In Response to "A Path Forward for Conservation and Farming in Westwood"

The Westwood Minute recently carried an article from advertising executive Kelly Fredrickson about the controversy created by The Bean Farm over Clapboardtree Meadow. Her piece, titled “A Path Forward for Conservation and Farming in Westwood,” posits that turning the meadow into a farm need not undermine the land’s conservation values.

It is heartening that Ms. Fredrickson recognizes the importance of preserving the land’s conservation values. Her solution to this controversy, however, does not.

Her article promotes a conservation theory to the effect that some agricultural practices might provide some ecological benefits in some contexts. But in the context of Clapboardtree Meadow - which is at a very stable and natively diverse state - it is not true at all. No form of farming can improve the soil, level of native plant diversity, native insect activity on this land, or any other of its native attributes. Nor can it provide improved hydrological function and thus protection of the surrounding wetland systems. And most likely, existing native vertebrates that use the habitat would find farming to be inhospitable too.

The agricultural practices inherent in what The Bean Farm proposes - row cropping, tillage, soil chemistry alteration, crop rotation - would destroy Clapboardtree Meadow, replace it with substantially degraded conservation features, and bring no compensating ecological benefits to the land. Ms. Frederickson’s thesis might apply when introducing regenerative farming to, say, a non-native monoculture. Those tools are meant to improve ecological diversity on land whose baseline, ecological diversity score is low. They do not apply to land like Clapboardtree Meadow, which is a highly functional, stable, diverse, native meadow, rare in this region, whose natural state requires only minimal routine management.

Ms. Fredrickson says that the Land Trust’s concerns can be addressed by “active management” and “carefully governed” agricultural use. Not so for Clapboardtree Meadow. Any “active management” or “carefully governed” agricultural use would only be in response to the detrimental impacts created by that very agricultural use.

Even on land with lower conservation value than Clapboardtree Meadow, much of Ms. Fredrickson’s thesis depends on the quality of active management and how carefully governed the agricultural use is. She is essentially proposing an undefined agricultural experiment and hoping for a desirable outcome. But the certainty of losing known habitats and high conservation values outweighs the unlikely possibility that the agricultural experiment she proposes would preserve the meadow’s existing ecological benefits. Most likely, the outcome would be a series of negative impacts in the short and long term, some possibly not visible for many years.

Ms. Fredrickson offers a solution should her experiment not work out in the way she hopes. She says that everything The Bean Farm would do to the land would be “reversible” because “the land could be restored.” That is no solution. Restoration is not that simple. It is uncertain, can take decades, could easily cost into the six figures, and rarely creates the same ecological system as previously existed.

Ms. Fredrickson says that denying the Town’s request to convert the meadow to agriculture is to favor abandonment over stewardship and theory over lived practice. The opposite is the case. To do what she wants would be to abandon the meadow, forsake the Land Trust’s role as steward of the land, and favor an uncertain agricultural theory over the lived practice of stable meadow management.

Clapboardtree Meadow should not be switched out for agriculture just because some people do not understand the meadow’s ecology or appreciate the conservation purposes it serves. It is unwise to make decisions that invite permanent detrimental impacts in the hope that those impacts will not occur. Guesswork about future outcomes should not take priority over what science tells us we can expect. At bottom, it is not a good use of taxpayer dollars to prosecute a lawsuit against the Land Trust for protecting the land and its conservation values.

Very Truly Yours,

Nancy Dempze, Esq.

President, Westwood Land Trust