By Peter Whoriskey and Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 23, 2001; Page A01

from http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35235-2001Jul22?language=printer

Second of two articles

To hear the rhetoric in Loudoun County is to believe that the future lies in farming.

The Board of Supervisors is drafting a plan to "preserve the rural economy" and set aside most of the county, about 300 square miles, for agriculture. One supervisor boasts of her district as "the breadbasket." And here and there at meetings, self-described "dirt farmers" wearing red bandannas amble up to the mike to expound their views.

"From the time I was a small boy, I lived and worked on my family's farm," one of the men, Jack Shockey, told the supervisors at one session. "I considered myself a farmer and still do."

But Shockey and many of the others in the red bandanna group are not farmers; the county's wheat production is meager and hardly makes Loudoun a "breadbasket." Agriculture in the county, as elsewhere, is in the midst of a 40-year economic slide.

In fact, Loudoun County is one of the nation's fastest-growing suburbs. But in the raucous debate over controlling growth that has divided the county, the myth of the Loudoun farmer has become a potent political image.

The county's Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote tonight on a plan to restrict development that may be as far-reaching as any ever tried in the Washington suburbs. The restrictions, which emerged after 19 months of debate and have the support of a majority of the board, have drawn national attention and are intended to contain suburban sprawl while preserving what is left of Loudoun's rural landscape.

Each side in the political struggle has traded in agricultural imagery, seeking to tap into voters' feelings for farms and farming, a sympathy that is at least as old and as American as Thomas Jefferson's agrarian ideals.

The debate in Loudoun has at times obscured the true state of farming, a critical issue because if farming continues to decline, the preserved farmland is far less likely to withstand the burgeoning development push.

The plan under consideration would limit development on a huge swath of land -- about two-thirds of the county. But whether that land is used for working farms -- or for hobby farms and tax breaks -- or merely for open space and aesthetics bears heavily on whether farmland preservation makes economic sense. People may ask: Why preserve the countryside at all?

"Unless you keep it farmed, the pressure will remain to develop it," said Judy Daniel, the lead planner for rural preservation for Montgomery County, where leaders set aside about 90,000 acres for farming in the 1980s. "Open land with no productive use can become fair game for developers."

Many farmers take a dim view of Loudoun's agricultural prospects. Try talking up farming, for example, to Bruce McIntosh, a lifelong farmer, and one of a handful in the county to still pursue it as a primary occupation. He discouraged his sons from taking up the family trade, saying they could make more money "picking up trash."

He has a wry rebuttal for the idea that his 485-acre beef cattle farm and its surroundings might be considered the critical source of the county's wheats and grains.

"Yeah, it was the breadbasket," McIntosh says, "during the Civil War."

Preserving 'Rural Heritage'

On one side of the Loudoun farm debate is the county's slow-growth Board of Supervisors. While the board's suburban constituents may be most interested in limiting traffic jams and school construction costs, one critical goal of the plan, according to board members, is to preserve the county's "rural heritage."

The supervisors talk up the possibilities of Loudoun agriculture. In addition to board member Sarah R. Kurtz (D-Catoctin) touting the lushness of her "breadbasket" district, some of her other colleagues argue that niche farms, such as those with Christmas trees, vineyards and other alternative crops and livestock like water buffalo, can replace the losses of traditional agriculture.

"There's a whole marching army of them," Supervisor James G. Burton (I-Mercer) said of the niche operations. "There are people not willing to give up the agricultural life or scene. They love it. They love the land and the setting and the countryside. It matters a lot to a lot of people out here."

On the other side of the argument is the red bandanna group, also known as Citizens for Property Rights, mostly a group of landowners. They argue that the plan, by limiting development in an ill-advised attempt to save farming, unfairly devalues their property.

Though most are not farmers by primary occupation, they don the red bandannas and blame suburbanites and their demands for open space as an assault on their property rights. The landowners call it the "tyranny of the majority."

"They're taking money right out of our pockets," said Shockey, a retired accountant and an investigator for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for 23 years who ran a motel in Falls Church until last June. His family struck it rich when his father, who was a farmer, started a quarry in Chantilly in the 1950s that paved the runways at Dulles International Airport.

