Title:رشد برای آینده ما: پیوند کشاورزی با توسعه اقتصادی

۳۰-۱۱-۲۰۱۱ ارائه دهندگان: هالی ماتی، جاناتان فربراچ و شین فارنزورت این وب‌کست فقط برای مشاهده در دسترس است، برای اعتبارات AICP CM قابل استفاده نیست. مقامات محلی شهرستان فیرفیلد، اوهایو، تجربیات اخیر خود را در برنامه ریزی برای ترویج و افزایش تولید، پردازش و مصرف غذاهای محلی به اشتراک خواهند گذاشت. این شهرستان اخیراً طرحی تحت عنوان “رشد فیرفیلد” را تکمیل کرده است که هدف آن ترویج توسعه اقتصادی پایدار است که به افزایش پایه های کشاورزی و اقتصادی شهرستان کمک می کند. این جلسه به سه بخش تقسیم می شود: ۱) برنامه ریزی برای غذاهای محلی. ۲) ترویج و حفظ میراث کشاورزی شهرستان. و ۳) فرصت های توسعه اقتصادی از صنایع حمایتی کشاورزی.

قسمتي از متن فيلم: I hello my name is Brittany kavinsky and I just want to welcome everyone it is now 1 p.m. so we will begin our presentation shortly today on Friday November 30th we have our presentation on growing for our future linking agriculture to economic development given by Holly Maddie Jonathan fur brush and Shane Farnsworth

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Log your CM credits for attending today’s webcast please go to ww planning or GM select today’s date Friday November 30th and then select today’s webcast growing for our future linking agriculture to economic development this webcast is available for one and a half cm credits we are recording today’s

Webcast and it will be available along with a six slide per page PDF of the presentation at ww utah APA org slash webcast archive at this time I would like to introduce our speakers for today Holly Maddie John than fur brush and Shane spark farnsworth Holly maddie is the executive

Director of the Fairfield County Regional Planning Commission she has worked for the Regional Planning Commission in various capacities since 2001 and assisted with the Fairfield County 2002 development strategy and land use plan which places strong emphasis on farmland preservation miss Maddie has expanded upon these 2002 efforts by spearheading Fairfield

Growing and agricultural economic development plan to help promote and increase the production and consumption of locally grown processed and distributed buttes as a regional planner miss Maddie understands the importance of agriculture in the county’s overall land-use patterns and local economy and she strives to increase the county’s efforts in recognizing the agricultural

Industry when making planning related decisions she holds a bachelor’s in geography from Miami University and a master of City and regional planning from The Ohio State University Jonathan fer brush is a 1998 graduate of the Ohio State University’s Knowlton school of architecture architecture with a Bachelors of Science in landscape

Architecture he’s registered landscape architect in the state of Ohio and a certified professional in a row ssion and sediment control Jonathan currently works for the Fairfield Soil and Water Conservation District as a resource specialist with a focus on farmland preservation and conservation practices Jonathan has recently served on the Ohio

Department of Agriculture’s AG viability task force and the farmland preservation efficiency team in 2010 Jonathan currently works with the coalition of Ohio Land Trust serves as an advisor to the Fairfield land preservation association and the Ohio Soil and Water Commission and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Task Force on the

Delivery of conservation services in the state of Ohio Jonathan was born and raised in Fairfield County Ohio from here Jonathan desire to transform development patterns and seek opportunities to protect agriculture Jonathan’s career path took him to Smith group and j JJ are in ann arbor michigan and fanning Howie associates in Dublin

Ohio where he designed k through 12 school facility sites across the state of Ohio before arriving at the Fairfield Soil and Water Conservation District Shane Farnsworth was hired in January of 2010 is the fairfield county economic development director to oversee the county’s enterprise zone program revolving loan program and

Administrates the region non non for profit marketing organization called the Fairfield 33 development alliance and oversees a myriad of economic development projects throughout the county prior to that mr. Farnsworth was the director of planning and economic development for Clark County Ohio for close to 11 years where he administered

The county’s development regulations and an active farm land preservation and agricultural economic development program specific to the region his experience in land-use planning economic development and quality of life enhancements allow him to approach economic development from a holistic approach that has proven to be successful time and time again Shane is

A graduate from hocking college and Wright State University with degrees and wildlife management geographic information systems and urban planning he is also a certified economic development finance professional through the National Development Council let’s welcome our speakers for the Bay Thank You Brittany this presentation will focus on the efforts that fairfield

County has taken to preserve our agricultural roots by attempting to increase the production and consumption of local foods Jonathan Shane and I all represent the county in one way or another and we have recently joined together to promote locally grown foods that’s a way to preserve the county’s heritage and create business

Opportunities to our area we hope to share our efforts with you today and we hope that you’re able to take something back to your community from the lessons that we have learned through our planning process so those of you who are not from Ohio I wanted to take a few

Minutes to give a brief explanation of our geography and demographics fearful County is located in central Ohio just southeast of Columbus the state capital of ohio columbus is in franklin county and we are the county immediately adjacent to the southeast as highlighted on the state map on your slide fearful

County is 505 square miles which translates them to approximately three hundred and twenty three thousand and a KERS in 2007 the u.s. census of Agriculture reported that there were approximately a hundred and seventy seven thousand acres of farmland remaining in our county so as you can see that approximately fifty percent of

Our total area as we continue to lose farmland the county’s population continues to increase as a result of increased development pressures from Columbus in the ten-year span from 2002 2010 fearful County grew by approximately twenty percent this slide illustrates the number of acres of land developed through the major and minor

Subdivision process for the last ten years major subdivisions are developments that include new roads and other infrastructure minor subdivisions are lot sports under five acres utilizing existing right-of-way and either existing utilities or on-site water and septic systems as you can see on average approximately 800 acres per year were being developed

Over the last 10 years I do want to point out two anomalies and that is in 2002 you can see we had almost 2,000 acres of land consumed that year there was a potential moratorium going on in the city of pickerington at that time and developers were recording plots in

The mass that year so that is the reason why that one is a little bit higher than the other ones and then also I wanted to point out in 2009 even though we had hit the housing crisis and we were in the recession at that point in time we still

Lost about 350 acres of land that is mostly on due to two schools that were built within our County during that time because of all the housing development we experienced in the past we meet in new schools and there were two new schools that came in that time and

That’s where the most of that acreage is coming in or taking account for in that year so wanted to point those two out so in the late 1990s fearful County recognized the development pressures that it had been experiencing and understood that these would continue over the next decade as a result the

Fairfield County Regional Planning Commission completed its first comprehensive plan since 1978 this plan was adopted in 2002 it includes a series of goals objectives and policies for preserving farmland and it identifies urban service areas where infrastructure existed at the time or was planned within the next 20 years I do want to

Point out that urban service areas should not be confused with urban growth boundaries that some of you might have terminology out there development is not restricted to these areas but rather the plan recommends that development be focused in these areas this comprehensive plan also utilizes the Lisa model to determine where farmland

