The North Kingstown Planning Commission met on November 21, 2023, at Town Hall. The meeting included two major discussion items: a presentation on soil health stewardship training from the American Farmland Trust and a workshop on zoning ordinance amendments to implement new state laws, including inclusionary zoning, density bonuses, and adaptive reuse. No votes were taken; the meeting was informational and to gather commissioner input.
of the North Kingstown zoning ordinance amendments, North Kingstown land development subdivision regulations and amendments uh to implement new state laws. Can we do the soil stuff first to get that over with? Not over with but over with so that we can concentrate on all the amendments. You want to make sure that we get to it before we break for the evening. Yes. I'm too tired to go over this. We have a motion to adjourn. No, I drove all the way here just for the meeting. So you're staying here. Which is a discussion National Agricultural Land Network. Soil Health Stewart's training. And there are cookies. There are oh Steve, thank you. That was very kind. No pressure. Or thank your wife or yeah. So um I wanted I asked Nicole if we could put this on the agenda tonight because as you saw in the packet um the town applied for and received um I guess it's a it's a small amount of money but it was also the ability to participate in the training that was being put on by the American Farmland Trust. I think officially it's the yeah the National Agricultural Land Network. So we applied and we were accepted. So Jenna um in our office and I went up to a to uh two day well three day training up in Fairley Vermont and um we got to learn they ate but it was nice. I mean they did they you know part of the the funds you get is is they do pay for your stay there. They pay for the training they you know put us up in a cute little place on a lake. It was pretty cool. It was Lake Maury um in Fairley Vermont and part of the training was in classroom training. And then part of it was we actually got to go to two different farms um for the day and have lunch on one of the farms on Wednesday and we got to see firsthand some of the soil health practices that they're advocating for and um basically what they want to teach us is as easement holders. So the town holds conservation easements over farmland in North Kingstown. Many of the organizations that were at the training were actually land trusts so we were one of the only municipalities at the training so we were a little bit it was a little awkward for us because it was very we have a very different experience because unfortunately the preservation aspect of what we do is a very small part whereas all the other folks there this is all they do is land preservation and ag easements and other conservation easements. But it was pretty cool we got to learn about soil health so there was some science to it but it was things I did not I didn't know anything about it and most folks there were clueless when they went there. So we were all learning together. But we also learned about how to communicate with our farmers like if you want to engage them a lot of them have been doing the same practices for generations and sometimes getting them to try something new is difficult. So we also learned about how do you reach out to them how would you approach them and a lot of what they focused on toward the end of the training was showing them that their bottom line benefits from it so that if you're using your equipment less and if you are you know you're not tilling all the time it can actually end up saving you money and making you more money with less you have less labor costs. So it was actually cool to see that aspect of it too and um we got to go first hand and do a soil analysis. I got to take home a little cool tool that's still in the back of my car but it's for compaction because one of the things that's hard for growing um and growing well is compaction because you're driving your tractor over it for could be a hundred years in some or more in some instances and the soil has become so compacted that it's not healthy anymore. So they gave us a tool to measure how compacted the soil is so it was just trying to give us the basics so when we go reach out to our farmers to teach them the benefits of no-till cover cropping um crop rotation grazing rotation that we have a little bit of an understanding and so one of the things we have to do is develop a soil health action plan by the end of this month and it's pretty simple and I gave in your packet I gave you the general parameters of what it is and one of the things um I started drafting it's not finished yet is I would share information that I learned at the training with the conservation commission the planning commission just to keep you guys in the loop you don't necessarily work with us on the conservation of property but it I think you're very aware of it um and I think as even when developments come before you sometimes you know there is a soil health aspect to some of the discussions that we have so I'm really just sharing the information with you guys so I put a bunch of fact sheets in your packet there's a bunch of resources on the link that I gave you in the word document um that I sent you and so it tonight is really just kind of introducing you guys to what we um did at the training and then um we are planning to do some targeted mailings to our easement holders and to other farmers to try to give them information. We are not experts we're just going to be a resource to help them if they'd like to try to adopt some of the practices that might end up producing better yields you know and save them money. So it was pretty cool. It was different. Something I never thought I would experience before. So it was inju it was fun. It was good. So that's it. Quick question. How much uh acreage does North Kingstown have that's farmland? How many different farms are gosh? I mean, I don't have that number. We have over total protected open space, it's like 8,000 acres. Just I have never parsed out just the farms. Um we probably had to actually for the application, but I don't know if I aggregated it. We had to have an assumption. Yeah, I can look it up for you.