The Little-Known Farmland Preservation Struggle in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania -23/09/08

John Bacher PhD

For those who have been active in farmland preservation in Ontario over the last thirty years, it is frustrating that the high dramas we have been engaged in to stop sprawl have not been the focus of widespread television coverage or cinematic drama. In this regard, we can take some comfort in the fact that this absence of publicity is also shared by those who defend the distinctive and very beautiful working landscape of one of the biggest remaining concentrations of horse powered and ecologically sustainable agriculture in North America. The sights of hundreds of horse powered buggies going to planning meetings to protest subdivisions is certainly worthy of Hollywood and CNN, but has yet to be captured on Television or in cinema.

One of the reasons that Canadians have not taken more interest in farmland preservation in the United States is because of the wrong assumption that the mess south of the border is a result of some constitutional problem relating to property rights. It is not however, the American Constitution which is at fault but the development bias of the state governments that decline to use the zoning powers which the courts have clearly said they have.

A strange but revealing place that documents the power of US governments to zone agricultural land is the book edited by Donald B Kraybill, "The Amish and the State". It was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2003.

In "Amish and the State", Attorney Elizabeth Pace who has been involved in a great variety of environmental issues involving Amish communities, details how US state governments have the power to impose the zoning controls that are required to effectively protect agricultural land from urban sprawl. These have been upheld even though courts acknowledge in cases such as Codorus Township versus Rogers, that agricultural zoning does substantially reduce land values. She notes that, "To withstand judicial scrutiny, a zoning ordinance must promote the public health, safety or welfare, its regulations must be related to the purpose it serves." This principle was upheld in Euclid versus Ambler Realty Company, a case dating back to 1926.

In reviewing the dramatic history of land use planning debates in Lancaster County, I have found a great similarity to Niagara. The key prophet was Alan Funk who loved to quote from the biblical Book of Deuteronomy that "it is our duty to God as well as one to another, to honour the land, not destroy it, and to respect the plant and animal life on the land." He became a founding member of the Lancaster County Conservation District Board in 1980, on which he served till 1995. Funk's battles are detailed in another remarkable book, David Walbert's "Garden Spot, published by Oxford University Press, in 2002.

While Funk used zoning to protect farmland, he also made effective use of conservation

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easements. Originally only having funding from county government, Funk eventually persuaded the state legislature to support his easement program. This was done through effective lobbying, using such methods as phoning state legislators in the early hours of the morning.

Many of the programs developed in Pennsylvania to protect farmland actually exceed the powers in Ontario. This can be seen with the Agricultural Security Area, a devise, like the Greenbelt which is expected to protect large blocks of agricultural land. Unlike the Greenbelt however, the Agricultural Security Area, restricts government ability to expropriate land. This is popular among Lancaster county farmers, since it will make it virtually impossible to build an expressway through their community. A major defect of the Ontario Greenbelt Act is that it contains no such restrictions on new expressways, and many are planned through it. (notably, the mid-peninsula expressway)

Agricultural easement programs in Pennsylvania are far more aggressive than those anywhere else in the United States. This is because of the unusual instrument used by the Lancaster Farmland Trust. Like most trusts, it does purchase easements on existing farms. In some cases however, the Trust actually goes out and purchases land owned by speculators, and then sells it back to farmers (frequently traditional old order or "Plain" farmers), with an easement on the land to prevent development in the future. Since the Lancaster Farmland Trust had become a way to effectively drive land speculators out of Lancaster County and increase the power of the horse powered Plain farming community, farmers who had been dubious in the past began to sell easements to it.

Can you imagine an Ontario government actually cancelling its plans for expressways through farmland and funding land trusts to go about purchasing farmlands for Plain farmers from speculators and then putting easements on it so that they will be protected in perpetuity? Public and government understanding that such policies are actually being carried out in the United States should make it a lot easier to have them come to fruition here.