Should be preserved the Lisa model stands for land evaluation assessment model it is a parcel by parcel evaluation that examines the land characteristics such as soil types and other similar factors the model then assesses the site characteristic characteristics such as the size of the parcel and how close it is to water and

Sewer services each parcel is then assigned a value based on this review the steering committee then sets policy to set policy decisions to determine the thresholds for preserving the land from this model it was determined that approximately a hundred and forty thousand acres of farmland and fearful counties should be protected this leads

Us into the efforts that fearful economy has taken since the adoption of the 2002 plan to protect our farmland and for this I will turn it over to Jonathan for a brush to provide a better perspective on the reality of farmland preservation in our county good afternoon this is

Jonathan fur brush with Fairfield soil and water and what I wanted to point out is we’re basically still at the beginning of efforts to protect our agriculture here in Fairfield County only ten years has passed since we really focused our efforts with the 2002 land use plan but what we’ve seen in

This period of ten years following our 2002 land use model is something that is really beginning to define the patterns of development for the future in the slide that’s up in front of you at this point in time you’ll see towards the northwest area that’s where the City of

Columbus begins to encroach into fairfield county the city of pickerington in canal winchester kind of blur together in the light gray and then you also notice the dark gray areas along the road frontage those are many of those minor subdivisions that Holly spoke of earlier but as we begin to look

At the process we’ve developed a conservation community that stretches across our northeast area this region also encompasses nearly eight villages and by the way I say nearly we have one that is no longer incorporated and never was large enough but there are eight villages within this area that

Previously served the canal system and the railroad system so as we move forward that is going to be very challenging for us to work with the urban service areas around those villages but try to protect the best prime farm ground we’ve also seen a strong interest in applications for farmland preservation

In our southwest corner and then as we look at the geography of fairfield county just below lancaster begins the foothills of the Appalachian this is sort of that rock and Columbus is kind of our hard place in between we are looking to develop that corridor along US 33 a major corridor for commerce

Moving from the Ohio River into Columbus and as you note I 70 interstate 70 runs north of us in licking county and briefly dips into fairfield county so as we look at our patterns these are very much the area that we’re going to focus our attention during the next 10 years

But with the development that we’ve seen over the past couple years we need to stop and look at some of the tools that we’ve used to try and curtail it about the same time that we started our land use planning efforts here in fairfield county the state of ohio recognized that

They needed to be doing something from a higher elevation and that’s when a governor voinovich launched his farmland preservation task force and from that we developed the clean ohio farmland preservation program along with several other programs for tech green space fairfield county stands out as a leader from a county-based effort to protect

Farmland here in the state of ohio we have many land Trust’s with large service boundaries that conduct a lot of the farmland preservation work but fairfield county is driven at the county level strongly supported by our commissioners and they are the ones that actually deliver the applications to the

State for the clean ohio agriculture easement purchase program we also partner with them and the ohio department of agriculture and the usda nrcs for the farm and ranch lands protection program as well as the grasslands reserve program now some folks that don’t understand what the grassland reserve program is that is

Basically trying to retain properties with grass cover for hey grazing as well as wildlife as we look at the diversity of food we want to consume in the future making sure that if people want grass-fed beef that we have the ability to provide that to them here in

Fairfield county but over that period of 10 years we basically seen 8,000 acres apply for protection through these programs but only two thousand six hundred and six acres were accepted for a value of about 4.2 million we never see prices above two thousand dollars an acre for these programs and most landowners are

Giving up well beyond sixty percent of the development value we’ve also been working very strongly here in fairfield county with our land Trust’s and associations the Fairfield soil and water board along with the Regional Planning Commission helped develop a local land trust that we currently provide guidance to the Fairfield land

Preservation association along with two other groups working in neighboring counties that have protected property here there are currently seven hundred and three acres of easements that have been donated here in fairfield county and we have seen a majority of these easements directly beside the municipal limits and that’s where the reference to

The urban service areas comes in as the programs that the state has developed in the federal government have developed don’t necessarily reward protection beside those existing service areas so if there are interested landowners that want to protect a piece of property because of unique wildlife habitat or some historical component then working

With the land trust meets that goal but our goal here is to make sure that we are all aware as to what’s happening and that’s where our offices soil and water becomes involved we currently operate with a memorandum of understanding for the Fairfield land preservation association to do much of the

Secretarial work and coordination and we provide a phone for people our call and talk and look at their options we’ve also utilized the agricultural security area program and it is basically have been a learning curve for us there aren’t a whole lot of these out there

And we were trying to use them to the full most intent of the law our agricultural security area exists between three villages that used to operate for the railroad and the canal systems here in central Ohio as you look at the map in front of you up against

The village of millersport there is a dark red area that’s a property that was donated to a local Land Trust but the area that has been hatched in and the blue and Hawaii that represents the agricultural security area and the red are those properties that are permanently protected under easements or

Have easements pending on them so about 1,200 acres came in about three years ago into this program and we were able to actually carry this forward as a test for the rest of the state we believe that we are one of the only counties utilizing a SAS to protect areas for a

Period of 10 years from additional sewer water and road development but also the property on the southern end was one of the first in the state to utilize the tax exemption for new agricultural real property as they look to expand their grain capacity as well as they’re drying

Capacity for their corn and soybean operation now we look back over 10 years and we think we’ve had great success with the number of acres we protected the applications that we have and but we stop and look at it and that decline that we’ve seen over the last 20 years

We can’t compete with that and even during the last five years as the housing boom has slowed down even with our efforts to protect two or three farms a year we have been basically converting twice the number of acres that we’ve been able to protect during

That same period of time a lot of folks have also made comments over the years that yields and technology will increase our production well even if we stop and figure in what that production increase has been over the last 20 years we anticipate by about the year 2050 we

Would not have the land base to support what our current production levels are if we keep consuming the acreage that we have been consuming over the last 20 years now Fairfield County stands as a strong grassroots effort from the soil and water board Regional Planning Commission strong support of our county

Farm bureau and our County Commissioners but that wasn’t enough we needed to stop and look for all those other opportunities because if we can’t protect enough farm ground to say one step ahead of what we have to protect the industry and that’s where the last five years has also brought renewed

Support as well as new support from the Lancaster Fairfield Chamber of Commerce main street lancaster which is focusing on the redevelopment of downtown we all put two and two together and realize that if we redevelop downtown in support of the redevelopment activities then we could turn the tide potentially against

Development here in fairfield county we also have the strong support of fairfield county economic development which is again strongly supported by our county commissioners and when we put all those things together the effort to protect all of our soil and water resources and our ability to sustain the demand for food here in

Fairfield County takes us to that point that we can begin to grow Fairfield County agriculture for those of you that are not familiar with Fairfield County we are primarily a corn and soybean County we have a strong beef herd population we have a moderately sized dairy operation with one organic dairy

At this time we have about four major orchards that are still family run here there used to be several large orchards that were operated by the ohio state university but Ohio State gave those up many years ago some of those are still in production under private efforts at

