Morning, everyone.

Two quick announcements, then a marvelously, urgently important guest essay.

• Sarah and I are honored to join Creative Mornings for a wonderful Friday morning at Crabtree Farms. Thanks to our friends Chris and Kody for the generous invitation. We'd love to see you all there.
• Last week's Thrive Regional Network's Tri-State Summit hosted a very powerful panel with Lori Bell, Jess Wilson, Kelsey Keener and Brooks Lamb, who drove in from Memphis and spoke later that evening at Little Coyote. It was remarkable, hard-hitting and so generous. I'll provide some excerpts from the day in a future column.)

After the panel, we met some folks, including the stalwart Jim Johnson, who many of you know as a regional leader in conservation efforts.

It became quickly obvious; with our impending crisis of farmland loss, there's one major solution right before us.

McDonald Farm.

Few people can articulate this vision as well as Jim.

This morning, we are honored to publish Jim's essay. (Included are contributed photos; the first three from Jennifer Duvall, followed by photos from Melissa Vicent. Bald eagles photo by Adam Gaiter.)

Saving McDonald Farm also saves Hamilton County’s agriculture industry

By Jim Johnson

At last week’s Thrive Regional Partnership Tri-State Summit, repeated alarm bells – klaxons, actually – went off about the dire and precarious state of agriculture in Hamilton County. 

Speakers warned how Tennessee is the fourth most endangered state for farmland loss, an average rate of 10 acres per hour – a cumulative loss of 65 percent in less than 20 years.

In Hamilton County, approximately 1,200 acres of cropland remain, according to The Land Trust for Tennessee. At current rates, this number will drop to zero within nine years.

“This is an ecological and ethical crime,” one speaker said. Another bemoaned the “cultural and psychological impacts of losing the places we love.”

The crisis goes beyond disappearing farmland to issues of affordability and availability, speakers told us.

With local farmers averaging 59 years old, the future of farming depends increasingly on younger generations. 

At the same time, the barrier to entry has become increasingly difficult for young people. Skyrocketing land costs now often average $30,000 per acre. With a typical minimum of 50 acres required to make a living with fruits and vegetables, and with 100 acres required for livestock and hay, that means a minimum of $1.5-3 million required just for land acquisition. 

That’s without the added cost of equipment, fencing, irrigation, storage and seed. 

Finances aside, young farmers often lack the tools, experience and expertise to succeed. This applies not just to farming but also to small business skills such as budgeting, forecasting, bookkeeping, marketing, insurance and HR.

This is one reason that less than two percent of today’s workforce is in agriculture today versus 39 percent a century ago.

The silver lining

Still, there’s good news – or at least serious potential for it.

As we listened to the dire reports, many of us in attendance realized that Hamilton County’s $16 million purchase of McDonald Farm to create a new industrial park may be the salvation of the agriculture industry here. 

Gotta love irony.

If the county had not purchased the Farm, it might have been sold off to multiple developers.

Instead, the county has a complete say as to what happens there. It’s a living laboratory in support of agricultural preservation, if not outright restoration.

In late 2021, Hamilton County acquired the 2,100-acre McDonald Farm in Sale Creek for $16 million.

The plan was to pursue industry, much as the county had done with Enterprise South. Perhaps another Volkswagen could be found. 

For much of the next two years, county leaders proclaimed the buzz words of industrial development: Jobs! Tax revenues! Increased property values!

More recently, however, county residents have expressed their concerns. McDonald Farm has a rich culture, deep history and natural beauty that an industrial park could destroy. 

County leadership listened and put plans on hold. The county created a citizens advisory committee, which has promoted agriculture, tourism and recreation over industrial uses. The county also brought in one of the country’s top economic development consultants, Randall Gross, whose study found the site is not viable for industry.

Instead, he highlighted recreation, agriculture and agritourism as realistic best uses.

At face value, the study cast a huge doubt on the Commissioners’ $16 million purchase.

All that money to create an industrial park, only to learn that industry would not be a viable use.

In most cases, history might view the purchase as a folly, as wasted taxpayer money.

In this case, however, future generations may well remember the purchase as an act of great foresight and wisdom. 

Supporting Young Farmers

Let’s look at some positive steps the county could take working alongside organizations like the Southeast Tennessee Young Farmers’ Coalition.

