Agriculture & Parkland Greenways
As rural and exurban areas start seeing growth pressures coming to their communities, there is often tension, frustration, and just plain fear over the negative impacts of “creeping” development. People living in these affected areas, even if they’re recent and non-agricultural residents, naturally want to find ways to oppose changes to their chosen way of life.
Agriculture is often the primary industry in these areas, and it is a big business — supporting, through its taxes, the schools, government revenues, and small businesses regionally. But agriculture is more than just a big business — it's a lifestyle and the core underpinning of the identity of the area for the residents. It’s a great way of life and, while it may not be clearly expressed, the reason folks want to live out here “in God’s Country”!
Nobody wants to see this way of life washed away just for the sake of developing places for newcomers to move here and spoil what we have! We want to keep what we have, maintain the views and vistas (provided by successful farming operations) that we love. It’s a real dilemma for a rural community.
But people innately know they must grow to provide opportunity and jobs for their children to stay in the area, support the schools with an expanding tax base, and enable growing revenues for existing businesses. Without growth, a community withers and dies. Pulling up the drawbridge and trying to stop change just distorts change, usually bringing about unintended negative consequences. This is the second part of that real dilemma.
These are not unreasonable fears. Things will change regardless, and communities must think ahead to proactively prepare for these inevitable changes. Incorporating ways for agriculture to continue in the community is important to include in the planning process early. Waiting until growth is upon the community is too late. The options to accommodate agriculture into the developing community’s plans are lost. We’ve often said the right things about respecting agriculture in our planning process, but have done nothing to avert the unintended consequences. Without a plan to enable successful farming at a realistic scale, it comes down to a slow-motion squeezing out of the farming community.
Some farmers will sell out early with the first bursts of growth. They leave due to the price they can get now, or trade for land further out, or for personal reasons (succession, age or health, finances, etc.). It’s their right and a good decision for them at their time in life. But I contend there is a core group within most communities that, given a viable option, would like to continue to farm. It appears to me that this group finally relents only when development pressures make moving equipment through their area so difficult that they give up, looking for other areas to maintain their agricultural lifestyle. For the non-farming residents, the views and vistas they moved out here for are then gone. It’s not just the money—we make it too hard to continue farming here as the area evolves. With early planning, I believe we can resolve some (not all) of these issues.
In parallel to these farming families, new residents consciously move out to the exurban areas because they want to live surrounded by the farms, views, and lifestyles inherent in the area. Otherwise, it’s more convenient to live closer in.
To continue the uniqueness of the rural communities and thoughtfully grow as necessary, we need to work to maintain agricultural corridors as an integral component of our developing community’s plans. A Parkway/Greenway plan designed primarily as a park system cannot work successfully for modern farming uses, but a thoughtful Greenways Plan, implemented early, can accommodate multiple uses for all members of the evolving community.
With local farm family input, we can learn to right-size fields for effective production, not just park-like settings. Farmers only need to access their fields 6–8 times per season, not 52 weeks per year. To connect working farm fields off-road, with greenway connections for moving equipment—planting, fertilizing, harvesting seasonally — takes local knowledge. It takes planning.
I believe a thoughtful land use plan can contemplate farming and new land uses that provide alternate shared usage of the greenways as proposed. We can then make our communities unique, prosperous, and a place where everyone can enjoy living.
Additional Thoughts
I. Trail Systems/Access for Agriculture
Greenways in traditional Park Systems seem to have four trail types:
Walking trails
Bicycle trails
Equestrian trails
Motorized trails (golf cart, atv, etc.)
I’m proposing an additional trail system category:
Agricultural Connectivity Trails
Size, scale, topography, drainage, and trail base, surrounding uses, and access for equipment and grain removal all need to be determined specifically for each area. In addition, some ag uses need additional screening or protection—livestock as an example. Some trail types can have shared use, and other types definitely cannot. Ag trails can be shut off (electronically) for use as farmers need.
II. Winners and Losers
Community and Regional Plans can create Reserved Areas or Zones for development types or uses, including Agriculture. Connection Points for Agriculture Greenways can be designed to traverse those other more intensely developed areas.
Transferable Development Rights (TDRs), based on price per developed use (units or square footage), can be created and used as a calculation methodology to compensate for non- or lightly developed land uses in a Community Plan. Allowing for greater density on some parcels then makes open land for ag uses and more equitable values for the land owners.
There are other ways for land owners to balance out valuations, including Land Trust Agreements as part of a sale, reducing capital gains. This is a complicated issue that needs to be fleshed out in detail on a case-by-case basis.