Feb./Mar. 2010: Letters from Readers & Eaters
Some of our readers disagreed strongly with Joel Salatin’s column in our Dec./Jan. 2010 issue (“Rebel with a Cause: Beware Those Sincere Conservation Easements”). Below are several letters we received as well as Joel’s response to those letters. Please also see our response here. We invite readers to continue this discussion by posting comments on the page with Joel’s column (here). You can also read the article “Accountable Omnivores” (Summer 2008) which describes the successful easement at Mount Vernon Farm.
I am sorry that your Dec./Jan. 2010 issue did not carry another view about conservation easements to balance the one expressed by Joel Salatin. The fact is that 20.6 percent of all private land in Rappahannock County is now protected by conservation easements, including many working farms owned by multigenerational families, none of which—so far as I know—have encountered the sorts of problems feared by Mr. Salatin.
My wife and I donated a conservation easement on our part of this family property in 1977 and then later bought from my brother a tract that was also easement-protected. A few years ago, for family reasons, we merged the two easements. In the process, we gave up a superfluous development right and sold the resulting tax credit (at $0.75 on the dollar) to someone who could use it. This allowed us to put $100,000 in the bank—a way of getting cash out of our land without having to sell any of it.
This same issue of Flavor included an article about Biniek and Hoffman’s Belle Meade Farm [“Putting Their Eggs in Many Different Baskets”]. Unfortunately, the author did not mention Biniek and Hoffman’s 2006 easement gift protecting 130.6 acres. In addition, several of the Rappahannock County farms that advertise in your magazine are easement-protected. It is too bad that Flavor is now on record with an anti-easement article. —Bob Dennis, Flint Hill, VA
I am responding to a recent article in Flavor written by Joel Salatin about conservation easements in Virginia. When I first heard that an article on conservation easements was to appear in your magazine, I was delighted; too many people have not heard of this program. Those who have heard often are not familiar with the details and do not fully appreciate the importance of conservation easements for the future of productive private farm and forest lands in Virginia. Mr. Salatin obviously falls into the second category. Even worse, he misled readers by cherry-picking and misconstruing information about easements.
When my wife and I placed our land into an easement, we were strongly encouraged by both Virginia Outdoors Foundation and Valley Conservation Council to keep our farm in some form of productive land management, utilizing good land-stewardship guidelines. In addition, we are fortunate to live in a neighborhood of farms, many of which enjoy the positive benefits of conservation easements. Most easement holders with whom I am familiar have productive farms involved in a wide array of agricultural and forestry commodities. Not one easement donor in our neighborhood plans to create a “wilderness” out of their easement.
I am sorry you chose to publish such inaccurate and maligned information about such an important topic. Productive farm and forest lands are disappearing at an alarming rate in Virginia. This article does a disservice to voluntary efforts to conserve the open lands we have left. We and several of my neighbors now have a different taste for Flavor. —Mike Pelton, Middlebrook, VA
I am bewildered by Joel Salatin’s article. I hope you will solicit clarifications from someone from Virginia Outdoors Foundation [VOF] and the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program [CREP]. In my experience, the donor of the easement (that is, the landowner) makes the rules that apply to the property, in consultation with the easement-holding organization. I never heard of a land trust requiring that no structures could be built, unless that is what the landowner wanted. (Joel says you cannot build even a doghouse on easement land!) When we donated our easement to VOF, we, the landowners, specified what types of structures could be built on the property as part of the easement. With regard to CREP, I thought the easement applied only to the riparian buffer area, not the entire farm area. I wonder if the farm he is talking about has both CREP and some other kind of easement.
Regarding CREP fencing, I have seen many CREP fences that curve around in the landscape with the topography, whereas Joel says “the government-built fences, with their straight lines and square corners, assault the topography.” I can’t figure out why he wants to say that.
I hope you have an informed person explain more accurately these matters in a future issue of the magazine. —Beverly Hunter, Amissville, VA
The points Joel made in his article on conservation are very challenging for people to hear but couldn’t be more accurate. It’s challenging to hear because there are many folks who have put a great deal of thought, time, and effort into the design and execution of these conservation strategies. I have encountered both the CREP projects and the conservation easements he mentions in the article. We actually implemented two CREP projects on our land in Rockbridge County and the result was in fact a very nice, very expensive fence along the creek and a water system for the cattle that became inoperable within two years, if that.
