Farming as a Strategic Land Use:
Community Supported Agriculture
The Land Use
Committee has been casting about for new ways to preserve open space and
protect natural areas from encroaching development. Parcels bordering
natural areas should provide the best possible buffer from development
and the most gradual transition between urban and natural environments.
So we feel that diversified and sustainable small-scale agriculture is
an appropriate land use in these zones. This type of agriculture almost
always employs organic methods of production tailored to local soils,
microclimates, and native ecosystems.
In order to
promote conversion of existing monoculture farmlands into sustainable
agriculture uses, the Farmland Protection SubComittee is actively
investigating a number of ideas. One of the most promising is the
possibility of helping different types of entrepreneurial farming get a
foothold in McHenry County. “Entrepreneurial farming” is an umbrella
term for non-conventional forms of farmer cooperatives, value-added
merchandising of farm products, and direct connection to specialty
markets. Most entrepreneurial farms thrive because they capture much
more of the market value typically siphoned off into the costs and
profits of corporate retailers and distributors.
One type of
farm-direct marketing that has been expanding in the United States in
recent years is a grassroots movement known as Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA). A CSA farm can be organized in a variety of ways,
but usually urban shareholders purchase a portion of a local farm’s
product(s) in advance, and then receive the product(s) weekly during the
harvesting season(s). CSA farms very frequently use organic or
sustainable methods of production because of the greater end value of
the crops produced. Fresh vegetables are the most common crop, but the
only limits to what can be grown, harvested, and supplied this way are
the natural constraints of the region and the artificial constraints of
habit.
From a land
planning perspective, the ideal location for CSA’s or other types of
small-scale sustainable farms is either on the urban fringe close to the
markets that the farms would supply, or adjacent to conservation areas
where the farms’ open spaces act as productive buffer zones. Urging
county and city planners to incorporate designated “sustainable
agriculture” areas into their land use plans and zoning ordinances
would be one way of promoting conversion or protection of strategically
located open space. Well-established conservation tolls such as
easements and purchase of development rights could then be used to help
farmers in these zones make the transition to new methods of production
and marketing.
Another way of
moving toward the same goal would be to actively encourage and support
farmers who are shifting into new forms of production and marketing,
such as CSA’s. The environmental and economic potential of
entrepreneurial and sustainable farming is readily apparent, though
often minimized. It is becoming clearer every year that these types of
farming initiatives are probably the only hope for preserving
small-scale family farms, and the cultural values they embody, in the
face of the cut-throat competition that characterizes the global
marketplace.
More
about Community Supported Agriculture
|
Environmental
Defenders of McHenry County 
