Rooted in the Soil

Four decades ago, as John v.H. Halsey noted in an article last week, the idea of preserving land on the East End wasn’t new: Suffolk County and the towns had started to look at doing piecemeal projects where the municipalities would ask voters to borrow funds to purchase the development rights on farmland. The idea was to keep the land in the farmers’ hands, and the soil actively in production, but allow them to exchange some of the intrinsic value in developing the lots. That would offset rising tax bills for land that suddenly was soaring in value, and to provide an offset to the growing pressure to sell and develop every acre.

When Halsey and a group of friends — Terry Stubelek, Roy L. Wines Jr., Richard W. King and Ted Sharretts — founded Peconic Land Trust in 1983, it was meant to more aggressively inform the generational owners of these treasured fields of their options, and to encourage and collect donations from philanthropic people and organizations who wanted to keep a certain agricultural way of life in place.

It was, in many ways, the perfect “right place, right time” idea. Real estate on the South Fork in particular had begun its steady climb in the 1970s, so development pressure was mounting. There were innovative programs in their infancy, such as the sale of development rights. The time was right for an organization like the Peconic Land Trust to provide advocacy that benefited the farm families but also the community in general.

As the Southampton-based nonprofit marks 40 years this summer, it’s a chance to step back and truly marvel at the impact it has had. It seems fitting to suggest that the seeds of success that have grown so lushly in the past quarter century, leading to the groundbreaking Community Preservation Fund and its $2 billion in preservation, were planted and cultivated in part by the success of the Peconic Land Trust. This little nonprofit showed the way with audacious optimism, a goal of fairness to all sides and its heart firmly in the region’s agrarian past.

Apart from the towns and their supercharged CPF, nothing has had the kind of success the Peconic Land Trust has had: 13,000 acres of working farmland remains in production because of the organization and its partners. It’s a remarkable legacy, a rousing success story.

This summer, the 40th since its founding, as you drive around the East End, and the South Fork in particular, take note of the crops, the tractors, the men and women who are still coaxing miracles out of some of the best soil on the planet. There isn’t an architect who can match the beauty of a farm field. If you enjoy the view, give credit where it’s due.