Thirty-Year-Old Organic Farm to Be Turned into Soccer Fields?

Nick Maravell has been tilling the soil in Maryland's Montgomery County for more than 30 years. His 20-acre operation, Nick's Organic Farm, provides a cornucopia of certified organic seed crops and vegetables, and countless local farmers and foodies rely on the agricultural operation. "What Nick's doing there is the hub that supports the spokes of a local food system that we're trying so hard to strengthen," says Kristina Bostick, Senior Conservation Associate with the Montgomery Countryside Alliance, a farmland conservation non-profit.

So you can imagine Maravell's surprise when Montgomery County officials slapped an expiration date on his local food mecca. The County plans to plow down the organic farm in 2012 to make way for — wait for it — soccer fields.

Choosing soccer fields over summer squash is obviously a controversial choice. But understanding just how egregious this decision really is requires a bit of back story.

Maravell leases the land for Nick's Organic Farm from the Montgomery County Board of Education (BOE). The 20-acre plot — known as the Brickyard Farm School Site — is the location of a future middle school once the County's public schools become overcrowded. Under the Board of Education's restrictions, no one can build on and develop the site of a future school. So for the past 31 years, Maravell has leased and cared for the land, sparking the growth of not only his own farming operation, but a thriving local food scene in Montgomery County.

That all changed on March 7, 2011 when Montgomery County officials told Maravell that they planned to build soccer fields on the land, giving the farmer a mere two weeks to vacate the property he's called home for the past three decades. Three days later, the BOE voted and decided to let Nick's Organic Farm stay until January of 2012, but that still only gives the farmer 10 months to forfeit his livelihood.

The fact that County officials would shut down Nick's Organic Farm is bad enough, but the way they went about doing it is the worst part of this tale. Montgomery Soccer Incorporated (MSI), a non-profit that runs the region's soccer activities, had been talking to County Executive Ike Leggett about building new soccer fields since 2009. The BOE then decided to lease the Brickyard site to the County, which is now brokering a deal with MSI. The problem was that nobody told Maravell — or the public, for that matter — until two weeks before the farmer would need to leave his land. No public hearings, no transparency — just closed-door meetings and sneaky arrangements.

While the BOE decided to give Maravell until 2012 to vacate the site of Nick's Organic Farm, some members of the community are understandably upset. There's still been no public hearing on this decision, and many folks feel that the BOE's secretive decision will irreparably damage the region's budding sustainable food scene.

That's where Montgomery Countryside Alliance comes in. The non-profit, in collaboration with Nick Maravell, started a petition on Change.org asking Leggett to let Nick's Organic stay. The non-profit is also asking the County to establish a Food Policy Council that will use Nick's Organic Farm as an agricultural production center and hub for sustainable food education.

No one's saying that Montgomery County couldn't benefit from soccer fields, but these fields shouldn't come at the expense of an invaluable organic farm. Sign Montgomery Countryside Alliance's petition, and help Nick Maravell hold on to his local food hub.

Photo credit: stevendepolo via Flickr