John Piotti, executive director of Maine Farmland Trust in Belfast, discusses the importance ot perserving farmland during a recent tour of the historic 90-acre Erickson Farm off Route 90 in Rockport. Maine Coast Heritage Trust and Maine Farmland Trust have joined forces to try to preserve the 90-acre property for future farming. With Piotti are Camden resident Abby Fitzgerald and her dog, Sveva, a Parisian lab and whippet mix, and Rockport resident Polly Chatfield. (Bangor Daily News/George Chappell)
ROCKPORT, Maine - John Piotti, executive director of Maine Farmland Trust in Belfast and a state legislator from Unity, believes farming has a great future in Maine.
"But we need to get over a hurdle in the next few years," he said on a recent tour of the Erickson Farm, a historic farm on the south side of Route 90.
Piotti is part of a collaborative effort involving his land trust and Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which joined forces last summer to acquire Erickson Farm, a productive farm for more than 200 years, from Maria Erickson Wheaton.
The farm is located less than a mile from Route 1, and has 60 acres of wooded backland and 35 acres of fields, grazed by the famous black-and-white Belted Galloways of Aldermere Farm, located on Russell Avenue in Rockport. Aldermere Farm is a program of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust.
Piotti and Ron Howard, general manager of Aldermere Farm, recently conducted a walking tour of the acreage for the benefit of people interested in the property.
When Howard learned the farm was to be sold, he asked Maine Farmland Trust to help keep the property in farming forever.
Maine Farmland Trust borrowed the money to secure the land and preserve it through a permanent agricultural conservation easement.
The loan has to be paid by this July. The groups have mounted a campaign to raise $1.1 million. Once the acquisition is completed, the land will be conveyed to Maine Coast Heritage Trust, ensuring that the land is available to Aldermere Farm for grazing, haying and growing food forever.
"To date, we’ve raised more than $600,000, including a federal farmland grant," Howard and Piotti wrote in a recent fundraising letter. "We need $500,000 more to reach our goal by July."
Piotti said that farming has grown in Maine.
"We’ve increased farms and acreage production in the past 15 years," he said. "A lot of the telltale signs are good."
At the same time, in the past 15 years Maine has lost more than 800,000 acres of farmland to development, he added.
While some large commodity farms are struggling, many others are stable, he said.
"We’re very excited about this property," Piotti said while walking up a slope to a grove of trees overlooking Route 90 and the Camden-Rockport Elementary School beyond.
The hurdle Piotti mentioned is a demographic fact that up to 400,000 acres of Maine farmland are owned by elderly people who no longer farm their property. He predicts that most of that property will be sold in the next 10 years to development unless it can be protected.
"We’ve got to look at the longer term about the quality of food we are going to eat," he said. "So much of our food is dependent on oil transporting goods to market."
The future of farming is growing food to be consumed locally, he added.
"Aldermere is one of those farms we want to keep working," he said. "The key factor of success to these farms is access to the market."
"This part of Maine is very well-oriented toward that," he added. "I envision a resurgence of farming in this area."
Joining Piotti and Howard on the tour were Lys McLaughlin of Lincolnville, Cate Cronin of Rockport, Nancy Harmon Jenkins of Union, Mazie Cox of Rockport, Abby Fitzgerald of Camden, and Polly Chatfield of Rockport. The Chatfield family once owned Aldermere Farm.
