The state Department of Conservation and Natural Resouces is defending itself against the suggestion that its regulations that exclude farming on land preserved through one of its grant programs pit agriculture against conservation when it comes to protecting open space.
In a series of emails sent last week to the MediaNews Group by DCNR Press Secretary Wesley Robinson, the spokesman said grants awarded to landowners through its Community Conservation Partnership Programs (C2P2) were meant specifically for recreation and conservation and did not call for either farmland preservation or other uses.
Robinson cited the underlying legislation that established the grant program — the so-called Keystone Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund of 1993 — as calling specifically for land preservation that is for public use, and that includes constraints approved by legislators and through a public referendum.
“The idea that this is an either/or proposition greatly misrepresents the issues at hand,” Robinson said in an email Tuesday. “Preserving farmland and land conservation are not in direct opposition.”
The spokesman also bristled at the characterization of the regulations as a “restriction” on farming.
“This is not a restriction,” he said in the same email. “The funding legislation requires that grants are awarded for public recreation and conservation purposes. DCNR supports projects to conserve (land) for recreation and that is our agency’s purpose. In the same vein, the (state) Department of Agriculture does not award grants for conserving land for public recreation.
“This is what lawmakers and the public have decided upon,” he wrote. “The grants are for parks, recreation and/or wildlife habitat. The lands we fund are open to the public for outdoor recreation, which is for the public to enjoy and use.”
The issue was raised by a leader in the Chester County farming community last month, and bolstered by one of the longtime farmers who lost the use of hundreds of acres of land on which he grew row crops when the property was placed under conservation using C2P2 funds. The agency’s regulations have also been targeted by the local Farm Bureau, an agricultural advocacy and support organization.
Gary Westlake, chairman of the county Agricultural Development Council, told the county commissioners during a presentation in honor of National Agriculture Day that leased farmland in the county was disappearing as landowners used the C2P2 funds, as well as federal Land and Water Conservation grants, to protect their property against development.
He pointed to two large conservation efforts at Bryn Coed Farms in West Vincent and Crebilly Farms in Westtown where farmers had lost access to the land they had leased for years.
“In essence, we are preserving farmland that will no longer be farmed,” Westlake said as a crowd of residents listened at the commissioners’ meeting on March 29. The DCNR regulations, he declared, “put farmers out of business.
According to Robinson, C2P2 grants support the preservation of land for both recreation and conservation use, but the $90 million in C2P2 grants approved in 2022 were primarily used for recreation, and not conservation. In the county, DCNR funds have been used to protect around 10,000 acres in the county for conservation or recreation purposes, while 43,000 acres of farmland have been preserved using state and county funds, he said.
“Most acquisitions funded by the program are not actively farmed, and if they are it is often via lease and not the family who owns the property,” he said.
In an interview Thursday, Westlake stressed that his remarks were not meant to “pick a fight” with conservation efforts.
“Farmers are residents also, and we benefit from open space and the sense of place it creates,” he said. “It is not that farmers don’t want to see open space. But as less and less leased land is available we are diminishing what is available.
Westlake contended, however, that he has not been able to understand the “why” behind the regulations.
“They hide behind the regulations, but nobody wants to say, ‘This is why it came about.’ This is the gist of our frustration. Tell me why it says it. Everybody says it is in the act. Everybody seems to hide behind the language that benefits them.”
Indeed, the use of protected land for farming is not intrinsically detrimental. At two popular nature preserves owned by Natural Lands — the ChesLen Preserve in Newlin and Stroud Preserve in East Bradford — there are row crops such as corn and soybeans being farmed. Neither property, however, was conserved using C2P2 funds.
The issue has drawn the attention of the Chester County Farm Bureau and has been raised in. Harrisburg.
This past fall, the Farm Bureau adopted a policy position that recommended that the C2P2 grants be changed by the legislature to allow agriculture production on the preserved open space. Similar language was then later adopted by the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau in its 2023 Policy Book.
One of the state legislators from the county who Westlake had pointed to as being supportive of his concerns, however, said that she was unaware of any dispute between farmers and land conservationists.
“I have been on the House Agriculture and Rural Affairs committee for several years and this issue has never been brought before us as a concern of the Ag community,” state Rep. Christina Sappey, D-158th, of East Marlborough, said in response to questions about the matter. “I stay in close touch with the Ag community and they know they can reach out to discuss their concerns with me any time.
“I’m not sure we are comparing apples to apples in a conversation that pits farming and open space against each other,” Sappey wrote. “Both of these areas are of tremendous importance to Chester County residents and I don’t view them as in competition.”
But Rick Schlosberg, a Thornbury, Delaware County, farmer who had been leasing hundreds of acres at the Bryn Coed Farms property until the land was placed under conservation by Natural Lands using DCNR funds, says he certainly sees a problem.
Source: dailylocal.com
Photo Credit: gettyimages-harvepino
Categories: Pennsylvania, Crops, Rural Lifestyle, Sustainable Agriculture