Plan Hamilton - the city and county growth plan - seems like a fast-moving train that will either stay its course or jump the tracks and cause damage for decades and generations to come.

News reports over the last few days show last-minute amendments, a Regional Planning Agency leader on-leave after alleged violations and citizens across the county troubled and furious as proposed changes seek to bump up density to three homes-per-acre, despite countless people speaking out otherwise.

Let's start with this:

They're called Place Types.

It's the term used by the Regional Planning Agency (RPA) in its Plan Hamilton that goes before the County Commission this morning.

Here's the definition from RPA.

In Area 13 - the north end of the county, like Soddy Daisy and Sale Creek, which are abundantly agricultural - Plan Hamilton uses a variety of distinct Places Types, including Centers and Corridors and Specialty Districts.

And all the farms there?

They're not named as farms, but as "Countryside Residential." That's the Place Type terminology used to describe the 100s of historic, generational, small-family, diversified farms in Hamilton County.

Not farms. Not agriculture. Those terms were swapped out for Countryside Residential, which seems to suggest that land use is best for building homes, not growing food.

Sure, it's just a term, not a zoning designation.

But words matter; they set tone and describe vision. We've said for months that the RPA is ignoring agriculture, food and farming in its work. Asked directly and indirectly for any vision on food policy, RPA leader Dan Reuter - who improperly voted out-of-state last year and is now on leave after an alleged policy violation - was unable to offer any distinct plan or vision regarding food policy.

Then, Plan Hamilton was released.

And Agriculture is not considered as a Place Type.

Across the state, farmland's being lost at a rate of 10 acres per hour. In Plan Hamilton, the erasure continues through semantics, terminology with an apparent allegiance towards development, not agriculture.

"Every commercial farm registered with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, USDA Farm Service Agency and the Century Farm Program has been reclassified as residential by Hamilton County and the RPA in their comprehensive plan," wrote April Eidson, a cattle farmer in Soddy Daisy, in her Chattanoogan.com editorial.

Not so, says the county mayor's office.

"The County is not currently seeking to rezone or redesignate any private property," said Nathan Janeway, Director of Development Services. "The term Countryside Residential was chosen for consistency of nomenclature for staff that will be reviewing rezoning requests in the future. We would no [sic] be opposed to calling it something else."

Janeway said Place Types are just that: terms used that have no rezoning powers.

He pointed to the description of Countryside Residential. It's simply describing the current state of rural Hamilton County.

"Our only agricultural zone in Hamilton County already allows 2 houses per acre and isn't really a stand alone agricultural zone," he said. "In fact, we have the highest density in our agricultural zone from a housing perspective than most of our peer counties state wide."

And that's the main point.

That's the main engine on this runaway train.

High density development on farmland that, once destroyed, will never return.

As painful as it seems, Janeway's right: Agriculture is not the proper term because farmland in the 21st-century is not valued as it once was.

If your neighbor owns a 200-acre farm and wants to sell to developers, current rules allow 400 homes built on that site.

Maximum density? Two homes per acre.

There's a proposal in Plan Hamilton to increase that to three homes per acre.

Farmland loss contains so many types of loss: cultural, spiritual, generational, communal. Land, among the most gorgeous in the county, turns into subdivisions. Quiet is lost to noise, ease lost to stress, trees lost to asphalt, community lost to profit, Creation lost to cul-de-sacs.

This is why Save Signal Mountain packed the town meeting last night and the McDonald Farm community groups have worked tirelessly to save this precious land and why so many of us are weeping and gnashing our teeth:

When the hell does it stop?

Once you lose this, it never returns.

Then, after months of community meetings in which citizens said over and over - save our land, don't overdevelop - Plan Hamilton leaders include two amendments into the proposed document:

• A letter from the Chamber of Commerce calling for McDonald Farm to turn into a manufacturing site.
• And a homebuilders' proposal to increase density from two homes per acre to three.

Here's page 60 of the Area 7 Plan:

Here's the proposed amendment suggesting a three-home-per-acre change:

(Don't take the Chamber letter's inclusion as part of the county mayor's office. They don't always wish for the same things. The Chamber sees manufacturing. Mayor Weston Wamp says he wants to honor citizens' wishes.)

Regardless, agriculture was the original Hamilton County place type.

Where is the equivalent of a farmers' Chamber of Commerce? Where is the Chamber of Agriculture and Land?

What if instead of 10 acres of farmland being lost every hour, we were losing 10 businesses every hour? It is the problem we have faced for centuries that's now more urgent than ever:

There is this land. Precious, God-breathed, containing some of the most biodiverse life in America.

"It is the most diverse area for biology for living creatures in the entirety of North America," one conservationist told us recently for an upcoming story.

And it's being lost.

(Email your county commissioner here.)

Here's Rep. Greg Vital:

This morning, the Times Free Press published a report:

The majority of polled residents want McDonald Farm to remain agricultural, not industrial.

This comes as no surprise. As so much unravels in society, there is the conscious-and-subconscious need to return to the grounding stability that land, farming, agriculture offer.

We do not move through manufacturing spaces and feel at ease. Yes, we need jobs and commerce, but not at the expense of our agricultural past, present and future.

Poets don't write of industry. God breathed dust - not asphalt - into the bones, flesh and spirit of Adam and Eve. Jefferson called farmers our most valuable citizens.

When does the land win?

When do farmers win?

When do conservation and family farms and the old ways and quiet communities and miles of abundant fields get the upper hand?

When does this ...

... and this ...

... not become this?

"For no matter how urban our life, our bodies live by farming," Wendell Berry writes in The Unsettling of America. "We come from the earth and return to it, and so we live in agriculture as we live in flesh."

As one friend said recently: we will learn this one way or another. Either on our own, through collective will and vision. Or, as the train wrecks increase, through hardship and environmental suffering.

Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com

This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.

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