This point in time but we’ve also seen some of these smaller operations and the emergence of small vineyards which we have not seen in years on some of the smaller properties one of the things that we would like to accomplish and Holly will hint that this later is we

Would like to return underutilized lands to production we would like to see us increasing our acres in agriculture at this moment in time I’m going to turn it back over to Holly to take you into the next step of growing fairfield county’s agriculture thanks Jonathan and Jonathan

Did speak about the partnerships that we had formed and it’s the partnerships between our economic development leaders and farmland preservation advocates that led us to pursue Fairfield growing which is the economic development plan that we have just recently completed and adopted this plan was made possible through a grant that the Regional Planning

Commission received from the Ohio State University’s Center for farmland policy innovation and again it seemed like it was the perfect storm for us to pursue this plan not only that our 2002 Land Use Plan call for further study of our agricultural support industries but the local food movement was continuing to

Gain momentum the middle higher Regional Planning Commission which we call morp see also completed a local food assessment plan for a 12 County region which included Fairfield County we wanted to build upon this broader planning effort and focus on what we could do at a county level to keep our

Farmers farming in Ohio there’s a 107 billion dollar food and agricultural industry we wanted to find a way that we could keep these dollars in the state and more specifically I keep our local dollars in Fairfield County this led us to continue to build our partnerships throughout the region

Including the ohio state university we were able to partner with ohio state to have a city and regional planning class right the plan for us and then the grant that we received allowed the RPC to hire an intern to act as a liaison between the planning efforts that we were doing

Here locally and the plan writing that was taking place back on osu’s campus the plan would not have been made possible either without the efforts of the economic development department our Chamber of Commerce our soil and water district main street lancaster and the ohio state university as i’ve mentioned

Before we also needed excuse me we also needed to form an advisory board to help lead us through the planning process we’ve formed this board by sending on a survey to various stakeholders which included producers processors and retailers that included institutional uses local grocers and restaurants there were three different surveys that we

Sent to each of those groups but on each of the surveys at the end of them we asked if the person or company would be interested in serving on the advisory board for this plan from these surveys we were able to form our board and as

You can see we had a broad spectrum of about advisory board members this helped to create a diverse conversations that led us through the core issues at hand one other point of interest is that there were many stakeholders mostly in the retail sector that were not able to

Attend monthly meetings in these cases we conducted one-on-one interviews with these individuals that were scheduled at the convenience of the stakeholder we try to be as common date be as accommodating as possible to get the most participation so I would encourage you as you are doing your own planning

Efforts to find some way to accommodate your stakeholders and beyond the normal monthly planning meetings that most of us are familiar we also took a very short planning process and we try to coordinate this planning process around the producers are farmers schedules and make sure that we weren’t interfering with their

Planting and with their their harvest season so we started off in February with our monthly meetings and that meeting we went just through an introduction of what we were trying to accomplish and we drafted goals and objectives that later went into the plan then in March we had our march meeting

Very early in march and we used that meeting to identify the barriers that our producers were experiencing and getting their food to the processors and the retailers for our end users and we did make sure that we did that early in march again to avoid that planting

Season as best that we could then in April we started to identify the barriers from our retailers and processors we lump that into one meeting so that this too could could talk more one-on-one and then in May we had draft recommendations back from OSU so after our march in April meetings our liaison

Took those barriers back to OSU and that class was able to draft recommendations for us to consider and then we went through our main meeting and whittled through each of them we tweaked them or we took them out we added some etc then by June we had a draft plan that was

Presented to us from OSU and from there we tweaked it just minor and in July our advisory board was able to recommend that we start the adoption process of the plan and that started in took place in august and sep tember and was finally adopted by the county commissioners at

The end of sep tember so what does this plan include well first of all there were four major goals that were identified during our planning process they’re lifted up on your screen and the first and most important one that we got out of our advisory group was public

Education we heard that from all three sectors no matter if it was a farmer a processor or retail entity people need to understand the locals what local foods what benefits they have and and how to obtain them and even how to cook them is what we heard some people say

And so education was one of the biggest goals that we heard then the next to increasing local demand and increasing local supply we had a rather in-depth conversation on those and some believe that we need to increase our demand before we increase our supply some believe that we have enough supply but

We need to increase our demand so in vice versa so it’s which one do you believe is what it came down to and so those two go hand-in-hand but ultimately we need to look at both and then finally Johnathan touched on this slightly in his presentation but we wanted to look

At preserving our farmland and not only preserving the large tract of land but how do we can get grow upon or underutilized land are five and ten acres that have been converted how do we bring some of that back end to production for specialty crops etc so

Those are the four broad goals and objectives that we identified during this planning process so how do we go about obtaining these goals well we started by identifying the barriers that our producers processors and retailers have experienced and trying to get the local food from the farm to the table

And as you can see through these slides I’m just going to flip through them because there are a lot of similar barriers that each of the groups identified and we’ve talked about it here it’s probably similar barriers that any of these entities are going to find across the nation they’re very similar

And the biggest ones being awareness and convenience those are big concerns and then from our farmers perspective and our retailers perspective no aggregation we don’t have a place where we can take our products and aggregate them and get them out to our retail entities in larger quantities so that was one of the

Big barriers that we saw as we were going through our planning process so once we identified the barriers as i said we received the recommendations back from Ohio State and there were over 50 recommendations that ended up in our plans in our plan to help create a local food economy these recommendations fall

Within eight broad categories that are shown on this slide however I believe that there are two main themes coming out of this plan they’re the creation of a local food Council and the development of an aggregation facility the local food Council will which will create a network that will allow for

Collaboration between all levels of the food system and also be an impetus for implementing the other recommendations of this plan the aggregation facility will bring together producers to achieve the economies of scale and to provide the quantity quality and consistency demanded by the market for locally grown process and distributed foods from this

We have started to take a look at our next steps and as you can see here the third bullet point says central location and one of the things that came out of this plan was that we need to have an aggregation facility that is centrally located so we’re currently working with

Main street lancaster to come up with funding to look into a feasibility study of creating an aggravation facility in downtown lancaster so as we pursue that funding we’re hoping to have something you know sooner rather than later so that we can look into identifying a site

And then possibly how do we go about implementing that in the future there are many other recommendations that came out of this plan and all of them are very relevant and some of them are short-term and some of them are much longer term but as we go through this I

Think it’s very important that we have a marketing perspective and what we have someone that can go out and start to show others what fairfield county has to offer in the local food industry and with that i’m going to turn it over to shane to talk about economic development opportunities in fairfield county

Through the local food momentum so Shane it’s over to you thanks Holly this is shane Farnsworth from the director of economic development in Fairfield I am either hello your desk okay here we go oh this is shane Farnsworth on the economic development director for Fairfield County and a lot a lot of

Communities when you’re looking at farmland preservation you’re looking at agriculture it seems like that group of individuals that are passionate about that you tend to not see economic development in the business community involved and unfortunately I see that as a missed opportunity from my perspective because although you have people that

Are very passionate about farmland preservation and preserving that way of life it it also is a business it’s an agribusiness and even a great industry when you look at all of the aspects and even the diversity of agriculture in our world today and so one of the things