The top priority is to lower the barriers to entry for young farmers, perhaps in the form of a young farmer incubator program. Set up a low-cost farmland leasing program for young farmers. The county already owns the property, so this would not be a huge up-front expense. 

Create a cooperative that will share the costs of equipment and infrastructure. Offer training programs both in farming techniques and in small business management.

The county might also provide common housing for farmers, their families and their workers. 

In exchange for this support, farmers would agree to provide a portion of their harvests to food banks, thus reducing food insecurity.

They’d agree to host educational tours that would expose future generations to local and family farming.

They’d agree to create and support community gardens, where residents could help increase their own food self-sufficiency. There could be community orchards and even a community apiary.

Agri-tourism at McDonald Farm

The National Agricultural Law Center defines agri-tourism as “a form of commercial enterprise that links agricultural production and/or processing with tourism to attract visitors onto a farm, ranch, or other agricultural business for the purposes of entertaining or educating the visitors while generating income for the farm, ranch, or business owner.”

I’ve been active in international tourism for nearly 30 years. Some of that time has included volunteer work in the Balkans and Eastern Europe with USAID to help nations develop sustainable tourism. I’ve seen agritourism transform communities.

In Romania, farm villages emptied when Communism fell, with residents leaving the ancestral homes for opportunities in the cities. The trend reversed itself only after some of the farms started offering lodging and meals to touring hikers and bicyclists. One of the villages now features one of the country’s highest rated inns. Overnight guests can even go hiking with the chef each morning to forage for the day’s meals.

On Croatia’s Brac Island, long-time family owners of an olive oil mill transformed the building into a museum and restaurant. This augmented revenues and extended the season long enough to support hiring full-time rather than seasonal employees.

On the nearby island of Solta, a third-generation beekeeper has expanded his operation to include tours, hands-on experiences, and a museum.

Thousands of visitors each year come to listen to his presentation, “Give Bees a Chance,” which explains how the survival of the human species depends on the survival of bees.

Farming at McDonald Farm could also help expand tourism – one of Tennessee’s largest industries – and be transformational.

Tennessee attracted 144 million visitors in 2023 and generated $30.6 billion in direct visitor spending – an average of $84 million per day.

This represents 15% of Tennessee's retail and non-retail sales. Without tourism, Tennesseans would be paying an average of $1,161 more in taxes.

In Hamilton County, tourism last year generated $1.7 million in visitor spending, supported 12,770 jobs and reduced taxes by an average of $1,205.

I strongly believe that tourism revenues from McDonald Farm would boost those numbers significantly.

Preserving most or all of McDonald Farm would create the critical mass to become a one-of-a-kind recreation, special events, and cultural heritage destination with regional, if not national, significance.

Opportunities for agri-tourism abound at McDonald Farm. There are prime examples in Tennessee:

• Lucky Ladd Farms: outside Nashville is a 60-acre farmstead dubbed an “Ag-Venture Farm Fun Park." Activities include playgrounds and corn mazes, wagon rides, wilderness trails and tractor train rides, festivals and pick-your-own produce.

• Crabtree Farms: a Chattanooga nonprofit that provides fresh produce to visitors, restaurants and farmers markets. It offers frequent workshops and tours and could be an element of agricultural education programs offered on the farm.

• Stillwaters Farms: a 153-acre working farm outside of Hendersonville offers visitors a hands-on farm. It also offers lodging in cottages and other farm locations.

• The Smithsonian-affiliated Museum of Appalachia, located 20 miles north of Knoxville, fills hundreds of acres and features dozens of relocated farm houses, wooden churches, log cabins and one-room schoolhouses brought in from elsewhere.

Agri-hoods at McDonald Farm

McDonald Farm could also put Hamilton County at the cutting edge of a new movement: agri-hoods.

These are housing developments centered around a farm and farming activities – specifically local food production and farm-to-table lifestyles. Think of them as a mashup of community gardens and cohousing communities.

In Olathe, Kansas, the Prairie Commons agrihood will include an organic farm that will produce fruits, vegetables and small-scale livestock as well as several community gardens, a farmers’ market, and farm-to-table restaurants. 

In Vermont, the Farm at South Village agrihood features hiking and cycling paths, community gardens, a four-acre organic farm and a village-like residential area. 

