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Home » Resource Center » e-Newsletter » April 2006 » The Importance of the Rural Agricultural Landscape

The Importance of the Rural Agricultural Landscape

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By Vicky Welch, F&E Board Member

It’s basic Homeland Security isn’t it? The open space of our rural/ag lands is beautiful, as well as useful, and may become increasingly necessary in this age of peak oil. Most European towns have designated strict agriculture-only zones nearby – a lesson learned from the food shortage experience in their homeland after the two world wars. In today’s world of decreasing fossil fuel availability, its only good sense to protect our rural/ag landscape.

While local, sustainably grown foods may have a higher price tag precisely because they are not monocropped, some say it’s actually the cheapest food you can buy.
Not only is protecting the rural/ag landscape the only wise course in terms of food security, farmlands and other open spaces frequently provide the kind of visual appeal that attracts tourists who then come and create new markets for local products. While local, sustainably grown foods may have a higher price tag precisely because they are not monocropped, some say it’s actually the cheapest food you can buy. As sustainable farmer Joel Salatin puts it, "All of the costs are figured into the price. Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water—of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap."

Cheaper agri-biz products from far away do not include the real costs.

If you value the integrity and quality of your food, you’ll get the best guarantee of its worth by buying it locally.
Small farms tend to be diverse farms, which means they’re not only less susceptible to disease but also more ecologically sound. If you value the integrity and quality of your food, you’ll get the best guarantee of its worth by buying it locally, where you can talk to the producer about their production practices and perhaps even visit their farm. Outstanding freshness, nutritional superiority, taste and keeping your food money in the community are other benefits. You get what you pay for. If we are what we eat, fostering local food production through the protection of local agriculture is important to our physical well-being.

If you want to keep seeing green pastures, you need to support local growers. Too often little thought is given to the fact that arable land makes up only a small percentage of our planet. Only too frequently good farmland is not protected. For example, a high-tech industry complex in Quincy is currently being built on top of some of the best soil in the region. Losing this prime soil to a high-tech complex means we must spend the extra energy it takes to farm in less than perfect conditions and energy is getting expensive these days. Washington State has initiated a Farmland Protection Program to help with this issue as can local agriculture zoning. The most powerful support currently, however, comes from a local and regional commitment to purchase local farm products.

Our farmscapes are now threatened by an increasingly globalized economy that transports food to local supermarkets from wherever in the world it can be produced most cheaply. The continuous advertising of food based on cost versus quality is another issue. Both are responsible for lowering the prices local farmers receive for their products, making it difficult and frequently impossible for local farmers to keep farming. The fight of the multinational food industry to stop providing people with production information and country-of-origin labeling makes it hard for people to know what they’re buying.

If there is any chance at all of saving those wonderful open landscapes we so enjoy, it rests with individual food purchasing decisions (at least until national priorities change). Find a farmer you can trust and "EAT YOUR VIEW" as one bumper sticker puts it.

Vicky Welch, a Farming and the Environment Board member, is the owner/operator of Sunny Pine Farm, an organic farming and dairy operation in the Methow Valley.  She is founder and current Chair of theMethow Valley Citizens Council, whose purpose is to promote and maintain the rural and agricultural character of the Methow Valley, as well as a board member of the Methow Conservancy, a local land trust.