In response to an article about Atina Diffley and her memoir Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works, Mary Alice Divine of White Bear Lake seems to think that the only way land changes hands in the U.S. is by way of voluntary transactions (see http://atinadiffley.com/turn-here-sweet-corn-dialog-on-urban-planning/#more-2245).
LOADED LANGUAGE: Developers can’t build unless landowners sell
While I appreciate those who are passionate about organically grown food and enjoyed reading the profile of Atina Diffley (“Soil sister,” April 18), I think it does a disservice to those who build our homes when a reporter writes that “bulldozers are the villians” and that the Diffleys “lost” their farm to suburban development as bulldozers “strafed the land.”
Bulldozers don’t just come over the horizon and take people’s farms. Somebody has to willingly sell their land to a developer. Then that developer (provided the property is zoned for housing) builds the homes we live in.
I don’t know the particulars of this family’s decision, but I do know that no developer, no city, no bulldozer made them sell.
MARY ALICE DIVINE, WHITE BEAR LAKE
If Ms. Divine is interested in facts rather than mythology, she would do well to acquaint herself with eminent domain and the ad valorem property tax, which are just two popular ways of involuntarily taking property away from people in the U.S. She might also look into the system of sewer and water assessment liens apparently used in the Diffley case, the ultimate effect of which was indeed to make the family sell.
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