Closer by, in the Chattahoochee Hills southwest of Atlanta, the 1,000-acre Serenbe community blends four “hamlets” into the natural landscape and centers on its own working organic farm. The farm services a CSA and provides produce for the development’s three restaurants.

An agri-hood mixed-use community is also being planned on 190 acres in East Chattanooga.

Further Economic Benefits

Keeping McDonald Farm as natural as possible also has some less obvious but very important economic benefits.

In Tennessee, property values increase by 8-20% if there’s a park within a half-mile. The larger the park, the larger the increase. 

Less obvious but perhaps even more important, parks improve a region’s quality of life, a major determinant of whether people move here or leave their community.

At a recent Hamilton County Commission meeting, one county official noted that half of the county’s population growth comes from people moving here. Quality of life, with parks, green space and outdoor recreation as primary components, is a primary reason.

Of course, saving McDonald Farm means more than saving farming and providing economic benefits. It means saving critical wildlife habitat. Farms and forests also help reduce climate change, emissions and flooding.

Regardless of how successful agriculture–and its close cousins agritourism and agrihoods–might be at McDonald Farm, it’s likely that Hamilton County commissioners will demand a higher return on that $16 million investment. Otherwise, industrial development will remain part of the conversation.

The citizens advisory committee has come up with pages of suggestions for events, attractions and outdoor recreation that will draw visitors to McDonald Farm and to Hamilton County. I’ll share my personal favorite: a world-class mountain bike park.

Mountain Bike Park at McDonald Farm

Mountain biking has had a significant impact on Hamilton County’s economy.

In 2022, mountain biking in our county attracted 48,315 visits, one-third of them from out of state. Visitors spent $6.9 million, generating $482,999 in state and local taxes.

Lest you have an incorrect image of mountain bikers, most have college or advanced degrees, their average income is $80,000-100,000, and the average age is 40. 

McDonald Farm could become one of the leading mountain biking destinations in the Southeast, not just because of the surrounding scenery but also because it has the potential for a huge mountain bike system.

As a general rule of thumb, you can fit about 1 mile into every 10 acres of land. If even 25% of McDonald Farm has mountain bike trails, that translates to 50 miles of trails.

That’s also plenty of room to appeal to a wide range of ability and experience levels.

By comparison, the largest trail systems within 100 miles of Chattanooga are Raccoon Mountain (33 miles), Enterprise South (25 miles), and Five Points (20 miles). None of these systems offers bike rentals, training, restaurants or shops.

McDonald Farm is large enough to warrant and fit all.

This is not to suggest that McDonald Farm would be transformed into a giant mountain bike park. Built right, the trails and riders blend into the scenery rather than detract from the experience. Also, other activities can happen on the same trails – such as hiking and trail running – and other features can use much of the same space.

We could also look at the feasibility of running small shuttles to the highest point in the trail system, giving riders a joyful ride to the bottom.

The Virginia Creeper is a 35-mile trail in southwest Virginia that has become a major economic driver for the region.

Between Nov. 1, 2002, and Oct. 31, 2003, an estimated 130,172 trail users traveled from an average of 154 miles away and spent $1.6 million.

Some say that at least one town along the way owes its survival to the Virginia Creeper. Damascus, for example, with a population of 990, was reeling from the loss of two manufacturing plants toward the end of the last century. 

At about the same time, a bicycle shop opened that offered rentals and shuttle service. That shop now has 35 employees, hundreds of rental bikes, 25 shuttle vans, and dozens of vacation rentals.

Today, five additional companies share similar successes. Trail visitors are a primary driver of successful restaurants, coffee shops and grocery stores.

What's Your Legacy, Commissioner?

The older I get, the more I think about the concept of “legacy.”

What world am I leaving behind for future generations?

I feel that many of our county commissioners are asking themselves that, too, as more of them are recognizing the natural treasure entrusted to them. And realizing that it can also be an economic driver.

To any commissioner or county leader who isn't convinced, I’d ask you to imagine yourself 20 years from now, taking a country drive with your grandchildren.

What would give you more pride: pointing at farmland and forests and telling the grandkids that you were responsible for protecting McDonald Farm for them and future generations, or pointing to an industrial complex and proclaiming that you helped expand the tax base? 

Or, in brief, what do you want your legacy to be?

(Jim Johnson can be reached at jim@jimbikes.com. Join the McDonald Farm community on Facebook.)

Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com

This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.

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