Photo : Douglas Graham / Wild Light Photos ; Courtesy of Visit Loudoun
You have to have a critical mass of land available for agriculture for it to exist at all . This is one of the rallying cries of the Farm Bureau . If you don ’ t have enough land to support the overall industry , you start seeing all the little support pieces slip away .
developments are built in western Loudoun , this is often where the houses are placed .
A second related directive for the Farm Bureau is making certain that there is land available for farming . Many long-time farmers are nearing retirement age and want or need to sell their land because their children aren ’ t interested in continuing to farm it . This problem is addressed by promoting conservation easements that allow farms to be affordably passed to new generations of farmers , and also by encouraging people to go into farming and providing the educational opportunities needed to do that .
You have to have a critical mass of land available for agriculture for it to exist at all . This is one of the rallying cries of the Farm Bureau . If you don ’ t have enough land to support the overall industry , you start seeing all the little support pieces slip away .
Every farmer needs support services — fertilizer spreaders , farm equipment repair , people with baling equipment , manure spreaders , etc . You have to have enough farming going on for the people who perform those services to stick around . And this is where having enough large farming operations is important — the smaller ones piggyback their needs for services on the larger ones .
Think of the farming community as a solar system ; the larger farms are the planets , and the smaller ones are the moons . They are all reliant on each other and orbiting each other . It ’ s a symbiotic relationship . One farmer might have one type of equipment needed by another , and they barter — you come spread my manure and I ’ ll come plant your corn … things like that .
The third need for the future of farming in Loud-