To the editor:

At a recent forum on the future of farming hosted in Tiverton by the Rhode Island Food Policy Council, the director of Rhode Island’s Division of Agriculture, Ken Ayers, spoke of the impact of state funding for farmland protection. Yet, merely protecting farmland from development does not ensure that farmland will be farmed in the future.

As The American Farmland Trust’s Director of Land Protection Dennis Bidwell has put it, “It's not farmland without farmers. Our job may only be half done if we've only protected the land resource. We need to address the question of who is using it? And are we protecting the land for the purpose of productive agriculture? Twenty years ago, this wasn't on our agenda.”

Across the Farm Coast, land trusts in Tiverton, Little Compton, Westport and Dartmouth have locked up thousands of acres of what was once farmland for protection. But very little of what was protected to preserve our traditional, rural working landscape on the South Coast of New England is being farmed today. Take the farmer off the land and it ceases to be farmland. Left unmanaged, it becomes a neglected asset, where open fields and pastures bounded by stone walls revert to weed choked woods.

According to the National Young Farmers Coalition’s longterm plan, “Farmland Conservation 2.0: How Land Trusts Can Protect America’s Working Farms,” land trusts hold the key to farming for the next generation of farmers who don’t inherit land and can’t afford to buy land at market value. That is why the land trust mission of protecting farmland must evolve and expand into providing access to farmland. This is done by offering creative long-term leases and farm purchase opportunities for young farmers who are eager to plant roots in our mild coastal climate with its long growing season and close proximity to dense urban markets in Providence and Boston.  

The Westport Land Conservation Trust and the Aquidneck Land Trust have done good work on this front already. It is time for the Tiverton Land Trust, the Little Compton Agricultural Conservancy Trust, the Sakonnet Preservation Association and the Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust to catch up. I have spoken to board members of each of these organizations, and all say they would like to do more. 

State officials from Rhode Island and Massachusetts and the Rhode Island Land Trust Council should convene a summit of land trusts across the Farm Coast to look at what has been done in other regions and what needs to happen here. Protecting farmland is not enough to keep the “farm” in Farm Coast. Land trusts must provide farmers more opportunities to access land and start (or expand) farm businesses if farming is to have a future here.

Carter Wilkie

Little Compton