There I was, standing in the middle of a shop, laughing out loud and drawing all kinds of curious stares, all because of a t-shirt that says “without farming, you’d be hungry, naked and sober.”
While the sentiment may not strictly be true – early hunter/gatherers certainly had clothing, food and libations – it certainly made me reflect on the value of our local farmland and the importance of protecting it.
Land trusts like Black Swamp Conservancy partner with the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Office of Farmland Preservation and landowners to establish agricultural easements that keep farmland under private ownership and protect it against future non‐agricultural development.
The Conservancy has facilitated easements on more than 80 farms, in four counties.
We closed five new farmland preservation projects at the end of October 2019, permanently conserving another 591 acres of productive agricultural land in this region. These newly-protected family farms, located in Seneca and Sandusky Counties, were preserved in partnership with the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Local Agricultural Easement Purchase Program. Two more farmland preservation projects are scheduled for completion before 2020.
