Keeping a thriving agricultural industry

KENT COUNTY, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - The auto business is of course one of Michigan's biggest industries, but with the prospect of thousands more job losses on the horizon there's an increased pressure on the state's other leading industries to create products and jobs.

One of those is agriculture, and that business requires lots of land.

Some Kent County commissioners want to make sure that land is there to keep farming thriving in Michigan.

The Med-O-Bloom Farm on 100th Street in Caledonia is a farm with one of the richest histories in Michigan, something that inspired those commissioners to take action.

Bill Hirsch says it's all about money. "When farmers want to sell, developers will always pay the highest price for their land and their goals are to build, not preserve," said Hirsch.

That's why he and four fellow commissioners recently took a trip out east to study farm preservation in Pennsylvania and Maryland.

He says keeping farm land for farming doesn't just benefit the agricultural industry, it also helps every other citizen in Kent County.

The more rural land developed, the more people move away from cities already struggling in today's economy.

"Michigan and Kent County have lost a lot because of the issue of sprawl, we're abandoning our cities infrastructure and developing our best ag land and it's having a negative effect on our school system, on transportation, traffic, taxes and just overall quality of life," said Hirsch.

Hirsch says in the long term it's far less expensive on taxpayers to preserve farmland than it is to develop it.