Farmland Protection Strategies

Ag Educators Learn Farmland Protection Strategies Designed for Local Communities

In just 10 years, Ohio lost 281,000 acres of prime farmland to urban development, spurring statewide interest in learning ways to sustain the land base. Photo by Dennis Reeder

Taking advantage of a new public interest in protecting farmland in Ohio, a nonprofit educational organization used a SARE professional development grant to train agricultural educators about land use issues. In five, one-day workshops held around the state, staff from American Farmland Trust (AFT) taught 173 extension educators, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) specialists and others about farmland protection policies in hopes that the trainers would expand the knowledge within their communities. The timing was ripe. AFT began the educational initiative after an Ohio task force identified farmland protection as a pressing issue and while 59 Ohio counties are forming farmland protection planning committees. The workshops focused on the local nature of land use by demonstrating how to conduct community preference surveys, develop tools and techniques to guide land use, and create comprehensive land use plans. In post-workshop surveys, participants indicated they planned to use the information in their counties and rated the information an 8.4 out of 10. Protecting farmland from poorly planned development, an issue of increasing concern nationwide, remains integral to sustainable agriculture because it provides a secure land base from which producers can try new profitable alternatives. For more information, go to www.sare.org/projects/ and search for ENC98-035

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