As president of Citizens for Property Rights, he says he is trying to protect the value of his mother's 800-acre farm, where he was raised and where he hopes to see a large subdivision. Shockey has been considering a run for board chairman himself.

"All of these people say, 'We enjoy the open space.' Well if they do, why don't they buy it?"

Farmland vs. Farms

Fifty years ago, about a decade before Dulles was built on the county's eastern edge, about 290,000 acres were farmed in Loudoun. Today, that number has withered to less than 185,000, a drop of 36 percent. And the slide continues.

Part of the phenomenon, of course, is that selling to developers has become far more profitable than farming, particularly as the Washington metropolitan region has expanded steadily outward from the District of Columbia.

The county's plan directly addresses this phenomenon: It would prohibit suburban development in the rural area.

It would limit future development in the west to one home per 10 or 20 acres, depending upon how closely they are clustered, to save open space. Otherwise, the plan would limit development even further -- to one home per 20 or 50 acres. Current planning allows up to one home per three acres.

But while these restrictions may be effective at preserving farmland, preserving farming itself is a greater challenge.

Some of the forces behind the disappearance of farming are outside government control. Sagging commodities prices, rising wages, international competition and other large-scale economic changes have made profitable farming difficult.

"It's too hard to make a living on the traditional agriculture," said William Harrison, who was an agricultural agent in Loudoun for 29 years before he retired.

Take, for example, brothers Bill and Chris Hatch.

They each have jobs off the farm -- Bill works as a television network video specialist in Washington and Chris is a part-time school bus driver -- but they're still struggling to make a go of the 400-acre farm their father bought in 1950.

Their land housed a dairy until 1986, when, after operating in the red for 10 years, they switched to raising beef cattle. That hasn't proved profitable either. Last year, they grossed about $12,000. They're now exploring the idea of vineyards and vegetables that they could sell themselves.

They'd like to try to keep farming, but in case they can't make the farm work, they'd like to preserve their development rights and property values.

A study commissioned by the county reported that the new restrictions would reduce rural property values by 30 percent to 45 percent. Others, however, argue that the zoning restrictions might raise property values by adding an elite, horse-country-only prestige.

"People think we should just farm this land forever," said Bill Hatch. "But we haven't been making a profit for 20 years or more. There are easier ways to lose money."

He estimated that 90 percent of the farms in the county are hobby farms or retirement passions.

"I don't know anyone in Loudoun who is operating in the black," he said.

Lessons from Montgomery

Maybe the best place to see how rural preservation can work lies across the Potomac River in Montgomery County. A master plan approved in 1980 created an agricultural reserve of 93,000 acres and restricted development there to one home per 25 acres.

The purpose, said the plan's sponsors, was to preserve not only farmland, but also the economy of farming itself.

Today, more than 90 percent of the agricultural reserve set aside 21 years ago has remained in farmland, pastures and forests, according to county tax records. No rezonings have taken place in that time.

Montgomery farm operations fall into three categories: traditional crop farms, horse farms and horticultural operations, which include landscaping nurseries, Christmas tree farms and sod farms.

Farm profitability has often proved elusive, however, and over the years the number of people who reported farming as a principal occupation dwindled steadily.

In 1978, just before the agricultural reserve was created, 309 farm operators reported farming as their principal occupation. By 1997, the last year for which statistics are available, that number had fallen to 221, a drop of 28 percent.

"Not many people wake up in the morning and say, 'I'm going to be a farmer,' " said John Zawitoski, director of planning and promotion for the county's agricultural services division. "If you ask most of them why they do what they do, it's either, 'It's what we've always done' or 'It's what we know' or 'It's part of our heritage.' "

Although the rural plans in Montgomery and Loudoun both hold the preservation of farming as a goal, there is one critical difference.

Loudoun County's planners have faced charges of "snob zoning" because the plan would restrict home development, but Montgomery County created its agricultural reserve without diminishing the overall potential for home building in the county. It merely allowed the right to build houses that then existed in the rural area to be shifted to already suburbanized areas. But such an arrangement is prohibited by Virginia law.

