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BY GERALD OCHS
Rappahannock News Special Writer | At a workshop on Oct. 13 sponsored by the American Farmland Trust (AFT) and Fauquier County, AFT’s Mid-Atlantic Director Mary Heinricht led a group of nearly fifty farmers, county planners, conservationists, and government officials in the review and development of strategies for farmland protection. ! As she stressed, farming is essential for the vijability of the Commonwealth: agriculture generates 12.3 percent, or nearly $36 billion, of toltal sales in Virginia, and accounts for almost ten percent of state jobs. Despite the importance of agriculture to its well-being, Virginia is; the only mid-Atlantic state without a farmlaud protection program or strategy, and it loses some 45,000 acres of farmland to development each year. | Farmland is essential to Virginia’s prosperity for reasons that we in Rappahannock understand only too well. As Ms. Heinricht noted, farmland must be saved: to ensure food security and economic well-being; to protect natural resources; to invest in community infrastructure (significantly less public money is' spend where agricultural land is protected and where development is concentrated in nonfarm areas); to sustain a high quality of life; and because the food export market is growing and US farm production is critical for the world’s food supply.
Further, community service costs are significantly lower in farm/forest and open land areas than in residential areas: for $1 in taxes received, for example, it can cost as little as $.20 to provide services to such areas, while it can cost $1.60 to provide services to residential
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