Chocolate Milk and the Rural Economy

By Charles Houston

My childhood breakfasts often featured milk that had soured. (Cue the bad memories.) Once away at college I had a chance to have breakfast my way, so I signed up for fresh chocolate milk every morning. The smooth sweet taste was a treat.

A treat for about a week. By then I had had enough of the stuff and was sick of it.

To this day I’ve not had another sip of the sugary cocoa concoction. It had become too much of a good thing. And so it is with the commercialization of western Loudoun.

The Rural Economy

There are many definitions of a rural economy, but let’s use the version in Loudoun’s new General Plan: “Crop and livestock production, forestry, horticulture and specialty farming, farm markets and wayside stands, the equine industry, orchards, vineyards…” Those do seem rural and salutary, but how about other uses the Plan considers to be part of the rural economy? “Farm wineries, farm-to-table restaurants, rural resorts, country inns, camps…” At most they are only tangentially associated with rural life, and they sure ain’t agriculture.

Western Loudoun used to be a rural paradise, but those days are past. It’s urgent that we save what’s still here.  

The Plan also says that breweries and event facilities are part of the rural economy. Only a casuist would assert that they have anything with agriculture. Some are wildly popular, but their neighbors detest the traffic and noise that wineries and especially breweries can bring.  A brewery on Rt. 601 has been a big success, but its success has brought dangerous traffic. I’ve also heard many complaints about noise and lighting. Neighbors are up in arms about that particular brewery and have fought, so far unsuccessfully, to rein it in.

This fearful anger is pervasive and widespread. Any announcement of a new brewery sets off storms of protest from neighbors. I’ve even heard that one westerner sold his farm and moved away, simply because the open land next door seemed ripe for a brewery to grab.

The Mantra of More

Loudoun already has over a hundred drinking spots – breweries and wineries galore. Isn’t that sufficient? Instead, some County bodies push for even more rural development. There’s the Rural Economic Development Council, the Economic Development Advisory Commission, the Department of Economic Development, and the ever-avaricious Chamber of Commerce.  Do any of them truly serve the interests of the people who actually live in western Loudoun?

A History Lesson

Businesses should exist to meet the needs of citizens in the area, rather than being profiteers aiming to lure traffic from afar. At most, business should grow no faster than the local population, and it should be of an appropriate type.  

Loudoun’s history shows how that can happen organically. In 1649 King Charles II of England established the Northern Neck Proprietary, consisting of all the land between the Potomac River to the north and the Rappahannock River to the south. By 1719 the young Thomas 6^th Lord Fairfax had inherited the Proprietary, all 5,282,000 acres. But what to do with it?

Lord Fairfax had an imaginative idea: Give settlers 40 acres if within two years they built a house of at least 16 feet by 20 feet. Settlers would farm and a rural economy would develop to support them. Eventually there would be crop and livestock production, forestry, farm markets, orchards, vineyards, all supported by veterinarians, farriers, coopers, smiths, cabinetmakers, candlemakers and so on.

Lord Fairfax’s vision of a thriving rural community – farms and supporting business – came to pass and it did so naturally, without commissions, boards, committees. 

Why Not?

Why not change the membership of the County’s pro-business committees to include only citizens-at-large? Forget the “stakeholder” idea that lets business people dominate advisory boards and push their economic self-interest. 

Under current zoning many businesses can simply open shop on a by-right basis, with no case-by-case evaluation for appropriateness. That’s even dumber than drinking chocolate milk at every breakfast, so enact a zoning requirement that any proposed commercial use in western Loudoun go through the special exception process for approval by the Board of Supervisors. 

Charles Houston developed more than six million square feet of office buildings throughout the south. More importantly, he has been active in conservation matters for over two decades.