My comment would be this: Like most government programs where you are spending someone else’s (taxpayers’) money, you have less incentive to extract value from the dollars spent. A few years ago, the U.S. government, Ducks Unlimited, and several other well-intentioned organizations that I generally respect and appreciate paid for us to plant 1,500 trees along the creek—during the worst drought in 10 years. Because the format of the program requires everything be done within 12 months, we had to plant them at that time and, needless to say, they are all dead. Why did we utilize the program if it was so bad? Because we were lazy and the government offered to build a big, free fence. So why not?
Since that time we have started a rotational grazing program on our 300 acres of pasture, and after looking at government programs we instead installed a water system ourselves that brings water to every two-acre paddock on our farm. And as Joel mentioned, when designing our water system, we were unable to build ponds along our creek because it remains under the CREP contract. As both a CREP customer and a taxpayer, I can say this program falls victim to the problem that so many other government programs do: too much funding and ineffective implementation/metrics, which results in success being measured by how many checks they write and how many fences they build.
The other program Joel mentions is conservation easements that place land under certain restrictions, mostly pertaining to building and infrastructure development; in return the land owner receives a tax credit for the amount by which the land value is reduced. I also speak from experience here as my family has considered such a program on our land. I believe, however, that this program is a step in exactly the wrong direction. If we are afraid that our land is going to become developed into a subdivision or Walmart, the solution is exactly not to try to put up blind barriers to development and further decrease land value. Instead we must figure out a way for landowners and the broader community to place a higher value on land used for things other than strip malls. We do that by creating value-added businesses on those lands that enhance rather than destroy the natural beauty. Although there have been some very successful works of conservation by the government in the past (the national parks come to mind), I am certain that I do not want to place the fate of our land in its possession, which is what these easements do by placing them under contract with the government. These contracts are no better than the government that upholds them, and that government is no better than its people. If we ourselves can’t wriggle from the grip of indiscriminate consumerism that causes urban sprawl and the destruction of wild spaces, then there is no chance that these contracts will protect farms. I support Joel in suggesting that we instead create value-added enterprises on these lands that have imbedded in their business model the protection and preservation of nature. —Joshua Grizzle, Lexington, VA
Joel Salatin responds— The reason my article used personal experiences with easements and easement holders is because I am not a lawyer and I don’t spend a lot of time pouring over heady documents. I actually make a full-time living from real farming, and my experiences reflect a boots-on-the-ground reality.
Many times, things are not as easy as they seem. I wonder how many of these irritated respondents have tried to place an imbedded farm-scale poultry processing facility on their farms, or build an on-farm retail store, or graze pigs in their woodlands, or build a commercial kitchen to create value-added farm products. How about building housing for farm workers?
While I’m sure many people have had a positive experience so far, I dared to explain my own encounters with these agreements that often restrict Polyface-style innovation. You can say that I don’t understand or that I am dealing with poorly worded agreements, but my actual experiences show clearly that easement writers and property owners often can’t imagine what 21st-century localized food systems will look like. Farms will not look anything like they do today, and we are defining landscapes with frozen “forever” terminology. Forever is a long time.
As for topographically sensitive fences, I haven’t seen a CREP fence yet that adhered to my principle of land-appreciative fencing. I suspect the defender has never visited our farm and seen what crooked fences really look like. That I would be vilified for encouraging people to be careful is quite shocking indeed.
Finally, I deeply appreciate Flavor’s courage to let this discussion happen. Less-intrepid editors would pursue a more acceptable ideological myopia. To assume that easements are the only, or even the best, way to preserve farmland is to erect sacred cows and limit creativity. Reading widely, and even reading disagreeable things, is the way to awareness. So if these easement lovers think Flavor has gone to the dark side, they should at least continue reading the magazine to see what shenanigans the dark side contemplates next.
May lively discussions ensue.
Editor’s note: Please let us know what you think by posting comments here.
