Political Quotes

“Absolutely. We have seen a lot of growth in southeastern Pennsylvania in the last 20 years, and it is good-paying jobs and family-sustaining jobs. As that continues to happen, people at the same time, while that is where they go to work and earn their livelihood, they also want to see the environmental quality of life also preserved, so they have in their communities not only the good-paying jobs but also the green space, the open space to preserve for their generation and beyond. At the same time, that growth is also coming up against the rural communities, those communities that for generations and hundreds and hundreds of years have been agrarian. They were founded on agricultural activity, and now, as that growth pushes up against that, the farmers want to be able to stay and keep the family farm going for future generations. We found in Pennsylvania that the Farmland Preservation Program is an excellent way to do two things: keep the family farm going by providing, through payment of dollars for conservation easements to the families, the ability for them to sustain themselves economically and, at the same time, sustain that environmental quality of life that is important to what makes a good community.”