That we were looking at from an economic development approach is really who are we as a community and and so we took a step back and really begin to look at what our resources are in fairfield county but also in central in southeastern ohio we are kind of on that

That cusp between columbus and very urban highly populated region and then to the southeastern a very rural wooded Appalachian foothills environment and both both regions really lend themselves to bringing their own unique strengths to the table and because of our location we can take advantage of both of those

And so we look at that looking at our infrastructure and what I mean by that is our roads our water and sewer within our municipalities I think it’s important that our municipalities and our townships and counties work together and and really the the individuals and organizations that are pro farmland

Preservation we also need to be pro urban development and really need to help support our municipalities for redevelopment infill development where the infrastructure is it’s a lot easier to really focus on our maximizing our infrastructure inside our urban environments versus just annexing and growing outward and our we are looking

At our workforce what kind of skill sets do we have our State Workforce Development Organisation has been a continuing to be a stretch a real tool for us and when we ask those questions about whether we’re dealing with any different layer of Agriculture that is out there whether it’s general labourers

All the way up to doing high technology when you’re dealing with a lot of the Biosciences a lot of a lot of biomedicals where many of those base elements are grown you know could be grown right in your community or within your region and so identifying what that

Workforce is technology location I’ll be obviously for logistics and it’s going to be different from every community but we also looked at industry clusters and what what kind of food processing companies did we already have what kind of growers did we already have that we could help either strengthen them or

Actually help to diversify and build upon those one of the one of the areas when it comes to industries within our community is the glass industry and so that is kind of one of our targeted industries I mean I’m not looking at agriculture but that have a workforce

That are that are understand glass that understand the technologies and and have that that that knowledge base that other companies that are in the glass industry know that if they were to move into our area within our region that there’s a workforce that understands glass so through that first we need to identify

Who we are what our strengths are well you know we didn’t want to be focusing on fish farming if we didn’t have a volume of high quality water that these fish farmers could go after so we needed to first we needed to know know who we

Are go ahead you go to the next slide Holly next slide I’m trying okay it’s not letting me Shane if you just want to talk what what oh hey well there we go one of the things that we found out of really identifying what our strengths

Are then we needed to look at okay who are our partners and honestly what we were finding is there were organizations and there were people and business leaders in our community that we’re coming out of the woodwork when there really be going to understand this whole Grove fairfield county and this local

Food movement and really supporting local agribusinesses they were coming out of the woodwork and we couldn’t quite understand it we realized that how are these businesses utilizing agriculture how could they be utilizing agriculture our Chamber of Commerce they are and we have five trent Chamber of Commerce in fairfield county which can

Be a blessing and a curse at times but what is important is that they are very much connected in the business community the restaurant ears and the different businesses in our communities from the standpoint of being able to connect with them and being able to have those conversations for example our local

Hospital some of our local wrestling owned restaurants in for you know someone that is not from you know if they’re not familiar with who you are then maybe skeptical if you want to talk to them about local foods whereas if you are partnered with your local Chamber of Commerce and they’re in supportiveness

And they’re talking to this local restaurant here that there’s an existing relationship that was a tremendous resource the economic development organizations in our community were a great asset in identifying what those needs are but even some of our government organizations like our local port authority one of the projects that

Was aware that we were working on on the side with a transload facility a local rail spur and what we are seeing now is is one of the big users are our local growers and local farmers and even some of our food processors in either shipping in product those based products

Via rail but also shipping either products they’re growing or shipping products out to their customers in a much cheaper fashion because the cost of energy is going to continue to run and so we’re looking at ways of how we can improve and make our local growers more competitive and our local port authority

Will charge a user of our transplant facility like a hundred dollars for a rail car and so it’s really the intent is how can we make this tool usable for all of whether you’re hauling steel or you’re hauling popcorn that how can you use this to the to the best of your

Advantage Transportation Improvement Districts our community improvement corporations there are other governmental economic development organizations and how can they play a part in working with our business attraction and really focusing on those targeted industries and being those partnerships because many times a lot of lot of these organizations that are

Pro-business you know there are still a connection that can be made with pro farmland preservation and its matter looking at it from the standpoint of agriculture in agribusiness and agri industry and then the business to business opportunities is who’s buying if you’re talking to these restaurant owners where are you buying your

Tomatoes where are you buying your lettuce where are you buying your your chicken where are you buying your beef and how can we make those connections and really connect the restaurant owners with the the local producers really get out of the way let them have as conversations do the negotiations of

Price let them deal with that but how do we make those connections some of the things we learn when it comes to education was educating even the farmers that they understand that you can’t just put any old tomato on a salad and serve it to a customer in a restaurant that

There’s a there’s a level of quality that has to be tained and and making sure that those growers understand it and that that was something that knew that came out of this whole process is that all three levels from growers to processors to those retailers whether it is the major

Grocery stores or it’s a local restaurant or look just a local retailer is making sure that they understand the needs of each other and making it making those lines of communication really strengthening those and being that conduit to help those and you can go ahead Holly to the next one when it

Comes to our economic our industry base I kind of make the joke that with you know we see some communities they’re kind of a one-trick pony they have one egg in the basket and when when that industry is doing well they’re doing great when that industry isn’t doing

Well you know watch out and we have communities around Ohio that I have one egg in their basket and we’ve really focused in our community to try to versa Phi our industry base and and with the farmer with agribusiness and egg industry that’s one more targeted industry that we’re focusing on of how

To end how to diversify who we are as a community farmers markets are a great tool I kind of view them as a small business incubator I try to reach out to all of our vendors throughout the county and all the different farmers markets that we have and reach out to them tix

And and make sure that we can help them from a small business perspective and to say okay you’ve got your stand you’re hanging your shingle at this farmers market how can we get you into a storefront what’s it going to take to get you to that next level and many

Times it’s not so much the physical investment it’s developing the business plan finding those clientele to make sure that okay now that we have this additional cost because we are we have a we have an address for this business okay who we want to sell to we need we

Did make sure that we are identifying those those future customers really small businesses and those businesses could be wholesale they could be retail how do we do this and how do we strengthen because many times there they have a desire they have this passion for growing these products

Or or making and baking these products but then okay how do you sell it and how do you sell it in quantities it’s going to be worth your while and what kind of equipment are you needing so we’re looking at small business development and looking at the federal programs

Through SBA looking at the state programs here in Ohio but even what local programs that we have and even looking at our regulatory environment really encouraging our municipalities to make it easier to build or redevelop in the downtown your downtown then it is out in a greenfield site or out in a

Strip mall someplace and really look at our regulations look at our incentive packages that are in place how can we simplify them how can we make them a you know it really ain’t try to encourage people we even looked at reached out to our banks our main street lancaster

Program reached out on really on their own and talk to the local banks and said how can we help from a lending perspective and so they actually there were five four or five banks that set aside money at extremely low interest rate to help landowners in the downtown

