In Scott County, soul of the land may be at stake

David Peterson, Star Tribune

Commissioners Joe Wagner and Jerry Hennen and administrator Dave Unmacht marveled at the equipment on the Stier farm in Belle Plaine.

Will the land remain rural or become part of suburbia? A day of touring farms gave officials a look at what's happening.

By DAVID PETERSON, Star Tribune

Last update: August 5, 2008 - 7:42 PM

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An advisory panel to help the county sort out conflict between farming and development, and a broader public forum to debate the options, are among the steps being considered. Contact Brad Davis at 952-496-8654 or bdavis@co.scott.mn.us

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The afternoon began with chicken and ended with chicken. But what a difference between the two.

Lunch featured chicken salad sandwiches with meat from the Farm at Prairie Oaks, on the edge of Belle Plaine. And the last farm tour of the day included a look at Joe Bowman's Cornish Cross broilers, fluttering about on a pasture at Prairie Oaks.

The message, to Scott County commissioners and planners: Here is a vision for the county's future -- neighbors feeding neighbors.

But by the end of a long afternoon climbing into and out of a bus, visiting one farm after another, it was also clear how complicated it will be to try to keep farming alive in Scott County as suburbia spreads.

"This is a new issue for us to grapple with: permanent farms," said Brad Davis, the county planner who helped organize what he called a "mobile workshop" last week.

At issue is a new long-range plan for the county's future, due to be submitted to the Metropolitan Council by the end of the year. The most contentious part of that plan, if a public hearing last spring was any guide, is that it envisions the gradual suburbanization of much of western Scott County, an area that boasts prime farmland.

As the backlash arose, county commissioner Jon Ulrich, of Savage, suggested the tour as a means of linking the leadership of an increasingly citified county to the folks who -- though they are down to a relative handful of people -- do still control 57 percent of the land.

Is it realistic to mix robust, profit-making farms with subdivisions?

"Some people around here wish we'd leave," said Roger Stier, whose family farms 4,000 acres of crops from a farmstead that is now fully within the city limits of Belle Plaine. "Our long-range plan is for another site."

As the suburbs encroach, he said, and people park their cars along what used to be country roads, something as simple as driving a combine around becomes a headache.

The dairy farmers gathered at the Stocker farm, near Jordan, said that developer-influenced land prices keep them from buying the acres they need to expand in an era when the little guy can't make enough money. They also talked of "cashing out": profiting from those same forces.

At Prairie Oaks, later in the day, Michelle Gransee-Bowman, co-managing the farm, mentioned that street improvements, intended to quite literally pave the way for more subdivisions, could cost a farmer who doesn't want them as much as $200,000 in special assessments.

Grass-roots activists, many of them organized under the heading of the Local Harvest Alliance, are working to solve the problem of mingling farms and homes. It's a dilemma common enough across the nation to have drawn the notice of the National Association of Counties, which has summarized its efforts in a bulletin to its members across the nation.

County board members and staff planners said last week's tour was intended, in Davis' words, to "showcase the broad range of issues." Even as farm preservation advocates are meeting regularly to hash out the issues, he said, so also is the county itself considering creating a more formal advisory group to work them through.

It's a fundamental turning point for Scott County, said Michael Sobota, director of community development.

"When we talk about our 2030 plan," he told farmers at one stop, "we're talking about a template for our ultimate development" -- the complete buildout of what is still today a mostly rural county.

David Peterson • 952-882-9023