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Editorial

Because of the way our nation was born and grew, we tend to think of land as an infinite resource. Most of us have ancestors who left an Old World where only the wealthy owned land. When they arrived here in the vast New World, there was such an abundance of land the government gave it away to encourage settlement and to wrest it from the inhabitants, who didn’t embrace our notions of deeds and titles. Even though that was many generations ago, the underlying national attitude toward land as a commodity remains. The term commodity, of course, implies routine buying and selling, and commodities are more or less interchangeable.

So it’s easy to think of land primarily as real estate, complete with “For Sale” sign. Buying and selling land is generally a good way to make money, because it has almost always appreciated in value. Hold onto a parcel long enough, and it will be worth more than you paid for it. A classic way to earn an even better return is to buy a large parcel, determine where the building sites are, and then subdivide the land accordingly. You can sell each of the smaller pieces for a higher price per acre than you paid, and after you’ve recouped your investment, you can hold onto the remaining land and use the cash to do it all over again. This approach works whether you buy a 100,000 acre tract in a lightly settled area or 20 acres on the outskirts of town. You can make even more money by cutting some or all of the timber before subdividing the land. It’s amazing that people will buy parcels that have been skinned, but they do. This is classic American land speculation, and someone at this moment is cashing in on it within a few miles of you.

The speculative impulse is reinforced by the rootlessness of our society. Even in our most rural areas, there are few people today who live a long life on the same piece of ground. So we find ourselves nearly four centuries after the founding of the Plymouth Colony still in the process of settling this land. 

I don’t think it’s possible to defeat the societal and market forces that make speculation and parcelization an ongoing fact of life for the rural landscape. But not everyone has the cash or the derring-do – or the impulse – to make a living as a speculator, so most of us find ourselves living on a piece of ground that at least temporarily we call home. But even then, if we try to wring as much cash out of that asset as we can by overcutting the timber, the home place can be little more than a commodity.

The only way any of us gets past that attitude is by developing an ethic of land stewardship. Some people get there by using the land in ways that are passive: birding, botany, and hiking have led plenty of people to a strong connection to their land. But others get there by using the food, fuel, and lumber the land can provide. When done well, with a clear understanding of what the land can produce, people can harvest crops of wood and meat year after year, and both they and the land are better for it. So, using the land is not the problem; in fact, it can be the solution, because by using it, we can’t help but look on it with awe. We can’t help but marvel at the land’s power to turn sun, soil, and water into an amazingly intricate system.

Through science and a healthy respect for that which science can’t teach us, many people are learning how to work with the land so it has the capacity to produce goods for people without diminishing its ability to support a vast array of plants and animals. Long after we are recycled through the system, the land will still be there. The condition it’s in depends on how its succession of tenants has tended it. Did they exploit it or did they try to leave it a better place? Did they see land ownership as a right or as a responsibility?

When people get to know a piece of land, it is not merely a commodity – it is a treasure.

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