Area but even businesses to invest in the downtown area so you know it’s not just okay you’re looking to to get your business started great wonderful god be with you have fun it’s how can we help you from the standpoint of with equipment with financing with business development plans even marketing and and

What you’re going to find is there are tools and resources in your community and for example with marketing when we’re talking to these small business owners saying you know there are marketing firms here in our community I’m not going to recommend one over the other but here’s a list of who does

Small business marketing that I would encourage you to at least have a conversation to that way you know look at how that is taken care of looking at the small business development centers in here in central Ohio and how they’ve been a tremendous resource in developing those business plans that ultimately

Will go to a bank and say I need this much money to get this business started and and we are also looking at our you know working with our existing businesses from a retention and expansion perspective how can we you know what do you do and then how can we

Take that and look at how can we diversify are you aware of what these other activities that are going on here in fairfield county but even in central Ohio and and maybe we can help to diversify because we’ve seen a lot of working with a lot of companies that you

Know they’ve they’re seeing more activity they’re seeing more action happen and how do they get into that and in our area we do have some food processors we have a lot of metal fabricating a lot of machining companies and so and polymers and so we’re looking

At how we can even diversify them in providing products that maybe are dealing with food-grade polymers and products so it’s looking beyond just growing of the produce growing of the livestock but how are those jobs how those processing jobs being created are they created in your community you know

You can you can have an apple orchard but if you’re making something out of those apples within your community that’s where real job opportunities are happening and that’s something you chamber commerce and your ed officials are going to latch on to and they’re going to want to take advantage of and

So that’s one of the angles that we really when we reached out to our chambers and even our downtown’s to say we need a landing zone for these companies if and when they come and that’s where our downtown our main street Main Street programs really in our municipalities jumped on that let’s

Prepare areas for a landing zone for these small businesses where are where these jobs going to you know we need people to fill these positions so we even reached out to our local colleges and technical schools and say do we have the workforce to be able to fulfill these needs and

The state and the our local universities were a great resource and even to look at specific pieces within that that workforce so it’s it you know we can talk about a little bit about what we have done but I think it’s more important is trying to throw some ideas

Out to you and let you think about you know look at the different tools and resources you have within your community know thyself and then really go after those targeted industries a lot of marketing plans are more of a shotgun approach and it really will help your

Eye i feel it’s helped us in identifying what are what do you have by way of infrastructure or or location you know what are your strengths and what kind of companies or industries need those strengths then go after those industries go after those kinds of things you can

You can move forward Holly and you know the specific in your message you know and I think the thing is know thy audience it seems like the you know those two groups the proform land preservation versus pro-business it seems like they don’t always see eye to

Eye but you know what we don’t have to agree on everything we can agree on certain things and just agree to disagree on other pieces but by promoting agriculture by promoting those agribusinesses and industries I’ve kind of said you know how can we how can we make those connections and then the

Growers understanding the needs of the retailers because in understanding the needs of the public I’m not going to go into a grocery store and buy a bunch of nasty look and tomatoes we need to make sure that the quality is there but also when that demand is happening in that

Collaboration even between the growers to say I’ve only got two crates of tomatoes today but this other neighbor neighbor that’s growing tomatoes he’s got creates and he’ll sell to you and developing those types of things we see our is a real resource and opportunity of connecting our growers to our local

Retailers and even the general public and then looking at your large institutions you know talking to your local school districts talking to university he’s talking to the prison systems talking to the hospitals some of the major employers some of the things we found is a few of our companies provide

Meals as a benefit to their employees where you buying your food not to say that you have to buy one hundred percent local you may not be able to do that but how can we begin to transition into that currently working with a with a company that deals and processes potatoes well

Where are you buying your potatoes well they’re buying them from outside of Ohio how can we transition and connect you with Ohio potato growers whether they’re in fairfield county or in central ohio or Ohio and transition to buying Ohio potatoes it’s those kinds of things is how do we make those connections and

It’s really with a number of organizations that are out there if it’s truly surprising the number of partnerships that you’re going to have I encourage you to to look at agriculture as an industry no different than manufacturing no different than high tech or bio health and and treat it as

Such and from business attraction but also retention and expansion and it’s going to help your community your region in your tax base when it comes to the fluctuating economy we’ve been living and living in I think it will help too I you know as you get those victories and

Get those expansions and growing that they’re going to be some real row opportunities and diversifying your workforce and your industry force Shane I think that concludes our presentation Brittany if we want to move into questions and answers alright sounds good I’m so our first question comes in from Daniel how many ranch and

Farm owners a number of acres have petitioned for the farm and ranch land protection program I didn’t hear the entire part regulation beat that sure um how many ranch and farm owners number of acres have petitioned for the farm and ranch land protection program right now

I would estimate that we have about a thousand acres that have gone into that program fairfield county does not have a direct funding source that we put up for the twenty five percent match required we have relayed or relied on the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s clean Ohio

Fund to provide us with that match that also stretches the state dollar further and protection okay great our next question comes in from Jessica could you please explain what an agriculture security area is the general premise of the agricultural security area is not permanent protection but is a land use

Planning tool to try and make sure that we are guiding utilities and roads into areas that we do not want to protect as agriculture long term so the primary driver is intelligent land use up front and then trying to protect the land permanently with inside that agricultural security area it’s required

Here in the state of Ohio to utilize the law that the counties and townships and adjacent municipalities within a set distance weigh in on whether or not they want to create an agricultural security area the agricultural secure we have here in Fairfield County just recently went through what would be the first

Major challenge in the state of Ohio with two municipalities on either side we had clearly communicated with them at the beginning that if they had any objections we needed to know but at that time they did not have a water line play in place and one village provided water

To another and then the village further to the north said we can provide you water as well and they went through an effort to run a water line directly through the agricultural security area we were unable to utilize any existing law to stop that moving forward in our

Review but basically when it was all said and done our county farm bureau stepped in and negotiated between the villages to find a means by which no water line would have to be run and be more economical to either village so what it really did was foster that communication between villages on either

Side of the agricultural area as to what the importance of Agriculture is and what the agricultural community can do to help preserve your bottom line as you operate your villages okay our next question comes in from Heather what does an aggregation facility look like is it a large farmers market what we’re

Envisioning through this process is that it would include both wholesale and a retail component it would be something that would be on inside so typically farmers markets when I think of those are more outside this would be something at a larger scale inside where there could be such things as a produce

Auction or some kind of wholesale distribution so that farmers can aggregate their products and then send them to larger institutions but coupled with that is a retail component which you might think more of a farmers market type thing where people can come in and purchase directly from the entities at

Those boobs on it has been discussed that our current farmers marker market in Lancaster if we were able to get an aggregation facility going it could move into that facility on a permanent basis rather than being closing down our one of our streets on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday morning so yes partly there

Be a farmers market component but something larger and something was wholesale component to it all right our next question comes in from Leanne did you have to make any changes to your subdivision ordinances for land outside of your service area to discourage or redesign residential development to help protect farmland um subdivision

