Palm Beach Post
Letters to the Editor
Sunday, January 27, 2013

The Ag Reserve west of Boynton Beach is a perfect place to grow winter vegetables. The county should have made the reserve 100-percent agriculture, but developers wanted to put some houses in the area. From the start, this has resulted in conflicts.

Even though the Ag Reserve was never intended to have services, homeowners were promised services. The county compromised, promising a 60–40 split between agriculture and housing. But this depended upon the clustering of housing. Builders agreed to these terms to protect the integrity of the Ag Reserve. Now KRG/Atlantic Delray Beach wishes to break the agreement, because it can make more money through urban sprawl than clustering.

Every time the county makes an agreement with the builders, the builders come back and ask to break the agreement. If we continue, developers will drive agriculture out of the county at a time when climate change is damaging farming around the world. We may someday be dependent upon these farms for food. We need farms more than more homes.

DREW MARTIN
Lake Worth
Editor’s note: Drew Martin is Conservation Chair, Loxahatchee Group, of the Sierra Club.