(Host) Commentator Bill Schubart has been paying attention to a new
initiative by a broad base of Vermonters to ensure that Vermont’s working
landscape continues to contribute to Vermont’s economy and beauty as it has for
two centuries.
(Schubart) In time
and perhaps with age, we learn to doubt or at least question the predictions of
gurus and futurists. Our landscapes are riddled with the remnants of "model
communities" and retail and industrial endeavors that either turned out to be
fads or investment pipedreams. Nature, or our "higher power," or whomever we
personally delegate with cosmic change, has a way of humbling our dreams and
periodically reminding us of our rightful place in the universe.
Tropical storm Irene,
recently did so, reminding us that our peaceable kingdom can be swept away.
Watching the city of Detroit – decimated not by nature, but
by man-made reversals of fortune – plow vacant residential communities under to
make way for urban farming enterprises also reminds us of the ebb and flow of
human enterprise. Nature’s force is inherently entropic, seemingly wanting the
built environment to revert to a natural one.
Every place has built landscapes, working landscapes, and
natural landscapes. For the last hundred years, Vermont has been defined by the
beauty of all three. With the westward migration of sheep and dairy farming
moving down off the hillsides into the fertile river valleys, much of Vermont’s
former working landscape has reforested itself.
Most communities fiercely defend the growth of their built
environments against out-of-scale or sore-thumb development. But who cares for
the working landscape, the farmlands, forests and riparian networks out of
which many Vermonters harvest renewable energy and timber, and on which they
grow grains, produce, and graze animals?
The ebb and flow of human activity in the working landscape
creates risks. We’ve all seen farm fields blossom into housing developments,
depriving young farmers of land and infrastructure on which to begin new
farming enterprises. Nature too, takes its course and fallow fields that once
produced hay for livestock overgrow with alder, and prickly ash.
At the
behest of the VT Council on Rural Development, a broad coalition of Vermonters,
legislators, non-profits and businesses committed to maintaining this vital
economic and aesthetic component of our landscape is addressing this risk,
responding to studies that show that Vermont’s working landscape could well be
lost within a generation without a plan for investment and stewardship.
The
comprehensive plan, entitled Investing in
our Farm and Forest Future, celebrates the generations of farm and forest
families and entrepreneurs whose work has produced the landscape that is
central to Vermont’s identity. It states that Vermont will never conserve the
working landscape simply by fiat or by purchase, but must invest in the
economic foundation of the land itself by supporting the farm and forest enterprises
that are its stewards.
It
outlines
clear steps to make Vermont a national leader and to inspire, attract
and nurture a creative new generation of food, farm, and forest
entrepreneurs
as a foundation for our future prosperity. As we celebrate and make our New Year
commitments to improve our lives and communities, this will be one of
mine.