Regulations are pretty much governed from the enabling legislation at the state level so there is not much that we can do through the subdivision regulations but what you can do is have through zoning do some different amendments to that to make sure that we’re zoning in the proper locations for

Development and then also looking into zoning that can protect agriculture in the areas where we want agriculture to remain I think one of the things that’s very important here in Fairfield County still is the land rights and one of the nice things that we’ve been able to do

In fairfield county is if someone does desire to build a subdivision and it’s also beside a farm that is already protected the people still have that choice but what we have seen primarily as the driver is when one neighbor gets a farm protected the next neighbor takes interest and we now have these

Conservation communities of you know maybe six to eight farmers the farm 60 acre tract here 100 acre tract a mile down the road their neighbor has won another quarter mile we begin to create this continuous Network and there is a strong energy that flows with that when

You talk to those neighbors in those neighborhoods about what’s happening okay our next question comes in from an and it’s sort of related to the last question when a farm property that is among the 140,000 acres targeted for preservation comes up for review for subdivision or development what is the

County’s response typically went coming through a rezoning recommendation we will take a look at our land use plan and if it is within that agricultural preservation area we typically will recommend disapproval arc County plan is at a county level I challenged the zoning and fearful County is administered at a

Township level on so we have through Ohio law of the right to and responsibility of making a recommendation back to the township but it’s ultimately up to the township to make that final rezoning decision so we will recommend against it but it does not necessarily mean that it always

Follows suit through that whole process now that’s up from the zoning side subdivision regulations we administer that at a county level but again if a property is zoned that would allow for the subdivision our subdivision regulations would only regulate how that land gets subdivided and and the type of infrastructure of affects the

Specifications for the infrastructure it’s not going to allow us to stop the development and just tell them how what size lots etcetera great our next question comes in from George and it kind of goes back to the aggregation facility is there any data available yet to document the effectiveness of your

Programs on creating the connections between local growers and retailers and or in getting an aggregation facility plan and project implemented at this point in time since we just wrapped up the plan a few months ago we do not have that type of data but one thing that we

Have seen out of interest is there’s an Amish population within fairfield county that has great interest in moving forward with some type of aggregation and they are moving forward doing their own legal review as to what they would need to do to help propel the effort along with our main street lancaster and

Regional planning has submitted to the Ohio Farm Bureau foundation for a grant to begin that feasibility study of the downtown area and what can be done but right now we are very optimistic based on the success we’ve had the farmland preservation and the desire to keep agriculture in our

Community the numbers will begin to appear in a few short years as to what our crew success has been okay our next question comes in from Heather any specific plans for utilizing the smaller Lots and getting them back into production are there any incentives at this point in time again just because we

Have the short planning effort underway we do not have incentives but what we are trying to do is beginning to get with some of our Township representatives especially up there towards the Columbus area and let them know that this is something we have interest in doing what we don’t want to

Do is change the plan that may already be in place for that property so we’re just really trying to wade into it but we’ve also seen as some of these larger fires were divided over the previous decade many of those property owners realized quickly that the maintenance of

That 10 to 15 acres was unreasonable and the taxation that they were being taxed at what was higher than they wanted so they chose to move in the direction of engaging in some type of Agriculture to meet our current agriculture use valuation tax so we’ve already seen the

Development of a handful of shrimp ponds on several parcels along with the vineyard development on I believe three parcels here in fairfield county that we’re all of that relatively small nature okay our next question comes in from an what has been the role of the county extension office and also address

The the state extension programs involvement if there is any with our efforts at this point in time the fairfield county extension office did weigh in as one of our advisory members right now they are doing many of their own programs and because of financial challenges within their offices and

Transitioning folks they were not able to be at the table with us throughout this entire process but again they had an active role in moving it forward and then of course the osu partnership that we had does tie back to osu extension indirectly and all that holly speak to that relationship

The grant that we got issues was through the center of farmland policy innovation so we were able to work directly with osu on through this planning process and and the Jill Clark with the the center was part of our planning process and did attend our meetings and provide input

Throughout our planning process so there was a close connection with Ohio State at many different levels through the policy center center farmland policy innovation through our extension office through the city and regional planning program who wrote the class war so I think that they are pretty heavily involved throughout now as we move

Forward we fully anticipate that lancasters office here the fairfield osu extension will take a role in some of these education and health components that we’ve partnered with with the hospital but right now we’re still moving forward in our own internal planning processes to take this to the

Next level okay our next question comes in from heather you show senators and congressmen on your policy committee what has been their involvement and how supportive have they been it’s been very great um they came at their own will to these meetings and they have shown a

Strong interest in our plan and both Austria’s office and senator Brown’s office have participated a lot and the senator Brown’s office often send me updates and things that of how he’s been involved in the the local food and agricultural business industry and I think that that is just a step in the

Right direction and a very good thing to have them on board with us and i look forward to hopefully continuing their involvement with us as we move forward with monthly meetings of a local food council i’m hoping that they will continue to stay on board and

Be a part of that council to help implement many more of these recommendations in this plan okay I’m our next question comes in from Kirby you’ve talked a lot about support for producers and retailers you have specific plans for support for processors and what is the economic role

Of processors in the county Shane you can take that one if you’d like yeah a lot of the programs that we have in place that there’s a lot of carryover with incentives that you see for manufacturing in the state of Ohio a lot of those incentives when you’re dealing

With job creation tax credits Enterprise Zone Community Reinvestment areas you’re dealing with primarily talking about real property you’re talking about investment of equipment and different tax incentives those those types of food processors also the larger processors typically are going to go into our industrial areas the smaller processors

That we’re having the way that we’ve seen and have talked to may not necessarily go into an industrial park but can still take advantage of some of these programs that are available through the state or even locally we have a local revolving loan fund program for small businesses and also a number

Of state tax credits that a lot of these processors can take advantage of being food processing is really a targeted industry for our community that’s one of the areas that we are strategically focusing on in business and the attraction but also the expansion so many of the programs that you you may

See across the state of Ohio or most states when it comes to manufacturing we can dub potatoes right into food processing great thanks our next question comes in from Martin considering that the major needs seemed to be consumer education on using fresh foods and market education on sourcing local foods is rebuilding a

Local market economy a case of overcoming industrialization and farm policies that have driven growers and consumers are so far apart that’s quite the question um I guess my gut reaction right now having been a native of Fairfield County and you know living here in my entire life the transition

That we saw in fairfield county was primarily the intergenerational transfer when we lost you know dad willing to go out and pick the trees and the son or daughter we’re not able to continue that because of the career choice they move forward with that’s really when we

Change things but I can’t say that there’s there’s blame being put anywhere what those generations when they left the farm have been able to bring back to the community a lot of people do move back to fairfield county we have a lot of great leadership that lives here and

They’re native but i can’t put any finger on any industrial or farm bill policies that really press in the position we are today we would really struggled to try and keep the mom-and-pop operations together and sometimes they’ve made mistakes and shane can attest to some of those stories but we still have the

