Legacies, has helped organize all nine tours. The rolling green hills and farmscapes participants saw yesterday will look the same 50 years from now, he said.

"This shows that if you take the first steps to preserve, you will end up with what they have here, 42,000 acres," he said.

In 1979, Carroll set a goal of preserving 100,000 acres over a 40-year span. It was the first county in Maryland to apply for state preservation funds, long before neighboring counties had their programs ready. Carroll officials began funding the preservation program that same year. Nearly 25 years later, it has reached 40 percent of its goal, a milestone it will celebrate in November.

Midwestern states - such as Michigan, known for an agricultural diversity that produces more than 100 food and fiber crops - did not feel the same urgency to protect land 25 years ago, but now urban sprawl is rapidly grabbing up farmland, said Grossi.

"The state has had a high rate of loss over the last eight years and is trying to develop a preservation program with minimal funding," Grossi said. "Officials would like to make it as integrated as Maryland's."

Although many states are facing fiscal constraints this year, Grossi is urging continued funding for agricultural preservation.

"We can make a strong case that what is good for conservation is also good for the taxpayer," he said. "This program saves the costs of infrastructure. Rapidly growing states must plan for growth with agriculture in mind."