You’re a farmer.
You’ve worked the land for years, but one or two bad seasons could force you
out. To help diversify your revenue stream, you start a small roadside fruit
and vegetable stand to sell produce to locals on the honor system. Over the
next few seasons, its popularity grows, so you build a small structure to house
a farm store, which incorporates a light lunch menu and requires a new hire.
A devoted following
develops and the extra cash from the store is really helping with the monthly
bills. Things are going well and you are considering looking into the town’s
requirements for starting a small restaurant on the property.
Then you get a phone
call from the town. Apparently, a neighbor doesn’t appreciate your
entrepreneurial spirit or the “traffic and parking nightmare” that has gone
along with it. He complained to the town, and since your farm, like most Rhode
Island farms, is zoned as residential, your other business isn’t allowed. You
are allowed to go through a public hearing process in front of the town zoning
board to request permission to reopen the store, but in the meantime you have
to shut it down.
You comply. You also
start the public hearing process, but it becomes clear that there is a strong
contingent in your town against businesses in residential areas. They complain
that they “won’t stand for any old business popping up in their backyards.” The
process gets bogged down and eventually fizzles out. A few bad growing years
follow, two droughts and a severe storm devastate your yields.
To stay afloat you
have to sell some of your forested buffer land to a developer. He knocks down
trees and builds McMansions. You soon sell the remainder of your land to
developers, and within a few years your farm that offered an iconic rural view
is an unrecognizable row of suburban houses.
Farming in Rhode
Island is not a commonly recommended way to strike it rich. It’s hard to even
make a living. In most seasons farmers work long, backbreaking hours just to
break even. On top of that, circumstances that are completely out of farmers’
control can conspire against them to shut down their operations, which almost
always results in developers turning the land into residential lots.
This trend is
generally unwanted by Rhode Islanders. Farms offer nice views, local food and
can increase property values for surrounding lots. Community character is often
a factor in people’s decisions to move to rural areas, but as farms disappear
at an alarming rate from the Ocean State landscape that community character is
disappearing with them.
Rhode Island has lost
more than 80 percent of its farmland since the 1940s, when there were 300,000
acres in production, according to the state Department of Environmental
Management (DEM).
To counter that trend,
the DEM, in conjunction with the Horsley Witten Group Inc. and an advisory
committee that included town planners from across the state and members of
nonprofit and governmental groups, the agency has developed guidelines (pdf) to help communities maintain
working farms and forested lands.
“Frankly, it wasn’t
easy,” DEM staffer Scott Millar said about the two-year process that was funded
by a National Park Service grant.
The focus of the
guidelines is on helping towns develop laws that offer economic incentives for
landowners to preserve their land in agriculture or forestry. The first step is
for towns to identify small business and commercial uses for farms and forests
that will supplement existing revenue and help maintain the viability of farms
and forests.
By incorporating an
accessory use, a farmer or forester may avoid selling his or her land to a
developer. The second step is determining reasonable performance standards to
be met by farmers and foresters that minimize negative impacts associated with
the accessory use, so that the use can coexist within a residential zone.
Depending on the accessory use, negative impacts could include parking and
traffic, signage, noise, pollutants or setbacks distances from property lines.
Accessory uses
suggested in the guidelines vary widely. Suggested uses for farms include
landscaping businesses, pick-your-own fruit seasons, equestrian centers,
wedding venues, farm cafes, tractor repair businesses, bed and breakfasts, and
small manufacturing such as crafts, cabinetry or specialty clothing.
Uses for forested
lands include day-care centers, bed and breakfasts, bird-watching sites,
professional office space, and small businesses such as barbers, caterers,
tutors or antique shops. Each use would be categorized into a class based on the
intensity of the use, with more intense uses garnering stricter performance
standards. For example, a tractor repair facility would likely have much
stricter performance standards than a bird-watching field.
These DEM guidelines
are simply that — guidelines. DEM recognizes that the decision to save rural
land from unintended development is in the hands of municipalities and, more
specifically, those who draft their comprehensive plans and zoning laws. DEM
encourages all Rhode Island towns to use the guidelines as a starting point to
craft unique sets of ordinances that nurture each town’s most treasured
features.
Rhode Island towns
generally address proposed accessory uses on farms or forests on a case-by-case
basis because of the high number of variables per proposal. Each proposal could
present its own set of concerns that could include public safety, environmental
impacts, the type of business being purposed, or the size and location of the
property in question. These complexities make it difficult for a town to set
blanket policy to govern all possible situations in a given zone, according to
DEM officials. Limited choices and uncertainty in the approval process
discourages landowners from investing in business plans.
By preemptively
creating ordinances based on the DEM’s guidelines, municipalities can avoid the
ungainly process of addressing each landowner’s proposed accessory use. If the
laws and performance standards are developed using a collaborative process that
includes farmers, foresters, neighbors, public safety staff and municipal
decision makers, they should provide a predictable process for everyone
involved, including landowners interested in starting or expanding a business
or a resident who may be impacted.
“The guidelines are a win-win for land owners
and towns,” Millar said. “By being more flexible towns can help preserve their
working landscapes, increase their tax base and (create) local jobs. The
landowners are able to use their property more efficiently and are encouraged
to initiate appropriate small businesses.”