Infrastructure and we want to get people back in those facilities operating the those meat processing and local restaurants but at this point in time i think it’s really just been it’s been the change and mom and dad encouraging people to leave the farm and then at that point in time you know transitions

Are made for my family and the farm that we operated since about nineteen twelve it really did not become economically feasible for two schoolteachers being my uncle and my father to continue operating a hundred acre farm and they chose to talk with my great-grandmother’s nephew I and we’ve

Had that relationship now for over 50 years still within the farm family the immediate neighborhood but again it’s just the way things are changing Jonathan I’d like to touch on that a little our little bit of an education I think is is needed and we’ll continue

With our retailers and you know when you talk to restaurant owners and they pay a lot of money for those menus and to say well i would like to start introducing local foods and marketing local foods well now you’re talking about changing your menu and so how can we do this

Inexpensively but also as food changes in the seasons we have seasons in Ohio how do you take advantage of that and we’ve seen a lot of restaurants look at you know local food specials that you know little little advertisement that can sit right on the table the monthly

Specials but even our rest are our grocery stores and when there is Ohio foods or even fairfield county foods that you that you are putting on your shelf how are those differentiated from any other product that is that is made and and how can we show in a very easy

Way to the consumers that oh you’re supporting local farmers you’re supporting Ohio farms Ohio industries if you buy these foods and we’ve seen some real success with some of the grocery stores that are now really they’re beginning just very simply identify there’s an Ohio proud program that is

Across a stable high oh but there’s also a lot of little ways that you can do it that when you’re walking down the produce aisle and you see five different varieties of apples and one of those is may is grown right here Ohio you see that and you can very quickly identify

That and so people begin to that if they shop at the same stores they begin to see that and recognize that and and and what we found most people it is near and dear to their heart to support local jobs are jobs within the state or within

The region and and that they want to do that and in they may not always pay a little bit more but if we make it easy for them to identify those foods and get to them whether it’s at the restaurant table or it’s at the

Grocery how we want to be able to do that and so there’s been some education on a retailer’s perspective as well I think some of this comes into convenience to and the busy schedules that we have today all of us and and everybody I mean even some of the people

That said at the table said yeah I like go on one place and picking up all my different stuff and so just the lifestyle that we have today has has led to some of this as well so I think that factors in okay um well our next

Question comes in from Leanne have you incorporated any changes to accommodate ecotourism and agritourism to help farmers make money if so one of the efforts included at this point in time our language playing back in 2002 they also indicate agritourism was something that we needed to move forward with as

We’ve delved into this that was very much part of our discussion but the agritourism components were not necessarily creating the larger job opportunities that we might expect the ability to aggregate and process the food is where the greatest bang for the buck comes in but we also do have almost

Every one of our orchard operations and almost every one of our major sweet corn growers they have facilities set up at the side of the road in the of them are along state highways and over the last couple of years we’ve been trying to find grant money to move forward with

Mapping of those locations and potentially creating an app for people traveling through the county we just don’t have the time to do all the things that we possibly want to but those are things that are definitely on the horizon to pick up pace on okay well our next question comes in

From an many planners may not realize that the Soil and Water Conservation District is a unit of local government and she thinks that this is true in Ohio as well and has the status worked in your favor in some way or is that just a neutral effect I really think that the

Fairfield Soil and Water Board is a local unit of government that is at is a fact but here in fairfield county that this one water board was one of the first boards created beyond your township and your county commissioners and the Fairfield Soil and Water Board has always taken an active role because

Of our unique soils in our glaciated position between the hocking hills and the city of columbus they were one of the first voices that really said we need a Regional Planning Commission and since that day Fairfield soil and water has been at the table side by side for

Us in the song water office we deliver the farmland preservation programs on behalf of the county commissioners they hold all legal authority but we are their designated entity to do applications and monitoring and coordinate efforts along with our land Trust’s we also provide many of those same services for them our reporter with

Our agricultural community has given us the ability to talk on the most fundamental level we can understand the challenge that they have each year and we also have had a 50-plus year history with their family we’ve seen many folks interested in farmland preservation come in the door for the first time since

Nineteen forty eight 1952 when we first did conservation strips and well into their 80th and 90th years they desire to keep that farm as productive as possible and move things forward with farmland preservation so it has been nothing but a huge benefit that I think the fairfield county and even our ability to

Help our friends on the pickaway county line perry county line and licking county line that we’re at the desk we are in the office on any given day and can answer those questions okay our next question comes in from Heather I’m we many small farmers markets in our county

But no coordinating organization or structure do you have any central organization for farmers markets and if you asked how do they work no we don’t again we have multiple farmers markets throughout the county as well and they each have their own organization as any I don’t know if any of the other two

Panelists know of anywhere that has an overall organization not aware of one know there are stronger efforts moving in Northeast Ohio I think in the youngstown area to help coordinate but the folks at the countryside Conservancy have been very integral in trying to coordinate some efforts in Northeast

Ohio but we do not have those here our office at the soil and water side has tried to communicate for the last three to four years as we saw the local foods movement coming to touch base and understand who the farmers were delivering those products in those

Communities and try to open the line of communication with them that soil and water resources are not just for the large-scale grain operation they are also available to the small fruit and vegetable production but at this point in time no we do not have that central

Facility I do think too that as we move forward with the local food Council that hopefully we will have most of them on board and that will be a place that they can all come together and understand what each of the others are doing and then also one of the recommendations in

This plan is that those air at those communities within Facebook any that do not have farmers markets if we thought it would be a good idea if we could take some of our existing market and do just a one-day pilot program out in one of the communities that doesn’t have one to

Show them what it would be like to have one to even grow more farmers markets throughout the county so that’s something else to keep in mind okay our next question comes in from Daraa are you utilizing transfer of development rights or purchase of development rights we have not done anything formally and

Has been something that we have talked about that we would like to pursue in the future there is no existing current legislation that would specifically allow for TDRs right now in Ohio and we have been working on the legislative side to promote that and would be interested in

Doing something in the future as a pilot program or or working towards that if and when that becomes available we are utilizing the purchase of development rights through the clean Ohio agriculture easement purchase program and the federal ranch lands program and grassland reserve okay our next question

Comes in from an you three appear to have forged a wonderful partnership in addition to a great program do you have any advice for others in reaching across agency lines to combine the strengths of agencies like each of yours this is Jonathan um again somebody that comes

From Fairfield County the thing I really like about the partnership with regional planning and economic development is for the first time in a long time everybody seems to be reading from the same page and we have folks that you call them the giants you stand on the shoulders of

Giants that went before you we had a soil scientist for years that said the soil here was the best and we have to protect it we had previous Regional Planning Director to set well let’s do a plan to try to protect it and now economic development has really kind of

Fallen into place without those pioneering folks ahead of us the position that that holiday and I and Shane have today we would not be able to be moving forward at this level but ultimately we all have the support of each other’s boards and our boards cross each other’s lines from the Farm Bureau

Level the soil in the water the Regional Planning Commission and the county commissioners we all here and talk the same thing and I think without the grassroots efforts of the people allowing us to do it um we still have some challenges here today okay our next question comes in from

