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Aurora Beacon-News
April 8, 2002
Project under way: American Farmland Trust organizing 'stakeholder' committees to discuss strategies
By Mike Norbut
STAFF WRITER
YORKVILLE ó A farmland protection group has stepped up efforts to preserve land in Kendall County, devoting a
full-time employee to work with residents who want to protect the agricultural integrity of their communities.
The move by the American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit conservation organization, shows at least a sense of urgency
to have preservation strategies in place before development completely invades the area, officials said.
"The American Farmland Trust sees this as really important land," Brad Walker, the organization's northern
Illinois field representative, said. "There's a lot of prime and important farmland, but it's also good for
developers because it's flat and drains well."
Developers' interest has been easy to witness, as land is being transformed from agricultural to commercial and
residential uses. The American Farmland Trust estimates northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin to be the third
most threatened agricultural area in the country.
Walker recently was hired to work with residents in Kendall, DeKalb and Boone counties, to help develop local
protection programs. It starts with organizing "stakeholder" committees, made up of about 15 people interested
in the cause, he said.
The committees will dictate how much land should be saved and where it should be protected, Walker said.
"We want to get everyone involved," he said. "This will be pretty much the same thing that people
do with watersheds."
In Kendall County, farmland preservation has become an important topic because of plans for the proposed outer-belt
freeway, which would cut through acres of rural land if it ran through the western portion of the county.
Walker said plans for the preservation project were under way before the highway proposal was made public, but
the possibility of a road connecting interstates 88 and 80 have made their work more vital.
"It's an unfortunate coincidence for us," Walker said. "We have to figure out how to deal with
it. It adds a level of complexity for us."
Once the committees start to make decisions, the American Farmland Trust will be able to help them work toward
those goals, officials said.
"We realized that the only way we were going to have any effect in these counties was to have a person working
in the immediate area with the people who were able to have an influence," Denny Caneff, director of the American
Farmland Trust's upper Midwest regional office, said.
The information will be helpful for area governments, which are trying to establish policies to rein in development.
Kendall County Board Chairman John Church said the organization can be helpful in not only identifying what farmland
to save, but suggesting methods by which to save it.
"One of the biggest issues is financing," he said. "When you're talking about purchasing development
rights, how do you make that work?"
For more information about the program or to volunteer, call Walker at (815) 753-9237 or e-mail him at bawalker@niu.edu.