Message clear from AFT: No farms, no food

Senior fellow and senior program adviser Julia Freedgood from the American Farmland Trust visited the Wayne County trustees recently through funding from a Pathways to Prosperity grant, and she made it clear the farmland in the county is valuable and needs to be protected because without farms there is no food.

“Why I think agriculture is so important to the future of Wayne County is that it is some of the nation’s best farmland,” Freedgood said from the podium in the Shisler Center on the OSU campus.

The mission of the AFT is to protect American farmland by promoting sound farming practices and keeping farmers on their land.

“What we do is identify the best land in the nation for food production,” she said. “And we identify threats (to the farmland) from different kinds of development.”

According to an OSU study in 2017, Wayne County was home to 250 farms with $5.4 million in sales through intermediated markets and $2.8 million through direct-to-consumer markets. There were 94 farms that reported a total of $13.9 million in organic sales.

However, the report said earning a living through farming is increasingly difficult due to market changes, an aging farm population, farm stress and development pressure.

“Development is really important and necessary,” Freedgood said. “But so is farmland, and both have to be balanced. Looking at the past is a good guide, but we must look at what is coming in the future. On (Route) 83 there was a new Meijer built on prime farmland with room for additional stores.”

Adding fuel to the fire of dwindling farmland is economics. The price of prime farmland is at an all-time high, and farmers who do not have a succession plan are experiencing financial motivation to sell to developers.

With the viability of farming in doubt, the possibility of a food shortage can be avoided with proper planning and farmland protection. The Agricultural Success Team is working with the Wayne County Planning Department and Wayne County commissioners to ensure guardrails are in place to prevent a food shortage scenario from happening by offering land use, regulatory tools and educational sessions to county departments, township officials and interested groups.

A hot topic at the moment is solar power. Companies want to lease farmland and convert it into solar farms. Freedgood said solar power grids could be incorporated into rooftops, in ditches, parking lots or on brownfield — abandoned or underutilized properties including but not limited to industrial and commercial facilities where redevelopment or expansion may be complicated by possible environmental contamination — rather than on prime farmland.

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem, Freedgood urges people to visit their website at www.farmland.org and assess if the community is doing enough to be farm-friendly.

For more information or questions about preservation and land use, call the Wayne County Planning Department at 330-287-5420.

Dan Starcher is the public communications coordinator for Wayne County.