Where public transit and bicycle infrastructure meet the Agricultural Reserve. Image by the author.

In 2016, Greater Greater Washington ran a piece by Maryland-based blogger and urban planner Dan Reed (now GGWash’s regional policy director), headlined “The difference between Maryland and Virginia in one photo.” That article was a brief illustrated overview of Montgomery County’s Agricultural Reserve, an area of preserved farmland making up one-third of the county’s land area.

Most people who live in the DC metro area have probably heard of the Agricultural Reserve, and certainly, everyone who follows land-use issues in the region has. But fewer know quite what it is, or have actually explored it up close. Including, until recently, me.

From a County website:

In 1980, the Montgomery County Council made one of the most significant land-use decisions in county history by creating what we call the Agricultural Reserve. Heralded as one of the best examples of land conservation policies in the country, the Agricultural Reserve encompasses 93,000 acres – almost a third of the county’s land resources – along the county’s northern, western, and eastern borders.

The Agricultural Reserve and its accompanying Master Plan and zoning elements were designed to protect farmland and agriculture. Along with a sustained commitment to agriculture through the county’s Office of Agriculture, the combination of tools helps retain more than 500 farms that contribute millions of dollars to Montgomery County’s annual economy. This is a notable achievement in an area so close to the nation’s capital, where development pressure remains perpetual and intense.

It’s a fascinating and beautiful land-use experiment. Recently a friend in Maryland, who lives along the I-270-corridor, gave me a tour of the Agricultural Reserve. In keeping with its rustic vibe—and the weak internet signal—we didn’t use a navigator or phone. Instead, my friend wrote out directions by hand, and we explored a slice of the DC-area countryside the old-fashioned way.

Not more than 15 or 20 minutes from many of the county’s major population centers, we passed farms, orchards, wineries, country stores, and sleepy small towns (and a surprisingly small number of McMansion-style homes on large lots). At one point we pulled over for a large tractor. Several of the MARC train stations reside within the Reserve, an illustration of how the direction of development shifted decades ago. We drove over gravel roads and watched farmers work in their fields. If you had dropped me in the middle of this and not told me where I was, I wouldn’t have thought I was within 100 miles of a major American city. But I was only about 30 miles from the heart of downtown Washington.

Farmland preservation initiatives exist all over the United States, and some, like the one in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania—and, of course, Montgomery County’s Agricultural Reserve—are considered exemplary. But what makes the Agricultural Reserve unique is that unlike farmland preservation in many other places (like New Jersey, where I’m originally from), the Reserve is a contiguous piece of land hugging most of the country’s outer border. It preserves not just green or open space, but an actual working, functioning countryside. It is much more than an amenity for affluent homeowners, or NIMBYism posing as environmentalism.

Where some retail density shows up -- the Boyds General Store on Maryland Route 117. Image by the author.

So how did the Agricultural Reserve come to be?

The Reserve itself is not a single policy, per se, but rather the result of many policies. One of them, for example, is the conscious choice not to provide public sewer service to the areas covered by the Reserve, but rather only the county’s inner portion and its newer “corridor cities” along I-270. And the “corridor cities” idea itself ties in with the Reserve: instead of allowing relatively low-density growth to radiate out evenly—as in Fairfax County—growth is channeled into corridors, creating higher-density development alongside rural “wedges.”

“Creation of an Agricultural Reserve through a combination of zoning, limitation of sewer service, and use of transferable development rights is one of the nation’s most successful and widely emulated efforts to preserve farmland in perpetuity,” writes Royce Hanson in Suburb, a granular history of development in Montgomery County. While 1980 is the year of creation, the entire “wedges and corridors” plan, of which both the Agricultural Reserve and the I-270 “corridor cities” are a part, dates to the mid-1960s. (This was at a time when even much of Fairfax County, let alone Loudoun, was still rural and agricultural.)

In the 1970s, the county imposed a “Rural Zone” over much of what is now the Reserve, and also established five-acre zoning. However, even with the lack of public sewer service, the conversion of farms into subdivisions continued. Easements were added to the arsenal, but so was one of the Reserve’s most unique attributes: the fact that it created a contiguous piece of agricultural land and not a patchwork of individual farms. “Keeping a large contiguous area of farmland intact was crucial to sustaining farming. Farmers’ experience taught once an area was fragmented by residential subdivisions, farming became less viable,” Hanson writes. In other words, the county managed to preserve not just “open space” but farming and rural life themselves. And just 30 miles from downtown Washington, DC.

Hanson notes that at the time of the Reserve’s creation, the loss of farmland was a broad concern around the country. Yet out of so many places, it was Montgomery County that set the gold standard for farmland preservation.

Some might say the Agricultural Reserve is a scheme to reverse-engineer the countryside, instead of letting the county grow. But if we do it right, as Montgomery County has attempted, we can grow and preserve in tandem. And besides, while public policy is necessary to preserve this land today, the result is really just keeping a little bit of what we used to have.