Whose island is Johns Island

Part Three

Third of five parts: Many value Johns Island for its rural character, but an integral part of that -- farming -- is disappearing. The forces of suburbia are increasing property values, and some say there aren't enough tools in place to protect farmland from development. JOHNS ISLAND--Adair McKoy is a busy man in the early spring, overseeing more than a dozen people scrambling to plant tomato seedlings. That's why he was more than a little frustrated when he learned Charleston County's new zoning law -- a law touted as preserving rural areas -- made it illegal for him to expand his packing shed at 771 Brownswood Road. The shed is on the island's northeastern end -- the end closest to Charleston and the area under the most pressure from developers -- so the county had rezoned it for residential use. As a result, McKoy took time out from his planting this spring to make the trip to the county's North Charleston offices. There he asked that his piece of land, a site farmers have used to pack vegetables since 1935, be zoned back to agricultural. "My request, and this is probably a rarity, is to let the six tomato farmers that are operating in Charleston County continue to operate," he told council members. Even though he got his wish, McKoy, who has farmed this island and neighboring sea islands since the 1960s, puts little faith in the ability of zoning to protect his way of life. "In the last 10 years, agriculture has just about disappeared from the island," he said. "When the generation before me got out of farming or died, there really wasn't anybody to take over. "The reasons behind farming's demise are complicated, but McKoy said a big one is the large difference between what a rural tract of land is worth to a farmer and what it is worth to a developer. "The sad thing is, back in 1996, '97, when the county was putting together the unified development plan, there was an opportunity for agriculture to become a permanent part of the community," he said. "That didn't happen." While the county drew a line around its metropolitan areas and rezoned land outside the line to allow less density, the county did not put a program in place to buy development rights. McKoy said those kind of programs have been crucial to preserving farms in New York and New England. "They chose to control the land through zoning," he said. "Zoning can be changed next week." Just a few years after the county's rural-urban line was put on the books, council members have made several modifications, including a controversial move to reclassify 2,500 acres on Johns Island from rural to urban, then back again to rural. Under a program to buy development rights, a landowner who wants his land to remain rural can receive compensation for the difference between his land's agricultural or open space value and its development value. If its agricultural value was $2,000 per acre and its value to a developer was $6,000, the value of the easement or development right would be $4,000 an acre. In exchange for that sum, the landowner signs a legal agreement forbidding development on the land, and McKoy notes those agreements are far more binding than zoning. If Charleston County voters approve a half-cent sales tax on Nov. 2, 17 percent of the proceeds are set to go toward parks and green space, but it's unclear how much of the money would go toward buying development rights on farmland, as opposed to developing city or county parks or buying sensitive areas such as Morris Island. McKoy and his son-in-law, Whitt Russell, aren't optimistic. "That money will go somewhere else," said Russell, who used to tend Kiawah Island's golf courses until he joined McKoy in farming about six years ago. They don't own most of the land they farm. Instead, they lease it from large property owners, the kind of property owners he said are disappearing. As he stands on farmland on Wadmalaw Island, just across Church Creek, Russell notes that it has been in the same family for two centuries. "You can't go to many pieces of property on Johns, Wadmalaw or Edisto islands and make that distinction," he said. "It's just a matter of time. The handwriting is on the wall." Four decades ago, Charleston shipped more tomatoes than any other part of the country, said County Council Chairman Barrett Lawrimore, a former Clemson Extension agent. Its commercial agriculture also included cabbage, snap beans, Irish potatoes, squash and slicing cucumbers. "The only agriculture we've got left in the county as far as fresh vegetables is tomatoes. There are no other 'big' vegetable growers," he said. "In order to get in agricultural production now, you've got to inherit it or marry it. You or I couldn't go out and do it now. The overhead is too high." While a growing number of county residents are calling for the protection of the remaining rural countryside, McKoy knows the debate can be a slippery one. To some, including many of those who moved to Johns Island in the last decade, preserving the countryside means allowing only low density development, preferably development that is well screened from major highways so most people hardly notice it's there. To McKoy, it's not about aesthetics; it means having a place to farm. "Over in Scotland, there's a totally different mindset about land. The little villages and communities are compact. When you get to the outskirts, there's nothing beyond it," he said. In America, many people want a backyard big enough for a game of football, which drives homes farther apart, farther toward McKoy's fields. He said he once talked to a woman from Kiawah Island who wasn't keen about preserving farmland. "She said, 'We don't need farms. We can go right up to the Piggly Wiggly,' " he said. While leaning on his tractor, he gazes a few football fields away, toward some 65 acres of freshly planted tomatoes and said: "A developer sees this as having a great potential. "I see the developer as a buzzard. Don't you write that down -- I've got a lot of friends who are developers," he said with a smile. Then, he turns serious again. "Some of them were forced into it because there was no way to sell their development rights."

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