Surge in Substitutes

Leaders in Loudoun County acknowledge that traditional farming may be inexorably disappearing. But they have high hopes for a range of replacements, from agricultural biotechnology to an expansion of the horse industry to the alternative crops.

A retired high-tech executive already grows chili peppers and markets them on the Internet. Another Loudounite is trying to sell mozzarella cheese from water buffalo milk. The county also boasts 31 Christmas tree farms and 23 vineyards.

Louis S. Nichols, the county's agricultural development officer, said that 2,500 to 3,000 acres are planted with alternative crops, and most of those farms occupy other acreage beyond what's planted.

Most of those farms are relatively small, however, at least compared with the 200,000 acres in the rural area.

The other critical pillar of Loudoun's farming future is the equine industry, according to county officials.

"The future of Loudoun County is spelled H-O-R-S-E," said Warren Howell, who left his job at a farm supply company to become an agriculture promoter for the county. "You are going to see a lot of money and land go into horses."

Loudoun had 19,800 horses in 1995, the last time there was a comprehensive survey. That translated into about 2,480 jobs.

But county consultants Hunter Interests Inc. concluded in a report last year that the equine industry probably will not grow in the next 10 years. And it certainly isn't easy to make money in horses.

Roy L. Ash, the county's biggest individual landowner, tried horse breeding for a few years but gave it up.

"We've sold our last horse, thankfully," said Ash, head of the Office of Management and Budget in the Nixon and Ford administrations. "I have my eye on the bottom line."

He had six mares for a thoroughbred breeding business, but his timing was terrible. "We got in when the market was up, and we got out when the market was low," he said, adding that even at a better moment, breeding is economically tough to sustain.

"The people who are in this business get a lot of psychic satisfaction out of it," he said.

Symbols in the Struggle

Indeed, much of the tension in the current debate stems from the gap between some of the very wealthy, who farm or who have horses for pleasure, and those who must make a profit.

Each side has its propaganda.

One of the most pervasive symbols used by opponents of the anti-sprawl plan has been the red bandanna, which has become the trademark of Citizens for Property Rights. It is supposed to symbolize its message that the farm preservation plan is making victims of the farmers themselves.

Sally Miller, a local developer and public relations executive, came up with the idea of the bandannas last March when she was organizing the opposition group. Miller went to the local feed store and bought out all the bandannas, then did the same at the local crafts store.

She passed them out at recruiting meetings with farmers and landowners, and they soon caught on, showing up on those who work the land as well as on many who don't.

"They've been pretty successful, the bandannas," Miller said. "That's always been an identifying thing for farmers. They just need to pull them out of their pockets and put them around their neck. . . . It was perfect."

Plan backers have gone to comparable lengths.

The Middleburg Online Web site is promoting a children's book called "The Magic Bond," an equestrian fairy tale in rhyming verse by two local authors. The characters include a smirking Miss Snaffle, who, according to the blurb, is "the nasty property developer that will do anything to get hold of the farm and turn it into aluminum and cement."

Her voice sounded much like the squawk of a goose.

Most people thought she had a ring loose.

Also making an appearance: Mr. and Mrs. Cribbing, "the kind-hearted farmer and wife who have spent their lives caring for animals, protecting wildlife and their beloved environment."

The owner was gentle, warm and forgiving.

No better man lived than old Mr. Cribbing.

'Isn't This Nice?'

Not surprisingly, many of those who own farms in Loudoun County are in it not for the profits, Nichols said, so much as the way of life.

"There are a lot of people who like the lifestyle," Nichols said. "They just want to sit on their front porches and see their 300 acres and say, 'Isn't this nice?' "

It is this romance of farming, in a way, that makes the Loudoun debate over economics and preservation so thorny.

Even lifelong farmers such as McIntosh, who take the matter of farm profits seriously, acknowledge that the allure of farming extends beyond financial considerations. He tells a joke about a farmer who has just sold a piece of his farm for $1 million.

"The farmer goes to town, where people ask him, 'Hey, what are you going to do now?' " McIntosh said. "The farmer says, 'I'll just keep farming until it's all gone.' "

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