Life in Christian County, Kentucky...
Progress?I heard on the radio that Christian County, Kentucky is supposed to be one of the ten best places in the U.S. for growing corn. It's a shame that more and more of this county's best farmland is going under asphalt and concrete as Hopkinsville sprawls south toward Fort Campbell. I'm not against progress and new business. I just wish they'd redevelop some of the land we already have under concrete and asphalt.
2 comments:
We really need a paradigm shift. Even those of us who don't really want new hotels to replace all the cornfields have fallen prey to the notion that progress means growth means good.
Adaptive reuse and infill development of already built areas is good policy but there are -sadly, in my view - many reasons why communities and districts fail to do so. In Massachusetts, funding is available for new school infrastructure but not to renovate old buildings so so guess which option municipalities and school districts invariably go for?
In the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut, where we say we value farms and farmers as among our most thrreatened resources, we have protected 20% of the land area from development but only 1 in 7 of our acres with prime agricultural soils and not necessarily for agricultural purposes. We have protected the same low percentage of lands in agricultural landuse, but not figured out how to ensure a viable farm economy in a rapidly suburbanizing area with extremely high land values and limited markets for our predominant farm product: milk.
Keeping land available for agriculture, even if there is a farming hiatus, is preferable to paving and breaking up prime farmland soils. You can always clear trees and reestablish fields, but tearing up asphalt and infrastructure to farm again is a very rare thing indeed, if in fact it ever occurs. This is why communities that avoid land use planning still have to live with the consequences of that choice not to thoughtfully set aside some land for the future and keep those ag options open.
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