FARMINGTON - Agriculture in Franklin County is not dying but changing.

A standing-room-only crowd of farmers, town officials and interested citizens filled the West Farmington Grange Hall Monday to explore what everyone, including government officials and businesses, can do to help keep farm land in farming.

When local farmer and Planning Board member Bussie York wanted to bring John Piotti of Maine Farmland Trust and Stephanie Gilbert of Maine's Farmland Protection Program to a meeting of the town's selectmen and Planning Board, the idea blossomed into a session for the wider Franklin County community, said Jo Josephson, who helped organize this second meeting sponsored by the two Farmington boards. A meeting was also held in the Grange Hall last fall for farmers, she added.

York told the audience he only expected a dozen or so people to show interest and then questioned if there is now a willingness to look at the bigger picture and recognize that farms are critical to the community.

"If now is not the right time to invest in this resource, then when will it be? When will it be too late?" he asked.

A county rich in the history of farming, including local canneries and a change from beef cattle to dairy, has turned a page with the number of farms now increasing in Franklin County, Josephson said.

A total of 1,469 farms in 1940 represented Franklin County, Planning Board member Tom Eastler told the group.

That figure dropped to 210 farms in 1992 but rose to more than 300 farms in 2002 as young operations and small diversified farms came into being, Josephson said.

While the number of farms rose, the size of the farms decreased, she added.

York has seen a changing landscape over his 45 years of farming, he said, going from a small tight-knit community with corn shops and six machinery dealers in Farmington to "huge farms," but the small farms were lost, he said.

Now it may be what goes around comes around, he said. Small farms can produce without trucking their produce a couple thousand miles.

A huge amount of agricultural land has been lost to development, he said, leaving 1 percent of the population providing food for the rest, raising questions of food cost and availability.

With Maine having the fifth youngest farmer population in the country, Piotti of Maine Farmland Trust, said the organization's quest is to keep farmland in farming. In recent years, it became apparent that a lot of farms were going to be changing hands, he said as he explained methods to help preserve farmlands for young farmers instead of developers.

As towns make plans, Gilbert encouraged town officers to keep in mind that it takes three acres of farmland to feed one person for a year with fruits, vegetables and meat as she described the need to raise awareness, strategize and prioritize.

Some concerns raised after the presentations by those attending included farm taxes, energy sources, regional planning between towns, costs of transporting food, insurance and communication.

The outcome was a decision to form a "blue ribbon" planning committee to come up with project ideas/goals and meet again at the Grange Hall in the fall.