George I’m Lisa le sa evaluates land with prime farmland soils in terms of the availability of agricultural support systems like supplies and equipment as well as distribution networks what condition are those components in and are they addressed in the plan I guess the agricultural support network that you’re looking towards that really did

Not play in to our less a model but we look at it when we utilize our farmland preservation programs we do not want to move forward with protecting land that does not have the services of equipment and feed supplies fertilizers if they’re not available by other means so we look

At each farm that we move forward with the easement purchases on to make sure that they have those support networks within the immediate vicinity immediate vicinity would be within two counties because equipment dealerships cannot survive at the small size anymore so two of the bigger players that we work with

One of those operations is here in fairfield county on john deere equipment but the other case IH dealership is two counties away but they are very critical and they actually have a working relationship where red parts will come to the green parts facility and to be delivered to the local customers and

It’s that type of agreement that we think is great that they’re all trying to support agriculture by whatever means possible I wanted to comment on the previous question a little bit just you know when you’re going out and talking to you know other organizations that may not be pro agriculture or pro farmland

Preservation is really kind of try to try to figure out what their hot buttons are what is near to near and dear to their heart and I think what you’ll find is is how to make us you can make those connections and just to say you know if

You can focus on this piece of the puzzle for us and partner with us on this piece of the puzzle then you can begin to develop those relationships and partnerships the other thing is is you when you really begin to talk to organizations throughout the community about you know local foods and local

Industry and local agriculture what you’re going to get is you’re going to get people that are going to be that you never thought could be a potential partner are coming out of the woodwork and you want to take advantage of everyone that walks through that door

Every time that phone rings you want to take advantage of those and how do they fit into the grand grand scheme of things because you don’t want to turn anyone away okay well our last question for today comes in from Elizabeth I think it’ll be a good place to end r

There changes in state policy that you would like to see uh yeah I think as I’ve mentioned during one of the other questions that I subdivision regulations are something that I think that could be taking a look at further there were some changes made at the state level on back

In 2005 I believe that did help to some degree but I would like to see further revisions to that as far as more review on smaller lot splits um because right now anything that’s over five acres is exempt the change that took place in 05 was on that counties could implement

Some limited review for things that are between 5 and 20 acres but I think it could be built have more teeth in it and be a little bit stronger even at that I also touched on before that TDRs is something that I think would be very beneficial to our efforts and i would

Like to see that take place and as far as other policies i don’t have the vin informing a local job this is Shane yeah there’s there so at the state level I think definitely looking at when you’re dealing with food processing all of the permits and regulations you know looking

At your state and what kind of incentives are in place to help that lease go through what we see is to produce locally versus for producing commercially you know wholesale versus retail the investment just to get that permit can be substantial and how can we find some ways to deal with that the

Other thing too is if you’ve got areas in York your community you want redevelopment or infill development to occur how hard is it to get permits how long does it take to get a permit so where they can get their lights on they can turn the lights on and they can

Actually start making money and one of the things that my office we also focus on is being the project manager from the government side on this project because a lot of times you’ll have a contractor you’ll have a project manager when you’re redeveloping a site or developing

A site but there’s no one on the government the permitting agents and that’s where ed officials or other government official can become that project manager so when you’re dealing with building code you’re dealing with zone and you’re dealing with utilities you’re dealing with floodplain and the

List goes on and on how are those things going to wear that project manager on the private side can contact you directly and say hey I’m having trouble with a floodplain administrator because many times government agents are more willing to open up to me being just a

Government Lackey than it is with an applicant and we’ve been able to even work through some processes before an application officially submitted so that application can be created in the right manner so when it goes before a permitting agent they’ve got something that they can move forward with versus

Up this is an error this is an error and this is an error start over it’s those kinds of things that we found have we’ve had some successes in to overcome some issues that the permitting agent the professional fees but the the project manager who many times may be coming in

From outside of our community doesn’t understand may never thought about that and it just allows those applications to actually move in and be put in a positive motion towards approval I think one of the things that that gets my attention most and I probably bend the rules of what my job

Description is in the soil and water conservation community but through activities with the AG viability task force under the previous administration at the Department of Agriculture along with our own internal discussion between retailers and producers there are a handful of regulations and rules related to what the Ohio Department of

Agriculture expects to see when they arrive at a facility or inspect and what our local health department is looking to inspect at the same time there is lack of quick reference for those folks that are interested in doing on-farm processing well we want to make sure everything is under the most sanitary

Conditions sometimes we bury things in regulation so far it’s hard to find and when someone wants to slaughter a certain number of chickens on the farm and still be within the law you have to read through multiple codes and sections and there’s all types of little what-ifs

And one of the things that I’ve been able to do and again you know maybe I didn’t do it right and I should have asked permission for it was seeking the permission from the departments of Agriculture Department’s of Health for those operators to do things one thing

That I have found is there is anonymity behind that voice in the soil and water office you can ask a question I’ll keep your name back and I’ll ask a question on behalf of some other government agency similar to what Shane’s indicating the the meat inspection department of the Ohio Department of

Agriculture was really trying to figure out for quite some time why this soil and water guy kept calling but we got on a fundamental understanding that we were just trying to clearly identify keep people right keep them sanitary keep them safe and then we briefed once the

Land owner or operator move forward that this operation is going forward and again it’s not necessarily under your control but if you have a question you know they should be prepared to answer them there are a handful of other regulations that I think we identified and we will be moving forward in

Addressing those with our state representatives and Senators but again right now we’re still moving forward and we have to have that bored voice put together by this food Council and I just want to touch them more on a positive note of the things too is that

If we could have at the state level some kind of incentive program for utilizing local foods too i think that would be a step in the right direction as well oh and i think i think there is um there there’s enough low-hanging fruit of ways to either streamline processes or

Educate our local growers just in the farmers markets in the state of Ohio way to measure something as simple as that and how products are being packaged and and presented to customers to make sure they’re in compliance with weights and measures little things like that that

We’ve found to be able to communicate to our growers educate them so when they actually open up their store open up their their their table at the farmers market they’re ready to go and it just makes everyone much more you know positive about your community that oh

There actually are looking out for our interests and trying to help versus how can we stick it to you okay well thank you so much Holly and Shane and Jonathan for a great presentation I think everybody really enjoyed it for those of the attendees who are still with us if

You just want to hang on for about a minute or so I’m going to go over submitting your CMS for today and where to find a recording thank you again Holly Jonathan and Shane thank you alright well for those of you who are still with us um first off to log your

CM credits for attending today’s webcast please go to ww planning or GM select today’s date Friday November 30th and then select today’s webcast growing for our future linking agriculture to economic development this webcast is available for one and a half cm credits also we are recording today’s webcast

Sessions so you will be able to find the recording along with the six slide per page PDF at ww utah APA org slash webcast archive and this does conclude today’s session and I want to thank everyone again for attending

ID: WGS9B9vUewU
Time: 1343344962
Date: 2012-07-27 03:52:42
Duration: 01:31:02

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